Thomas Quick (21 page)

The car used by Sture Bergwall in the murder of Johan had been borrowed from a homosexual acquaintance, he claimed. There was nothing remarkable about that, until the investigators started looking into the matter.

For the owner of the car, referred to here as Tord Ljungström, the telephone call came as a shock. He couldn’t understand why a police detective should want to see him. However, he ensured that the interview was held in a neutral, discreet place, in room 408 at the Scandic Hotel in Falun.

‘I don’t know anyone by the name of Thomas Quick and no Sture Bergwall either,’ Ljungström insisted.

Only when Seppo Penttinen described Sture Bergwall’s appearance was Ljungström’s memory jogged.

‘Could this possibly be the Sture who’s been committed to Säter Hospital?’

Ljungström conceded that he did remember him. He described how they had been acquainted some ten or twelve years ago.

‘We met maybe seven or eight times and had sexual relations,’ he admitted. ‘We always met at the sports hall in Lugnet, by the public pool. Always on a Tuesday, because Tuesday was my day off. I was working at a grocery at that time.’

The meetings had always taken a certain form, according to Ljungström. He had arrived in his car while Sture cycled from his home in Korsnäs to Lugnet.

Had he possibly owned a light blue Volvo, a model from 1980, wondered the investigator?

Ljungström answered that he had owned many cars, most of them Volvos, but never a light blue one. What about a dark blue one?

The interrogation report gives a consistent impression of Ljungström trying to be cooperative and answer the questions truthfully. But when Officer Carlsson suggested that Ljungström had lent his Volvo to Sture Bergwall, Ljungström became less cooperative.

‘That’s absolutely incorrect! I’m very particular about my cars and I’ve never lent my car to anyone. Well, except my wife, of course,’ he added.

Tord Ljungström was willing to answer all kinds of personal questions, but he categorically denied ever having lent his car to Sture. The interview finished without the investigators having managed to budge him by a single inch on that point.

The following day, Christer van der Kwast disclosed to journalists
that Thomas Quick had pointed out the person who had lent him the car used for the murder. But he seemed to imply that the ‘car lender’ was a tricky customer who had tried to give them the slip.

‘The individual in question initially denied knowing the forty-three-year-old but later admitted that he was familiar with him. Their relationship was of a sort that would do a great deal of damage to the individual in question if his identity were ever to be revealed.’

The day after questioning Tord Ljungström, Seppo Penttinen drove to Säter to interview Quick yet again. Göran Fransson was also present.

‘If we could begin by talking a bit about your driving licence and so forth,’ began Penttinen. ‘When did you take your driving test?’

‘In 1987,’ answered Quick.

Everyone in the room must have realised that the answer was a strange one.

‘In 1987?’ asked Penttinen with sincere surprise.

He twisted and turned and repeated the question, but the answer remained unchanged. Sture obtained his driving licence in 1987 and, prior to this, didn’t have any significant driving experience.

‘The drive to the Sundsvall area, did that not, so to speak, cause you problems in terms of driving the car on your own?’ Penttinen wondered.

‘No. Oh no! No problems at all,’ Quick assured him.

The following day, Penttinen visited Quick’s younger sister, Eva.

‘Eva, would you say that Sture was capable of comfortably driving a vehicle at the time we are looking at, 1980?’

‘I actually never saw Sture drive a car before 1987,’ she replied. ‘The first time was in 1987, when he got his licence.’

Eva recalled that Sture was such an awful driver that he’d even had problems changing gears after passing his test.

Hurriedly they summoned the car owner, Tord Ljungström, for more questioning that same evening. Despite great pressure applied by the interrogators, he would not budge from his denial.

‘Ljungström is not changing his view that he is 100 per cent sure
he never lent the car to Sture Bergwall,’ noted Penttinen in the interrogation report. The next day, on 18 March, he was back at Säter Hospital to crack the nut of the car. He put out a set of colour charts. Quick picked a colour known as Tintomara 0040-R90B.

‘As light as that?’ Penttinen burst out. ‘That was the colour of the car?’

‘Hm.’

‘Right. Well, then I have to inform you that we spoke to Ljungström yesterday and we’ve been able to confirm that he never owned a blue Volvo like this during the relevant period.’

‘Hm.’

‘What do you have to say to that?’

‘What can I say? That must be right, then.’

By referring to the National Road Administration’s vehicle registry, Seppo Penttinen was later able to establish that Ljungström had bought a new 1981 model of a Volvo 244 from Falu Motor AB two weeks before the murder. The car was not blue, as Quick had claimed. It was red.

If Quick’s story were true it would mean that the shop assistant Tord Ljungström had bought a brand-new Volvo on hire purchase, for the equivalent of a year’s salary, only to immediately lend it to an unemployed man, Sture Bergwall, whom he hardly knew. Also a man who couldn’t drive and who didn’t have a driving licence.

Quick had also described how Johan had bled inside the car and the cut-up body was later transported in the boot inside a cardboard box so soaked in blood that the base fell out. Ljungström’s old vehicle was traced and picked up by the police from its current owner. If Quick’s story was true and a cut-up corpse had been handled and transported in the car, there would feasibly still be some contamination from the blood. The Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science (SKL) examined the car’s seats, the carpet in the boot and other exposed surfaces, without finding any trace of blood.

Ljungström maintained until his death that he had never lent his car to Sture. There was no suggestion that he had committed a crime,
only that he had lent his car to someone, and it is difficult to see why he would protect a murderer. In the police interviews he had been truthful about his homosexuality and in answering other sensitive questions, whereas Quick was time and time again caught out telling lies and changing his story. Despite this, the investigators chose to believe Quick’s version of events, while Tord Ljungström was assumed to be lying.

On 26 April Thomas Quick, Kjell Persson, Seppo Penttinen and Inspector Björn Jonasson travelled to a settlement known as Ryggen about ten kilometres east of Falun to look for one of Johan Asplund’s hands.

First, Quick had to get his bearings and walk round the area with Persson. Having wandered around for an hour, they returned to the investigators and announced that they needed more time. One and a half hours later, after a good deal more walking, Quick was overwhelmed by such terrible anxiety that he had to ‘rest’. A hospital vehicle was brought forward. After spending some time with his doctors – and possibly taking some medication – Quick announced that he was ready to show them where the hand was hidden.

Yet he didn’t manage to find the little creek where he said he had hidden the hand. There was only a small ditch in the area. Quick kept talking incoherently, describing a torch he had brought with him when he hid the hand, mentioning the stones under which he left the hand, recalling a Mora knife that he hid at the same time and a boom that was lowered. But Quick didn’t manage to lead the group to any hand.

The forensic technicians arrived shortly afterwards and examined the scene without finding anything of interest. Once again, Quick had promised to pinpoint where he had hidden body parts, in a place where the police later found nothing.

Kjell Persson wrote a disappointed note in the file. Quick’s story ‘has been judged by police and prosecutors to be of varying credibility, and as a result of nothing being found the level of doubt is obviously growing’.

On 5 May Quick’s lawyer wrote a letter to Christer van der Kwast. The letter revealed that Gunnar Lundgren had had extensive ‘discussions’ with Quick, who still wanted to solve the murder of Johan. The lawyer concluded his letter as follows:

However, he has now confirmed to me that he cannot offer to supply any further information but he would rather that you make a decision to prosecute on the basis of the existing investigation, or that you abandon the case altogether.

After considering his options for a couple of weeks, van der Kwast called a press conference where he announced that he lacked the grounds for any prosecution of Quick, although the suspicions still remained and the investigation would continue. In reality the investigation went to sleep very soundly that summer.

Having read the report of the preliminary investigation, what actually emerges is that Thomas Quick did not manage to provide one single item of information that indicated he knew anything at all about Johan’s disappearance – while a great deal seemed to speak for his having invented the whole thing.

Meanwhile, at Säter Hospital, Thomas Quick’s psychotherapy continued and there were no doubts at all about his guilt there.

At the end of May, Kjell Persson wrote that Quick was quite sure about the reality of the murder of Johan and that it was extremely unsatisfactory that no finds had been made at the scene of the crime. He also pointed out that Quick ‘had thoughts and fantasies about other murder cases’.

Thomas Quick’s files record many difficult panic attacks and suicide attempts during the investigation. When the questioning ceased in the spring and summer his anxiety tailed off, and by July Quick was allowed full clearance in and out of the hospital grounds. On 2 August his Diazepam was withheld and a week later the other benzodiazepines were also removed from Quick’s list of medications. As part of this process, Quick was moved to an open ward.

‘The level of danger he poses is perceived as having been considerably reduced, and currently he finds himself in an unusually good
psychological condition,’ wrote Kjell Persson. This harmonious observation was followed by the ominous note that Seppo Penttinen had been in touch that same day to inform them that the criminal investigation would be ongoing as before.

But despite remaining under suspicion for the murder of Johan Asplund, which should mean that arrest was obligatory by the Rules of Court in the Code of Judicial Procedure, Thomas Quick was spared arrest and no restrictions on newspapers, the telephone or receiving visitors were put in place.

During the period that followed, the file deals almost exclusively with the approval of Quick’s leave outings to Borlänge, Avesta and Hedemora, as well as several trips to Stockholm. There is no mention in the file of the purpose of these trips.

There is no doubt about the fact that discussions were under way on the sidelines about the direction of the continued investigation. There were certain additional matters to look into on the Johan Asplund case, but not even Kjell Persson believed that Quick had anything further to divulge there. What the doctors and medics were discussing, rather, was a statute-barred crime – the murder of Thomas Blomgren in Växjö in 1964.

A DEEP-SEA DIVE INTO THE PAST

AFTER DISCUSSION BETWEEN
Seppo Penttinen and Quick’s doctors, a decision was made to hold further police interviews, at which Göran Fransson and Kjell Persson would also be present.

On Wednesday, 22 September 1993 Thomas Quick travelled unsupervised to Stockholm. As usual, Göran Fransson, who authorised the trip, didn’t refer to its purpose in the file.

When, during the first police interview about the murder of Johan Asplund, Thomas Quick confessed to a second murder ‘before 1967 somewhere in Småland, maybe in Alvesta’, he also mentioned his accomplice Sixten and his unusual car, and that the victim’s name was probably Thomas. Now, almost seven months later, it was time for Quick to dig up some facts. So he ordered back issues of newspapers from the archives at the National Library.

The murder of Thomas Blomgren was one of the best-documented crimes of the 1960s.

It was twenty to ten on Whitsun Eve in 1964 when Thomas Blomgren opened the front door of the family’s house on Riddaregatan in Växjö.

‘Don’t worry! I’ll be home soon,’ he called out to his parents.

His tone revealed that he was half joking, but there was also an underlying seriousness to his words. The last time he had been to Folkets Park (the People’s Park) his parents had humiliated him by showing up to fetch him. Thomas walked down Dackevägen, passing many other locals from Växjö who were strolling down to the park
at a more leisurely pace. Several of them noticed a man standing under some trees on the corner where Dackevägen meets Ulriksbergspromenaden.

In the police interrogation that followed, the witnesses would describe the man as about forty-five years old, approximately five foot nine, well built, with a round face and dark, back-combed hair, a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. He was not a local, it was generally agreed. A number of people were curious and took an extra careful look at the man, who was standing by himself in an odd place. He was untroubled by the glances, however, and merely stood there in the bushes as if he were looking out for something.

It was a quarter to ten when the man saw a boy coming down Dackevägen. Thomas turned off Dackevägen and went towards the clump of trees, directly towards the spot where the man was standing. It was his usual short cut to the People’s Park.

After seeing Ing-Britt’s Cocktail Show on stage, Thomas didn’t go straight home, as he had promised his parents. Instead he strolled around the park and when he passed the target-shooting stand, the proprietor asked Thomas to go and buy him a hot dog. He was paid with a couple of tokens and later tried his hand at some shooting.

When Thomas finally left the People’s Park, he was more than an hour late and he had only a few minutes left to live.

Meanwhile, the car mechanic Olle Blomgren and his wife, Berta, had grown so anxious that they had gone out to look for their son. At half past one Olle called the police, but despite a great deal of effort and search parties the boy was not found.