Thomas Quick (37 page)

Birgitta Rindberg was then asked how she viewed Thomas Quick as her patient in the mid-1970s and 1989. She said quite
spontaneously that she never saw him as a murderer. She was never afraid of him, and although there was aggression in him, he never had any violent tendencies towards her. The only violence she encountered was the violence he did against himself. Birgitta Rindberg believes that chief physician Mårten Kalling shared her view on Thomas as a patient.

In the interview, Rindberg said that the Thomas Quick she had witnessed in the media was far more articulate and more of an exhibitionist than he was during the period of his therapy with her. Neither she nor Mårten Kalling believed that Quick was credible as a serial killer.

After returning to Stockholm, Ann-Helene Gustafsson typed up the interview and left it in Chief Inspector Stellan Söderman’s room.

Gustafsson told me what happened a few days after that. She heard an incensed roar coming from Stellan Söderman’s room and then a voice calling for her. There she found Christer van der Kwast, who had just read the interrogation report and was very upset.

‘He gave me a real telling-off, shouting at me that I had exceeded my duties,’ she said.

According to van der Kwast, she was only supposed to have asked about Quick’s therapy session on 21 March 1989. Nothing else!

‘I’m not interested in what some bloody psychologist has to say about Thomas Quick,’ he roared.

Ann-Helene Gustafsson was shocked. She had done exactly what she was supposed to do: interview a person and then write down what was said.

‘It’s never happened to me before or since then. I’ve never been shouted at because of an interview.’

Christer van der Kwast didn’t want to accept the interview in its existing form; instead he demanded a new interrogation report be drawn up that was only about Quick’s alibi for the murder of Helén Nilsson.

‘I refused to rewrite the interview because it was an official record,’ says Gustafsson. ‘What he was demanding of me was illegal.’

After discussing the problem of forging source material with her
chief, she solved the issue by leaving the report as it was, while also writing a short memo with nothing but the alibi for the murder of Helén.

Only this memo was included in the preliminary investigation file. Van der Kwast’s requirement of absolute obedience and loyalty, even at the cost of professionalism, stirs up strong feelings in her to this day.

‘We’re supposed to be objective and pay attention to whatever speaks in favour of someone or against them. It is not our job to censor interviews!’

CONFRONTATION

MEANWHILE, THE INVESTIGATION
into Thomas Quick and Johnny Farebrink was ongoing, although Farebrink had not yet been brought in for questioning. There was no urgency about that, the investigators seemed to feel. Farebrink was safely locked up in the C Wing of Hall Prison. But as usual the Quick investigation was full of leaks and it didn’t take long before both Pelle Tagesson and Gubb Jan Stigson were aware of suspicions that Farebrink had been Quick’s accomplice in Appojaure.

Johnny Farebrink was one of the most violent criminals in Sweden and had been convicted of serious criminal offences on twenty-four occasions. But the murder in Appojaure was about as far from his usual activities as you could get.

‘I’m not the type to murder tourists,’ he explained to Tagesson. ‘Too many other arseholes need their heads blown off.’

The newspaper speculation was causing serious damage to the investigation, as van der Kwast saw it, and this stirred CID into action. Johnny Farebrink was taken to the CID building on Polhemsgatan in Stockholm, where the first interview was held on 9 May 1995.

Farebrink denied the murders in Appojaure and swore that he had never met Thomas Quick. He also said that he had most likely been locked up at the time. However, it was an indisputable fact that he had been released from Tidaholm Prison two weeks before the murders. Farebrink remembered that his then wife, Ingela, had met him when he was released. They had taken a train down to
Stockholm, where they went directly to Bagarmossen to buy drugs. From the interrogation report:

When they got to the house, Johnny had the recollection that he and Ingela ‘hammered themselves with drugs’ and then started ‘buzzing’ both inside the flat and out on the town. He said that as far as he remembers, there was ‘an endless buzz’ both at home and out, which is how he put it.

It wasn’t much of an alibi. And the ex-wife made things worse by explaining that they went their separate ways after arriving in Stockholm.

Johnny Farebrink had no alibi and was therefore under suspicion for the double murder in Appojaure. Quick pointing him out as an accomplice had put him in a very bad position.

Ingela told me that she was done with Johnny Farebrink when the police contacted her. She had a new life, with a job and house in Norrland. A good life. She was unable to give Johnny an alibi, nor did she particularly want to.

It was only later when the police came and started asking questions about Johnny

The question of Farebrink’s sexual orientation made Ingela sense something was amiss. Quick had claimed that he and Farebrink ‘had been necking in a sauna’.

‘That was when I knew something wasn’t right,’ says Ingela.

The prosecution of Quick and Farebrink was looming into view when Ingela started ruminating on what had really happened during that mad summer of 1984.

On 30 June 1984 Ingela went to Tidaholm to meet her husband, who was being released from prison that day. After a couple of beers on a park bench, Johnny had asked if he could use a toilet in a branch of Pressbyrån, the newsagents, and as he came out he couldn’t help but notice a safe that had been left open. No one was watching! Johnny snatched a couple of bundles of bank notes, some 7,000 or 8,000 Swedish crowns.

After the unexpected cash injection, the couple went to Stockholm, where they purchased a sizeable quantity of amphetamines.

Twelve days later the Dutch couple, the Stegehuises, were murdered in Appojaure. But what was Farebrink doing at that time?

‘I don’t know how, but suddenly I remembered that I’d had a psychosis in Stockholm,’ says Ingela.

Ingela was unsure when exactly it happened, she wasn’t even sure it had been in 1984. All she knew was that Farebrink had taken her to the accident and emergency department of Söder Hospital.

Johnny Farebrink would be given a life sentence in prison if he was found guilty of the Appojaure murders and Ingela couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself.

She called Ture Nässén at CID and told him about the psychosis which might conceivably give Farebrink an alibi for the murders.

Ingela’s medical records were requested from Söder Hospital and all they could do was wait. In the meantime, her memories from July 1984 were becoming more and more clear.

‘We’d bought quite a large quantity of amphetamines, bloody good stuff. We left the flat one morning to go and see my friend Eva on Krukmakargatan. At Eva’s I started getting really jittery, I got psychotic. In the end Johnny called Jerka. “I can’t handle Ingela,” he said. Jerka came over – he’d borrowed his mum’s car. I put up a fight and all three of them could hardly manage to get me in the car. At the hospital they strapped me down on a bed. I was sure the hospital had been taken over by enemies. Johnny, Jerka and Eva tried to push me down on the bed, and a doctor came with a syringe. I knew it was poison. I looked into Eva’s eyes. I could see what she was thinking: “She’s going to die!” I fought for my life. Then I got a shot of Haldol and I don’t remember anything else. When I woke up the next morning Johnny was standing there. He was wearing my kimono. “Hi, Mum! I’ve been to Värmland. Where have you been?” Then from his pockets he emptied out loads of amphetamines into two big piles that ended up on the hospital bed. A big pile on either side of me. He turned his pockets inside out and then we left the hospital together. Him in the kimono and me in my bloodstained skirt. The love I felt
for Johnny when he stood there in the morning . . . I’ll never feel love like that again.’

Just in time for lunch on 26 September 1995, the fax machine at Rikskriminalen spat out Ingela’s medical file from the Söder Hospital psychiatric clinic. It confirmed the date and Ingela’s account on every point.

Well, I’ll be damned
, Ture Nässén told me he thought at the time.
Johnny Farebrink has an alibi!

Farebrink was kept locked up in C Wing at Hall Prison with some of the toughest criminals in the land. When the newspapers started writing about his dealings with Thomas Quick he had asked to be ‘boxed up’: in other words, placed in an isolation cell. He feared for his life if someone should believe the lunatic from Säter who had pointed him out as his accomplice.

Farebrink was shaken to the core by the realisation that he was seriously at risk of receiving a life sentence for the double murder in Lapland. His voluntary isolation also meant that he was cut off from any information about his unexpected alibi in the form of Ingela’s file.

Despite his alibi, Farebrink was driven to Säter Hospital on 12 October for a ‘confrontational round of questioning’ with Thomas Quick. The video recording shows how he and Thomas Quick were placed directly opposite one another, with lawyers at their sides. Christer van der Kwast, Seppo Penttinen, Anna Wikström and Ture Nässén were also present.

The questioning begins with Penttinen asking Quick if the person sitting opposite him is the one who, in his view, had taken part in the events.

‘It’s Johnny Larsson, yes,’ answered Quick without hesitation.

Again Quick described how he and Farebrink got to know each other in Jokkmokk in the 1970s, naming a number of other people whom they had both known.

Farebrink sat in grim silence during Quick’s lengthy story, until he had the opportunity to speak.

‘I never met you in Jokkmokk. And I don’t know who any of those guys are. But all you have to do is check them out. It’s very simple!’

What the police didn’t tell him was that they had already interviewed the ‘guys’.

All the individuals named by Quick who had supposedly seen him with Farebrink had unequivocally declared that they’d never met Farebrink.

Farebrink turned directly to Thomas Quick.

‘You say you’ve met me,’ he said with a barely discernible smile. ‘So what sort of car was I driving at that time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Quick abruptly.

‘You must have noticed what sort of car I was driving around in?’

‘No,’ said Quick, even though in several interviews he had claimed that Johnny Farebrink drove a Volkswagen pickup.

Penttinen changed tack and asked Quick to tell them about his meetings with Farebrink at the folk high school.

‘How often did you meet, and was it at the school?’

‘It must have been . . . on four or five occasions. We usually met in the evening, then we’d have a couple of beers with GP and J in the school sauna and sit there chatting away,’ said Quick.

‘So you’d have saunas together?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

Farebrink shook his head with an expression that revealed precisely what he thought of Thomas Quick.

‘First of all I hate saunas. I wouldn’t ever choose to go into a sauna because I can’t breathe in there!’

Again Farebrink turned to Quick with a sly smile.

‘You say I’ve been in the sauna with you, drinking beer. Can you remember what tattoo I’ve got on one of my legs?’

‘No,’ said Quick.

‘Oh really? And what about the tattoo on my back?’

‘No, not . . .’

‘Once you’ve seen that tattoo on my thigh, you never forget it.
I promise you! If you were my mate you’d know that tattoo. I can promise you that, you wouldn’t have forgotten it.’

Ture Nässén was the only one in the room who knew what Farebrink was talking about. In police circles they used to say of Farebrink, ‘Here comes the one who’s always armed.’ On one of his thighs he has a large tattoo of a revolver.

Quick had no idea what tattoos Farebrink had on his back or his thigh, but he seemed to think about it for a long time after the interview. In one letter to Birgitta Ståhle four months later he wrote that Farebrink had motifs from
The Arabian Nights
on his back. These recovered memories, however, were far from accurate. In actual fact Farebrink’s back was covered with an image of an electric chair.

Farebrink kept cool and didn’t reveal what his tattoos were during the questioning, well aware that this was one of his few trump cards. Yet Anna Wikström seemed more impressed by what Quick had actually got right about Farebrink.

‘He describes your personality, your appearance. He’s totally confident when he picks you out. I suppose he must have a really good memory if he’s so detailed about it,’ said Wikström.

‘Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it surprises me. It surprises me that he can just sit there saying stuff like this. That’s what I don’t get,’ Farebrink admitted.

He couldn’t come up with any feasible explanation as to why Thomas Quick had involved him, a complete stranger, in the investigation. Farebrink didn’t know that Quick had described him as a local tradesman driving round Jokkmokk with tools in the back. And he didn’t know that it was Seppo Penttinen who had suggested his name to Quick, not the other way round.

Nor did Anna Wikström present matters in this light during the questioning.

‘On 23 November [1994] ten names were verbally put forward, that is ten men’s names with both first names and surnames. All of these names had some connection to Norrbotten and on that list was the name of Johnny Larsson.’

Seppo Penttinen and Christer van der Kwast knew as well as
Thomas Quick and Claes Borgström did that this statement was inaccurate. But they all pretended otherwise.

Farebrink was more suspicious than impressed about Quick’s knowledge of his name.

‘My name wasn’t Johnny Larsson then! My name was Johnny Farebrink.’

‘But I remember the name Johnny Larsson-Auna. Farebrink I don’t recall,’ Quick interjected.

That was a mistake. Johnny Farebrink got really fired up this time.