Thomas Quick (44 page)

Next, Quick explained where the body had been left, and wrongly stated that it could not be seen from the road. Van der Kwast took this opportunity to ask again about the bag:

Despite Quick’s clear statement, van der Kwast didn’t give up. The question was too important and therefore he asked it a fourth time:

In the next interview Quick described how the bag was removed from the scene. The district court was unaware and remained unaware of these circumstances. Lennart Jarlheim places much of the responsibility for this on Quick’s defence lawyer.

‘The trial was an absolute farce! Claes Borgström didn’t ask a single critical question in the whole trial. It was so clear that all they wanted was to make sure TQ was found guilty,’ he said.

Nor did the proceedings in the district court convince Johan Asplund’s parents. Quite the opposite: they added further fuel to the fire.

‘The entire trial was a piece of theatre directed by Quick,’ Björn Asplund commented in
Expressen
on 8 May.

The chief judge and jurors in Hedemora District Court didn’t share the Asplunds’ opinion. Thomas Quick was unanimously found guilty of the murder of Yenon Levi. In its verdict, the district court wrote that it had been ‘established by the testimony of Seppo Penttinen that the questioning has been conducted in an exemplary way without any leading questions or insistent repetitions’.

Claes Borgström commented on the Asplunds’ dubious reaction in the same
Expressen
article, in which he admitted that their feelings about Thomas Quick’s credibility were understandable.

‘But the crucial question is: Where has he got the information from, how does he know all these details?’ said Borgström.

The reporter Pelle Tagesson let a few well-chosen quotes from Christer van der Kwast’s closing argument round off the debate: ‘He leaves us with a concrete and accurate picture, far removed from any guesswork [. . .] What more could one ask for? This must be viewed as probable beyond any reasonable doubt.’

TO ØRJE FOREST!

A FEW WEEKS LATER,
a fax came through to Ward 36 at Säter Hospital from the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University addressed for the attention of Thomas Quick. The front sheet, with a personal message from the sender to the recipient, was slowly fed out. A seven-page document followed, under the heading ‘Guidelines for the reconnaissance of the crime scene by Thomas Quick in Norway on 11 June in connection with the disappearance of Therese Johannesen in 1988’.

A year had gone by since the Norwegian fiasco with the fruitless inspections and the equally fruitless draining of the lake, and now eyebrows were being raised here and there over the fact that Quick was once again being driven to Ørje Forest to lead them to the location of Therese’s body.

The renewed hopes of the investigators were based on the fact that Christer van der Kwast had paid for the services of a private dog handler and cadaver dog which had been taken to Ørje Forest to search a large wooded area at the end of May 1997. The result was staggering.

Earlier the police had concentrated on the immediate surroundings of the small lake known as Ringen, but the search had now been expanded to cover several square kilometres and divided into areas designated as ‘Skumpen’ (the Bump), ‘Torget’ (the Square) and ‘Kal Sten’ (Bare Rock). The dog had reacted to the presence of human remains in all three places. After this breakthrough all they had to do was loosen Quick’s psychological barriers so that he could lead
them to where he had hidden Therese’s body. Sven Åke Christianson had been given carte blanche to create the optimum conditions for Quick to remember and find the ‘courage’ to make it all the way to Therese’s grave.

The pages juddering out of the fax machine now were the results of Christianson’s intellectual labour. That I was able to see them at all was the result of an improbable discovery.

Sture Bergwall is like a squirrel and over the years he has gathered an impressive number of documents which are kept in storage in the basement at Säter Hospital. Every time he visited his storage space he brought up astonishing material that provided new insights into the investigations. One day he told me in an excited voice that he had found this fax.

The document is too long to be reproduced here in its entirety, but it’s also too unbelievable to be summarised in a credible way. Instead, what follows are some excerpts from Christianson’s guiding principles, which were very broad in scope. First there were some instructions that some might have interpreted as an insult to the investigators:

In order for the reconnaissance and identification of the place/places where Therese lies buried to take place in an optimal [way] two basic conditions must be observed:

1) Thomas Quick’s (TQ) approach: ‘I can do this, I might not be able to do this, we’ll see.’ [. . .]

2) We should endeavour to make the inspection as simple as possible. We should leave Säter Hospital and go to the hiding place in Norway. TQ should lead us there and we should in principle only function as a support to him (perhaps just make him feel less lonely in the process).

The small details are also of great importance in creating optimal conditions:

Carefully prepare clothes, provisions and other equipment. To bring on the journey: coffee, water/drinks, sandwiches, chocolate biscuits (sweets) and cigarettes.

To help the investigators understand better, Christianson wrote a ‘feasible sequence of events on the day of TQ’s reconnaissance’:

Departure from Säter Hospital by car as early as possible in the morning. Ask TQ to step inside the car. ‘We’re leaving now.’ TQ’s attitude: Let this happen now, and he goes and sits in the car and we depart without any decisions being taken or talk of what lies ahead. [. . .]

A Walkman can be brought as a means of relaxation.

Once we have passed the Norwegian border we should start activating TQ. ‘We’re passing the Norwegian border. Hello! Wake up!’ Ask TQ to remove his Walkman.

On the way to the ‘hiding place’ Christianson was in favour of Quick choosing the route himself, without any leading questions. If he directed them to the right when Seppo Penttinen knew it should be left, he should not be corrected.

When TQ says: ‘Stop the car, we’re getting out’, it is important to do so, and to respect that it is TQ who is in charge of the car stopping or reversing.

Christianson imagined that Quick, once they started moving forward on foot, might ‘break into a sweat, feel anxious or slow his steps’.

In the event of this some mild coercion may be needed. A physical push of a gentle kind. This is the decisive stage of making one’s body cross the threshold of anxiety. Seppo or Anna could give him a little shove.

Christianson recommended that Quick should have unlimited access to narcotics-strength medications, and he reminded the investigators not to forget the very strongest of these:

Medicines Xanol (?) in doses decided by TQ. Also a medical readiness if TQ finds he is capable of showing us the hiding place, for instance Heminivrin (?) if his reaction is too strong.

Professor Christianson’s recommendations about ‘Xanol’ and ‘Heminivrin’ do not seem to be based on any pharmacological knowledge (both Xanax and Heminevrin are misspelt) but rather seem to be Quick’s own preferences.

‘I’d probably told him they weren’t to fuss about the Xanax. I wanted to have as much as I wanted,’ said Sture. ‘I mean, Heminevrin is a very strong drug that has a very rapid effect. It’s pretty much like knocking back a quarter-bottle of schnapps. A nurse here at Säter told me recently that I used to sing to her when she gave me Heminevrin. It’s exactly like being drunk.’

Christianson added that all conditions that could disturb TQ’s concentration and focus on the place where Therese lay buried must be eliminated. Police questions about the event or sequence of events at the time of the murder were to be saved for a later date. On the day of the reconnaissance, on 11 June, the only priority was to find where the corpse had been hidden.

One of the disruptive elements Christianson worried about most was the intrusion of journalists and he advocated extreme measures to keep them at bay:

Evade media monitoring. Close off the whole area, including aerial surveillance. Any awareness of the presence of the media will adversely affect concentration.

Unlike other reconstructions with Quick, this inspection in Ørje Forest was not recorded on video, which was in accordance with Sven Åke Christianson’s guidelines.

‘If possible we shouldn’t film TQ as he makes his way to his hiding place,’ the professor wrote. ‘It will disturb his focus on Therese.’

In Christianson’s imagined sequence of events, Quick was now approaching his hiding place:

If TQ comes this far, he should be able to say, ‘Now I open this grave’ or ‘Can you open it . . . Pick that up, give me a moment to feel.’

Christianson realised that it would be annoying not to be able to open the grave once they had reached it. Therefore he suggested the following:

Certain tools may be required if the ground has hardened, for instance something to turn the ground, a metal spit, a smaller spade or similar.

[. . .]

If TQ actually goes all the way to a hiding place (grave) he should be given the opportunity to take a short
moment in private
. Allow TQ the chance to open the hiding place himself or assign this to someone else (if he wants this) and then TQ should have the chance to physically touch a piece of bone, for instance a rib bone. It is important that we respect this desire and he should not be made to feel any shame about it.

Nor should we ask him why.

In his book
I huvudet på en seriemördare
(‘In the Mind of a Serial Killer’), Christianson suggested that retained body parts help the serial killer ‘relive the aspect of lust in the attack’ and ‘create intimacy and give sexual excitation’.

According to Christianson, body parts might be ‘used as stimulants for masturbation or Satanic symbols’.

In view of these possible scenarios, the suggestion that Ørje Forest should be sealed off, including aerial surveillance, seemed like reasonable measures.

But the reconstruction didn’t play itself out as Christianson had imagined.

*

On the morning of 11 June the expedition set off for Norway. Quick was travelling in a minibus with his nurses and Birgitta Ståhle, so that he wouldn’t feel any pressure from the investigators. Anna Wikström, Sven Åke Christianson and Seppo Penttinen were in a car behind them. At first, Christianson’s guidelines were followed scrupulously. The medicines had been brought, as had coffee, sandwiches and sweets. Wikström kept continuous notes on what was happening.

A short pause was made halfway there, when all partook of coffee and sandwiches. By 12.00 we were approaching Örje Forest and the vehicles entered the so-called ‘Ringen area’.

The reconstruction began at 13.20 and various passengers switched places in the vehicles. Travelling in the CID minibus were Quick, Borgström, Ståhle, Penttinen, Christianson, Wikström, a sound technician and driver called Håkon Grøttland from Drammen police.

Progress was slow, with a stop by the pond that had been drained the preceding summer. The convoy moved on and passed another bog on the left-hand side. ‘Thomas Quick shied away abruptly from this by looking to the right,’ noted Wikström.

The police minibus drove along the narrow lanes of this vast forest and Quick reacted with anxiety at the sight of a ridge. After various manoeuvres they stopped and Quick uttered the words, ‘Yes, we’re here now.’

At 14.00 we had a coffee break in the so-called ‘Skumpen’. At this point Thomas Quick wandered about 50 metres away from the car towards the rock formation and was given his coffee while sitting in the road. Thomas Quick cried desperately in his loneliness and maintained a dialogue with himself. Exactly what Thomas was saying wasn’t clear to the undersigned but my sense of it was that he was speculating in the sense that he has arrived at the place and it may possibly be ‘the time’.

Quick wandered around in deep anxiety. He appealed for help from the therapist.

In connection with this, Thomas Quick clearly cried out his anxiety, ‘Nomis, come and help me!’ Thomas Quick’s calls echoed loudly across the landscape. Nomis is the name Simon backwards. The name Simon is a frequently recurring theme in Thomas Quick’s therapy world.

‘At 14.25 we left this place of anxiety,’ noted Wikström, and the journey continued a kilometre or so to a rock formation which Quick wanted to climb. There he started ‘an anxiety game’ which seemed to be about exchanging a few words with his alleged accomplice, Patrik. He carried on into the forest, where he smelt and tasted the bark of a tree, then lay down in a foetal position. ‘Powerful anxiety came to the fore in Thomas Quick and care assistants intervened,’ according to the report.

Afterwards Quick revealed that he had been between only twenty and twenty-five metres from a hiding place.

The police minibus drove on to ‘Torget’, a place Quick claimed he recognised very well. He told Penttinen about ‘some of the cutting activities’. Repeatedly he called out the words ‘five intestines’. The significance of this was left to the interpretation of the spectators. Suddenly Quick rushed up a slope towards a drop, then he fell at the steepest part and smacked his cheek and nose against a boulder.

Thomas Quick remained lying down in a powerful fit of anxiety and told us during this anxiety attack after he had calmed himself down somewhat about what he has hidden in the different places. At 16.30 he said, when he woke from his fall and the shock of it, ‘Now I’m close.’ Then he spoke in an anxious voice about place one, i.e. the first place we went in the reconstruction, where one can find the torso and ribs. In place number two, i.e. at the edge of the rock with a gravel and sand pit, the head of Therese can be found. Further in place three, where we are now, Therese’s thigh bones, feet and arms should be found. He mentioned: ‘I have cut off her feet.’