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Thomas QUICK
Birth name: Sture Bergwall
A.K.A.: "Sätermannen"
Classification:
Serial killer
Characteristics: Juvenile (14) - Child molester
Number of victims: 8 - 15 +
Date of murders: 1964 - 1996
Date of arrest: 1996
Date of birth:
April 26,
1950
Victims profile: Men, women and children
Method of murder:
Several
Location: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland
Status: Sentenced to closed psychiatric confinement
Thomas Quick
(born Sture Bergwall, 1950, Korsnäs, Falun,
Sweden) is a child molester and alleged serial killer,
with over 30 murder confessions (although only eight
convictions). He has confessed to committing murder and
rape, victimizing mainly men in Sweden and Norway, with
the first known murder committed when he was 14. He
changed his name after this, and adapted the first name
from that of his first victim, Thomas Blomgren, and
surname Quick, his mother's maiden name.
According to his autobiographical
book, Kvarblivelse, he was abused by his father
as a child, something which his brother, Sten-Ove
Bergwall, denies in the book Min bror Thomas Quick:
en berättelse om det ofattbara (My brother Thomas
Quick: A story about the incomprehensible).
He was arrested in 1990 for
attempting to rob a bank outside Falun, Sweden. During
his years in Säter hospital (receiving treatment for
being criminally insane), he started to confess to
numerous murders, and he was convicted for eight of them.
Critics of the confessions and the
trials claim that Quick never murdered anyone, but that
he is a compulsive liar. Among the critics are the
parents of a child he confessed to having murdered in
the late 1970s. In response to these accusations, Quick
himself wrote an article for the Swedish newspaper
Dagens Nyheter in 2001, where he said that he
refused to co-operate further with the authorities
concerning all open murder investigations.
In November 2006, Thomas Quick's
trials were reported to the Swedish Chancellor of
Justice by a retired lawyer, Pelle Svensson, on the
behalf of two of the murder victim's relatives, who wish
to have the trials declared invalid and, presumably,
have Quick retried.
References
Bergwall, Sten-Ove, Min bror
Thomas Quick: en berättelse om det ofattbara.
Stockholm : Rabén Prisma, 1995. Swedish.
Quick, Thomas, Kvarblivelse.
Stockholm : Kaos Press 1998. Swedish.
Thomas Quick
(born Sture Ragnar Bergwall, 26 April 1950 in Korsnäs, Falun,
Sweden) is a convicted Swedish serial killer who has confessed to more
than 30 murders, although he has only eight convictions, one of which has
been overturned.
With no technical evidence, the only evidence police
have held on Quick is his own confessions, and elements in these
confessions that have been judged to match classified facts from the
police dossiers on the crimes in question (e.g. clothing and birthmarks of
victims). The credibility of Quick's confessions has been widely debated
in the Swedish media. Critics of these confessions and the trials claim
that Quick never murdered anyone, but that he is a compulsive liar.
In December 2009 Quick recanted his confessions, and
denied taking part in any of the murders for which he was convicted. Quick
has since changed his name to his baptismal name Sture Bergwall
Convictions
In 1990-1991 Quick was sentenced to lengthy prison
terms for armed robbery, and consigned to closed psychiatric care.
During therapy he confessed to some 20 murders committed in Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and Finland between 1964 and 1993. One of his
confessions led to the solving of an 18 year old murder considered to be
unsolvable, and an other to the informal solving of a murder in Växjö in
1964. The 1964 crime had passed the then Swedish 25-year limit of
punition, but with the information given by Quick the murderer was
considered to be found; his story matched information that had never
been published about the crime.
Over time, Quick was convicted of eight murders at
six different trials:
Charles Zelmanovits, Piteå 1976, Sentence in 1994 -
no forensic evidence but a confession.
Johan Asplund, Sundsvall, 1980, Sentence in 2001 -
No body, no forensics but confession.
The Stegehuis couple, Appojaure, 1984, Sentence in
1996 - No forensics, but Quick gave information regarding facts which
had never been disclosed to the public. This has been put into
question later, as Quick had been party to all information before the
trial.
Yenon Levi, tourist from Israel, Rörshyttan, 1988,
Sentence in 1997 - No forensic evidence, but statements included in
Quick's testimony were matched against undisclosed police facts. Later
on, this has been questioned for reasons similar to the Stegehuis
case.
Therese Johannesen, Drammen, Norway, 1988, Sentence
in 1998 - No forensic evidence.
Trine Jensen, Oslo, 1981, Sentence in 2000 - No
forensic evidence.
Gry Storvik, Oslo, 1985 - No forensic evidence,
confession; the semen found in victim did not belong to Quick.
(In Sweden a defendant always gets
access to the full police investigation before the trial.)
Quick's confessions and subsequent withdrawal of confessions
In the years following 1990, when Quick was sentenced
to closed psychiatric confinement, he confessed to several unsolved
murders.
His first murder, according to his own accounts,
occurred in Växjö in 1964, when Quick was only 14 years old. The victim,
Thomas Blomgren, was described by Quick as being the same age but not as
strong and tall as himself. The second alleged victim was Alvar Larsson,
whom Quick claimed to have murdered at Sirkön in the lake Åsnen outside
the town of Urshult. According to Quick's sister he never left Falun at
the time of this murder.
The credibility of Quick's confessions had been
widely debated in the Swedish media since 1993, up until 2008, when
Quick withdrew all of his confessions.
There have been consistent doubts about the
reliability of his statements, and some of his confessions have been
proven to be fabrications—in some cases the victims have turned up,
alive and well. Another dubious circumstance is the fact that no
witnesses have ever testified to seeing Quick in the proximity of any of
the crime scenes, even though more than 10,000 people were interviewed
for intricate details.
Critics of these confessions and the trials claim
that Quick never murdered anyone, but that he is a compulsive liar.
Among the critics are the parents of a child he confessed to having
murdered in the late 1970s. In response to these accusations, Quick
himself wrote an article for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter
in 2001, in which he said that he refused to cooperate further with the
authorities concerning all open murder investigations.
In November 2006, Thomas Quick's trials were reported
to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice by retired lawyer, Pelle Svensson,
on the behalf of two relatives of a murder victim who wish to have the
trials declared invalid.
Several principals in the fields of law and
psychiatry, among them Swedish police professor Leif G. W. Persson,
journalist and writer Jan Guillou and secret sources in the Swedish
police all claim that Quick is mentally unstable, but not guilty in many,
if any, of the crimes to which he has confessed. They describe the
handling of the Quick cases as the "most scandalous" chapter of
Scandinavian crime history, branding it as glaring incompetence, naiveté
and opportunism within the police and judicial system.
Quick withdrew all of his confessions in 2008 during
the taping of a TV documentary. Quick's attorney now contends that the
Prosecution withheld important investigative material from the defense (which
the Prosecution adamantly denies). Quick's attorney also maintains that
his client is mentally ill and had been under the influence of narcotics
prescribed by a doctor when he confessed to the killings.
Thomas Quick, now Sture Bergwall, recanted his
confessions, and requested that the Svea Court of Appeals order new
trial for the murder case of Yenon Levi at Rörshyttan. In December 2009,
the court of appeals granted a retrial of the Yenon Levi case. As the
prosecutor found that the evidence was not sufficient, Quick moved for a
judgment of acquittal, and was acquitted in September 2010.
Quick's defense counsel also declared his intention
to ask for a retrial of the Therese Johannesen case, claiming that Quick
has an alibi for the day when Therese Johannesen was abducted and
murdered. SKL (Statens kriminaltekniska laboratorium, State Forensic-Technical
Laboratory) found in March 2010, that two forensic objects which the
prosecution had claimed were bone fragments, were in fact small pieces
of charred wood.
Wikipedia.org
Thomas Quick
May 28, 1997
Swedish serial killer Thomas Quick was convicted for the 1988 murder of
the Israeli tourist Yinon Levy. This is his fourth conviction for the
serial killer who has confessed to 15 killings. Sentence will be passed in
two weeks and will probably result in continued confinement at Säters
Sjukhus, Sweden's high security asylum for the criminally insane.
Thomas Quick
November 14, 1997
Following instructions from Swedish serial killer Thomas Quick, Norwegian
police found bone fragments from a calf that are believed to be of
nine-year-old Therese Johannessen. The case -- one of Norway's most
notorious murders -- was under investigation for almost ten years. The
girl disappeared from a residential area in Drammen on July 3, 1988.
Nothing was ever heard of her again until March 30, 1996, when Quick
confessed to abducting and killing her. He described her wristwatch with
great detail, and pointed out a gravelpit near the pond where he
supposedly buried her.
QUICK,
Thomas
Sweden's
most prolific serial killer to date was a sadistic necrophile who
preferred children as victims, but that did not stop him from killing
adults-or wiping out whole families-when the opportunity presentes itself.Like Gerard Schaefer, Quick originally wanted to become a priest,
but he drifted into random homicide instead, reportedly claiming his first
victim at age 14.Arrested in 1996,
he describes a childhood fraught with physical and sexual abuse, then
confessed to 15 homicides, including six in Norway.
Quick's
confession solved the mystery of three Dutch tourists, murdered while
vacationing in northern Sweden, and he was sentenced to life for those
crimes.
On May 28, 1997, Quick was
also convicted of killing an Israel¡ tourist, one Yinon Levy, in 1988.Four months later, following Quicks directions, police unearthed
what "could be a human finger bone" from the cellar of an
abandoned farmhouse near Falun, but the victim was not identified, and no
further charges were filed.
In
November 1997, Norwegian detectives found human bone fragments in a gravel
pit near Drammen, where nine-year-old Therese johannessen vanished in july
1988.Quick has confessed to her
slaying and describes the child's wristwatch in meticulous detail.
Investigation
into Quick's crimes and confessions continuas at this writing, while Quick
remains confined at Sáters Sjukhus, Sweden's maximum-security institution
for the criminally insane.Authorities
speculate that his body count may finally exceed the 15 confessed victims,
but whatever the ultimate total, Quick will probably remain at the asylum
for the rest of his life.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia
of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Thomas QUICK
Thomas Quick was born 1950 in the small-town
of Korsnäs, Sweden but under the name of Sture Bergwall. He had a rough
childhood, or so does he say himself. Many belive that everything that
Quick has said about his murders, and his childhood is lies. Some
criminal-professors says that he hasn't harmed a single human being. Still
Quick has confessed over 30 killings in Sweden between 1964 and 1994, a 30
year killing-spree.
Quicks brother has written a book called
"My brother Thomas Quick", the book describes Thomas as a liar and a sick
human being. Quick has said that during his childhood he got raped by his
father and abused by his mother. Quick's father supposedly got disgusted
when Quick came into his puberty at the age of 11 and stopped sexually-abusing
Quick. But this had left a mark, and Quick still belives today that
because of his father abuse he got a sick and perverted view on sex.
When
he was 12 he used to play a game in the showers with the other boys in the
school called "The Strangulation Game". He strangled the boys and touched
their private parts, Quick has said he did it for pleasure but none of the
other boys suspected anything because at that time the boys found the
human body to be interesting.
When he turned 14 he met with an older
man in his 20's that had a car, they used to travel on the Swedish roads
looking for young boys that they could pick up and molest. Quick would
talk the boys into it and have anal sex with them while the older man was
watching from the drivers seat.
One weekend the man drove Quick to a tivoli, Quick met a boy in his age named Thomas Blomgren - Quick's first
victim. Quick took him out in the woods and strangled him to death, then
he touched the boy's penis and took his shirt and disappeared into the
woods. On his way home from the tivoli, Quick told the man about what he
had done, but he had to make him promise that he wouldn't tell anyone
anything.
One year later Quick pushes an 8-year
old boy into a river, the boy drowns. No-one ever saw what happened so the
case was closed because they thought it was an accident. After some years
Quick began experimenting with drugs so he was sent to a rehab where he
spent some time, he also killed a 13-year old boy during his rehab visit.
He began working as a medic, he tried to strangle a boy that slept. He
called a priest and confessed the whole thing. The police arrested him for
attempt of murder and he had to stay in psychic ward for three years,
Quick said he killed one person during these three years, he has said that
the security was terrible, they even let him out when he wanted.
The story goes on and the kills goes on.
In 1990 Quick and a 16-year old boy robbed a bank and took the bank
manager's family as hostage. They got arrested and Quick went to prison.
After some time in prison Quick realized he was getting out pretty soon,
this was his only chance to confess his murders and escape from his dark
thoughts of murder.
At this time Thomas Quick took the name Thomas Quick,
before that he was Sture Bergwall, Thomas for his first victim (his first
victim was Thomas Blomgren) and Quick (his mother's maiden-name). Up to
date Thomas Quick has confessed over 30 murders, however he has only been
charged for 8 of them.
In 2001 Quick decided to stop attending trials,
he's tired of that no-one belives him. And no-one really knows when Thomas
Quick is going to start confessing murders again, or when the police is
going to bring back old cases. In many cases Quick has been able to give
the police information that they didn't know about, and in many other
cases he can't remember anything, he just knows he's involved.
What's so fascinating about Quick is
that he never got caught with murder, the police never took him. He had to
confess before they could get him.