fired on Vasaplatsen – Janne Josefsson and I were able to show what had actually happened.
Now my attention was focused on the investigation into the murder of Yenon Levi in 1988. The murder took place in Avesta police district, where the police inspectors Lennart Jarlheim and Willy Hammar had done an impressive job of mapping out Thomas Quick’s life chronologically, from the cradle to Säter Hospital.
By way of a summary they had established in 1956, the Bergwall family had moved to a flat at 4 Bruksgatan in Korsnäs outside Falun. The father, Ove, passed away in 1977 and, after his death, Sture took care of the household and his sick mother, Thyra, up until her death in 1983.
During these years Sture had been declared medically unfit for work because of his psychological problems, and he was claiming disability benefits. Helped along by his mother’s pension, they managed to pay their way. He spent a lot of time with his siblings and their families and had particularly strong ties to his nieces and nephews. At home he kept himself busy with rug-weaving, household chores and by spending time with his mother and her friends.
Sture Bergwall’s life seemed to be improving when, in August 1982, he opened a tobacco shop with his older brother, Sten-Ove. One year later their mother died, and he was now living by himself in the parental home.
A number of youths would hang out at the kiosk in the evenings; one in particular, an eleven-year-old referred to as Patrik Olofsson, started helping out with minor chores and also enjoyed taking care of Peja, Sture’s Scottish deerhound. Sture was soon on friendly terms with the Olofsson family.
In 1986 the Bergwall brothers wound down their entrepreneurial project and Sture became unemployed. He opened a new kiosk on Drottningplan in the town of Grycksbo with a new business partner – this time Patrik’s mother, Margit Olofsson.
The new kiosk quickly became a hang-out for teenage boys in the area, who increasingly also visited Sture at home. Sture had started taking driving lessons and on 27 March 1987, after many attempts, he passed his driving test. His first car was a 1965 red Volvo PV. Sture’s popularity among the boys was at its peak when he began to organise ‘heavy metal’ trips to Stockholm in his twenty-two-year-old car. They went to concerts by Kiss, Iron Maiden and WASP.
Having previously survived on disability benefits, Sture Bergwall had now become a shopkeeper. During the Grycksbo years he worked as a bingo caller and newspaper delivery man too, and he was demonstrably popular with customers, colleagues and employers.
Patrik Olofsson spent more and more time with Sture and even lived with him during certain periods, with his parents’ approval. The relationship between Sture and the Olofsson family was now so tight that it seemed perfectly natural for Sture to celebrate Christmas with them.
But the story ended in catastrophe for the Olofssons. The husband and wife separated, a deep disagreement arose between Sture and Mrs Olofsson, the kiosk went out of business and Patrik turned his back on his family. Sture’s time in Grycksbo came to an end when his and Patrik’s financial and social predicament drove them to rob the town’s branch of Gotabanken.
The foolishness of the robbery was almost mystifying: Sture was a customer of the bank, which was next door to his previous kiosk. On the morning of 14 December 1990 the robbers forced their way into the home of the bank manager and took the family hostage. They had disguised themselves with Santa Claus masks and balaclavas. As an extra precaution Sture spoke with a Finnish accent, but after a while he forgot about this and went back to his usual way of speaking. Both of them were recognised without much difficulty and they were arrested by police immediately after the robbery.
Patrik was eighteen years old. He received a prison sentence of three and a half years. Sture was clinically assessed and committed to psychiatric care at the Säter clinic, where he had more or less stayed ever since, apart from the few occasions when he had been granted leave to travel to Stockholm, Hedemora and other towns in the regions of Dalarna and Norrland.
It was the time before the robbery that particularly interested me.
During extensive questioning, the teenage boys had described how Sture had made ice hockey goals for them, organised treasure trails and made popcorn. For a while, Sture had rented a holiday cottage where a number of the boys would occasionally have sleepovers. On no occasion had he tried to molest any of them and none of the boys had even suspected that he was homosexual. One evening a few of the boys had gone to Sture’s home to watch a horror film. When things got particularly scary, Sture had held one of the boys’ hands. On the way home, the boys had talked about it. They thought it was weird that a grown man would want to hold a thirteen-year-old’s hand.
This long-standing innocent relationship with the boys of Grycksbo did not chime with the image of the serial killer who switched personality and compulsively raped, desecrated, murdered and cut up boys.
I contacted a few of the Grycksbo boys and met with one of them. None of them could quite reconcile the image of Thomas Quick with the Sture they felt they had known so well.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, I travelled to Dalarna at the end of August for a second meeting with Sture.
On the way to Säter I stopped at Falu District Court to look through the investigation material on the murder of Gry Storvik. I turned a page and it was like being punched in the gut when I saw the forensic technician’s first photo of the body. The murderer had carelessly flung her out into a litter-strewn car park. A naked woman’s body, still girlish, lay face down on the asphalt. Not satisfied with killing Gry, the murderer had also apparently intentionally and aggressively placed her in an exposed position for public display.
The effect of the photograph was unexpected. I felt upset, confused and embarrassed by the picture in front of me.
Whether he was guilty or not, this was a snapshot of the incomprehensible series of tragedies implied by Quick’s confessions. After all, if Quick really was innocent of these crimes, the convictions were in effect an amnesty for the real murderers who had done this to Gry Storvik and the other victims.
This was precisely what Leif G.W. Persson had said, but it was only now that I properly understood. Again I looked at the photograph of Gry in the investigation file. It had been taken on 25 June 1985. It was now 28 August 2008 and the murder would become statute-barred in one year and ten months.
In 660 days the murderer – if he were someone other than Thomas Quick – would walk free for ever.
SÄTER HOSPITAL, THURSDAY, 28 AUGUST 2008
AS SOON AS Sture and I had made ourselves comfortable, I was keen to hear his feelings about his time in Grycksbo.
‘When I read the interviews with the boys in Grycksbo and all the other people who knew you back then, I got the impression that this was a very happy period in your life.’
‘Yes, that was a very good period,’ Sture confirmed. ‘Actually the best time of my life.’
Sture talked about various events, happy memories, his and Patrik’s dogs and Christmas celebrations with the Olofsson family.
‘But it all ended up as a complete disaster,’ I reminded him.
‘Yeah, in the end it went terribly bad, the whole thing!’ said Sture, wringing his hands.
‘And the effects on Patrik’s family,’ I continued. ‘You worked your way in and then you hurt them terribly. Didn’t you?’
Sture
