the most extraordinary part of this story is that Råstam was right.
When I read that small news item back in August 2012, it struck me that if I had been watching the tale of Thomas Quick unfold in an episode of a Scandinavian television drama, I would have felt the plot was too far-fetched. But there it was in black and white: this actually happened. I was intrigued. A cursory Internet search showed that Quick, now living under his birth name of Sture Bergwall, was still incarcerated in Säter – the same psychiatric hospital where he had made his ‘confessions’. He had been acquitted of five of the murders and was awaiting the outcome of two further retrials. I travelled to Sweden to meet him and wrote a piece about the case for the Observer.
I was aware, throughout my trip, that the feature I was writing would not have been possible without the sheer dedication of Hannes Råstam. He was a brilliant investigative journalist. In Sweden, where he started out as a professional bass player before making a career change and becoming a documentary researcher in his late thirties, Råstam had won a clutch of prestigious awards. He was renowned for his fearlessness in tackling big subjects – from exposing police cover-ups to tracking down sex-traffickers – and for his relentless pursuit of the truth.
At journalism school, his teachers said that if they sent a group of students to cover a car accident, everyone else would have returned to their desks and written the article while Hannes would still be at the scene, examining a wheel nut. The lawyer Thomas Olsson, who worked with Råstam on many of his stories and who now represents Sture Bergwall, says this attention to the tiniest element of an investigation was typical. ‘Hannes was devoted to what he believed was the journalistic mission, and, as a consequence of that, extremely careful with the details,’ Olsson says. ‘Every statement or detail was turned around several times and had to be confirmed before publishing. I once told him that if the court was as careful about the evidence as he was, there would be no risk whatsoever that anybody would ever be wrongfully convicted of a crime.’
He respected the facts. And it was this that led Råstam to the Thomas Quick case. There had long been controversy over the convictions in Sweden but no one had ever been able to nail down exactly why.
Råstam was the first journalist to gain Bergwall’s trust. He had a rare capacity to listen and to keep an open mind, and the two men became friends. ‘Hannes was a very intense person with an ability to really listen to other people and also to share,’ said Bergwall when I met him. ‘It was the first time that I remember thinking, Something’s going to happen. I felt Yes! Something’s going to change, and I was ready to come clean . . . It was so liberating to finally tell the truth.’
In order to establish Bergwall’s innocence, Råstam spent years ploughing through thousands of documents, re-interviewing key players and putting together a complex timeline of events on the Quick case. His friend and journalistic colleague, Mattias Göransson, recalled that it took nine seconds for Råstam’s laptop to calculate the size of his Quick archive. By the end of his investigations, the folder contained 12.5 gigabytes of data and 5,218 documents. To have been able to shape all of that into this coherent and gripping narrative is, in itself, an incredible feat.
Some of what you will read in this book will be discomfiting. A few of the psychiatric transcripts, for instance, are deeply unsettling and border on the bizarre. But this is the language that was used; this is how confused and desperate the whole process had become.
When you read further, you begin to wonder why the close-knit group of people around Quick seemed so eager to believe what he was telling them, and so unwilling to voice dissent from the prevailing view. Råstam would no doubt say it was because they wanted to believe their charge was guilty – the more entwined they became in the case, the more their professional reputations were at stake. In stark contrast, Råstam refused to believe anything until it was shown, beyond doubt, to be the truth. He would keep digging until he got there.
Jenny Küttim, Råstam’s researcher on the Quick case, says that all his work displayed ‘an obsessiveness towards journalistic truth’. ‘He taught me to read all the pages and the footnotes and to read the articles referred to in the footnotes,’ she explains. ‘He taught me to speak to the people responsible and always keep an open mind – never stop collecting facts. He always questioned the context, the conclusions and people’s agendas. That was his strength.’
I wish I had met Hannes Råstam. I wish he could be writing this foreword instead of me. But in April 2011 he was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and pancreas. He was in the middle of writing this book when it happened. For a while, no one wanted to believe the worst. He kept working, with the help of his literary agent, Leyla Belle Drake and Mattias Göransson, who would often sit by his bedside while he dictated key passages. In January 2012, the day after he completed the manuscript, Råstam died.
‘The most vivid memory I have is the last time we saw each other,’ recalls Thomas Olsson. ‘It was early summer and I had gone down to his summer house outside Gothenburg to discuss the manuscript. He had cooked some food and we sat in the sunlight in his garden, drank a beer and discussed the Quick case. After a pause, I asked him how he felt over the uncertain outcome of the treatment of the cancer. He answered, “You know, Thomas, I have lived a good and interesting life. I want to live, but I am not afraid to die . . . and I want to finish the book.” In that moment I understood that he knew he was going to die and that he would do so happy with all the things life had given him.
‘I think it shows that he was not only a devoted journalist, he was also a person who loved life. Only if you love life is it possible to die happy over the things you had, instead of being furious over the things you will miss.’
His death at the age of fifty-six is not a just ending to Råstam’s life story. But he would be the first to say that justice can often be elusive. It’s asking the questions that counts.
Elizabeth Day
London, April 2013
‘We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. Our soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.’
From Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg
PART I
‘Once you know the terrible truth of what Thomas Quick did to his victims – and once you have heard his deep, bestial roar – only one question remains: Is he really human?’
Pelle Tagesson, Crime Correspondent, Expressen, 2 November 1994
SÄTER HOSPITAL, MONDAY, 2 JUNE 2008
THE SERIAL KILLER, sadist and cannibal Sture Bergwall had not been receiving visitors for the past seven years. I was filled with nervous anticipation as I was let into the main guarded entrance at the regional forensic psychiatric clinic in Säter.
‘Hannes Råstam, Swedish Television. I’m here to see Sture Bergwall . . .’
I dropped my press pass into the little stainless-steel drawer under the bulletproof glass between me and the guard. He confirmed that my visit had been logged and approved.
‘Go through the security gate. Don’t touch the door!’
I obeyed the scratchy voice from the speaker, passed through an automatic door, then a couple of metal detectors and finally through one more automatic door into a waiting room where a care assistant rummaged through my shoulder bag.
I
