out of sight, he ran along a path through the woods to a road known as Smedjebacksvägen, where, according to plan, an old Volvo 745 was waiting with its motor running. In the driver’s seat sat a young woman and, beside her, a man of about twenty who was on trial release from Säter Hospital. The Säter Man jumped into the back seat and the driver pulled off with a wheel-spin.
The car’s occupants laughed excitedly: the escape had gone according to plan. The man in the front seat handed over a little plastic bag, which the Säter Man opened and expertly, with a moist fingertip, emptied of every last grain of the white powder inside. He put his finger in his mouth and, using his tongue, fixed the bitter load to the top of his palate, then leaned back and closed his eyes.
‘Damn, that’s good,’ he mumbled as he worked the amphetamine paste in his mouth. Amphetamine was his favourite drug and, unusually, he actually liked the taste.
His young friend in the front seat passed a razor, some shaving foam, a blue baseball cap and a T-shirt to the escapee in the back, then gave him a shove.
‘Come on, we don’t have time to mess around.’
As the Volvo swung onto the S-70 trunk road towards Hedemora, the assisting psychiatrist was standing by the club house wondering if she should be worried. She called out but there was no answer, and before long she realised that he was neither behind the wall nor anywhere else. It was inconceivable that her sincere and amiable patient should let her down in this way, but after a few moments of fruitless searching, she had to go back to Ward 36 to report that the patient had absconded.
By this time the fugitive was clean-shaven and wearing his disguise. He relished the freedom and the amphetamine rush while their aimless journey continued northwards on Highway 270.
By the time the police in Borlänge put out a call for the Säter Man, forty-two minutes had elapsed and no one had any idea that he was approaching Ockelbo in an old Volvo.
The evening newspapers picked up on the story straight away and immediately extended their print runs. Expressen’s headline went in as hard as it could:
POLICE HUNTING
the escaped
SÄTER MAN TONIGHT
‘He is highly dangerous’
Up until this point the newspapers had protected the identity of the Säter Man for ethical reasons, but when the most dangerous man in Sweden goes on the run, public interest demands a name, photograph and biographical information:
The 44-year-old ‘Säter Man’ is now known as Thomas Quick, after changing his name. He has confessed to the murders of five boys, and the police and public prosecutor believe he can be tied to two of these. The man has told Expressen that he would prefer just to live in the woods with his dogs – last night the police conducted a search for him in the forests around Ockelbo.
Once the woman driver realised the nature of the crimes for which Thomas Quick was under investigation, she had second thoughts and pulled over by an abandoned farmhouse to drop off the men. The companions found two unlocked bicycles there and, after getting them into some sort of working order, set off for the nearest town. Cycling along, they saw several police cars and were overtaken by just as many, while police helicopters circled overhead. No one seemed at all suspicious of the odd couple on the rusty bicycles.
A large force of police officers equipped with automatic weapons, bulletproof vests and dog patrols searched for them until midnight without picking up their trail.
After spending the night in a tent, the fugitives parted company in the morning. The amphetamine was finished, they were tired and it was no longer fun to be on the run.
While the police were searching the forest, a man in a baseball cap walked into a Statoil petrol station in the small town of Alfta.
‘Do you have a payphone I can use?’ he asked.
The proprietor did not recognise the man whose image was on the cover of both evening newspapers. Calmly he showed him the telephone. The customer made a brief call to Bollnäs police.
‘I’m handing myself in,’ he said.
‘And who might you be, then?’ asked the duty constable.
‘Quick,’ replied Thomas Quick.
The escape triggered a heated debate about lax security in the country’s psychiatric institutions. Most indignant of all was National Police Commissioner Björn Eriksson.
‘It’s so tiresome that these things happen,’ said Eriksson. ‘There are so few really dangerous people around; it really ought to be possible to guard them. In the police force, we prioritise the safety of the public over rehabilitation.’
The barb of the criticism was directed at Säter Hospital, but on 10 July 1994 an article strongly defending the institution was published in the debate section of Dagens Nyheter. It had been written by Thomas Quick himself, who paid effusive tribute to the staff and quality of the care at Säter, while at the same time putting the boot into the press corps:
My name is Thomas Quick. After my escape last Monday (4/7) and the massive uproar that followed in the media, neither my name nor my face are unfamiliar.
I neither want to, nor would I even be able to defend my escape from Säter Hospital, but I feel it is absolutely necessary to highlight some of the good work that has been done and continues to be done at this clinic; this is utterly lost in the general screeching of the journalists in their hunt for sensational stories, and it even overwhelms the good intellectual forces attempting to be heard in this domineering choir of voices.
Many were surprised by his words, which indicated that Quick was an articulate, intelligent person. For the first time, the public gained an insight into the mind of a serial killer. They also learned about the process that had played itself out in all of Thomas Quick’s murder confessions.
‘When I came to the regional psychiatric unit in Säter I had no memory of the first twelve years of my life. Just as effectively repressed were the murders which I have now confessed to and which are being investigated by the police in Sundsvall.’
Thomas Quick heaped praise on the staff who had helped him to recover his repressed memories of the murders, and he described how the therapists had supported him in this painful process: ‘My anxiety, guilt and sorrow over what I have done are so boundless, so heavy, that in real terms they cannot be borne. I am responsible for what I have done and also for what I do henceforth. The misdeeds I am guilty of cannot be remedied in any sense, but today I can at least say what they are. I am prepared to do so in my own time.’
Quick explained that he had not escaped in order to commit new crimes, but rather to kill himself: ‘After I had parted from my companion, I sat for thirteen hours with a sawn-off shotgun pointing at my forehead. But I couldn’t do it. Today I can take responsibility for yesterday, and I think it was this sense of responsibility that stopped me ending my life and made me telephone the police to ask to be arrested. That is what I want to believe.’
CHARLES ZELMANOVITS
ON 18 OCTOBER 1994 Piteå District Court received an application for a summons from the prosecutor Christer van der Kwast with the following brief description of the offence: ‘On the night of 13 November 1976 in a wooded area outside Piteå,
