A bored psychiatric patient pretended to be a serial maniac: why everyone believed him

Stuhr Bergwal, also known as Thomas Quick, was called Sweden's first serial killer. He was considered a psychopath, a cannibal and a pedophile rapist, but in fact he simply invented all his crimes, just for a long time no one bothered to check his words. The story of an incredible legal scandal - in the material "Tapes.ru".

41-year-old Stuure Bergwal once again ended up in a psychiatric hospital in 1991. It was like this: he really needed money after he quarreled with the co-owner of his tobacco stall and went out of business. Bergwal did not think of anything better than to rob a bank in the Swedish city of Falun together with an 18-year-old accomplice named Patrick. They broke into the house of the bank’s chief accountant and took his family hostage, and so that they would not be recognized, they put on Yultten's masks - the local Santa Claus - and black hats. For greater conspiracy, Bergwal spoke with a Finnish accent.

The plan would probably work if Bergwal had not been a client of this bank for many years in a row. Moreover, his bankrupt tobacco kiosk was located in a neighboring house, so all employees knew him well. The criminals were quickly identified; Bergval’s accomplice was sent to prison, and he, after a forensic psychiatric examination, was sent to Saters Hospital for mentally ill offenders.

For Bergwal, this was not the first forced hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital. He was first locked up in a similar facility in 1970 after being caught sexually assaulting four underage boys. He was then about 20 years old. A year later he was discharged with a probationary period and sent to study, but in high school he got into the company of homosexuals who abused drugs and alcohol.

After a series of tricks, he was again hospitalized, then discharged again, but in 1974, Bergwal attacked a friend with a knife and ended up in a hospital. In 1977, he was released from the hospital: doctors wrote that the patient realized that it was not permissible to pester the boys, and completely refused drugs and alcohol. Since 1982, he opened a tobacco stall with his brother, went bankrupt, opened a new one with Patrick’s mother and lived happily ever after, quarreling with her. After that, he decided to rob.

Bergwal was far from being the most interesting patient in Seter - real killers and psychopaths were kept in the next wing, but they really did not pay attention to him. The case slowly went to the next discharge, and the Swede got scared. He understood that nothing good was waiting for him in freedom, and therefore decided to try to “realize himself” as a patient.

At that time, stories about serial killers became fashionable - the film “Silence of the Lambs” was released, and the novel “American Psycho” was published. Bergwal really liked the image of an intellectual maniac, and he decided to try it on himself in order to attract the attention of doctors. He hardly knew how it would end.

Difficult childhood

It was not so easy to ask the doctor for psychotherapy - the doctors from the clinic had something to do. However, Bergwal managed to convince Dr. Chel Persson that he was overcome by suicidal thoughts. At first, doctors were distrustful of his words. Then Bergwal decided to read the latest articles on psychology and found out that the search for traumatic memories from the patient's early childhood is considered the latest fad.

At one of the following sessions, he suddenly “remembered” that his father had raped him. As Bergwal mentioned this, the bored doctor's eyes lit up. The patient realized that Persson was hooked and came up with an even more tearful story: allegedly once his mother became a witness to the rape, she suffered a miscarriage from stress, after which she laid the blame on her son and began to beat and humiliate him.

Persson listened attentively to the patient: the more frankly he became, the more freedom he got inside the hospital, moreover, the doses of drugs prescribed for him containing narcotic substances slowly and steadily increased. Bergwal himself illegally took drugs, they helped him come up with new details of childhood stories.

Despite all the efforts of Bergwal, the doctor decided that he had got rid of the load of childhood memories and was recovering: he was being prepared for discharge, despite the fact that he was making gloomy hints that he was involved in something terrible. At some point, the patient applied for a name change: he decided that he wanted to start life from scratch under the name Thomas Quick. Within a month, he rented an apartment on his own, but because of a lack of money he decided to return to the hospital. There he realized that it was time to play big. In order to be fully armed, Quick read several articles about the unsolved loss of children.

Soon, at a psychotherapy session, Quick admitted in tears that he had killed and raped two boys. Dr. Parsson at first was skeptical of the patient’s confession, but decided to take him to the city where one of the crimes was committed. There, Quick had a severe panic attack, and the doctor returned with him to the hospital, confident that only his culprit could react to the crime scene. And yet Parsson did not rush things and did not tell anyone about his guesses. Shocked, he went on vacation, and Birgitta Stole began working with Quick in his place.

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First interrogation

At the first session of psychotherapy, Quick confidentially informed her that he was a killer. An alarmed doctor reported everything to his superiors. Everything went to the fact that the police would intervene in the patient’s game and, possibly, institute criminal proceedings. This scared him seriously, but he couldn’t take his words back. He was given two weeks to contact the police and confess himself. The patient suffered for a long time, but did not dare to admit a lie. He decided to see what would happen next, and asked the clinic authorities to contact the police on their own.

After some time, Junior Inspector Jorgen Persson arrived at the hospital to arrange an interrogation of Quick in the presence of his attending physician. During the conversation, the patient rather vaguely answered questions, but at some point stated that it was he who killed the boy named Johan Asplund in 1980. The policeman was speechless for a while: the loss of Asplund was considered one of Sweden's most high-profile unsolved cases.

Moving away from the shock, the inspector advised Quick to talk with him only in the presence of a lawyer, but soon the men decided to continue without him. Quik later said that, out of shame, he simply could not admit to his doctor that he had lied, and hoped that there would be a person who would directly ask him if he was telling the truth. But this was not found.

Loser prosecutor

Meanwhile, the case was transferred to the police of the city where the boy was killed, it hit the table to the 48-year-old prosecutor Christer van der Quast. He specialized in economic crimes, but they were almost never committed in the city. For all the years of service, he investigated only one murder, and mainly dealt with petty offenses like speeding.

Quast realized that it was his finest hour. Without even meeting Quick, he immediately began giving interviews to reporters. When Quick was brought to the city for an investigative experiment, the prosecutor accompanied him personally, and his subordinates literally carried the suspect in his arms when he felt ill.

The case of the disappearance of the second boy, Charles Zelmanovits, also fell into the hands of Quast. He and investigator Seppo Penttinen, together, gave Quik explicit clues during interrogations. For example, they directly asked if he had dismembered the body, and if Quick said no, they asked him to think more. A patient in a psychiatric hospital suddenly recalled: “Yes, in fact, I cut off something.” Then, by the method of selection, he understood that we were talking about feet. Since half of the interrogation was carried out with the recorders turned off, it turned out in the protocol that Quick was somewhat confused, but still correctly answered questions in which the investigator seemed to accidentally give out all the necessary information.

In October 1994, prosecutor Christer van der Quast filed a petition with the court asking him to proceed with the murder of Charles Zelmanowitz. Already in November, the process itself began, it was actively covered by the media that built the media image of Quick: a crazy maniac who became so because of a difficult childhood. Relatives of the "criminal" repeatedly tried to refute Quick's tales, but it was useless.

Quick became a sensation, and for some time the news about the "first Swedish serial killer" did not leave the editorials. Kvast’s insolence and confidence, long abstruse speeches by psychotherapists, information about Kwick’s past sexual assaults on boys and public pressure left almost no choice for the judges - he was found guilty of Zelmanovits murder.

It is worth mentioning Quick's lawyer, Gunnar Lundgren, separately. The eminent and wealthy lawyer did not even think about protecting the ward in court. He bluntly stated that he believed that since the client himself had confessed to the killings and was thirsting for justice - his sacred duty as a lawyer was to ensure that Quick was found guilty.

After the first successful trial, the entire team working on the prosecution of Thomas Quick joined him in a restaurant. He was happy that he could please so many people and become a celebrity. He was also pleased with the ever-increasing doses of drugs.

Norwegian Forest

Kvik understood that it was impossible to stop, and soon stated that he had killed a couple in Akkayure, although before that only boys were his “victims”. Then he remembered another boy. And later about the girl killed in Norway. This should have confused the investigators - usually the victims of serial killers are similar. But the so-called commission of Thomas Quick, a psychologist Brigitte, prosecutor der Quast and investigator Penttinen, seemed to be trying not to get to the bottom of the truth, but to "hang" as many cases as possible on the ward.

The peak of the absurdity of what was happening reached in the spring of 1996. Thomas Quik, pumped up with drugs, was taken to a Norwegian forest to show where he hid the body of the missing girl. It was impossible to get clear answers from him, from time to time he fell into hysteria, but the investigators and the psychologist who were experienced in communicating with him interpreted his narcotic nonsense in their own way.

At first, the suspect claimed that he had hidden the remains in a quarry, next to which was a pile of stones or gravel, but no quarry could be found. Then he said that he had drawn a sign on one of the trees, and there he burned the girl’s corpse, but he couldn’t find the tree. In the end, he said that he had drowned his body in a forest lake, the existence of which nearby is kindly told by the Norwegian police, exhausted by barren wandering in the forest.

Quick was brought to the lake, but he was so exhausted that he could not even open his eyes. The investigator asked him if it was difficult for him to look at the lake, in response he could only growl something. Quik's speech was confused, he mistook the police inspector for his twin sister, but at some point he managed to say that the lake was the place near which there were stones. After that, the suspect finally lost consciousness, and his lawyer explained in an everyday tone that the first point where Quick had a tantrum during the investigative experiment was the place of the murder, then the maniac put his body in a valley, and then drowned in a lake.

The experiment seemed reliable to the Norwegian police - in the end, the Swedish colleagues did not go to the crime scene for the first time with a mentally ill serial killer. After conferring, the police and forensic experts decided to drain Lake Ringen to find the remains of the girl.

The lake drainage operation lasted seven weeks and cost crazy money. People worked off-schedule seven days a week in heavy rain. 35 million liters of water were passed twice through filters that people constantly watched.

The sediment at the bottom was collected until it reached sediments ten thousand years old. However, the remains of the girl, and indeed any remains in the lake were not found. “Thomas Quick has either lied or made the wrong place. There is reason to doubt the credibility of his testimony, ”said Drammen’s police chief Ture Johnsen, when the last pumps stopped working on Lake Ringen.

The Norwegian police once again examined all the materials in the case of the missing Teresa Johannesen - and there have been a huge amount of them since 1988 - but they have not found a single observation of the movement of people or cars that could be connected with Thomas Quick.

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Sensation with a choke

It would seem that after such a grandiose failure it was worth putting an end to the investigation and taking a closer look at the team that surrounded Thomas Quick. But no, a year later Quick returned to the Norwegian forest. The reason was a sensational find: the police combed several hectares of forest and still found a tree with a symbol, and not far from it a sniffer dog found a small charred object. Experts have established that this is supposedly a fragment of children's bones.

This was a real sensation: for the first time in the course of the investigative experiment, it was possible to find at least something. In 1998, a Stockholm court triumphantly convicted Quick. Theresa Johannesen's case was the main argument of those who were convinced that Thomas Quick was really a psychopath and a killer.

One of the main evidence among Thomas Quik's supporters of guilt was the fact that he allegedly recalled that the girl had eczema on the bend of her left elbow. During one of the first interrogations, the suspect really said that the victim had “a kind of scar on his arm or hands, I don’t remember exactly, but somewhere in this part of the body.” Investigator Seppo Penttinen then found out about eczema and, during interrogations, tried in every possible way to push Quick to say it himself.

At the next interrogation, he asked the suspect a little differently: "I asked this question earlier, did you say something during the investigative experiment, that you still had memories about her hands, a kind of skin disease, or something like that?" Quick grabbed a clue and answered that yes, he remembers inflammation, but he can’t say anything for sure. After a few more leading questions, he still pointed to the back of his hand and stated that "there was redness in both hands with spots." At the trial, this was presented differently: supposedly in the early stages of the investigation, Quick himself recalled the eczema scar.

What the public did not know was that during the first interrogations, Quick described the victim completely different from what she really looked like, since he read a newspaper article about her that did not contain a photograph. According to him, she looked like a typical Norwegian: long blonde hair to the shoulders, porcelain skin, large front teeth.

However, the photograph of the girl attached to the case shows a completely different child. The missing girl is trimmed under the boy. She has black hair and dark skin. But the main thing that catches your eye is her perky smile, which lacks two front upper teeth. Of course, over time, the investigator prompted him all these details.

Ahead of Quick, two more ships were waiting, on which he, of course, was found guilty. He was so entangled in a web of lies that he no longer realized what was happening to his life. And she, in fact, was led by his commission - a prosecutor, investigator, lawyer and psychotherapist. The Swede himself opened his mouth when necessary, guessed the answers on Pentinen's leading questions and was constantly in drug delirium. What was happening ceased to bring him pleasure: it had long ceased to be an intellectual game with a psychotherapist, and turned into something obscure.

As a result, in 2001, Thomas Kwick was madly tired of all this. The news about his sentences was far from being published in the front pages, it was unbearable to invent new stories, he always wanted to die and made suicidal attempts due to horse doses of drugs. Finally, the clinic authorities drew attention to this and sharply reduced the dose. Withdrawal symptom, Quick refused to speak with reporters. And the next year, he completely changed his name to the old and again became Stuure Bergwal.

Six years nothing happened to him. So far, in 2008, investigative journalist Hannes Rostam did not express a desire to communicate with him. He warned that he wanted to make a documentary about disputes between those who were convinced of Quick's guilt and those who called him a mythomaniac. Surprisingly, Bergwal agreed. Rostam, who had not previously had an intelligible position in the Quick case, began to slowly but meticulously study all the existing materials in the case of the maniac and soon began to notice numerous inconsistencies. At the third meeting with Bergwal, he directly asked if he had invented everything. He burst into tears and admitted it.

However, this, of course, was not enough to restore Bergwal to a good name. For months, Rostov rummaged through all the materials of the case and talked with various participants in the processes, simultaneously issuing journalistic investigations. He did a tremendous job and was able to prove that absolutely all cases were fabricated. Bergwal got a real lawyer - Thomas Ulsson, and a special commission took up the investigation of fraud.

In particular, she dispelled the main argument of the supporters of Bergwal-Quik's guilt: the experts again examined the main evidence of the Theresa Johannesen case - fragments of her bones. In 2010, they were investigated at the molecular level and found out that this is a tree with the addition of glue. As it turned out, during the investigation in 1998, the criminologists hired by the investigation subjected the find only to a visual inspection.

It is so unbelievable that even we could not imagine it. But this is symptomatic of all Quick's affairs - the academicians agreed to perform in all this circus.

The commission studied all the materials of Quick's cases and constantly filed motions with the courts. Bergwal was charged one charge after another; he publicly admitted that he had invented absolutely everything. Hannes Rostam received the Golden Shovel Award for his numerous investigations, the most prestigious award for investigative journalists in Sweden. However, he repeatedly said that the main reward for him would be the final liberation of Bergwal. He did not particularly hope for punishment for the guilty - one of them had already retired or left the country.

As a result, on July 30, 2013, all charges were dropped from Bergval, and he was finally discharged from Sater Hospital. However, he could not hug his benefactor. The growths did not live to Bergwal's full justification - in January 2012, he died of cancer. Bergwal’s treatment plan was not disclosed, but it’s known that since then he has never taken any addictive drugs.

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