Thomas Quick by Hannes Råstam

Author:Hannes Råstam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

There was a united front in Piteå District Court: prosecutor, investigators, the defence lawyer, the suspect, therapists, doctors, experts and journalists. All seemed to be pulling in the same direction, so how could it have ended in any other way?

In its verdict of 16 November 1994, the district court wrote:

Quick has admitted to his deed and his confession is backed up by the information he has provided. However, there is no technical evidence to connect Quick to the crime.

The last part was obviously a weakness in the prosecution’s case. Nor had any witnesses seen Quick in Piteå at the time of the murder. But these things, according to the district court, were counteracted by other circumstances:

Quick’s statements on the body parts he removed from the scene conform very well with the evidence, in the sense that these body parts are missing from the crime scene. This fact makes a very strong supporting case for the accuracy of Quick’s information.

The forensic technicians who examined the scene where the remains were found concluded that there were no signs of a crime having been committed and definitely no signs of the body having been cut into pieces. The investigators had noted that Charles’s bones had been dragged in the direction of some fox earths to the south of the remains. The absence of certain bones was therefore not evidence that the body had been cut up.

The views of the forensic technicians were not taken into account. Quite the opposite: the missing leg bones were judged to be ‘very strong supporting evidence’ for Quick’s guilt.

Thomas Quick, who had gone back to Säter after his testimony, received the court verdict delivered by fax to the hospital reception. Eagerly he rifled through the pages until he reached the important part:

By way of a summarising judgment the district court finds Quick guilty beyond any reasonable doubt of the act for which prosecution has been brought. The circumstances of the crime are such that the crime should be considered as murder.

Because of the lack of technical evidence, the pronouncements of specialists in psychology and psychiatry carried a great deal of weight in the judgment. Professor Lidberg, in an interview in Aftonbladet on 15 April 1997, did not hesitate for a moment about his own significance in the outcome of the case.

‘Thomas Quick was convicted on my evidence in Piteå. I am wholly convinced that he was guilty of the charges and that was also the view taken by the court.’

Lidberg’s conclusion that he had single-handedly determined the outcome of the case is certainly an exaggeration of his own importance, but quite clearly the guilty verdict was a great success both for him and for Christianson.

Christer van der Kwast had been concerned about their difficulties in coming up with a single piece of evidence for any of Quick’s confessed murders. He therefore had every reason to be very satisfied.

‘With this guilty verdict I have been given a green light so that an investigation can be conducted as we have done here.

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