RedHanded - Episode 267 – The Unbelievable Saga of Thomas Quick

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

In the early 1990s, a patient at Säter mental institution was undergoing the facility’s revolutionary memory-recovery therapy, when he revealed a shocking incident from his past. Back in 1980, he had killed an 11-year-old boy. As the therapy continued, more and more brutal confessions came, until he was linked to 39 of Sweden’s most infamous murders. He became known as the nation’s answer to Hannibal Lecter – a sadistic, cannibalistic serial-killer paedophile.  So strap in for shocking confessions, experimental psychotherapy, and a revelation that shook the Swedish justice system to its core… 2022 LIVE SHOW TICKET LINKS: https://redhandedpodcast.com Sources: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4857574/ ‘The Strange Case of Thomas Quick: The Swedish Serial Killer and the Psychoanalyst Who Created Him’ by Dan Josefsson https://www.gq.com/story/thomas-quick-serial-killer-august-2013 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/20/thomas-quick-bergwall-sweden-murder https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/thomas-quick-extraordinary-story-swedish-serial-killer-never/ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/22/the-strange-case-thomas-quick-swedish-serial-killer-psychoanalyst-created-him-dan-josefsson-review ‘Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer’ by Hannes RåstamSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

And I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Tour tickets, guys, you know what we're going to say. We are going on tour in October 2022. So if you are listening to this and it is not yet October 2022, specifically one of the dates we are on tour in October 2022 and you

have not yet got yourselves a ticket, this is the last chance, Saloon. It's perilously close. It is. I just bumped into one of the other podcasters that we have in the building in the kitchen and she was like, are you okay? And I was like, well, we're going to Columbus next week and we fell out of a plane yesterday

and then we're going on tour and then we're back and then it's Christmas Yes, in that order If you want to come see us on tour for a fucking amazing case that we are doing It's brand new, it's brand new If you've ever been to a Red Handed show before you have not seen this show before No No, no, no. So get yourself a ticket. Head to

redhandedpodcast.com and get yourself a ticket. And maybe, I don't know, like five or six other friends that you have. Exactly. And if you need a reminder, we are going to Berlin, Edinburgh, Manchester. We are playing the London Palladium and we are also doing Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo and Berlin. And if you get a ticket to that live show, not only will you see a never before seen show, you will also be one of the first people in the world to see the footage of us jumping out of planes. Because that's what we did yesterday. I hope you're all pleased with yourself because it was absolutely horrific, and I'm never, ever, ever doing it again. But if you want to see video footage

of my soul leaving my body, you have to buy a tour ticket. If you want to be one of the first people to see it, please get yourself over to redhandedpodcast.com to get your tickets, and we will see you on the road right now today we're heading to sweden which is somewhere we haven't been in a very long time and we should also be coming to sweden in real life when we do the stockholm show but today we're going to sweden

in our minds using our imagination school bus because we're going there for an unbelievable story of shocking confessions, experimental psychotherapy, and a revelation that shook the Swedish justice system to its core. On the 7th of November, 1980, 11-year-old Johan Uppsland was supposed to be going to his dad's over the Father's Day weekend. Johan's father had arrived early to pick up his son, and then had been forced to sit and make small talk with his ex-wife as they waited for little Johan to get home from school. Johan's friend Stefan, who was also coming along on the trip, arrived with his suitcase, but he was there alone. He said that Johan hadn't

turned up for school at all that day, and over a decade later, it was reported that on that day, 11-year-old Johan had been dragged into some woods near his house and murdered. In summer 1984, Dutch tourists Jannie and Mariner Steekhuis were backpacking in the north of Sweden. After a day's walking, they stopped by a lake and set up camp. In the dead of night, their tent was slashed and they were stabbed a total of 45 times. Bodum vibes. Come on, Scandi.

Very Bodum. And a few years before that, in 1981, 17-year-old Trine Jensen had disappeared. Her body was later found, naked from the waist down, and her head had been cut off. These cases are among the most infamous in Swedish history. What links them, and 39 other brutal murders, is Thomas Quick,

a man who is considered to be Swedish Hannibal Lecter and the worst serial killer in the nation's history. Quick gave detailed confessions to all of his murders, graphically retelling stories of dismemberment, cannibalism and extreme brutality. Typically, that's not really what you think of when you think of Sweden. Sweden, by most accounts, is one of the safest countries in the world. However, my hairdresser is Swedish. My hairdresser, she did my hair once, and she was talking about what I'm about to tell you, that the murder rates have been peaking in Sweden, especially in the

bigger cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg. there is a major gun violence problem now, where previously there was none at all. In 2021, Sweden was found to have the second highest gun homicide rate, after Croatia, out of 22 European countries that were surveyed. And it is the only European country where gun violence has risen since the year 2000. Yeah, you just don't think about that when you think about Sweden. You think about IKEA and meatballs and lingonberry. Lingonberries. That's what I think of.

I think of Midsommar. Oh, yes. I think of crayfish. Oh. I think of my best friend's dad, Bjorn, who I love. But that's my only Swedish reference point. That's all we've got. But we'll have a lot more reference points by the end of October

because we will have been and seen it with our own eyes. Can't wait. I've never been to Stockholm. Apparently, the rise in violence, gun violence, specifically in Stockholm and Gothenburg, is down to a massive uptick in gang activity. But today we're not going to talk to you about guns or gangs. We're going to tell you about a good old-fashioned fucked-up serial killer. Or are we?

Because our story today begins in the dark early hours of Friday 14th December 1990, when bank manager Bert Lofgren and his family were woken up by the doorbell ringing. Bert went downstairs, bleary-eyed, and answered the door to two masked men. One of them had cut eye holes into a baseball cap that he had then pulled low over his face, and the other was wearing a Santa mask. Now, obviously, that sounds quite comical, but none of this was funny because both of the men were holding knives, and Santa even had a gun. The two men forced the family inside and told them that they planned to rob Gotter Bank, where Lofgren was the bank manager. Now, while Capface held Mrs Lofgren and her son hostage, slashing at them to keep them scared,

Santa drove Bert to his colleague Berit's house to get the keys to the bank. Not seeing the armed St Nick in the back seat, Berit hopped in the car, and they drove to the bank, where Santa made them fill up a sack with Krona. He rang his

accomplice Catface, and they both drove off into the sunset with all that cash. It was the perfect crime and a festive one apart from the fact that one of the two culprits, Stura Bergvall, was pretty well known to Lofgren. He worked across the road from the bank and had appointments in the very same bank that he robbed all the time. And despite the disguises and a half-arsed Finnish accent that Bergvall was putting on, the bank manager had recognised them immediately. I love that he was like, I'm committing, and this is obviously my ignorance, but it's like,

I'm committing this hostage situation slash bank robbery in Sweden. I'll just put on a Finnish accent. How different are they? Quite. Quite, okay. Yeah. Okay.

He could have gone the whole hog and just done something completely different though, but who knows? I'm clearly just not cultured enough in the way of the Scandi. Though I have spent time in a hostel with a bunch of Scandinavians and they were all like making fun of each other. And I was like, I can't tell you apart.

Yeah, I think for us foolish English speakers, because they all speak perfect English and they have a slight American sort of mid-Atlantic twang when they're talking. And that is reasonably blanket, I would say. But I think in their native languages, it's a different kettle of fish. Ah, it's a Finnish Santa!

Send in voice notes. Yes, please. Of your different Scandinavian impressions. At 5.25 the very same day, the police went to the address of history's worst bandits and arrested them. Are we going to say they're worse than the guy who just put lemon juice all over his face thinking that it made him invisible? Oh, come on. We must have spoken about this before.

I don't think we have. I know the guy who got a marker pen and just coloured in his like drew like a Zorro mask onto his face with a sharpie. I've seen that one definitely. I'm sure there's a lemon juice one. Oh my god. So I'm not going to call them the worst bandits in history. Sure, sure. I'm just going to say that year in that part of Sweden probably. Or Finland depending on how good your ears are. Exactly. The bandits' plan had actually been so blindingly stupid, they were both given a mental assessment before they could stand trial, which, fair enough. Can you imagine the outrage that you would feel if you had just committed a crime that was so stupid that they had to check if you were fit to stand trial or not?

I'd be outraged if they didn't. Bergvall had been in and out of prisons and institutions for the whole of his adult life. And following this extremely stupid burglary, in 1991, at the big old age of 41, Stuart Bergvall once again found himself in the Sartre Mental Institution. And this is where the legend of Thomas Quick, Sweden's worst serial killer, began. program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. It was around this time that Bergwald changed his name to distance himself from his past and give himself a fresh start. He had a history of assault charges and an absolutely wild drug habit,

which we will come back to later in this episode because it is very important. Sata Hospital is Sweden's answer to Broadmoor, home to the country's most severely criminally insane people. But Sata is definitely a bit nicer. Think Broadmoor meets Centre Parcs. Sartre Parcs. Sartre Parcs. Well, we all know that as a bleeding heart liberal, I think all mental institutions should be Sartre Parcs. And Quick, when he got sent there, was actually quite glad to be at Sata Parks. Because the main thing you have to know about Sata is that as an institution, it was pretty radical when it came to therapy. For example, the so-called Sata Method was an ambitious treatment plan aimed at curing criminals of their violence and brutality through psychotherapy.

The central belief was that every mental condition has its roots in childhood trauma. Schizophrenia, for example, was just the result of oppression and abuse of control, usually exerted by parents. It was an increasingly popular idea in the 70s and seen as a revolution in psychiatry. The doctors at Sartre were seen as visionaries.

If they could identify and work through the right memories, the need to commit crimes would disappear. Or at least that was the theory. And the evangelist for this treatment at Sartre was a psychotherapist called Margaret Norrell. Norrell had been a consultant at Sarta since the 70s. She'd acted as a supervisor and sounding board for all of the head doctors.

She had also appointed a number of the therapists that she herself had trained, according to her radical theories, of recovered memory therapy. Ruh-roh. Womp-womp. Not good stuff. There's a quote from Dr. Richard J. McNally,

he's a professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, a leader in the memory field, said that, quote, the notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for recovered memory therapy, So good things are coming. Yeah. You have been warned.

And once Thomas Quick found himself to Sartre once again, he really liked this new recovered memory therapy. He was really keen to understand himself and after a lonely life of being pushed to the sidelines, finally, here were some people who genuinely wanted to listen. Thomas described a lonely childhood. He spoke of a distant depressed father and a mother struggling to take care of seven children.

He talked about difficulty coming to terms with his sexuality and then one day after months of treatment, one of those pesky repressed memories came back to the surface. And bit by bit, Thomas Quick retrieved from his mind cave an act of sexual abuse by his father and it was clear that there was something else on his conscience. The therapist was interested and pushed Thomas to reveal as much as he could, and the further they dug into his memory palace, the more interesting things got. Until one day, when Quick was on a supervised swimming trip at a lake near the facility, he turned to a nurse and said, I wonder what you'd

think of me if you found out that i'd done something really serious which is just what every nurse wants to hear when she's escorting random patients from sarta parks down to the local lake for a supervised swim he just slowly turns to her and says i wonder what you'd think of me if you found out I'd done something really serious, but in a Swedish accent, which I can't do. I'm not even going to try because it's just the chef from The Muppet, so it's just going to offend some people. Just racism.

Yes. And when the nurse asked Quick what he meant, he rather menacingly just went quiet. But he did mumble the letters M.U. Then he said he was hungry, and then just left. In the coming days in therapy, Quick remembered a crime much worse than any he'd been convicted of. Back in 1980, he said he'd murdered an 11-year-old boy.

Now remember Johan Absland, the boy who never made it to Father's Day? Well, his disappearance in the 80s was huge news in the Swedish press. But when Thomas Quick arrived at Sata, he said that he had no memory of this murder. However, as Quick's sessions went on, it became more and more clear that he had been involved. And so the therapists contacted the police. And then, 11 years after that little boy's disappearance, the murder investigation jumped back into gear. Bit by bit, Quick pieced together a full account of what had happened. He revealed that he picked Absalind up in his car, strangled him and assaulted him, before finally sticking a knife

through his heart. Then he buried some of the boy's internal organs up in the mountains, and some bits of the boy he ate. The disappearance of Johan Absalind was being overseen by the public prosecutor Christa van der Kvast and the head of police, investigator Seppo Pentinen. And all of them went on a little field trip with Thomas Quick. And these recreations became the real calling card of the Thomas Quick saga. The idea is not dissimilar to things that we've seen before in the Iceland tapes, for example, very similar. Essentially, the idea is this. Because Thomas Quick's memories of the murder were repressed, the only way to track down physical evidence was to go to the scene of the crime

and try and kick his memory back into gear. So Thomas Quick, therapists from Sarta, and a team of police investigators all went to the woods to jog their confessor's memory as soon as they got their, Quick burst into tears. The team took this as confirmation of his knowledge of the crime, and they spent hours with Quick, leading him around the forest and following all of the cues that he gave them. Quick would just sort of walk around the woods, mumbling to himself. The police spent countless hours trying to decipher his mumbled memories on the hunt for Johan Abson's

remains. But nothing happened. They didn't find anything. Even still, everyone on the team claimed the expedition to be an enormous success. And everyone, including Thomas Quick, went out for a meal on the way home. And they all had cigars to celebrate a job well done. This wander round in the forest for a few hours. I mean, nothing like a wander round in the woods to get the appetite going and the cigar smoking need a lit. I don't know, this is so weird. But it only gets weirder because over the following weeks,

Quick's therapy intensified. The therapist dug deeper and deeper, excavating into his childhood memories. And before long, Quick had uncovered another brutal scene from his past. Charles Delmanatovis was 15 and on his way home from a school disco. Quick said that he had been driving with a friend and they'd been cruising for boys. They saw Charles walking along a dark road and so Quick offered him a ride home but instead he drove the teenager to a logging yard where he started to assault him. When the

boy said something that triggered Quick he said he lost it and choked him to death. Quick messed around with the body after, then carried it into the woods. He remembered in therapy that it gave off a sweet odour as he had cut it. And yes, just like with Johan, Quick confessed to again having eaten some of Charles's body parts. At the time, the police had no physical evidence to match any of Quick's confession, and we all know that cannibalism is basically impossible to prove unless you catch someone in the act of doing it. But in 1994, a hiker in the forest tripped over Charles Zalmanovic's head. So Thomas Quick, having confessed to the murder already, went to trial. And the media went bananas.

Here they had a sadist, cannibal, serial killer, paedophile. And the lovely Swedish press had never seen anything quite like it. On the 16th of November 1994, Thomas Quick was found guilty of murder for the first time. The trial verdict said this. He is controlled by a type of sexuality where specific parts of the body have certain symbolic value.

And he knew which body parts he wanted. That doesn't make any sense. What does that mean? He's sexually aroused by various body parts. Aren't we all? And then he went looking for them. Good.

Okay. Fine. What we have here is a murder conviction on the basis of a so-called repressed memory. Right. We haven't had this before in Sweden. And with this conviction, the repressed memory theory started to gain traction. Yeah, you can just see like the psychotherapists from the SETA Institute just like fucking whacking out the cigars. They're like, we did it. We fucking did it.

Honestly, there'd be so much cigar smoking in that institution from all the celebrations, they'll all die of lung cancer. Oh, yeah. And what's even better for the celebrations. They'll all die of lung cancer. Oh, yeah. And what's even better for them is that Thomas Quick is convicted of this murder, but he's just going to get sentenced to more time with them so they can do more digging around in his brain and see what else they can find. So this is like a win-win-win-win-win all round for them. So like we told you earlier, the Sartre method said that any violent criminal act could be

linked to a specific childhood memory on the part of the perpetrator. Like you can make statements or you can definitely have theories saying that people's actions are linked to traumatic childhood events, but they go such a step further because what they're saying is, if Quick had murdered, he must have witnessed a murder as a child. If he dismembered, he must have witnessed dismemberment as a child. They are so specific and literal into A plus B equals C. It's like very, very... Monkey see, monkey do.

Precisely. So the therapist dug, and soon they found what they had been looking for. And this is, again, the problem with the whole repressed memory thing, because they go into it believing that there are repressed memories to find, and they don't stop until they find them, which goes against all scientific ways of thinking or doing things. You shouldn't go into a thing thinking that, knowing already what you're expecting to find

and then just hunt around until you find it. That's called confirmation bias. And that's what we see here time and time again. And so this memory that they dug out of Quick apparently seemed to explain all of his murderous, cannibalistic, paedophilic ways. And as expected, it was pretty fucking intense. So hold on to your tits, because this is the memory they found.

Because the thing is, you have to remember, he's been convicted of paedophilia. Well, you know, they're saying he's a paedophile, cannibal, murderer, etc. And they haven't yet found a memory that explains all of those things, as per the SATA theory. And this is what they found because they need one they need one otherwise their theory doesn't make sense otherwise it doesn't work and there'll be no more cigars for anyone precisely so this is the memory that they um

unlocked from thomas quick and it was one of a horrific family scene that had happened when quick was just four years old and a a fair warning, this is pretty horrible, so prepare yourselves. It turned out that Quick's father's sexual abuse was much more than he'd remembered. And once when Quick had been subjected to it, his mother had actually stepped in, tried to stop his father, but she was seven months pregnant and apparently she had been naked from the waist down. During the struggle, Thomas Quick's mother miscarried and the fetus fell out between her legs and his parents blamed it all on him. And in a classic satanic panic ritual child abuse recovered memory storyline, the parents then went on to play sick sexual games with the foetus.

They cut it up and then forced the four-year-old Thomas Quick to eat bits of his infant brother. Bingo! The SATA psychotherapists were over the moon at this revelation. Their reenactment theory was all but confirmed. I mean, it really did have it all. It really does. It really does. It is, in the truest sense, an absolute fucking bingo at Saterparks

because it's everything they needed to explain away with repressed childhood memories, and they found it. Almost like they put it there. That brings us on to Thomas Quick's second and third convictions, which were for the murders of the Dutch backpackers, Jannie and Marianus Stegaus. The crack team of investigators went back to the woods with Quick for another incredibly successful reenactment. And this time he dutifully slashed the recreation tent and went to town stabbing away at two mannequins. And in therapy, it came to light that the Dutch couple were just surrogates for Quick's horrible parents. Seriously, my eyes couldn't roll further back into my head.

I thought Michelle Remembers was bad. This is worse. This is worse. And after that, there was even more to come. And by more, I mean confessions. Loads of them. He can't stop. Quick confessed to the killing of the teenager Trina Jensen and to the torture and murder of sex worker Grice Storvik. Quick confessed to the killing of Yen and Levi, an Israeli tourist

who was in Sweden visiting family in 1988. And then we have the story of nine-year-old Teresa Johannesson. Quick came across Teresa Johannesson as she came out of a shop. He grabbed her and pulled her down a slope. Teresa smashed her head against a rock on the way down and she fell unconscious. Quick then dismembered her and hid her body parts all around a nearby forest. And for this one, Quick and his psychotherapeutic entourage went to the woods for their biggest reconstruction yet. Sometime later, investigators found something they identified to be a fragment of human female bone. It was the first piece of physical evidence against Quick. And he was convicted for Teresa's murder in 1998,

ten years after she had gone missing. Now, between 1994 and 2001, Quick would mentally rediscover a total of 39 murders with an unprecedented array of graphic and horrific details. Despite the depravity, Quick's confessions turned him into something of a golden boy at SATA. He was the central figure of their bold new crusade to cure the criminal instinct, and his courage in plumbing his extremely traumatic childhood was celebrated. He could get a steak dinner anytime he wanted. And once, he and the team even flew by private jet to one of the recreation sites. He was helping science and playing a key part in the effort to make the world a better place. Thomas Quick became one of the most

well-known people in Sweden at the time, but it couldn't go on forever. In 2001, Starter got a new medical director, psychiatrist Goran Jelberg, and he took a look at Quick's prescriptions. Every day, Quick had been given 7 Valium, 4 Xanax, 1 Triazolam, 2 Rohypnol and 12 Codeine. That sounds like a pretty good time to me, I'm not going to lie. Oh my God, I feel sick. And on top of all of this, he was also given as many benzodiazepines as he wanted.

And these are, of course, a psychoactive sedative. And Quick had been addicted to these benzos for more than 20 years. So clearly his time in the psychiatric institution, no one was trying to wean him off anything. And Yelberg was outraged. It took Quick nine months from that point to fully come off the tranquilizers. And eventually he had his first drug-free day in decades. Suddenly he retreated, refusing to cooperate with therapists, police or the media. He even changed his name back to Stuart Burgwell.

He cited defamation in the press and even wrote this in the Dagen's Nighter newspaper, which apparently had no problem publishing a column from a convicted cannibal serial killer. And this is what he wrote. I intend to take time out for my own sake, hoping to hold on to my will to live. I'm a human being after all, and it's only human to crave confirmation that my story is morally valid and legally important. How do you take much more time out than being in Sata Parks? It is out. You are out. Where else are you going to go? I think he's saying he's gonna take time out from all of the the busy press and recreation and confessing confessing he's basically been doing i do think he nails it there because he says this it's only human to crave confirmation that my story is morally valid

and legally important and i think that's what these people were offering because the way in which he was manipulated is so like blindingly obvious because he says it there he realized that he was leading a fucked up life he was addicted to drugs for decades he was not a happy person and he had done things that he was ashamed of and that he was um obviously come trying to come to terms with so when there are people they're telling you none of this was your fault you did this because of all the horrible things that happened to you in your childhood, he was willing in his mind, aided by all of the drugs and all of this quote-unquote therapy, to create situations that had happened to him that explained away all of his

bad choices and bad behaviour, etc. And also, like we said, he thought he was changing the world. So it was also legally important, not just for him as an individual. So I think what an astonishing level of insight for him to have had after coming off the drugs and basically realising what had happened to him, which seems to be much more insightful than a lot of his fucking therapists. And he did stick to it for seven years. Thomas Quick, but now Sturbergvall again, led a quiet and simple life.

He woke up at six o'clock in the morning to walk a figure of eight around the Sartre courtyard and he spent his days reading and doing crosswords. Then, one day in 2008, a journalist called Hannes Rastam picked up the story. As well as being a dogged investigative journalist, Hannes also played bass for loads of Swedish prog rock bands in his youth. Is there anything more Scandinavian than being a bassist and a journalist? Like a really haggard, like serious journalist that smokes loads.

Ramstrom made two documentaries about the so-called Thomas Quick. Whilst he was in prison, Bergvall saw both films and he liked the tone that they struck. And soon enough, Ramstrom came to visit. And as you might expect from a bass player turned super journalist, he did not fuck about. Rumours had been swirling in the outside world that Quick probably wasn't being entirely truthful.

And Rustram agreed because he had poured over those extensive police reports and something didn't add up. Actually, let's be real, nothing added up. Before long, Quick said something to Rustram that would turn the entire story on its head. This is what he said. If it was true that I didn't commit any of these murders, what could I do? It reminds me of Jennifer Pan when she finally figures out the jig is up and she just goes, what will happen to me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he starts off very cryptically like this, but pretty soon Thomas Quick was telling Ramster much more explicitly, quote, I haven't committed any of the murders I've been convicted of and none of the murders I've confessed to either. That's the way it is. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made,

a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

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And so it turned out that not a single one of the 39 murders that Thomas Quick had confessed to had had anything to do with him. And in case you're still a bit scarred from earlier, well, let me just tell you, the childhood baby-eating story was also made up. But Rastam already knew this. In researching his documentaries on Thomas Quick, the journalist had uncovered a mind-boggling series of mistakes, missteps and miscarriages of justice. Even with Bergwald now

retracting his confessions, and in some cases there being no other physical evidence connecting him to the crimes at all, overturning the many convictions against him still took time. Only three murder convictions had been overturned in the past century in Sweden. And according to Swedish law, confessions alone are not enough for a criminal verdict without independent evidence, even though that's exactly what had happened here.

Yeah, like kind of jokes on you, Sweden. How are you only overturning three murder convictions in a century? That feels like a system that is in denial. Fucking hell, that's crazy. I'm hoping because of my love of Scandinavia and Scandinavians, maybe there were only five convictions. If there are, that's even more worrying. Fucking hell, if you've had five murder convictions in 100 years, you need to fucking open your eyes. We've listed more murders than that already. Basically, they're saying we would never have convicted somebody just based

on confessions, which they did. And so now they were saying that just claiming that the confessions were false were not enough to overturn them. It's a bit of a loop-de-loop situation going on here. But thankfully, a crack team of Hannes Rastram and also a lawyer named Thomas Olsen worked tirelessly to bring the myth of Thomas Quick to a close. Thomas Olsen committed to working on the case for two years pro bono. He ploughed through 50,000 pages of court documents one by one. And in April 2009, just four months after

Quick's revelation, Olsen sent his first retrial application. It was for the murder of Yen and Levi, the Israeli tourist. Olsen stated there was absolutely nothing to tie Thomas Quick to Levi's murder. And there was quite a lot of evidence to suggest that Thomas Quick was lying. A panel of three appeal court judges unanimously agreed with Thomas Olsen. Thomas Quick's innocence was so clear that they didn't even need to bother with the trial. And the conviction for the murder of Yenna Levi was overturned. Before we move on, we know about some lies about Thomas Quick.

But let's find out some truths. Thomas Quick, Sturbergvall is his real name, was born ten minutes before his twin sister in Falun in Sweden in 1950. He was one of seven children, and despite the big family unit, he was lonely right from the start. When he was 14, he discovered that he was gay. Today, Sweden is a gay paradise. It's ranked as the safest place for LGBT travellers

and has more pride festivals per capita than any other country in the world. But back in the 60s, not so much. In Sweden, homosexuality was classed as a psychiatric disorder as late as 1979. And I love how this was overturned. This is such a great story because it was overturned when gay Swedes called the government's bluff. Legally, since being gay was an illness, hundreds of them decided to call in sick to work until the government was forced to declassify it as an illness. People would literally just ring up and be like,

sorry, can't come in feeling a bit gay? Yeah, I'm gay. I'm not coming in. And obviously, like we said, Sweden is now a gay paradise. But until then, until the government overturned homosexuality being seen as a sickness, many people's opinions of homosexuality was matched with the national view. So when in the 50s, little Stur Bergwall started fancying his classmates, he began to think that there was something wrong with him. And it was a traumatic time.

A note from his school doctor even read, the boy is very unhappy about his urges. He in fact seems deeply depressed and wants to be cured. And little Bergwall took a two-pronged approach to vanquish his inner turmoil. The first one was God and the second one was Class A drugs. Bergwall would go to communion every Sunday

and when he was kicked out of his high school for assaulting fellow students, he decided to go to a Christian boarding school and study to become a priest. Which of course meant he was surrounded by a lot more teenage boys with a lot of repression hanging in the air. And perhaps to deal with the fact that he was surrounded by a lot of teenage boys, he started huffing an unbelievable amount of glue

and regularly drinking his body weight in wine and beer. An unhappy boy, I think. It's pretty obvious. And I'm sure you can imagine that a Christian boarding school isn't going to really put up with stuff like that for very long. But it did take little Bergvall over 180 hours of missed classes, overt sexual advances towards other students and non-stop drug taking

before he was finally expelled. He got a temp job as a nursing assistant and for a while things were looking up. Bergwald got chatting with a nursing team leader who was almost 20 years older than him and soon they fell in love. Bergwald was over the moon with his new relationship. It was the first time his love had ever been reciprocated but a few months after they met, tragedy came screaming back into Bergwall's life. His new partner killed himself in his apartment. And that hit Bergwall hard.

His new confidence, happiness and security all vanished. He was in a chaotic free fall. And as his drug taking escalated, his recklessness turned to violence. On the 26th of May 1970, Bergwell was convicted of sexual assaults on four boys and branded a sadistic paedophile with, quote, an intent to murder in order to obtain sexual release. Investigators thinking that it was a genetic disposition rather than drugs even pushed for Bergwell to be chemically castrated. But luckily for Bergwald, a psychiatrist stepped in.

She argued that his criminal actions were just the product of a prudish upbringing, early puberty, and a sexuality that society had told him was wrong. And with this, Bergwald's 40-year psychiatric rollercoaster began. He was committed to Cijon Mental Hospital, where Bergwall was allowed to go out on day trips.

And during that time, he became extremely addicted to amphetamines. By the start of his second year, he was absolutely unhinged. He was picked up by the police, hallucinating on a potent cocktails of alcohol, amphetamines, TCE, and several different tranquilizers.

Then when he got back to the hospital that he was meant to be staying in, though he seems to have done little staying in there, he stole money from a collection for a fellow patient who had died, took the train back out to Stockholm and spent it all on more TCE. Why was it so easy for him to just keep getting out? Because that's all he does. He was in there apparently for sexually assaulting four boys. I don't know. But it does seem like he can just check himself in and out. Yeah. Finally, in January 1973, someone noticed that Bergwall

was leaving the hospital at every opportunity to go and get smacked out of his mind. And that meant he was sent to Sarta for the first time. At Sarta, Bergwall was pretty open with psychiatrists about his drug use, but no-one ever bothered to wean him off them. There was even a pretty nifty black market selling everything he wanted in a kiosk. And what he wanted included quaaludes, which you cannot get anymore, but they were Bergwoll's fave.

And he also, as we already know, really liked a solvent called TCE. So Bergwoll was out of his mind. All the time. But he was polite and he was cooperative, so he didn't really cause much trouble. At the age of 23, he became an outpatient and moved in with his brother and started to study comparative literature at a university. And he changed his substance habits once more to benzodiazepines.

During this time, Bergwald was a regular at a local gay club. And it was there that one day he met a guy called Lennart Hoglund who was about 10 years older than him. The two started chatting and left after an hour to go back to Lennart's house. There they both got pretty drunk and Bergwall had his trusty TCE bottle to huff away at. Hoglund undressed and went into the bathroom while Bergwall inhaled more and more of the mind-altering substances. So much so that when Hogland returned into the room, Burgwell freaked out and hit him on the head with a frying pan. He later said that he had been having terrifying hallucinations and that the man had turned into a monster.

Burgwell had even wildly lunged at Hogland with a kitchen knife. Hogland tried to escape into the corridor, but Bergwall caught him and stabbed him 12 times before he fled. Somehow, despite massive blood loss, Hogland crawled on his hands and knees to let emergency services in, and he managed to survive. So Bergwall had got off his tits and stabbed a guy almost to death. Surely that meant he must be on the road to prison. Well, actually, no, he wasn't convicted. He wasn't even put on trial. Because he had already been sentenced to psychiatric care,

he was just sent right back to hospital. For the next few years, he did manage to cut down on the drugs and he quit booze completely. And he lived a quiet life outside of psychiatric care. Let's fast forward to 1988. He's almost 40 by then, and he'd fallen in love with a 17-year-old. Knowing that this affair would be unrequited, Bergvall got back on the bottle, big time. Which, in time, led him right back to amphetamines. But during this particular drug binge, he got himself a job as a bingo caller. Why not? Quite a speedy one, I would imagine.

And one Saturday, after closing up the bingo hall, Bergwald grabbed 145,000 kroner, stuffed it into his bag and called the emergency services. Bergwald told the emergency services that Burgwell told the emergency services that a masked man had pushed his way in to the bingo hall and forced him to hand over the money. Astonishingly, this all worked and Burgwell kept the cash to spend on drugs.

When the bingo money ran out, he and his young friend, who he was in love with, decided to rob a bank. And we all know how that went. And that neatly brings us back to Sarta and its octogenarian medical supervisor, Margaret Norrell. As we said before, Margaret was something of a rebel on the psychotherapy scene. We also mentioned that she got therapists that she had trained to be recruited at SATA. What we didn't mention was that they had all started out as her patients. Margaret, no.

I know. It really is the patients running the fucking institution. Quite literally. It's the blind leading the even more blind. Like, I don't... So through the 1970s, Margaret Norrell would apply her neo-Freudian theories to treating patients at her private clinic. She would then take on these patients who were struggling with traditional therapy and act as a mother figure to them. It was actually central to her technique to present as a good parent to the patient. That way, she thought they could finally feel secure enough

to confront their past trauma. So many red flags. So many red flags. Where's your professional distance, Margaret? No, she's a rebel. She's like, fuck that, fuck professional standards. I'm going to have a breakthrough here. I literally interviewed a shaman the other day

and he was very forthcoming about professional distance and how important it is. Yeah. Margaret was like, nah to that. Would you like a cuddle? I'm your mummy now. Let me breastfeed you. Oh, God.

Oh, God. She would have done. She probably did because her training has been described by many of her ex-pupils as, quote, very much like a sect. So Margaret would psychoanalyse her students at the same time as teaching them. She knew everything about them, their childhoods, their romantic lives, and old family disputes. The level of power that she had over these people cannot be overstated. And although she was warm, open open and supportive in therapy apparently Margaret Norell also had a mean streak and there's actually a book by a guy called Dan Josephson that is very eye-opening it's called The Strange Case of Thomas Quick and we read it for the research to this

episode and we would highly recommend it and in that he uncovers just how much Margaret Norell and her influence had to do with creating and perpetuating the serial killer's legend. All we can say, for sure, is that if it wasn't for her, there very likely would be no Thomas Quick, the Swedish serial killer, who, as you'll go on to find out, never was. We already know that a key part of Norell's treatment strategy was the uncovering of repressed memories. Let's have a closer look at what that really means. The idea that traumatic memories can be repressed goes all the way back to the late 19th century, with the Big Daddy of Daddy issues, Herr Sigmund Freud, who you can go and look at in Highgate Cemetery.

And this repressed memory idea was invented, discovered, came up with, whatever you want to say, whilst Freud was treating women for hysteria. And during Freudian sessions, these hysterical women would have big hysterical woman emotional outbursts, which Sigmund Freud said was obviously them mentally returning to childhood and re-experiencing repressed memories of being molested not they were just sick of their husband tracking mud through the house or something Freud had already acknowledged a mechanism in the human psyche that automatically represses a memory if it finds it frightening he called it seduction theory because he said that most of his female patients had been seduced by their fathers and that their fathers had raped them.

At a lecture in Vienna in 1896, Sigmund Freud said, I put forward the thesis that, at the bottom of every case of hysteria, there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience. Occurrences which belong to the earliest years of childhood, but which can be reproduced through the work of psychoanalysis. This theory was not well received, and of course has been revealed to be complete bullshit later down the line. And even Freud distanced himself from the idea later in his own life. I guess when you're engaging in experimental psychotherapy etc you've got to think big and then bring it back down with what's provable and so I guess it's bound to happen but the thing I find really surprising is that in 1896 people were like this isn't a good idea. And then later on in the fucking 70s, Margaret Norell is like,

this is a great idea. And everyone's like, yeah. Yeah, man. Suri's completely right. Even at the time, in the 1890s, critics were saying that the technique Freud was describing created the risk of false memories being implanted in these poor ladies' brains. But in Sweden in the 80s, these ideas had a real comeback, especially the idea

of selective memory loss leading to a traumatic experience being completely and immediately forgotten. So when Margaret's disciples found Thomas Quick with his troubled past, gruesome crimes, and enigmatic backstory, they couldn't wait to root around in that brain of his to see what they could dig out, particularly if they could find some tasty, tasty trauma. So Margaret was even working on a book charting the progress of Thomas Quick's therapy

with the working title, The World of Thomas Quick. We've all seen cases of how false confessions can be pushed out of an innocent person. We've talked about that at length on Red Handed. And we've also all come across cases where somebody retrieves a traumatic memory. Those aren't new issues in the world of criminal investigation. But the question here is how was Thomas Quick convicted of nine murders and investigated for 39 murders with absolutely no eyewitnesses, no circumstantial evidence and not one shred of physical evidence? All they had was him retrieving memories of 39 murders and he was convicted of nine of them.

And if you're thinking, oh wait, Sruti, there was that physical evidence. Remember that bit of bone they found in the woods when he said that that's where he'd murdered Therese Johansson? Well, that bone fragment that police found in the woods is something we're going to shelve for now, but we're going to come back to because it's very important. The question of how Thomas Quick, who never really existed at all, was convicted for nine murders and investigated for 39 more

is quite a complicated answer, so we'll take it one step at a time. Number one, he just read the newspapers. When Quick confessed to the murder of 14-year-old Thomas Blomgren, it was an incredibly specific confession. It included details that surely only the killer could have known. But what everyone forgets is that for much of that particular stay at Saterparks, Quick was an outpatient. Thomas Quick, the man who told everyone what parts of boys were his favourite to eat, just came and went as he pleased. He had his own keys to his accommodation and could be signed out for day trips.

It was all considered a reward for being a very good boy in therapy all day. And telling the therapist whatever the fucking crazy shit they wanted to hear. Yeah, good. And it was only after he confessed to six murders that they finally revoked his right to leave. On one particular trip, he made a beeline for Stockholm's National Library, where you can see the Devil's Bible. It's in Stockholm's National Library.

Oh, should we go when we go to Stockholm? That'd be cool. Yep. I'll allow it. And in Stockholm's National Library, Thomas Quick called up press reports and articles on Blomgren's murder. And he made little notes in a notebook. Of course he did. Of course he did. It's like reverse Ed Kemper.

Yes, exactly. And even after he was told he couldn't leave Saterparks anymore, he had newspapers delivered to his little apartment. And when he saw a good murder, he'd reframe what he'd learned as a painful memory, repressed in his childhood, recovered in a therapy session. And just in case you're not getting the blindingly obvious point here, when Thomas Quick's reputation in the Swedish press grew, journalists would start to speculate about other potential victims, which he then claimed to be his murders as well. So that brings us on to step two of how Thomas Quick was convicted of these murders. Well, they also just fucking told him loads of stuff that he needed to know.

And they, of of course in this case being the psychotherapist at Sata they were so fucking horny for repressed memories that they literally just told him stuff and so were the police investigators they fucking just wanted to close unsolved cases that they were willing to say whatever they needed to to Thomas Quick in order to do that so much so probably, unbeknownst to them, they were really willing, quick, into getting his answers right. He learned how to read their questions to know what answer they were after. And he knew when to keep up the mystique.

For example, when he was asked where he'd hidden Therese Johnson's head, he said, quote, I don't have the courage to know that at this point because he doesn't know and if he tells them and then that's not there then he's gonna have to explain no don't make me go back into my mind cave don't make me go back there i've been so brave all day plumbing around in my fucking non-trauma don't make me go relive this and the reconstruction trips that they were just fucking piling on these were designed to jog thomas quick's memory but they just served as research trips for his fucking serial killer fantasy whenever he got a detail wrong and this

bit just really kills me because whenever he got a detail wrong for example like the victim's hair color it was just passed off as an unreliable memory and they pressed on. But if he got it right well done Thomas, have some more drugs. Which brings us to the next and most important step. Step three of how the fuck this all happened. Thomas Quick was off his tits from sniffing glue literally all the time. We can't really comprehend the volume of drugs

that were swimming around in Quick's system at the time of these confessions. Imagine the highest you've ever been times it by 10, you're still not even close. And you might remember from earlier on that as soon as Thomas Quick got clean, he withdrew from therapy and the confessions stopped in their tracks. It's almost like they knew that was going to happen if they stopped giving him all those drugs. It's almost as if when you're off your tits, you chat shit constantly. It's almost as if that's a side effect

that literally everyone understands and knows about. And that is because drugs strip away inhibitions. They make it easier to confess and they make it a lot easier to lie and even more to care less about lying in the first place. Thomas Quick said, the benzo made me ruthless and unaware of consequences. And the medical director at Sata Parks that took the drugs away eventually said, it is beyond any doubt that his statements, him being Thomas Quick, in court will have been affected. I would

not trust anyone who consumed these on such a scale. And when bass player slash journalist slash the most Scandinavian man alive, Hannes Rostam, the journalist who Quick had first confessed to, watched videos of the reconstructions in the woods, he just couldn't believe how drugged up Quick was. He's stumbling around, slurring, moaning, making weird animal sounds. And if he wasn't remembering quite right, the team of investigators would just go

and fix him some more drugs. For those in charge at Sartre Parks, all of these mumblings were just a side effect of his therapy. He needed plenty of medication to help him deal with the intense psychological toll of exploring his childhood trauma. But there is one final reason that all of this went so far. And that's the fact that Quick slash Bergwall,

just like being listened to, when he first got to SATA and started his therapy, he was keen to participate and understand himself. But at first, he felt like he was failing even at that. Can you imagine? They're like, why have you done all this? And he's just sat there like, I don't know. And they're like, he's a failure. He's a failure even there. As Hans Rastram put it,

quote, his feelings of being an uninteresting patient solidified his sense of failure. It seemed that he was incapable even of being a successful lunatic. Oh, I know. Quick slash Bergwall wanted so badly to be an interesting patient, but he just couldn't remember much about his childhood. And it was just as he was being prepared for release that he suddenly started to hint that there might be something more sinister hidden beneath the depths of his consciousness. Again, you can see he's like, uh-oh, I'm going to be released out into the big wide world.

I kind of like it here because even though I'm not saying anything interesting, people are listening to me. What if I just start saying really interesting things? And by interesting, I mean fucking crazy. All of this went on for so long and was so out of control, so out of proportion and so unbelievable. There were sceptics all along. And amongst them were the parents of Johan Absland. They never bought into Quick's story, they never thought he was guilty and they even had a lawyer compile a 53-page document charting the weaknesses in his story. One example was that Quick had once claimed

to have killed two Somali refugees who later turned out to be alive and well, just living in other places. Another example, once Thomas Quick named more than six murder weapons before he got to the correct one. So let's come back to that one piece of physical evidence that we mentioned earlier. And that's, of course, the bone fragment that had been found in the woods. During the trial for Therese Johannesson's murder, an expert stood up in court and testified that it was bone and that it had come from a human child aged between 5 and 15 and that it showed signs of having been cut with a sharp instrument.

Well, guess what? The only bit of physical evidence in this whole fucking case was tested again. And that bit of bone was literally just a bit of wood. Somebody help me. Honestly, I'm just not having like this. Oh, Sweden knows what it's to. What the fuck are you fucking doing, Sweden? What is happening?

My God. This like dragged out into like the 2000s, the noughties this is mad how can you not just touch a piece of wood and not know it's not bone well i suppose it depends what you mean by fragment you know is it like is it like woodlouse size sure is it like sure would my dog pick it up like i don't know unsurprisingly one by one by one, every single one of Thomas Quick slash Bergwals convictions for murder were overturned. And in July 2013, he was acquitted of his eighth and final one. Now he's a free man.

It's very difficult, as usual on Red Handed, because life isn't black and white no matter how much we want it to be. It is difficult to pin down this whole shit show to one particular reason. It has to be a combination of the shady psychology peddled by Margaret Norrell and her loving cronies, Bergvall's own eagerness to please and his own addiction to the attention he received, in addition to the uninterrupted drug tornado ripping through his system

at quite literally all times until it was too late, and of course you have to factor in a justice system that wanted results at any cost. Yep, that'll do it. Hat trick, bingo, whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, I think it's everything we just said. It was people who desperately wanted to say that their form of psychotherapy was genius and working and could solve all the problems of the world. Bergwald just loved being listened to and loved the idea of being interesting and morally validated, like he said. And the police were like, we can close 39 cases in one go. Fucking A. Sign me up.

Exactly. Cigars for everyone. in one go fucking a exactly so it is an unbelievable case but yeah there you go that is the case of thomas quick the swedish serial killer who never was and uh if you've got any problem with anything we've said sweden uh buy tickets to the live show and tell it to my face and we'll see you in stockholm so yeah get your tickets guys red-handed podcast.com for all of the cities and we'll see you in Stockholm. So yeah, get your tickets, guys. RedHandedPodcast.com for all of the cities. And we'll see you there. Bye. Bye.

I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

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