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THOMAS QUICK

Convicted serial killer applies for new retrials

Convicted serial killer Thomas Quick, who recently retracted confessions for eight murders, has formally petitioned the Svea Court of Appeal for a retrial in two further murder cases.

Convicted serial killer applies for new retrials

Quick, who now goes by the name Sture Bergwall, has requested a retrial in the cases concerning the murder of Trine Jensen in Oslo in 1981 and Gry Storvik, also in Oslo, in 1985.

The cases are the third and fourth cases subject to a petition for a retrial following Thomas Quick’s retraction of his confessions covering eight murders dating from 1976 to 1988.

Quick’s lawyer Thomas Olsson has divulged in his petition to the court that they plan to submit new information to show that the confessions were false and that his client could not have carried out the murders.

Quick has previously explained that the confessions were made due to his psychological condition at the time and as result of the strong painkillers that he was taking at the time.

Thomas Quick has been convicted in six trials for the murder of eight people.

In 2008 he retracted all his confessions for the crimes and applied for his first re-trial. In 2009 the Svea court of appeal granted Quick a new trial for the murder of Yenon Levi in Hedemora in central Sweden in June 1988.

Quick was acquitted of Levi’s murder in September 2010.

The Local reported in March that a Swedish prosecutor has dropped the case against Thomas Quick related to the murder of nine-year-old Therese Johannessen in Norway in 1988, ruling that the conviction was not beyond reasonable doubt.

The Svea Court of Appeal had in September 2010 ordered a retrial in the case.

Quick remains convicted of the murders of Charles Zelmanovits in PiteƄ in 1976, Johan Asplund in Sundsvall in 1980, Trine Jensen in Oslo in 1981, a Dutch couple called Stegehuis in Appojaure in 1984, and Gry Storvik in Oslo in 1985.

Thomas Quick has been in psychiatric care since 1991.

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ITALY

French police snare ‘Valentine’s Day Monster’

An Italian serial killer nicknamed the "Valentine's Day monster", whose escape from prison in Genoa this week triggered a huge manhunt, was caught Friday on the French Riviera, police said.

French police snare 'Valentine's Day Monster'
French police snared an Italian serial kiler on Friday on the Riviera coast. Photo: AFP

Bartolomeo Gagliano went on a murder spree in the 1980s, killing two prostitutes and a transvestite and seriously injuring another sex worker, for which he served years in a criminal psychiatric ward.

At the time of his escape on Wednesday, he had been serving time in prison in the northwestern Italian town of Genoa for a hold-up.

French police said he was detained on Friday afternoon in the southeastern French city of Menton after Italian authorities launched a manhunt for a man they described as "very dangerous" and "possibly armed".

Gagliano was spotted in Ventimiglia, an Italian border town, and fled on the motorway to France in a stolen vehicle.

Police found the parked car in Menton, and detained him as he was heading back to the vehicle.

Gagliano escaped while on temporary leave from prison to visit his mother – leave he had been granted for good behaviour. 

Italian media gave him the nickname of "Valentine's Day monster" because he killed the transvestite on the day that celebrates love.

According to Italy's ANSA news agency, Gagliano had also been convicted for robbery, drugs and weapons possession, aggression and extortion.

He had already escaped from a psychiatric hospital in northern Italy in 1990, and a month later shot his girlfriend in the chin and fled the scene, the agency said.

She was found lying nude on a bed, with underwear at her neck to try to stop the bleeding, surrounded by pornographic material, it added. Gagliano later returned to the hospital.

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