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THOMAS QUICK

‘Review Thomas Quick’s case’: Social Democrats

The Social Democrats want the government to appoint an independent commission to review the controversial case of convicted serial killer Thomas Quick, who has since been acquitted of several murders.

'Review Thomas Quick's case': Social Democrats
Convicted serial killer Thomas Quick.

“Enough serious facts are now emerging to warrant another look at this. In the end it is about the trust in the Swedish legal system. If it does turn out that Quick has been convicted of a number of crimes he never committed, we have a number of perpetrators that walked free,” Morgan Johansson, head of the Riksdag’s Committee on Justice (Justitieutskottet) to news agency TT.

Johansson thinks that the commission should investigate whether anyone has been lacking in their responsibility in the police investigations, if there is a flaw in the current procedures and if something in that case ought to be changed in the legal system.

“One has to ask oneself how it could go this far without anyone noticing that there may have been grave flaws to the investigations. After all he was convicted for eight murders by six district courts,” Johansson said.

Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask is also open to an investigation into the case but said to TT that she wants to wait until the remaining applications for re-trial have been processed.

“I am very concerned about this case,” Ask told TT.

“There are so many questions that need to be dealt with. A person who has been convicted of heinous crimes that lawyers later find he can’t possibly have committed. That means that we have a number of crimes where the guilty party has walked free. And then there is the question how this could happen in today’s legal system,” she said.

Quick, who has changed his name to Sture Bergwall, was convicted of eight murders between the years 1994 and 2001, but has since been acquitted of three of them.

Retrials have been granted for another two cases, and in June the last three applications for retrial were submitted.

TT/The Local/rm

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THOMAS QUICK

Swedish ‘serial killer’ cleared of two murders

A Swedish man originally convicted of eight murders saw two more of the killings wiped from his record when the prosecutor's office announced Tuesday it was dropping charges in a retrial.

Swedish 'serial killer' cleared of two murders

The decision leaves Sture Bergwall — for many years known as Thomas Quick and long considered Scandinavia’s worst serial killer — with just one murder on his record.

The prosecution said on Monday it would not prosecute Bergwall, 63, for the deaths of a Dutch couple, Marinus och Janni Stegehuis, who were found stabbed to death at a highway rest stop in Appojaure, in northern Sweden, in 1984.

He was convicted of their murders in January 1996 after confessing to the crime. But he later retracted his testimony, and a retrial was ordered.

The prosecution authority said in a statement it was dropping charges in a retrial “since there is not sufficient evidence that Sture Bergwall committed the crime.”

The Bergwall case has sparked a controversy in Sweden, because of the ease with which he was found guilty of the eight murders, which occurred between 1976 and 1988.

Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask vowed last year to conduct a review of how the courts could have convicted him.

During therapy for an armed robbery conviction, Bergwall confessed to all eight murders along with more than 20 others committed in Sweden, Norway and Finland — for which he was not tried — often describing how he butchered his victims and in at least one case ate the body parts.

In December 2008, however, he suddenly withdrew all his confessions, saying he had been craving attention at the time and had been heavily medicated by doctors.

He has since been acquitted in three cases, had the charges dropped in four cases, and has been granted a retrial in the remaining case.

Bergwall is serving a life term in a psychiatric institution.

AFP/The Local/dl

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