Thomas Quick, Sweden’s Hannibal Lecter

More often than expected, reality surpasses fiction. There are stories that surprise and fascinate. For some reason, human beings are especially attracted to stories that involve serial killers who have been capable of the greatest atrocities we can imagine.

Thomas Quick became known as a murderer who practiced cannibalismFor this reason, he was nicknamed the Swedish Hannibal Lecter. However, his story hid an even more enigmatic and intriguing background than the crimes he had confessed to…

Thomas Quick, his beginnings

The story of Thomas Quick is divided into three parts. In the first, his name was Sture Ragnar Bergwall, a man born in Sweden within a deeply religious family with incorruptible values. It was the year 1950.

Bergwall became the “black sheep” of the family. To begin with, he was homosexual, something absolutely unacceptable to his parents because it contrasted with his deeply religious values. They not only considered it a sin, but a crime. Therefore, this man grew up repressing his sexual inclinations.

During his adolescence, he began drinking alcohol already consume drugs. He also began molesting children and was even involved in a sexual abuse case when he was 19 years old. He always wanted to be noticed because he, in some way, felt that he was invisible to his family.

Bold actions

When Sture Ragnar Bergwall was 41 years old, in 1991, he entered a bank dressed as Santa Claus and tried to rob him. He only carried a knife, but he was desperate to get money to buy drugs. The assault was foiled and he was arrested by the police, who took him to prison.

During the investigation, the man involved his best friend at the time, and he was also taken to prison. Because of this, everyone he knew turned their backs on him and Bergwall was left practically alone in the world. Besidesvoluntarily asked to be transferred to a psychiatric prison, a wish that was granted.

Why did he do it? Apparently, he considered that it would be easier for him to obtain psychoactives similar to those he normally used there.. In the psychiatric hospital, he came into contact with a group of professionals led by Margit Norell, a famous psychotherapist who studied the criminal mind.

Thomas Quick, a new character

When Bergwall entered the psychiatric hospital, the second part of his story began to be written. From one moment to the next he began to talk about the crimes what he had committedwhich he apparently did not remember until he arrived at the hospital and began psychotherapy.

He said that he had committed his first murder at the age of 14 and that his victim had been a young man named Thomas Blomgren. He noted that, since then, He had adopted the name Thomas, in honor of the person he had raped and murdered.. Later, he had begun using the surname Quick, which was his mother’s, becoming known as Thomas Quick.

In total, he confessed to being responsible for 38 murders.. Several of them included rape, dismemberment, mutilation and cannibalism. The psychiatrists were both terrified and fascinated by the story of Thomas Quick. He was the perfect prototype of the serial killer and a great opportunity to advance his investigations.

Sweden’s Hannibal Lecter

When the press learned of the case, there were entire pages dedicated to Quick. No one could believe that such an evil being had gone unnoticed for so many years. People were horrified and started calling him the Hannibal Lecter of Sweden.in memory of the movie character The silence of the lambs.

Thomas Quick continued to provide details and details of his crimes. The police became involved in the case and the man cooperated by reporting places where he had buried his victims, but the officers found nothing when they went there. It was thought that, in the midst of his obvious mental disorder, he played with them.

During the trial that followed, Thomas Quick spoke of a girl murdered in 1988. He said he had fractured her skull with a rock and pointed out the scene. When the police went there, he found a piece of bone. Finally there was a test. For this crime and seven others, he was finally convicted.

An unexpected end

The third part of this story is the most interesting and surprising. It all started when journalists Hannes Råstam and Jenny Küttim began an investigation into the case.. There were loose pieces, some pieces of the puzzle that didn’t seem to quite fit Quick’s stories. Furthermore, the parents of one of the victims rejected the version that Thomas Quick had killed his son; since they had identified another suspect for a long time.

In other stories the same thing happened: there were gaps that were not completely filled in and nothing seemed to make sense. The journalists examined the case in maximum detail and, finally, They concluded that there was not a single piece of evidence that incriminated Quick.. The famous piece of human bone was nothing more than a piece of wood and plastic.

The reporters visited Thomas Quick on several occasions and, after insisting, The man confessed that he had invented everything. He fooled the psychiatrists and the police because this way he got more attention, privileges and also more psychoactives. This case is one of the biggest judicial errors of the Swedish State, which finally exonerated Quick.

In short, it is a case that still causes astonishment and that, of course, has been made into a film. We still wonder today how someone could take ownership of such heinous crimes and actually profit from them.

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