Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer

There's no denying the popularity of serial killers, both fictional and real. In the case of Swedish murderer Thomas Quick, that popularity played a part in creating a serial killer, denying justice to the families of murder victims across Sweden and Norway. Thomas Quick was the assumed name of Sture Bergwall, who was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for his role in a bank robbery. Quick was also accused of molesting several boys. In the hospital, he discovered that confessing to murders earned him respect, interest from staff members, and a free-flowing supply of benzodiazepines. Eventually, Quick confessed to 30 murders, supplying investigators with grisly details of sexual assaults, dismemberments, and cannibalism. Quick was convicted of eight of those killings and is widely regarded as Sweden's worst criminal. Journalist and documentarian the late Råstam (1956–2012) became interested in the case several years after Quick stopped cooperating and reverted to his birth name, interviewing Bergwall in 2008 and eventually coaxing the truth from him. The author has produced two award-winning documentaries on the Quick proceedings, and this book provides a painstakingly detailed analysis. The confessions were riddled with errors, none of the forensic evidence matched, and the time lines made no sense. Bergwall has since been cleared of the murders though he is still incarcerated.