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Borgström & Quick

A tale of how a political insider cynically exploits the system, taxpayers, and innocents for ego and profit.

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Thomas Quick is actually Sture Ragnar Bergwall. His name was changed in 2002 after a series of trials over an eight year period (1994 - 2001) involving Claes Borgström.

The trials involved eight (8) murders Quick confessed to. The verdicts in the trials have since been overturned as there was no evidence whatsoever and the only witness was Quick himself.

Quick has a history of mental illness and has repeatedly been hospitalised in mental institutions. He was called 'The Säter Man' in the media, a reference to the Säter hospital that had taken care of him.

Quick withdrew his previous testimony in a documentary sent in Swedish national television in December 2008. Prosector Eva Finné was called in to review the case. Finné threw out the verdict and things started unraveling for certain individuals.

Following is an account by investigative journalist Maria Wilhelmson published 14 January 2006.

We at Aftonbladet have for some time been in possession of articles that cast doubt on the claim Thomas Quick is a serial killer. Something that should also be called into question is the influence of Quick's solicitor Claes Borgström in getting his mentally ill client convicted of multiple murders without a shred of evidence.

The guilt of Thomas Quick has also been questioned earlier - by journalist Dan Larsson and by criminal investigator Jan Olsson who left a murder investigation in protest. He thought there was an illicit interaction between the head interrogator and Thomas Quick. Quick was given help to 'remember correctly' when reconstructing the crimes. Several of the parents of Quick's alleged victims don't believe he is guilty.

Quick's first solicitor gave up and quit after two years. He said the defence worked 'backwards'. After having worked all his life to defend his clients, it was suddenly the other way around in the Quick case. The prosecution and defence cooperated to get the accused convicted. The judicial process was derailed.

Thomas Quick is mentally ill and a mythomaniac. He has confessed to over thirty (30) murders, even murders of people who are still alive. He starts confessing to murders several years after they've been committed, in connection with his imminent release from a mental institution. Maybe he believed he had murdered or maybe he just didn't want to leave the security of his institutional life.

And because he's sick, he's not sentenced to prison but to continue living at the same institution (Säter) as before.

It's quite common that disturbed people take on crimes they've not committed. That things went so far in the Quick case that he was convicted of eight murders is a scandal. Facts and circumstances that hinted at his innocence exist but they have been ignored.

Someone who is especially to blame for what happened is our current equality minister Claes Borgström who took on the case after Quick's first solicitor. Richly compensated with taxpayer money for several years, Claes Borgström failed to look after the best interests of his mentally disturbed client.

I've reviewed the investigation of the 1998 murder of israeli Yenon Levi. Seven years later in 1995 Quick takes on the unsolved murder after it's been featured in the media. He's convicted of the murder in 1997.

I've seen the video of the first reconstruction of the events at the place of the murder. It was made on 20 May 1996 and Quick remembers everything incorrectly. A half year later there's a new reconstruction. For six months Quick and the head interrogator have several conversations and Quick's memory works a lot better the second time around.

An example of Quick's poor memory is when he can't remember what weapon he used for the murder. He suggests a crowbar, a tyre cross, a car jack, a rock, a shovel, an axe, and a log before he gets it right - a cudgel. The psychological explanation offered was that he had a hard time approaching the terrible memories. But if you study the interrogation and the reconstruction it's apparent he remembers things that can't be proven - feelings and moods - but not verifiable facts.

Claes Borgström dropped out of the case when he was appointed equality ombudsman. Quick announced in an op-ed in DN.se that he didn't want to help solve any more murders. With the help of Claes Borgström, a psychically ill individual has been convicted of eight murders with no evidence whatsoever and been branded as one of Sweden's worst criminals ever. And of course if he's innocent then the real murderers are still on the loose and nobody's looking for them.

Claes Borgström did not want to respond to the criticism directed at him for his representation of Thomas Quick but he'll get another chance. And how will the Swedish bar association rule that a defence solicitor should behave when a mentally ill client wants to confess to crimes he's not committed?

Note: Borgström decided to preempt the bar investigation by filing a complaint against himself in April of this year. Months later (but before the Assange scandal) the conviction of Thomas Quick was overturned by none other than Eva Finné. Small world. The pieces of the puzzle are finally falling into place.