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JOHAN ASPLUND

THE STORY OF Thomas Quick begins and ends with Johan Asplund.

When, during therapy in 1992, Quick started remembering the murder of Johan, he was very unsure whether he had had anything to do with it. It is unlikely that he would have suspected at this point that he would eventually remember committing another thirty murders.

If Thomas Quick had begun by confessing to the murder of Yenon Levi, the matter would have ended up in the Avesta police district rather than with the Sundsvall police. But the murder of Johan came first and the Quick file therefore landed on the desk of prosecutor Christer van der Kwast and the Sundsvall police, where senior officer and narcotics investigator Seppo Penttinen was charged with heading the investigation.

It would be understandable if Seppo Penttinen had harboured a dream of being the one to solve the murder of Johan Asplund, Sundsvall’s greatest crime mystery. Over the years, the police had invested enormous amounts of manpower and resources with a view to producing some sort of technical evidence as the Quick case progressed.

After the verdicts for the murders of Gry Storvik and Trine Jensen, the investigation took a firm new grasp on Johan’s murder inquiry, as it had done so many times before.

‘We’re getting very close now with Johan Asplund,’ said van der Kwast.

‘Again!’ commented Björn Asplund acidly. ‘There’s bound to be another murder in Norway he’d rather talk about . . .’

But this time the investigators were determined to bring Johan’s case to court and reach a verdict. On Valentine’s Day 2001 van der Kwast called Björn Asplund to let him know there was now enough evidence to instigate proceedings against Thomas Quick for the murder of Johan.

Both Björn and Anna-Clara Asplund welcomed the decision and approved the prosecution. ‘We just want an end to this after twenty years,’ they said. ‘But we’ll question every detail during the trial.’

‘The details provided by Quick show that he has been in physical contact with Johan,’ van der Kwast assured everyone at the press conference after the announcement of the trial. ‘Even his descriptions of things in Bosvedjan indicate that he was actually there on that morning.’

But Johan’s parents were dismissive of the prosecutor’s line of reasoning.

‘He did not murder my son,’ said Björn Asplund with absolute confidence, pointing to the fact that there was no technical evidence at all. ‘I don’t believe he is guilty of a single murder.’

The most significant failing in the Quick story, Asplund argued, was that none of Quick’s murder convictions had been tested in a higher court. But that would change now.

‘If against all probability he is found guilty, we’ll take it to the court of appeal. And then the bubble around Thomas Quick will hopefully burst.’

During the trial, the district court believed that Quick had given details about the residential area of Bosvedjan which proved that he had been there on the morning of Johan’s disappearance. He was able to describe a boy who lived in the same house as Johan. The fact that Quick could make a drawing of the boy’s jumper was viewed by the court as significant. He had also given precise information about distinguishing marks on Johan’s body.

Sundsvall District Court reached a unanimous verdict on Quick having committed the offence beyond all reasonable doubt. On 21 June 2001 Quick was convicted of his eighth murder.

Only then were Johan’s parents informed that because they had supported the prosecution they were not entitled to appeal against the verdict.

And with this the murder of Johan Asplund had come to a close.