cheek resting against the floor of the tent, lies alongside the man’s hip. The body is lying on its right side and is bent to an angle of almost 90 degrees. The left arm is extended and rests at an angle of about45 degrees from the upper body. The upper parts of the body are wrapped in a patterned duvet cover of the same kind as the one the man lies in. The duvet cover is very heavily bloodstained.
Outside the tent the police found what might have been the murder weapon – a thin-bladed fillet knife made by Falcon, a Swedish manufacturer. The blade had snapped off and was later found between the woman’s arm and body. It had broken when the knife struck bone with great force.
Between the tent’s opening and the lake a grey-green Toyota Corolla with Dutch number plates was parked. The car was locked, the interior was in good order and there was no sign of unlawful entry.
The police were quickly able to identify the victims. The crime scene gave a strong indication that this had been the work of a lunatic, pure and simple.
The following day the bodies were transported to Umeå, where the medical examiner Anders Eriksson made a thorough forensic examination. In two autopsy reports he describes a very large number of stab and slash wounds.
The investigators concluded that the murderer had stabbed the sleeping couple in a frenzied fashion through the fabric of the tent. Both the woman and the man had woken during the attack – they had defensive wounds on their arms – but neither of them had even been able to get out of their sleeping bags. The incident itself must have happened very quickly.
The news of the murder shook the whole country. Perhaps the worst part of it was the cowardice of whoever had sneaked up on an unknown, wholly defenceless couple in their sleep; or perhaps it was the anonymous, faceless nature of the attack, with the knife stabbing through the thin canvas of the tent, making it impossible for the victims to understand what was happening or see who was attacking them; or was it the frenzy revealed by the large number of wounds? All the evidence at the scene pointed to a perpetrator without any kind of motive. The double murder of the Stegehuises was so strange and twisted in every respect, the only explanation was that it must have been committed by someone unfathomably sick.
The brutal crime in the Swedish wilderness also attracted a good deal of attention outside the country. In the police investigation that followed, more than a thousand people were questioned without any progress being made.
When lengthy murder inquiries are solved it is usually found that the perpetrator has made an appearance somewhere in the investigation documents, but in this case there was no trace of the man who confessed to the crime ten years later. Another fact puzzling the investigators was that Thomas Quick – who up until that point had been known as a murderer only of boys – was confessing to the brutal knife killing of a couple in their thirties.
In the first police interview, held on 23 November 1994, Quick described taking a train from Falun to Jokkmokk, a place he was familiar with from his time as a student at the High School in the academic year 1971–2. He stole a bicycle from outside the Sami Museum and rode off without any particular destination in mind. By coincidence he ended up on the road known as Vägen Västerut, which runs from Porjus towards Stora Sjöfallet.
At the picnic spot by Appojaure he caught sight of the Stegehuises, then later that night he attacked them with a hunting knife he had brought with him.
Quick’s account was vague. He even explicitly stated that he wasn’t absolutely certain that he had had anything to do with the murder. What made him doubt it, he said, was the nature of the violence, and also because one of the victims was a woman.
In his second interview Quick changed his story, bringing in a second man whom he had arranged to meet in Jokkmokk. This accomplice
Outside the tent the police found what might have been the murder weapon – a thin-bladed fillet knife made by Falcon, a Swedish manufacturer. The blade had snapped off and was later found between the woman’s arm and body. It had broken when the knife struck bone with great force.
Between the tent’s opening and the lake a grey-green Toyota Corolla with Dutch number plates was parked. The car was locked, the interior was in good order and there was no sign of unlawful entry.
The police were quickly able to identify the victims. The crime scene gave a strong indication that this had been the work of a lunatic, pure and simple.
The following day the bodies were transported to Umeå, where the medical examiner Anders Eriksson made a thorough forensic examination. In two autopsy reports he describes a very large number of stab and slash wounds.
The investigators concluded that the murderer had stabbed the sleeping couple in a frenzied fashion through the fabric of the tent. Both the woman and the man had woken during the attack – they had defensive wounds on their arms – but neither of them had even been able to get out of their sleeping bags. The incident itself must have happened very quickly.
The news of the murder shook the whole country. Perhaps the worst part of it was the cowardice of whoever had sneaked up on an unknown, wholly defenceless couple in their sleep; or perhaps it was the anonymous, faceless nature of the attack, with the knife stabbing through the thin canvas of the tent, making it impossible for the victims to understand what was happening or see who was attacking them; or was it the frenzy revealed by the large number of wounds? All the evidence at the scene pointed to a perpetrator without any kind of motive. The double murder of the Stegehuises was so strange and twisted in every respect, the only explanation was that it must have been committed by someone unfathomably sick.
The brutal crime in the Swedish wilderness also attracted a good deal of attention outside the country. In the police investigation that followed, more than a thousand people were questioned without any progress being made.
When lengthy murder inquiries are solved it is usually found that the perpetrator has made an appearance somewhere in the investigation documents, but in this case there was no trace of the man who confessed to the crime ten years later. Another fact puzzling the investigators was that Thomas Quick – who up until that point had been known as a murderer only of boys – was confessing to the brutal knife killing of a couple in their thirties.
In the first police interview, held on 23 November 1994, Quick described taking a train from Falun to Jokkmokk, a place he was familiar with from his time as a student at the High School in the academic year 1971–2. He stole a bicycle from outside the Sami Museum and rode off without any particular destination in mind. By coincidence he ended up on the road known as Vägen Västerut, which runs from Porjus towards Stora Sjöfallet.
At the picnic spot by Appojaure he caught sight of the Stegehuises, then later that night he attacked them with a hunting knife he had brought with him.
Quick’s account was vague. He even explicitly stated that he wasn’t absolutely certain that he had had anything to do with the murder. What made him doubt it, he said, was the nature of the violence, and also because one of the victims was a woman.
In his second interview Quick changed his story, bringing in a second man whom he had arranged to meet in Jokkmokk. This accomplice
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