
Thomas Quick: The serial killer who wasn't - DanBC
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-confessions-of-thomas-quick/sture-bergwall-serial-killer/
======
mbrock
One fascinating part of this story is Göran Lambertz, who was chancellor of
justice during the trials and is now a supreme court judge.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ran_Lambertz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ran_Lambertz)

He fervently maintains that Quick is indeed guilty, and that there was nothing
at all wrong with the proceedings of the justice system. In fact he claims, to
this day as far as I know, that the evidence against Quick is "extraordinarily
convincing."

While a supreme court judge, this spring he released a 502-page book
"Quickologi" which he presents as a thorough debunking of the notions of
Quick's innocence and any suggestion of a scandal.

That's all a bunch of politics, but around here what should be more
interesting is Lambertz's interpretation of probability.

In chapter 15 of his book, he performs a calculation of the evidence that
Quick is guilty—and arrives at a probability of 183%. He concludes this from a
chain of reasoning that involves adding contingent probabilities in a wildly
spurious way.

After a professor of mathematics described exactly how ludicrous this is in a
blog post...

[http://haggstrom.blogspot.se/2015/05/quickologisk-
sannolikhe...](http://haggstrom.blogspot.se/2015/05/quickologisk-
sannolikhetskalkyl.html)

...Lambertz replied on his own blog saying that he was eagerly awaiting such a
rebuttal, since his aim was to "provoke a discussion."

In other words, the chancellor of justice responsible at the time of this
case, this current supreme court judge, is a blog troll who uses fraudulent
statistics to intentionally misrepresent the relevant evidence.

So, yeah. I hope I don't ever have to go to court. It's like a mashup of Franz
Kafka, Lewis Carroll, and Stephen Colbert.

~~~
StavrosK
> arrives at a probability of 183%.

I don't see anything wrong with the math. It simply means that Quick is
certainly guilty, with an 83% chance of being double-guilty, which is an
obscure legal term I don't expect the technocrat audience of HN to be familiar
with.

~~~
jacquesm
If you use the word 'probability' the expected range of values is 0-1 or 0
through 100%, you can't really be 'double-guilty' of anything. See also: Bayes
theorem, which was formulated expressly with the idea of evaluating evidence.
If I see the words 'probability' and '183%' in one sentence than as part of
that audience I suspect a buggy algorithm, not a new interpretation of the
word probability.

If you can be double guilty of something then does that mean you get to serve
two sentences for the same crime too?

~~~
StavrosK
Aw, I didn't think I'd need the detestable "/s", Jacques :(

~~~
jacquesm
Hehe, ok then. You had me wondering there.

~~~
_0ffh
And Poe's law strikes again...

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martinald
"Benzodiazepine" isn't a drug, it's a class of drugs. Really sloppy editing.

~~~
corin_
You beat me to it, I just paused reading to come moan about that before
continuing.

But not only that, having read a lot about benzos and have previously been
prescribed a few different ones for insomnia, their effects are to quote
Wikipedia "sedative, hypnotic (sleep-inducing), anxiolytic (anti-anxiety),
anticonvulsant, and muscle relaxant"

Unless mixed with another drug - but I'm guessing he wasn't drinking in there
- I don't see how their effects would be relevant.

Edit: _' When a new doctor took Bergwall off the heavy doses of
benzodiazepine, his confessions abruptly stopped. "He sobered up and thought,
'What the hell have I done?' " Hill says.'_ But he didn't tell anyone until a
journalist visited? Really feels like the author of the article heard
"psychiatric" and "drugs" and jumped on the assumption that they were the
cause. Interesting none the less.

~~~
gozo
It wasn't like he was a stable guy taking it for insomnia. He had long history
of personality disorder, including multiple personalities, and drug abuse.

"This, incidentally, is what Bergwall says was his daily intake, with extra
top-ups when requested: six 5 mg. Valium, four 1 mg. Xanax, one 10 mg. prefill
Valium, 1.5 mg. Halcion, two Rohypnol, six Treo comp, six Panocod."

[http://www.gq.com/story/thomas-quick-serial-killer-
august-20...](http://www.gq.com/story/thomas-quick-serial-killer-august-2013)

------
bjourne
I remember watching the documentaries about him in the 90's. As I understand
it, there was scant technical evidence against him but he produced some very
detailed and convincing confessions of his murders. One which he retold in an
interview was him sneaking up on a camping German couple sleeping in a tent
and stabbing them both to death while they were still trapped inside. He also
told stories about his step father taking him on "hunting trips" in the woods
in which he forced Quick to perform oral sex on him. Those stories were also
found out to be lies but were also incredibly believable.

~~~
Excavator
As I remember it, these stories were mostly due to the "psychologists"
basically cheering him on, same with the media. This is an example of our
abhorrent mental health system as much as our legal system.

Didn't they also manage to pull in some medium somehow?

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NumberSix
Reminds me of the notorious case of Henry Lee Lucas in the United States who
at one point confessed to hundreds of murders.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lee_Lucas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lee_Lucas)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Richard Kuklinski is another alleged contract killer, most of whose stories
are suspected to be false.

~~~
lolo_
I find him to be very interesting - because the law enforcement officials
involved, who must be at least somewhat aware of the propensity of a.
sociopaths to be excellent liars and b. for people to confess to crimes they
didn't commit (it's shockingly common.)

I think he's guilty of _some_ of what he's accused off, but lies about others.

