This was on FARK, but it touches on so many things covered here, and is such a fascinating story, that I wanted to make note of it.
Thomas Quick was perhaps the most prolific serial killer in Scandinavia. During the 1990s, he confessed to over 30 murders, and was convicted of killing eight people.
Except his name wasn’t Thomas Quick. It was Sture Bergwall.
And he was being fed diazepam while he was confessing to the murders.
And he probably never killed anybody. There is a total lack of physical evidence linking him to the crimes. In several cases, he was convicted based only on his confessions, and in spite of the fact that there was physical evidence directly contradicting those confessions. (For example, in one case, recovered DNA didn’t match Quick/Bergwell’s DNA.)
And he was probably being fed information – information he used to build his false confessions – by the cops. (Henry Lee Lucas, call your office, please.)
There’s a book on the case that, as far as I can tell, does not have a US publisher. I’m hoping it finds one, as this is a heck of a story. (There’s also a good story behind the book; the author was a prominent documentary filmmaker/”investigative journalist” who started looking into Quick’s case, discovered the inconsistencies and other issues, and ended up having Quick/Bergwall tell all to him. As I understand it, this was the author’s first book. He died of cancer three days after finishing the manuscript.)
(Is this, like, a thing in Scandinavian countries? Dying before your book is published?)
