Sture Bergwall has been in a secure mental hospital since the 1990s (Picture: AP)

Sweden’s worst serial killer is to be freed after admitting he in fact never killed anyone.

Sture Bergwall is set to be freed as the last of his eight murder convictions was overturned when he withdrew his confessions.

The 63-year-old, who has been held at a secure mental health unit since 1991, had confessed to more than 30 murders over three decades and even claimed to have eaten his victims.

But it is now accepted he lied to police due to a combination of attention-seeking and the side-effects of his medication.


Speaking from the Sater psychiatric unit, Bergwall said the decision to drop any remaining charges against him was ‘overwhelming and emotional’.



The convicted sex offender and bank robber admitted to the murders during a period in his life when he had changed his name to Thomas Quick, a persona he said he created as a result of therapy and psychiatric medicine.

‘In that lies the guilt that I must carry to my grave with respect to the relatives of the victims, their suffering during the Thomas Quick years,’ he added to the Associated Press news agency.

Sven-Erik Alhem, a Swedish legal expert, called the case the country’s ‘greatest miscarriage of justice in modern times’.

Attorney general Anders Perklev told reporters in Stockholm: ‘That a person has been convicted of eight murders and later been declared innocent… that is unique in Swedish legal history.

‘It has to be considered as a big failure for the justice system.’

After Bergwall’s convictions were overturned retrials were ordered, but prosecutors lack sufficient evidence for the cases to return to court.

There was no technical evidence linking Bergwall to any of his supposed victims, and two of the bodies were never even found.