Possessed (2 page)

D
ecades pass, yet childhood memories remain. Early experiences imprint and shape, the good and the bad, the hopeful and the disappointing, the joyous and the tragic. Adults may try to overlook their pasts, but can they ever truly be forgotten? For the child within calls out, reminding the adult where he came from, branding who he will be, how he will react, and forever influencing his self-image, his relationships, and his life.

In Stefan Andersson's case, his beginnings would not only impact how he lived his life but eventually how he died.

G
reen forests, blue skies, lakes, and snowcapped mountains, a Scandinavian country that neighbors with Norway and Finland, Sweden has a long, rugged coastline and less than 10 million citizens. In area, Sweden is the third largest country in Europe, but its population is scattered, giving much of it a rural feel, farms and cities, quaint towns and villages, forests and open land. The outer reaches lie in the Arctic Circle, and Sweden boasts spectacular displays of the northern lights. Winters are cold and snow-covered, with as little as three hours of sunshine a day. Summers are cool, green, with only a few hours of darkness.

Stefan was born in Västerås, in central Sweden. On the shores of Lake Mälaren, a city of 110,000, it's on land inhabited for more than three thousand years, since before the Viking era. On the outskirts lies a primitive burial
mound, Anundshög, two hundred feet long and thirty feet high, dating to between
A.D.
250 and 500. An industrial city, Västerås is surrounded by farmland, and, because of the prevalence of the green gourds, it's known as the cucumber city.

At his birth, Stefan was named Alf Stefan Andersson. Throughout life, he would forgo use of his first name in favor of Stefan, perhaps to differentiate himself from his older brother, Alf, a toddler who tragically died while their mother carried Stefan in her womb. His parents named him in honor of their dead firstborn. But Stefan found it gloomy and told friends that he wondered if his growing up would have been happier if his parents had not grieved so for their lost child that they'd given him Alf's name.

From the outside, the Andersson home appeared unremarkable, an older, quaint house on a typical, quiet street, with two parents, Irene and Harry. A sweet but passive woman, Irene cared for the children, Stefan, followed by daughters Marie and Anneli. Harry had a secure position working for the railway system. But behind closed doors, Stefan described his childhood as fearful and turbulent.

Throughout his life, Stefan confided in friends about his parents' volatile relationship, often describing his father as a bully, abusive to his mother, leaving their only living son regretting not being able to save his mother from his father's temper. While not detailing specific incidents, Stefan implied that the abuse was physical, and admitted that he, too, felt the sting of his father's wrath. Many of his friends viewed this heartache as one of the defining experiences of Stefan's life. “He came to identify with his mother,” said a good friend. “They were both similar in temperament, easygoing, kind, and both his father's victims.”

Other characteristics emerged that would portend the path his life would take.

Even as a child, Stefan had an exceptional mind, the kind that continually asks questions and seeks answers, searching for insight by pulling together the pieces of the puzzles.
At a young age, his keen intellect garnered attention. When he was ten or eleven, Stefan, like many young boys, built toy airplanes, but his curiosity took over, and he considered military aircraft, and the methods used to hide it from enemy forces. Intrigued, he began drawing his own camouflage designs on paper at the kitchen table, while his sisters watched. When finished, he chose his favorites and sent them to the FOA, Sweden's military research department. A general responded, highly complimentary of Stefan's work, saying he'd passed it on to those in the field, and they were impressed.

When Stefan later recounted the story, however, he'd contend that his father was less than happy. When the general's letter arrived, rather than express pride at his son's talents, Harry Andersson fumed, livid that Stefan had drawn attention to the family. “Better to blend in,” Harry told him. “It's never good to stand out.”

Decades later, Stefan would receive a letter from the general's wife, after her husband's death, recalling how he often mentioned Stefan and wished that he'd had a son like him. Cherishing the letter that brought the validation his relationship with his own father never would, Stefan kept it with him always.

Over the decades, his father's disapproval and violent nature shadowed Stefan, resulting in a constant state of self-doubt. “I was supposed to be of a Lutheran mind-set,” Stefan told a friend. “Work hard, not question authority, and live a simple life, like my father. That I didn't do that met with disappointment.”

Yet in many ways, Stefan's early life was good. He loved his mother and his sisters, and his father, despite the pain. And Stefan did well in school. There was much to enjoy in his native land. Sports were popular in Sweden. Despite the lack of sunshine, tennis, hockey, soccer, and bandy (a game similar to ice hockey) flourished. In the summers, residents congregated outdoors, on the shores of the lake, surrounded
by rolling hills and shade trees, for picnics. In the winters, when the lake froze over, they enjoyed ice-skating and skiing on nearby mountainsides.

In 1972, at the age of eighteen, Stefan, five-foot-nine with shaggy, blond hair the color of ripened wheat, and inquisitive, deep-set blue eyes, left home and moved one hundred miles north to Gävle, where he served what was then a period of compulsory military service for Swedish men. Separated from his domineering father, Stefan began to find himself. Soon, he made friends, athletes, many of whom would later become professional hockey players. On the summer solstice, they took a nine-kilometer bike trip from the small town of Norrlandet. The pilgrimage became an annual event for the friends, about three dozen of them. In the coming years, no matter where Stefan's work took him, each June he returned to Sweden, to visit family, and to bike through the stunning Swedish countryside.

After his conscription ended, doing what middle-class Swedish sons were expected to do, Stefan signed up for a program to learn a trade. He chose welding, enrolling in a trade school in Gävle. At the same time, he developed an interest in weight lifting, and before long, he was muscular and bench-pressed more than three hundred pounds. Enthusiastic about the sport, Stefan entered competitions, winning trophies and medals, then turned to teaching and training other athletes.

Something about athletes especially appealed to Stefan, who often remarked that he admired not only their incredible power but their passion for their sports. At strength competitions, he met and befriended a group of Russian weight lifters, some bound for the Olympics. As his welding training drew to a close, Stefan traveled with the Russians, acting as a trainer and seeing the world. On a grand adventure in St. Petersburg, he drank vodka and dated dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet. Later, he'd laugh boisterously and tell the story of how on a trip to Moscow, he peed on a Kremlin wall.

Stefan in an early photo

(Courtesy of Annika Lindqvist)

Although it was a brief interlude in his life, his weight-lifting experiences had a profound influence. At the time, many of Stefan's friends relied on steroids and other drugs to build strength. Watching them take the pills, seeing the sometimes remarkable results as their physiques developed, he became captivated by the profound effect of a small pill. “Stefan said it transformed the athletes,” said an old friend. “From that point on, he was fascinated with the power of chemistry on the human body. That was the spark that ignited a lifelong interest.”

At the welding school, impressed with their student's extraordinary mind, his teachers had suggested that Stefan continue his education by attending a university. Yet that wasn't something he initially felt comfortable pursuing. He knew what his father expected of him and didn't consider that a possibility. No one in his family had ever attended college, and it appeared out of his reach. But before long, Stefan began to consider the potential, and when he did, he recalled his experiences with the Russian weight lifters. His intellectual curiosity stirred, Stefan felt drawn to study chemistry and its effects on the human anatomy, wanting to decipher its mysteries.

In 1979, Stefan registered at Uppsala University, enrolling in the pharmacy school. Dating back to 1477, Uppsala was Sweden's first university and specialized in science and research. Stefan's years there would be memorable ones. He
loved the school and its traditions, the annual spring Walpurgis, called the donning of the caps, where students wore white sea-captain hats, marking the completion of their time in the upper secondary school. The day began with a champagne breakfast and float races on the nearby river rapids, followed by herring lunches. Enthusiastic about the future, he worked with his professors in their laboratories, assisting with research, made close friends, and envisioned ever larger horizons.

Uppsala University

(Courtesy of Aftonbladet)

After earning a master's degree in pharmacy, Stefan stayed on at Uppsala, working on a doctorate in pharmaceutical biochemistry. During those years, Stefan assisted his professors on research, later published in several scientific journals, on the isolation and identification of a protein that helps produce bile acids from cholesterol and modifies vitamin D to a more active form. His doctoral
thesis, entitled
Cytochromes P450 in Biosynthesis of Bile Acids and Metabolism of Vitamin D3
, was also published that year. Through his work, Stefan achieved recognition within his discipline and was granted patents on his discoveries.

At Uppsala, Stefan's graduation ceremony unfolded in the school's grand auditorium, through the main entrance engraved with “To think free is great, but to think right is greater,” the words of Thomas Thorild, an alum and a famous jurist. Along with his diploma, Stefan received a gold ring commemorating his achievement and symbolizing his dedication to his science. That evening, there was a banquet at Uppsala Castle, built in 1549 by King Gustav I, in modern times housing three museums and serving as the residence of the county's governor.

Yet as far as Stefan had come, one thing remained static. His great sadness, Stefan would later say, was that despite his academic success, Harry Andersson still didn't appear proud of his son's accomplishments. “It drove even more of a wedge between them that Stefan wanted to better himself,” said a friend. “His father didn't understand a son who wanted more.”

As much as he loved Sweden, Stefan needed space to grow and felt drawn to see the world. His doctoral thesis had received attention and offers arrived from research facilities around the world. As he reviewed his options, there were some possibilities that appealed more to him than others. Many Swedes speak English, and Stefan did as well, so there was the lure of transplanting to a country where he wouldn't have to learn a new language. The other overriding temptation was climate. Stefan had lived his life in a country with little sunshine much of the year and cool summers. He was a man who worshipped blue skies and hot weather. Growing up in Sweden, he'd suffered through too many long, dark winters. One offer that intrigued him came from the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. That was the one he accepted.

In 1986, diploma in hand, Stefan Andersson accepted a postdoctoral position at UTSW. He packed his bags and moved to Texas for further training and mentoring in one of the center's many research labs, and for the sunshine.

A
t the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Stefan became a postdoc under the auspices of Dr. David W. Russell in the department of molecular genetics. In 1986, when Stefan moved in, Dallas was in its heyday, made internationally famous by the then-wildly-popular prime-time soap opera bearing its name, starring Larry Hagman and Linda Gray.

Unlike its fellow Texas metropolis, Houston, Dallas wasn't as impacted by the eighties oil crunch. The city was more diversified, with high tech prospering, Southwestern expanding and gaining a reputation in the medical world, as was Dr. Russell for his research into cholesterol and its impact on the body.

Soon Stefan, who his colleagues rarely called Dr. Andersson, immersed himself in Russell's endeavors. In the lab, Stefan cut a dashing figure, his soft Swedish accent, his shaggy dark blond hair and intense blue eyes, wearing a white coat over a shirt and jeans. His mind on his research, not his dress, he sometimes arrived a bit wrinkled in the mornings but never appeared self-conscious about it. Instead, he channeled his energy into his inquiry, attempting to decipher the secrets of the human body.

Away from the campus, Stefan settled into Dallas, renting an apartment in The Village. A popular residential area for professionals, it was a patchwork of more than a dozen apartment and town-house developments, built on 307
rolling green acres of a former golf course. Close to Central Expressway and just minutes from downtown Dallas, tucked into lush trees, the complexes offered tennis courts and swimming pools, and overall there were community biking and jogging paths, a gym, green esplanades, and towering gnarled live oaks. Most of the nearly ten thousand residents were couples without children or singles.

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

“Everyone I knew in Dallas lived in The Village at one time or another,” said a friend of Stefan's. “It was a good place to start out, to meet people.” Crowds gathered at weekday happy hours, but The Village was particularly lively on weekends, when impromptu pool parties sprung up; music played on boom boxes, while residents mingled, talked, and drank, taking the occasional cool-off dip in the pool. Entertainment choices abounded, with the vast development's western boundary, Greenville Avenue, a restaurant row with bars, nightclubs, and eateries.

Renting a first-floor apartment, Stefan became a regular
at the pool. On weekends and summer afternoons, wearing his swimsuit, he rarely entered the water but rather lounged bare-chested on a chair, soaking up the hot Texas sun, often reading a scientific journal or perusing reports he brought from the lab. Although he knew how to cook, he did little of it, with the exception of an occasional omelet for dinner, preferring to eat his meals out.

Larger than any city in Sweden, perhaps Stefan felt the need to cut Dallas down to size, to make it more manageable. With his chaotic childhood, it wasn't surprising that he reined in his life, making Dallas seem smaller by carving out a comfort zone that included his apartment, The Village, the medical center where he worked, and the nearby Greenville Avenue restaurants and clubs.

At work, Stefan flourished, his postdoc progressing, as he became a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and of the Endocrine Society. His successes in the lab mounted, and in the late eighties he helped identify and clone two genes, while exploring how testosterone was converted to an androgen in the prostate. In 1989, he was the lead author of a paper in the
Journal of Biological Chemistry
exploring the role of 5a-Reductase, a steroid essential in the process of differentiating sex in a fetus. Through his research, he worked with scientists around the world, including a visiting professor from Russia. In many ways, on a microscopic level, Stefan Andersson was on a grand quest, investigating life's essential elements by studying the interactions of enzymes, steroids, and hormones in the womb and the fetus.

It was a heady time for Stefan, seeing his name in scientific publications, exploring exciting possibilities.

Although he'd dated off and on, no serious relationship opened up until 1989, when he met Jackie Swift, an attractive, dark-haired woman whose mother was Comanche and Fort Sill Apache. By then, Stefan was in his mid-thirties, and Jackie was more than a decade younger. She'd left home for Dallas, eager for challenge and excitement.

In The Village, Jackie moved with a roommate into a ground-floor apartment, and in 1989 she encountered Stefan one afternoon at the pool.

On their first date, Jackie, who had a two-year associate's degree, had to coax Stefan to tell her what he did. “I really don't like to talk about that because it can be a little overwhelming,” he said, but finally explained that he had a PhD and conducted research at the medical center. Trying to put her at ease, he described his doctorate as “like a driver's license to do something, a kind of work.”

Yet as they talked, his expression lit with excitement about his work, and she was even more impressed with his humbleness. “He was sweet, gracious,” she said. “And at the same time, clever and engaging. He never made me feel like he thought he was smarter or better than I was.”

Over time, she would learn that Stefan saw very little difference in people based on their educations or their stations in life. When he and Jackie went out walking and encountered a homeless person on the street, Stefan often asked her to wait while he went into a store, coming out with food and drink to give to the man. But it was what Stefan did afterward that seemed remarkable to Jackie. Rather than just hand the man the food and leave, he paused to talk, asking about the homeless man's life and interests. Before long, Stefan and the stranger nearly always found something they both felt passionate about, and they'd laugh like old friends. “Stefan really transcended boundaries,” Jackie said. “He didn't pigeonhole people because of social position or education.”

Not long after they began dating, when Jackie brought him home to Yukon, Oklahoma, to meet her parents, her dad, Dick Swift, at first worried. At twenty-three, Jackie seemed too young to settle down, especially with a man of thirty-five, but soon Dick, a home remodeler, set aside any misgivings. “Stefan and I became really good friends,” said Swift. “We just hit it off.”

On that trip, Dick Swift took Stefan to see a friend's
collection of Native American art. Afterward, Jackie's father was impressed with how much Stefan absorbed at the meeting, information about types of works and the artists. “He seemed to grasp a deeper meaning in things,” said Swift. “He took the time to understand.”

“Stefan was this blond, good-looking guy. He wore his hair long, glasses, a leather jacket, and biker boots. He was kind of rugged attractive. He looked a little like a rocker. But the conversations made me fall in love,” said Jackie, who found Stefan worldly and captivating. They talked of his life in Sweden, his work, and her life, what she wanted for the future. Her parents had urged her to pursue college, but she'd balked at the idea. Stefan never pushed. Instead, he simply offered to be there for her, to help if she wanted to go.

Something else attracted her to Stefan, however. “He was one of the first people to have confidence in me, to say I was smart enough, good enough to succeed,” she said. Yet as he championed her, she sensed that he battled his own self-doubts. He talked often of his painful childhood, his kind mother, and his cold, judgmental father.

As it had in Sweden, at Uppsala, Stefan's work wasn't going unnoticed. In 1991, he received an offer from Merck, one of the largest and most successful pharmaceutical companies in the world. The position required that Stefan move to the East Coast. They'd offered him substantially more money and the opportunity for advancement, for while his academic research was intellectually stimulating, it was not something that would ever make him rich.

That August, Jackie and Stefan married in a ceremony in Stefan's apartment, officiated by a judge and witnessed by only her family. Everyone laughed when, during their vows, a Federal Express driver interrupted, banging on the door with a delivery. That evening, they held a reception for friends at the pool where they'd first met.

Two weeks later, the newlyweds began their move. While his office was in New Jersey, Stefan wanted the experience
of living in New York City, and they rented an apartment on the nineteenth floor in a high-rise on West Sixtieth, a block and a half from Columbus Circle and Central Park, with windows overlooking the skyline. Jackie bought furniture and decorated, something in which Stefan showed little interest. “He liked nice things,” she said. “But he wouldn't have done that for himself. He just didn't care that much. He wasn't into possessions.”

In New York, Jackie and Stefan embraced the city by exploring the museums, clubs, and restaurants. Each workday, Stefan rose early and left for the train station, to begin his commute. In the evenings, he returned home late and often tired. Yet they found life exciting, including trips, one to Venice, where they had their picture taken on a gondola.

Jackie and Stefan in Venice

In just five years, Stefan's life had drastically changed, growing up in Sweden and now married and living in the biggest city in the United States, collaborating with respected scientists and traveling the world. In New York, the couple frequented small, ethnic restaurants in the evenings. One afternoon, they walked down the street and noticed someone with a well-built figure in a revealing dress. Jackie looked at Stefan as they passed by, and both realized it was a man. “I can't wait to tell everyone we were ogling him,” Stefan said with a hearty laugh.

Yet in so many ways, Stefan remained the same man with whom Jackie had fallen in love. In New York, as he had in Dallas, Stefan stopped whenever he saw a homeless person on the street, handing over a few dollars or buying food. There was a kindness about her husband that Jackie found endearing. No matter all Stefan had achieved, he still saw himself as no different from the man living on the street, whom he judged as simply down on his luck.

Yet for Jackie, the transition wasn't as easy. While excited to live in the city with Stefan beside her, she often felt lonely and homesick. Much of the time she spent alone since she had few friends, and Stefan routinely worked late into the evenings and on weekends. “I wanted more of his time and attention,” she remembered. When she complained, he gave her money to go shopping, but not what she truly wanted, time with him. It wasn't that the marriage was visibly troubled since they rarely fought, and when they did, he remained steadfastly calm, never raising his voice.

“You need to get a hobby,” Stefan told her when she complained about his frequent absences.

“You're my hobby,” she said, and he just smiled.

It didn't help that in the evenings, he often stopped at a neighborhood bar on his way home from work, delaying his arrival even further. Stefan had been drinking since college, not usually to excess but nightly. Dick Swift would remember his daughter talking about Stefan's proclivity for a nightcap out and how it left her home alone. When he listened to
Jackie and heard the sadness in her voice, Swift worried that Stefan's drinking would hurt the marriage.

Working at a local clothing manufacturer but still somewhat adrift in New York, Jackie slowly began to redefine her life. She'd left Oklahoma for Dallas years earlier, lured by a fast-paced urban lifestyle, entranced by the possibilities and excitement it offered. Yet as a consequence of leaving home, she'd inadvertently distanced herself from her Native American heritage. In New York, Jackie felt the strong pull of her ancestry, and she and Stefan attended events, including the opening of the movie
Geronimo: An American Legend
in 1993. At the American Indian Inaugural Ball, she wore a flowing black pantsuit and long, dangling earrings and Stefan a tux, and that same year she started a small nonprofit, the Manahatta Indian Arts Council, named after the tribe pushed off Manhattan by white settlers during the French and Indian War.