Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Jack Unterweger was a convicted murderer who became an acclaimed author behind bars and a celebrated figure after his release from prison. But, unbeknownst to the public, Unterweger continued killing.
In may 1998, convicted killer wa released from a prison in austria.havin only served 15 years and four months behind bars.
his name, jack unterweger, a brutal killer hwo is now going to embark one of the most horrifying killing sprees in modern european history.
a masterful manipulator unterweger was living the double life of a celebrated writer and that of a serial killer.once release from prison he went on kill 9 women and was suspected of a further two in just over a year.
his victim all died in the same way ,each strangled using the same knot.
In public , he was the poster boy of prison boy reform in Austria who transformed from murderer to model citizen.but little did his supporters know ,that jack unterweger was living a double life and was in fact one of the worlds most evil killers.
In june 1976,25 year old jack unterweger was found guilty by a court in in salzburg, austria of the brutal murder of a young german women.unterweger confessed.
he was sentenced to life, however unterweger served just over 15 years. he was released in may 1990. and only a few months later prostitutes started to disappeare.
for the next 10 months untervego went on a killing spree across austria, the former czechoslavakia and even the united states. unterweger was suspected of murdering 11 women but was convicted of just nine.
people like unterwger can change, they can change in prison,if they acknowledge that t what they’ve done is wrong and if they undertake work to adress those traits and those behaviors that lead them to the decision to harm others
but he didn’t go trough that process at all. he was without question perverted, depreaved killing machine. wery few probably less then 20 who would deserve comparison with him.
in 1975 during the trial of his first murder. Unterwger was assessed by a psychiatrist .he was diagnosed as an extremely dangerous unpredictable and incurable individual. the report stated he demonstrated egocentricity, agressiveness and sexual perversion with a sadistic component.
pyschopaths are people who feel and behave and relate to others in ways that are different from the rest of us.often describe psychopathy is , it’s a form of emotional emptiness. so they aren’t that complex range of emotions that the rest of us have like love and guilt and regret.
it is quite black and white for psychopaths” i want this particular thing and i’m going to not stop until i ‘ve got it”
the extraordinary story of this sadistic killer begins nearly 70 years, johan jack unterweger was born on the 16th of august 1950 in judenburg in syria southern austria he was the illegitimate son iof a waitress and an american soldier who left before jack was born.
his mother spent shorts spells in jail and when jack was two years old he was placed into the care of his grandfather. according to unterweger his childhood was far from ideal.
jack unterweger clearley had issues, he grew up without a father,his mother over the years developed a serious alcohol problem. du to this little jack grew up in a Hut in corinthia with his grandfather and was exposed to many things a child should not see.
he also learning things about women from his grandfather, who was a notorious philanderer he’s learning that women are there to be used and discarded, so that’s something that’s ingrained in him from quite early age.
he also saw his grandfather bringing his lovers or rather prostitutes to this Hut again and again. at the four -year – old boy witnessed their sexual activities and much more.and so there was this negative impact on his early years.
in 1958 Unterweger left his grandfather’s home and stayed with some relatives.shortly after he was placed in the foster care system.
He didn’t form those attachments with his caregivers those consistent attachments that provide that secure environment in which children can grow up and feel safe and develop. a child in this kind of situation they become very focused on their own survival.
He almost inevitably fell into this criminal role and showed this type of behavior from a very early age.he failed in his compulsory education and he displayed delinquent behavior in his youth.
in december 1974, now age 24 unterweger’s desires took a deadly turn, he was traveling with his girlfriend through germany when they drove past a friend of hers 18 years old margaret sheffer. they stopped and robbed her driving to her parents house to rob them too.
but the crimes didn’t stop there.
Unterweger took the 18 year old girl to a nearby wood and ordered her to undress. he tied her up ,beat her with a steel rod and then strangled her with her own bra.
the police questioned unterweger’s girlfriend and she confessed that he had killed her friend. once in police custody unterweger also confessed to the killing claiming he had a fit of rage.
on the 1st of june 1976 before his 26th birthday unterweger began a life sentence for the murder.but this was far from the end of his story.
from being what could only be described as a low -life uneducated brute capable of killing a 18 year old he suddenly becomes a changed man ,he teacheds himself to read and write properly and he begins at very adventurous career as a writer.in fact writes, not one but two bestsellers
he is very much the model prisoner. Now that he could read and write , unterweger spent time in the prison library ,he was uneducated but with a large appetite for knowledge.
one day in the library ,he came across a book by an author completely unknown to him and he says to himself quite narcissistically what he can do , i can do too.
and then he began to write stories and paradoxically he wrote among other things these episodes for a radio program which was very popular among children and families back then
it was called the bedtime program for little ones.the little sandman is coming. this was such a very idyllic lovely comforting soporific program.
Unterweger became famous as the man who wrote children’s stories,poetry and prose about life in prison. his autobiography figure foyer meaning purgatory became a bestseller and was made into a film.the austrian literati were delighted to have discovered someone like jack unterweger.
Unterweger suddenly attracted the attention of media , people showed support for his release these were people some of whom were very well known.like journalists and artists who showed their support for good reasons let’s say they had good intentions.
the intellectuals said wonderful finally we have a criminal who reformed himself who as it were confessed to his actions through his writing and processed them therapeutically. such a person can only be a good person. and they fell for him ,they really fell for him.
Austria at the time was in the midst of reforming it’s prison services. jack unterweger’s newly found literay prowess in prison was just what the reformers needed to prove the new system could be successful.
the calls for unterweger early release grew louder and louder,intellectuals, artists ,writers, journalists and even politicians campaigned for unterweger to be free.
now there was unbelievable pressure for his release at all costs and that’s what finally happened however there were voices who wrned that hiding behind this charming and manipulative man is a very dangerous malicious narcissist.
on the 23rd of may 1990 39 year old jack unterweger was released from Stein prison in lower austria he had only served a little over 15 years of his life sentence for strangling an 18 year old to death.
he was acutally released without any safeguards, that means he did not even have to go to see his probation officer or to a psychiatrist they woild have been treated further.
he was completely free .a brutal killer.unterweger was given a second chans as a free man thanks to the campaigning of austria’s artistic community, to release him.
Unterweger moved to Vienna where he mingled with the rich and famous, he played the role of the model rehabilitated prisoner. unterweger had them all fooled.
obviously the people who ran the prison wanted to advocate in that favor because it’s a great advertisement they see the system works.we can put somebody hwo is as bad and as evil as a psychopath who kills somebody in cold blood and this psychopath has rehabilitated in 15 years
he’s now a writer , a person who is known by the people in Austria, so he was the success story of the criminal justice system. and we got to carried away with that and lost sight of the fact that this was an individual who had harmed someone else who had taken someone else’s life
and that wasn’t something that had been addressed so of course he was going to do it again.
Unterweger was released from prsion without the need to regularly speak to a psychiatrist there was no real supervision and he was able to live the life of a free man.
he was very charming,quite intelligent but also a highly manipulative person wh was not mentally ill but had an abnormal personality.
he moves to Vienna , becomes the darling of cafe society buys a white ford mustang. this is a man with some considerable vanity.
and turns himself into a famous guests part-time journalistwriter,television studios, radio talks reads his poetry to a doring crowds, many of them women and generally struts his stuff.
unterweger became a celebrity and ofthen appeared on television news programs.in 1990 he joined a panel with journalist paul yvonne to discuss prison reform.
he was invited as basically an expert to report on his experiences in the penitentiary. in this club he appeared in a white suit, he had a bright red carnation in the buttonhole.
the normal reaction of a journalist is curiosity and interesting. what kind of guy ?what kind of person is he?
it’s very easy for unterweger to lead a double life because he can very effectively compartmentalize parts of his life and his existence
he’s a very accomplished actor at this point he’s playing this role of the reformed criminal of the man who’s changed and he’s absolutely loving the spotlight that comes along with it
so he wants that , that narcissistic element of him wants that continued attention and this adoration.
Unterweger also continued to write and gave readings of his works where he built up a large female fan base.
he also showed up in various bars where he always picked up women.what’s really impressive is the incredible number of women he had made contact with. he did not spend one night alone and very few nights with the same women.
Despite his re-entering into society appearing a success to the outside world unterweger’s dark instincts remained .
a lot of people will come out of prison,they dont even have a job and they’ll have to struggle , probably for the rest of their lives but he came out ,had money, he had a job ,he already had a career ,pretty much set up , so he had all the opportunity ,but the problems with killers is that they can’t curb the urge.
he is a man wh’s positively bursting with self- importance and vanity but he is also the same man who was cruel ,manipulative and violent towards women from the age of 16 onwards.
nothing has changed,only this time he chooses his targets carefully.
in september 1990 just four months after his release from prison unterweger killed again and once more he traveled abroad to find his victim ,this time to the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia.
she was the 29 year old shop assistant in prague ,blanca bockova. her body was found on the bank of the vitava river ,lying on her back with her legs wide open and covered with twigs and leaves. she ‘d been strangled with a pair of stockings.
the last time she was seen alive was at a bar talking to a well-dressed man around 50 years old this was just the begining of unterwgers undetected killing spree.
it must emboldened him incredibly, he must have felt literally godlike. “i can do whatever i want i can dress them and undress them” this is a man who has contempt for women. that’s the only possible word for it . utter contempt.and what’s more he intends to indulge himself as long he can get away with it.
a month after the murder in Prague in october 1990 unterweger began a new killing spree murdering three women .
the body of brunhilde masser was found naked in a forest near Gratz in austria nearly three monts after she disapeared .
in december 1990 haida hamara was killed in a forest near lustenau close the german border both women had been beaten and strangled with their tights .march 1991, Elfriede Schrempf disappeared near Gratz. her body was only found seven months later.
we’re looking at somebody who strangled his victims.but then disposed the bodies in the open areas in forests. and it was often a long time, weeks or months before they were discovered.
obviously the decomposition process the facts that animals have access to those bodies will damage them , it will limit what the pathologist can say,but quite often, the body is much better preserved then necessarily you would think at first glance.
and quite often at least some information can be bleaned if there was say bruising in the tissues of the neck from a strangulation . it would still be relatively identifiable in some cases. we could never say what happened in others the evidence can still remain quite strong for long periods
When we lool at the murders he commits after he left he left prison they are are much more planned. the first murderes was was an opportunity wich he took adantage of and th circumstances around that left an awful lot of evidence behind there was witness so of course he was going to be convicted of that.
so when hen he comes out he’s sure he’s not going to make those same mistakes again and he’s very carful,he’s plans is incredibly orginaized.
little is knwon about where exactly victims died and and what happened to them befpre they died and what happened to them before they died untoweger poicked them up in his car and presumably drove them to an isolated area in a forest .
police had no leads to follow until unterweger attacked again, but this tim his murderous plain failed.
we do know a few things because one of his victims suvived.and from this evidence it is quite clear that sexual acts were involved too ,but these were not a prime importance a prime importance was the sadism that he wanted to torture the women ,that he wanted to exercise power at all circumstances.
all of unterwege’s victims shared a similar fate at the moment’s of their death. oyu you look at the method that he used for killing his victims he strangled them and that is the ultimate control method in terms of a way of killing somebody your are face to face with them you are seeing the life drain out of them ,you can choose to stop.
you can choose to carry on .
Unterwegers victims were found naked or half naked lying face down with their legs spread apart and partly covered with twigs and leaves.
by now this was an all too familiar MO.
we always see this practice with serial killers ,they perform almost ritualized killings. and at the end they also have a funural.
in his case it consisted of covering half of the corpse as was discovered with some some of the sketeons.
but no one suspected unterweger of the killings spree.he was free to continue.
He’s learned that women are there to be used and abused. that’s something that he’s learned from an early age he knows that that’s wrong.but he choose to do it anyway because he enoys doing it. he likes to dominate others he likes to have that feeling of power over other people and because he has no compassion he has no empathy for the sufferring of others , he’s anc incredibly dangous man.
march 1991 unterweger was living the high life in Vienna’s coffee Culture society, he was a charming wealthy influential poet.but he was also leading a double life.
since leaving prison ,he had killed at least for women and no one suspected a thing . up until this point he traveled to commit the murders
but now he turned his attention closer to home , killing three prostitutes in Vienna.
its an act of the most incredible arrogance, add vanity to arrogance and you have a vision of unterwegers view of himself and we are talking about a man now whos is on a spree full .
full out spree.he chooses wisley, he’s clearly trawling red light districts it’s hard to miss unterweger because he’s driving a white ford mustang. but no one pust two and two together.
he’s always had a sense of entitlement he’s always felt like he deserve better than other people but at the same time he’s also got those lessons that he’s learned from his early tears.that women are there to be used and abused and discarded.
so women o are the vehicle through which he achieves the control that he craves.
a reporter claiming to be working for the austrian public broadcaster ORF was investigating the strange disappearance of sex workers in Vienna for a radio program.his name. jack unterweger.
In Austria there are 0.5 to 0.7 killings of prostitutes per year. and now suddenly there were seven or eight cases within a year this conspicuous.
and then the top crime detective got a visit from a reporter named jack unterweger.whos was equiped with a microphone and asked him there are so many prostitutes being killed in austria the population is worried.that’s a scandal . why have the police been more successful.
and duirng one of these live interviews this official told him ” yeas, we ‘re checking up on all sexual murderes including you .
and he’s loving every minutes of this because he knows that he´s the one behind the murderes that he’s talking about.
and psychopats enjoy plaing with people,they enjoy kind of pressing their bottons and having a bit of fun and knowing that they’re the ones who’ve got this knwoledge that other people dont . essentially he’s having a good time this is amusing for him,getting a lot of gratification out of it.
Unterweger’s radio program was a bold cover – up of his crimes. he also now had a reason to visit the red light light district
explaining why his white ford mustangwith the registration W jack one was spotted and why he was seen talking to prostitutes.
it is the act of the most extraordinary vanity and arrogance rolled into one . not only am i killing the prostitutes now i’m reporting on the fact that i’ve terrified the prostitutes in Vienna . it is truly astonishing. absolutely .
he might have done it just to tease the police .
some serial killers they do. the longer you go without having people after you people knocking on your door the more the more coucky you get .
he presenting himself as the champion of these women’s rights as their defender as somebody who really does genuinely care about them, so this is really really chilling stuff.
police in Vienna did have unterweger on their list of possible suspects but they had no hard evidence. unterweger often had an alibi for the days which the crimes happened.
he’d either been to a reading, given a radio interview or being with a girlfriend.
now not everyone is completely convinced by unterweger,certainly one police officer is begging to see similarities with the crime, that he waseventuall convicted for.
the killing of the 18 year old with a stelle rod in. in fact that police officer also suspected he may have killed once before but those odd suspicions do not affect his celebrity in Vienna.
indeed he’s so celebrated and so brazen he´s gets commisioned to go to Los Angels to write peace about prostitution. in june 1991 unterweger traveled to the U.S
he stayed in the former Cecil Hotel in down town L.A. it had a reputiation for violence and suicide at the time . unterweger was not the first serial killer to have stayed there.
it was already famous as the hangout of the night stalker richard ramirez.
within a few weeks of landing. he had killed three women in Los Angeles. all of them prostitutes. there was that sense in which he was getting a bit bored and often you see this with psychopaths they have that prone is to board and that need for stimulation so they will often start to vary their offending behavior to mix things up a bit and to keep it interesting.
potentially that was what lay behind the decision to continue killing people outside of that country.
all three murders were meticulously planned in advance .
unterweger’s firs LA victim was shannon exley. a prostitute allegedly popular with truckers nine days later he killed again.
irene rodriguez originally from Texas .
and five days after that he killed sherry who was later found in the hills of malibu . all tree women were strangled with a bra using the same very distinct knot
a signature.
some people use a certain method for example with strangulation that would be the MO the motives apparently .but if they use this regulation with a chord then the chord woull be the signature.
in his case he didn’t used the bra off the girls a lot of time .but he did a specific knot . he didn’t do the knod because unterweger wanted people to know it was him .he did the knod because he knew that knod worked.
and it’s the same thing that it happens with so many serial killers, they use the method or signature because they know it works.
unterweger left LA and returned home to Vienna before detectives could link him to the murders. but while he was away the police in Vienna were now working closely with their counterparts in grunts .
the site of the murders after he was released from prison, they releazed the murders were in fact linked. a pattern started emerging with unterweger being in the same area of Austria that the murders were committed .the police realized they were now dealing with a serial killer
on the 13th of february of 1992 one year and nine months after he was released from prison an arrest arrest warrant was issued by the Gratz judiciary.
Unterweger had fled with his girlfriend this time to Miami.but his escape didn’t last long.
his finally tracked down to florida in the united states because the authorities have begun to put various parts of the puzzle together and he’s arrested and extradited in may 1992 to stand trial in Austria.
when he talks to the television camera and he says I’ve only had two years of freedom and he appears to be quite upset ,we shouldn’t be fooled by that , the only person that he feels sorry for is himself and this is a skilled manipulator, this is somebody who’s learned by observing the behaviour of other people. what kind of emotions he can display that will elicit some kind of sympathy
during the extradition process ,detective from the vienna police departement discovered further links to prove unterwgers guilt.he’d searched unterweger’s home and found evidence of his visit to LA. so he contacted the LA police departement and discovered the three similar murders in their district.
the evidence founded onto unterwegers home placed him in the areas of each crime scene. the detective espanded his search across europe asking if there were any other unresolved murders with the same MO.
prague police replied with the case of blanca bockova, she was the first women unterweger killed after his released from jail.the case was building and unterweger was charged with the murders of 11 women.
on the 28th of may 1992 unterweger was extradited from U.S to Austria.the monor celebrity and poster boy of prison reform was again in police custody.
it’s not often they got a killer who was there well known to a society and in his case it’s very interesting, that he illed then he went to prison , then he came out early with a brand new profession and with an amazing chance of just carrying on with a brand new life .
10 times better than the life he had before.it just goes to show that the hate he had inside him towards women was so intense that nothing would stop him.
unterweger’s trial began on the 20th of april 1994 at the courthouse in Graz, many of his friends from vienna still believed in unterweger’s innoncene.
but the prosecution had gathered strong evidence against him including for the first time in an austrian murder case .DNA
the events attracted an enourmous amount of media. you had to register which was something completely new back then having to register as a journalist in a public proceeding, this big group of supporters, his fans ,even the female ones ,they were already nowhere to be seen or heard.
becauseduring the long pre-trial process many details had come to light which made it so clear that he was guilty as sin.
unterweger was defended by two laywers during what was a complicated and lengthy trial
one of them was grudge -based Dr hans Jurgen lehoffer.
every dingle victim , every single murder had been examined, the whole thing took three months, with many of the victims it was no longer possible to established who the women died. how they wer murdered.because sometimes only the skeleton was left as the bodies has been in the forests.
the court was shown photographs of the first women he killed after his release blanca bockova she was murdered in september 1990 in prague the shocking images left a deep impresion on everyone in the courtroom but not on unterweger.
obviously he was not affected by the image of this naked girl. the corps and this person who was strangled ,whose faial expressions are not pretty .
for the two of the murders the prosecutors presented DNA evidence.a hair beloning to the victim blanca bockova had been found in unterweger’s car and red fibers found on another victims body corresponding to a red scarfs found in unterweger’s home.
When unterwger was first asked by police about his whereabouts in prague unaware of possible DNA evidence , he answered that he had been to the city but that he hadn’t picked up anyone.
if he had said i met a girl there , took her to my car and we did things together ,going for a ride drinking a beer or something then it would have been possible to explaine why a girls hair was in his car ,but because he said i never took a girl in my car in prague.
now the question was,how did bockova’s hair get into the car of jack unterweger.
this practically sealed the chaine of evidence. another key piece of evidence was unterweger’s modus operandi, he strangled his victims , always using the same kind of knot.
austrian police got in touch with the FBI in the U.S and asked if there was a way to to analyze this specific knot
an american specialist had the answers they needed. she was asked for her opinion on the knots she said, i tell you the same thing i told the austrian investigators at the time if you find the person who tied one of these knots then youv’e undoubtedly found the one who tied all these knots.
the american women specialist had the original bra in her hand and showed it to the jury. you could see how tightly the neck was constricted by the knot. that was the turning point in the process.
you had to imagine that the victims neck was pressed to this diameter.that was a moment when it was dead quite in the overcrowded courtroom. even though there were hundreds of people in there.
and jack unterweger who has always had such a particularly straight present slightly dominat posture and it always looked with a certain impudence as if to say look i have nothing to hide.
the horror of the jury when they saw this bra,could really be felt physically. and that was also the turning point. when the mood turned against unterweger.
that’s was the moment when you could see it in his body language, he slipped back into his seat and grew smaller and smaler.his color drained. and then he just sat there.
now that was the moment . this is it . the hunt is over.
but unterweger stood by his innocence to the very end. the austrian jury consisted of eight members if the verdict is at least four against four. the accused goes free.
throughout the trial unterweger regular talked to dr Reinhard in his prison cell. he would discuss how he thought the jury was reacting on each day .
he closely monitored the eight jurors during the trial,he always knew who were skeptical,who were against him, who were for him and he told dr hanna every day ,today four before me and four against me , today three was skeptical and so on.
people like unterweger are incredibly intelligent and they will pick up on other people’s emotions feelings even though they don’t have that complexity of emotion themselves,
they learn through observing people the kind of behaviors that they need to display the sorts of things that hey need to say to get what they want.
absolutely certain he was confident in his own mind that he could convince at least four of them that he was innocent unterweger is so confident that he decides that he will give the final speech in his defense.
unterweger then delivered a brilliant concluding speech in his defense.the jury vote was never eight to zero for guilty ,rather it was always only five to three or six to two. so there was always a few jurors who were still convinced ov unterweger’s innocence. but unterweger’s impassioned speech did not sway the jury on all charges.
on 28th of june 1994 at approximately 9 pm the verdict was read out ,he was found guilty of nine of the 11 murder charges against him and sentence to life in prison.
he placed an appeal against the verdict.unterweger then retunr to his cell where six hours later he hang hanged himself with a string from his jogging bottoms and his shoelaces . it was confirmed that the knot he used to tie the noose was the same he”d used to strangle his victims.
