Jack Unterweger

Unterweger was born in Judenburg, Styria, to Theresia Unterweger, a barmaid and waitress from Klagenfurt. Theresia was a petty criminal who was jailed several times at for fraud, trespassing, theft, forgery and embezzlement, having received early release due to her pregnancy. Theresia had been on her way to Graz by car when she went into labour. Unterweger claimed in interviews and his autobiography that his mother was occasionally engaged in prostitution, but Austrian judicial records do not list any convictions or arrests for prostitution. His mother stated that Unterweger invented the allegation to slander her and "make his book sell better". later listing "Jack Bäcker" as her son's father in legal guardianship papers. His mother chose the nickname "Jack" for her son this way, In January 1951, less than a year after Unterweger's birth, Theresia was imprisoned in Salzburg for a previous fraud conviction, leading to her son being given into the care of a foster mother in Plainfeld for a year. In February 1952, Unterweger was put into custody of his grandfather, Ferdinand Wieser, and his life partner Maria Springer, with whom he was to remain until the age of eight. Unterweger described Wieser as a philandering alcoholic and reputed "rough fellow" who regularly used his grandson to help him steal farm animals. Unterweger also alleged that his grandfather often brought home female strangers and forced Unterweger to watch the pair have sex. Government records, neighbours, and relatives, including Springer's two adult children who lived with the couple in the beginning, contradicted this characterization, saying that Unterweger was cared for and that neither Wieser or Springer drank excessively. Similarly, it was pointed out that Wieser did not go out regularly due to poor health, suffering from a partial facial paralysis, near-blindness and deafness of the left ear, as well as emphysema and bronchitis. The family lived in a wooden lodge in the Ortschaft , Carinthia. Springer claimed that Unterweger had a tendency to misuse Wieser's trust and had pit Wieser against Springer by "tattletaling" on her. In March 1953, Theresia married American soldier Donald van Blarcom. The same year, she began paying monthly child support of 100 schilling. Unterweger stated that after seeing a picture of his new stepfather, he began doubting his mother's initial claim and that he believed van Blarcom was also his biological father due to their physical resemblance. In June 1958, Springer broke up with Wieser and as he was too infirm to care for his grandson alone, Unterweger's great-aunt Juliana Wieser briefly became his legal guardian, living with her in nearby Straßburg for a few months. During this time, Unterweger claimed that he witnessed his best friend Klaus get run over by a road roller. The local gendarmerie confirmed that a six-year-old boy named Helmut Salzer was fatally crushed under the wheel of an excavator during the same timeframe, but according to Unterweger's cousin Martha Lupar, he did not know Salzer, nor was he present during the boy's death. In April 1959, Unterweger was again taken into foster care and put into the custody of the Drofenik family in Liebenfels. Between 1962 and 1965, Unterweger was brought up in an Evangelical reform school in Treffen. He dropped out of school in 1965 and took an apprenticeship as an assistant hotel waiter in St. Veit an der Glan, a position he held for six months before being fired. His probation officer was informed by a youth welfare employee that Unterweger was dangerous and known to harass girls at his former school. Throughout 1966, Unterweger entered several other hotel waiter apprenticeships in St Anton, Mondsee, and Bad Hofgastein, but left each one after a few months. Unterweger's first conviction was in November 1966, after he stole a total of 527 schilling from two hotel guests at work. He was sentenced to three days jail with a subsequent 13-month stay at the , a federal juvenile detention facility, in Vienna's quarter for rehabilitation. After his release in December 1967, Unterweger continued to work as a waiter at various hotels, often being dismissed for workplace theft. Unterweger claimed that he joined a boxing club in St. Veit, where he supposedly had a 6-0 match record before being ousted after being falsely accused of stealing funds. Carinthia boxing federation president Karl Blaha and St. Veit Box Club chairman Willibald Piketz denied Unterweger's claims, saying he was never a member and that there was no record of either his fights or a theft linked to him. When Unterweger turned 18, the regional court sent a letter to his mother, informing her that they would not provide further social services to Unterweger as "educational measures are unlikely to be successful". From this point on, Unterweger drifted through Austria and worked occasional labour jobs. == First offences ==

Between 1966 and 1974, Unterweger was convicted sixteen times. His offences were mostly for theft and burglary, but throughout the early 1970s, the crimes also included pimping and sexual assault, as well as several counts of physical assault. Between 1968 and 1969, Unterweger served two sentences for theft, totalling ten months. In summer 1969, he was sentenced to four months imprisonment for burglary at a kiosk. In 1970, Unterweger was sentenced to seven months imprisonment for the kidnapping a minor from her legal guardians and theft, with the sentence extended by three months after he sent a threatening letter to a woman from prison. While jailed, Unterweger attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills, for which he was transferred to a psychiatric unit and released without returning to police custody. Later sources claim that the rape occurred in 1974 and that the victim was a teenage student named Daphne. that later served as the basis for a 1988 film adaptation, becoming known as a "Häfenliterat", Austrian German vernacular for "jail writer", usually translated as "Jack the Writer" as a play on Jack the Ripper). Several figures, including Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, have since questioned whether Unterweger actually wrote Purgatory. Unterweger had plagiarized at least some of his works, largely children's stories, from Sonja von Eisenstein, a journalist who had kept correspondence with him during his imprisonment, and sent her several poems by Hermann Hesse, claiming them as his own with minimal alterations. It's generally believed that the vast majority of his literature was rewritten from pre-existing works. Most of his stage plays dealt with class conflict and were autobiographical, though with the focus on his non-violent offences. The murder of Margret Schäfer is left out entirely, being replaced by a fictitious event in which Unterweger's character beats and urinates on a wealthy man who had solicited him for sex. Unterweger lied to von Eisenstein about the details of his murder conviction, saying he had killed Schäfer while experiencing a drug-induced blackout in which he hallucinated her as his mother, leaving out the preceding robbery and rape. He repeated a defence he had made during his trial, claiming that his criminal ways were the result of a traumatic childhood. He also invented a fictional "Aunt Anna", who was a supposed prostitute and murdered by a client in 1967. In reality, then 16-year-old Unterweger had read a newspaper article about the murder of an unrelated Anna Unterweger, really a kitchen helper who had been raped and killed by a homeless ex-convict in Salzburg. For years, he falsely claimed that her murder subconsciously contributed to his own mistreatment and later murders of women, and that the headline for the news article was "Her last customer was her murderer" rather than the actual, "Violent vagabond incriminated", believing that anyone who attempted to verify the story would not investigate for further details. including Jelinek and German novelist Günter Grass, along with the editor of Manuskripte magazine, Alfred Kolleritsch. and worked as a journalist for the public broadcaster ORF, where he reported on stories concerning the very murders for which he was later found guilty. == Serial killings ==

Czechoslovakia On 14 September 1990, less than three months following his release, Unterweger met 30-year-old butcher shop employee Blanka Bočková while in Prague. Bočková's body was found the next morning near the Vltava River, with signs of both manual and ligature strangulation. Austria Between October 1990 and May 1991, Unterweger killed at least seven women in Austria. The victims were sex workers, two of whom were unregistered, with several of them having been previously solicited by Unterweger. The women were driven outside of town, beaten, raped, and left in forested areas. All were manually strangled, which was the cause of death for most, while some were asphyxiated with underwear such as bras, pantyhoses or stockings. • 27 October 1990, Graz: 41-year-old Brunhilde Masser. Found on 26 January 1991 in Gratkorn. • 5 December 1990, Bregenz: 31-year-old Heidemarie "Heide" Hammerer. Found on 31 December 1990 in Lustenau. • 7 March 1991, Graz: 35-year-old Elfriede Schrempf. Found on 5 October 1991 in Lichendorf. • 8 April 1991, Vienna: 23-year-old Silvia Zagler. Found on 4 August 1991 in Wolfsgraben. • 16 April 1991, Vienna: 25-year-old Sabine Moitzi. Found on 20 May 1991 in Mödling. • 28 April 1991, Vienna: 33-year-old Regina Prem. Found on 16 April 1992 in Döbling district, on Hermannskogel. • 8 May 1991, Vienna: 25-year-old Karin Eroglu-Sladky. Found on 23 May 1991 in Gablitz. During the same timeframe, Unterweger maintained several relationships, including with journalists, lawyers, prostitutes, and teenage students. For much of this time, he lived with Margit Haas, a wealthy journalist for the magazine Wiener. Rudolf Prem, the husband of Regina Prem, had made extensive efforts to locate his wife and offered 10,000 schillings as a reward. For three months, from May to July 1991, Rudolf was taunted over the phone by several prank callers, including Unterweger. Back in Austria, Unterweger was suggested as a suspect for the sex worker murders. In the absence of other suspects, police took a serious look at Unterweger and kept him under surveillance until he went to the U.S., ostensibly as a reporter; the police observed nothing to connect him with the killings. Through autumn 1991, Unterweger was questioned twice by Vienna Police Councillor . On 8 October 1991, Unterweger called Rudolf Prem again and falsely named as the site where he had left Regina, also referencing a total of eleven victims. Following Unterweger's arrest, Prem handed police his wife's diary containing descriptions of previous meetings with Unterweger, which supported his continued penchant for bondage and physical violence during sex. Arrest and death Police in Graz eventually gathered enough evidence to arrest Unterweger, but he had fled by the time they entered his home. After law enforcement agencies chased him and his girlfriend, 18-year-old Bianca Mrak, through Switzerland, France, and the US, he was finally arrested by US Marshals in Miami, Florida, on 27 February 1992. On 29 June, Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. That night, Unterweger killed himself at Justizanstalt Graz-Jakomini by hanging himself with a rope made from shoelaces and a cord from the trousers of a tracksuit, using the same knot that was found on all the strangled sex workers. Prior to his death, Unterweger had asserted his intention to seek an appeal, and therefore, under Austrian law, his guilty verdict was not considered legally binding after his death, as it has not been reviewed and confirmed by the court. == See also ==