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How often do neighbors and relatives later say about serial killers: “Well, who would have thought, such a decent person, always polite and pleasant.” All of Austria and even beyond its borders said so about Jack Unterweger. Unterweger's plays were performed in theaters, his novels were translated into many languages, and he became a real celebrity in the late 1980s.





As usual, it’s worth starting from the very beginning to get acquainted with the portrait of a serial killer.

In 1950, Jack Unterweger was born in the town of Judenburg. His father was an American military man, whom he had never met, and his mother was Austrian Theresia Unterweger. The boy was named Johan at birth, but later changed his name to Jack and at the age of two his mother left her son to be raised by his father.

When Unterweger grew up, he often said that his mother was a sex worker, and his grandfather drank heavily and abused his grandson (Jack's other relatives always denied these words). But the boy’s childhood was indeed not the easiest: he often ran away from home, loved to wander, and his grandfather, tired of Jack’s antics, simply refused to raise him. The boy ended up in another family, stopped going to school and began to seriously think about working as a pimp.

He was unable to “supervise” sex workers and Jack worked part-time as a worker or as a waiter. Already as a teenager, Jack constantly got into some kind of incident, regularly ending up in police stations - from 1966 to 1974 he was convicted 16 times. Most often for violence against sex workers and theft.



Margaret Schaefer

And in December 1974, the body of German waitress Margaret Schaefer was found. An eighteen-year-old girl was strangled with her own bra, and it was tied with a special complex knot, which the police would later see on the victims’ necks more than once. Clothing as a murder weapon and this knot would become the signature style of Jack Unterweger, or, as he became known, the Vienna Strangler.

Suspicion fell on him quite quickly, as there were many witnesses to how they left the bar. In court, Unterweger did not deny his guilt, but tried to argue his action by saying that Schaefer was a prostitute. He generously seasoned his arguments with a tearful story about how hard it was for him as a child, that his mother was a whore, and his grandfather was cruel and an alcoholic. Unterweger tried to prove that suddenly, in the face of Margaret, he saw the face of his mother. All these arguments were rejected by the court and he was sentenced to life, but with the right to parole after 15 years.





The prisoners of the Graz-Lau prison, where Jack was imprisoned, unlike many prisons of that time, were going to be re-educated so that at the end of their sentence they could fully integrate into society. The establishment published a literary magazine, where Unterweger immediately became a local star. During his imprisonment, he completed a high school course, re-read a large amount of literature and decided to take up literary creativity himself.

Unterweger wrote a lot about how unfair the world is, about the difficulties that await an ordinary young man in life. He wrote about what was clear to ordinary readers.

Literary critics of the late 70s praised the killer’s work, and among the authors of the prison newspaper he was generally the most capable. At first, Unterweger was invited to work at a local radio station and once a week a sound engineer with a microphone visited him so that Jack could read works for children.



At one of the interviews

While Unterweger was in prison, he wrote not only prose. He was good at both poetry and drama, and his plays were staged in Viennese theaters. The novels were republished and translated. In 1986 he was awarded the Austrian Prize for the writer who wrote the best dramatic work. Unterweger's fame grew, and with it his capital.

The end of the 80s came and the intellectual elite of Austria began a large-scale campaign to free Jack Unterweger. At the same time, there were people who were sure that he was a sociopath, obsessed with the idea of death, incapable of experiencing emotions (but imitating them perfectly). They were sure that Unterweger, as soon as he was released, would start killing again. The Minister of Justice himself advocated for this, asking the Austrian President not to release Unterweger.

But Jack underwent several psychiatric examinations, which showed that the killer Margaret Schaefer had completely rethought himself, learned to sublimit your traumas and aggression into creativity and you can safely release it into society. The warden honestly admitted: “We will never again have a prisoner so ready for freedom.”

The lyrical image of a sensitive intellectual worked in Unterweger's favor. Well, I’m just “sitting behind bars, in a damp dungeon”...



Well. On May 23, 1990, the Austrian left prison and began to live in Vienna. By that time he had earned enough to not deny himself anything and lived on royalties from the sale of his works. Jack first drove a Mercedes, then changed it to a BMW, dressed exclusively in silk suits, loved gold and travel. Unterweger often acted as an expert on social issues, regularly organized literary readings and, of course, admiring women always swarmed around him, because the former prisoner was written about in newspapers, spoken on radio and on TV.

For many Austrian intellectuals, he literally became a symbol of the reformed criminal and proof that it was possible. Such a big name seriously helped Unterweger get an interview with the head of the homicide department, Max Edelbacher. He was just investigating the murders of four sex workers. The first occurred on June 4, 1990. The next three were discovered within three weeks.



Edelbacher later said that Jack was surprisingly persistent during the interview process, constantly asking about the progress of the investigation, including the smallest details. But Edelbacher could not really tell anything then, even if he wanted to - four girls were killed, they were combined into one investigation, but the police were not sure that the murders were the work of one person.

The case got off the ground when investigator August Channer (retired at the time), working on the murder of Margaret Schaefer in 1974, read an article about the Vienna Strangler. Channer put two and two together, as Unterweger didn't change his crime style much. Channer contacted Viennese investigators after learning that Jack had been released. The investigator was sure that the serial killer was Unterweger. But in the murder of Margaret and the sex workers, despite the similar style, there was one significant difference: the Austrian knew Schaefer and she was not a prostitute, although he tried to prove this to the judges. And the Vienna Strangler only killed sex workers whom he was unfamiliar with, plus serial killers usually commit crimes in the same place, and do not travel around the country (and the world).



Edelbacher, in the absence of other suspects, nevertheless established round-the-clock surveillance of Unterweger, including wiretapping his phone. He carefully studied the materials of the Schaefer case, and then spoke with Unterweger, asking him to tell the details of the crime. The criminal became noticeably nervous, did not say anything and stopped coming to Edelbacher. And surveillance showed that he not only did not communicate with sex workers, but did not even enter the areas where they usually worked.

However, the police found out that exactly when the murder took place, Unteweger was always in this city.

The first murder occurred in Czechoslovakia and the victim was Blanka Bočkova - her body, with stockings around her neck, was found in September 1990, near Prague.

Around this time, Unterweger went to Los Angeles, where he wanted to study the system and life of sex workers, and the differences in treatment of them in Europe and America. He wanted to write about social issues for an Austrian magazine. During the few weeks of his stay in LA, three sex workers were killed, and the police themselves showed a curious journalist where the girls usually worked.

The US police immediately assumed that this was the work of a maniac, but when the killings stopped, the police thought that the serial killer had either left, was already in prison, or had died.

The Austrian police, having made an international inquiry, found out about the death of three girls in America and realized that the coincidences in the two countries were not at all accidental. Unterweger, upon returning to Vienna, was immediately invited to the police station. He even came there, but then immediately left the country with his mistress Bianca Gloom. The couple first came to Paris and then moved to Miami. They were able to escape, but they couldn’t figure out that they shouldn’t use bank cards.

In 1992, Jack Unterweger was arrested and extradited to Austria.



All the while Jack was running from the police, the Austrian pressShe defended his innocence with all her might. At the same time, the police were collecting evidence.

Unterweger's acquaintances later said the same thing: "He lived in a great apartment in a good area. He didn't look like a killer." Fans of his work flatly refused to believe that such a cultured, sensitive person could strangle someone with his underwear.

When Jack's apartment was searched, they found a red scarf, particles of which were found on the clothes of one of the murdered girls. Unterweger was a pedant and never threw away receipts and checks, thanks to which the police were able to track his movements around the world and the country and even find out what cars he rented. For example, the car that he took in Czechoslovakia. Despite the fact that it had already been dismantled, the chairs were still stored in the workshop and hair was found on them. DNA tests confirmed that it was Bochkova’s hair. But all this was indirect... Well, yes, Unterweger met with the dead, but they were clearly still alive then.



That red scarf

Jack, in turn, denied his guilt, criticizing the police that they were biased against him because of his past, and they needed to close the “hangings”. One of Jack’s lawyers argued that the very fact that his client does not have an alibi speaks of his innocence, because such an intelligent man, if he were guilty, would definitely have protected himself. Some women in the courtroom cried: it was difficult for them to believe that such a charming and talented person could be a killer. They pitied him, considering the Austrian an innocent victim.

Unterweger was also justified by his colleague, who was precisely one of those who believed in the idea of “re-education.”

"If he were a murderer, this would be one of the major cases of the century. Statistically, the chances that I would know such a person are very small, so I think he is innocent."



The majority, having carefully studied the materials of the case, voted “for” the guilty verdict. On June 29, 1994, Unterweger was found guilty of nine murders, three of which were committed in America (two more murders could not be proven). Jack Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison. Jack, after the verdict was announced, began to cry and said that he could not bear another imprisonment in the cell.

A few hours later, he committed suicide by hanging himself with a string from his sweatpants. This could be called a posthumous confession to the murders, because he tied that very special slip knot from the lace.

One of the Austrian politicians succinctly commented on what happened: “This was the best murder of Unterweger.”