Johann 'Jack' Unterweger - International Serial Killer. (True Crimes Book 15)

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Dr Lynne Herold at the LA County sheriff's department crime lab had trained in one of the busiest forensic pathology labs in the world, which dealt with thousands of possible homicide victims every year. She had seen victims bound with all kinds of tape, rope, extension cords, speaker cable, telephone cords and electrical wire, but nothing quite like this. Although the exploits of this jet-setting Euro-ghoul have been a staple of Austrian tabloids, Unterweger’s story remains obscure here perhaps because it was overshadowed first by the state trial of the officers in the Rodney King beating and then by the O.J. Simpson case. John Leake’s fascinating book “Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer” is sure to change that. An American translator and editor who lived in Vienna, Leake is ideally suited to investigate this case and probe the particulars of the Austrian psyche that he thinks allowed Unterweger to roam free for so long.

He went to Miami with his girlfriend, even as the Austrian police collected evidence to prove that Unterweger was the killer. The pair went to collect wired money from a Western Union bank, where the police were waiting nearby to arrest him. Real life in L.A.," he subsequently wrote, "is dominated by a tough struggle for survival, by the broken dreams of thousands who come to the city and an equal number who leave, sometimes dead." On May 23 1990, after 15 years and four months in jail, he walked free. He was nearly 40. Various magazines ran features on him, some portraying him as a dandy, some as an ex-con wearing only blue jeans, his body covered in prison tattoos. under_volcano from Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsUnterweger was talking about his prison past – he had been convicted of murdering a woman in 1976 – and his subsequent rehabilitation into Austrian society by the Viennese cafe intellectuals who campaigned for his early release, leading to a pardon from the president at the time, Kurt Waldheim. In the summer of 1991, Unterweger traveled to Los Angeles to write about prostitution in Southern California. The obliging Los Angeles Police Department even gave him a ride in a patrol car so he could observe the seamy underworld up close. During the five weeks of his visit, three prostitutes were strangled with their bras: Shannon Exley, 35; Irene Rodriguez, 33; and Peggy Jean Booth, 26. In 1992, Unterweger was detained, but even then, he continued to give interviews freely, proclaiming his innocence and calling upon his colleagues for support. Despite his chatty demeanor, the evidence against him was overwhelming, and he was found guilty of nine counts of murder in 1994. Soon after sentencing, Unterweger used the string from his prison jumpsuit to hang himself. a b Leake, John (13 November 2007). Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 37–38. ISBN 9781429996334. entering hades. The real story, which Malkovich will bring to a Vienna stage in an opera-chamber theatre production which premieres tonight, was that Unterweger, the reformed prisoner turned celebrated poet and journalist, had begun a brutal killing spree within six months of his release.

It didn't take long to identify the victim; her husband had filed a missing-person report the previous month. Sabine Moitzi, 25, was a bakery salesgirl by day but, unknown even to her husband, she occasionally worked as a "secret prostitute" (not registered with the Office of Health, as prostitutes are required to be by law in Vienna). She had become addicted to heroin, and her wages at the bakery didn't cover the cost. At around 11pm on the night of April 16, her friend Ilse dropped her off at an intersection near the railyard of the West Train Station. When Ilse passed by 10 minutes later, Sabine was gone. Her body was found five weeks later; its state of decay indicated she had been dead about that long. New Netflix series, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, focuses specifically on the 2013 death of Canadian student Elisa Lam there, but also touches upon some of the other cases. Hotel manager Amy Price, as interviewed in the Netflix series, says there were around 80 deaths there just during the 10-years she served. Over the years before and during her employment, people jumped from hotel windows and the hotel was home to serial killer Richard Ramirez.With Unterweger, however, the risk seemed minimal. A psychiatrist concluded that he had indeed gone straight, sublimating his aggression through writing. He was witty, polite and cool. When he was paroled on May 23, 1990, the prison warden observed, "We will never find a prisoner so well prepared for freedom."

Unterweger devoted much of his literary energy to the construction of myths about himself, so the facts of his childhood are murky at best. He was born in August 1950, bastard son of an Austrian mother and an American father, a GI serving in the army of occupation that remained in Austria for a decade after World War II. The father vanished before the baby was born; the mother, who Unterweger often claimed was a prostitute, abandoned him when he was 2 to an alcoholic grandfather in rural Austria. Two women murdered in the same way - officer Ernst Geiger knew it was only a matter of time before the corpses of the other two missing women, Silvia Zagler and Regina Prem, turned up. Despite his conviction, Unterweger only served 15 years of his original life sentence, thanks in large part to the runaway success of the autobiography he wrote in prison, Purgatory or The Trip to Prison – Report of a Guilty Man. His talent for writing made him something of a celebrity, and he was later pardoned by Austrian president Kurt Waldheim and released from prison in 1990 at the behest of the Viennese cafe intellectuals who championed his case, including Nobel Prize winners Elfriede Jelinek and Günter Grass, according to The Guardian. Unterweger told police that he valued his freedom and celebrity too much to risk it with new crimes. His influential supporters agreed. Indeed many Austrians still believe that Unterweger was a victim of class warfare, a police conspiracy or an overzealous justice department. Unterweger himself cannot offer any insights. He hanged himself in his Austrian jail cell in 1994, the day he was found guilty of nine murders, including the three in Los Angeles. He was 43.

In 1975 a still unidentified woman died at the Cecil Hotel

In December 1974, he abducted and murdered 18-year-old Margret Schafer. During his trial, Unterweger claimed he had seen his mother's face reflected in Schafer's as he strangled her with her own brassiere. The court sentenced him to life. Authorities followed Unterweger across Europe to the United States, where federal agents eventually arrested him in Miami Beach on an Austrian warrant 31 years ago, on February 27, 1992, according to the LA Times. Legare, Michael Joseph (13 January 2016). When Things Seem Odd: Polly and the Internal Guardian. FriesenPress. ISBN 9781460277539. On December 20th of 1975, a woman who was thought to be aged 23 jumped from the 12th floor. She had registered at the hotel on December 16th under the name “Alison Lowell” but her real identity still isn’t known. Serial killer Richard Ramirez lived at the Cecil Hotel whilst he committed his crimes in 1985

Four more prostitutes who worked in Vienna went missing within one month of each other. They were all strangled with an article of their own clothes. It was clear to the Austrian police now that they were dealing with a dangerous serial killer. In 1974, Unterweger committed his first murder. He killed a German citizen, 18-year-old Margaret Schafer, by strangling her with her bra. He was convicted for the crime in 1976 and was sentenced to life in prison. When Unterweger confessed to the 1976 murder, he said that he had envisioned the victim as his mother, causing an intense rage to come over him. At 4.50 pm the next day, February 15, Graz headquarters got a call from Unterweger, asking to speak with officer Hütter (he had cruised around the red-light district with him in September 1990). "Why are the Graz police persecuting me? They have no evidence, so what is the meaning of this arrest warrant?" Hütter told him that it would go better for him if he cooperated. You have to make your own judgment about the probability that with so many owners they would only find seven hairs," said Paul Yvon, the lead writer on the case for Profil magazine. While seemingly assisting the LAPD, Unterweger also found the time to kill three more women. Each woman was sexually assaulted with tree branches and strangled with their own bras.

A campaign was launched to free Unterweger. He reminded his advocates of the French criminal and author Jean Genet; they believed writing his life story, and the self-reflection it required, had transformed him. At a parole hearing, his lawyer presented a statement calling for his release signed by a who's who of the country's writers and artists. The statement concluded with the assertion that "Austrian justice will be measured by the Unterweger case".