Jack Unterweger – Celebrity Writer Serial Killer

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Jack Unterweger killed working women in Europe and the US

In September 1990, women in the sex trade industry in central Europe began to disappear. They would be found in wooded areas after having been strangled to death with articles of their own clothing. This heinous killer eventually came to America and continued his murderous rampage.  Who was he? Listen to the story of the celebrity writer and serial killer, Jack Unterweger. He supposedly had been rehabilitated through his award-winning writing, only to be freed to kill again.

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Location

Our episode starts in Austria in the early 1990s. Austria is a landlocked country located in Central Europe. It is made up of nine federated states, including Vienna, which is Austria’s capital. Famous citizens of Austria include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marie Antoinette, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

It’s Legal

In Austria, prostitution is legal and regulated by law and has been legal for several years. Sex service workers are considered self-employed but are required to have a medical check-up every six weeks. Since they are self-employed sex workers have been required to pay taxes since 1986.  The majority of sex workers are from other countries, including Slovakia and other Eastern European countries. Only about 5% of licensed sex workers are Austrian.

The Danger in the Night

On September 15, 1990, hikers were walking along the Vltava River in Czechoslovakia which is located near Prague. They came across the nude body of a young woman lying on her back with her legs spread. She had what looked like a pair of grey stockings wrapped around her neck and her lower body was covered in leaves and sticks. Her clothing and purse were nearly thrown into the nearby river.

The young woman turned out to be Blanca Bokova. She went out drinking with friends the night before in Wenceslas Square. Blanca decided to stay at the bar after her friends left around 11:45 pm. She was talking with a white male who looked to be in his 40s. She was never seen alive again. Investigators didn’t have any leads on who the man was that Blanca was seen talking to.

More Sex Workers Disappear

Several weeks later in October 1990, another woman would go missing. Her name was Brunhilde Masser and was a thirty-nine-year-old sex worker from Gratz, Austria. Brunhilde had worked in the sex trade industry for the past ten years. On December 5, 1990, another Austrian sex worker, thirty-one-year-old Heidemarie Hammerer, disappeared. She had also been a licensed sex worker for 10 years.

On December 31, 1990, Heidemarie’s body was discovered by hikers in a heavily forested area about 10 miles outside of Gratz. The body had been left exposed to the elements, but her body was relatively preserved due to the cold temperatures. Heidemarie had been covered in leaves. It appeared that she had been redressed at some point with the perpetrator leaving her legs bare. A piece of material from her slip was found lodged in her mouth.

Investigators could see that she had been restrained at some point due to marks left on her wrists. She was also strangled with her pantyhose. During her autopsy, pathologists discovered red fibers that were inconsistent with the clothing she had been found in. They also noted that there were no seminal fluids found on her body or clothing.

More to Come

A few weeks after Heidemarie’s body was found, Brunhilde’s body was discovered. It was lying in a stream bed in a wooded area outside of Bregenz. Her body was badly decomposed at the time of her discovery, but she looked to have been strangled similar to the over victims that had been discovered thus far.

Authorities in Austria had few leads to go on and at this point, as they were unaware of Blanca’s murder. They did not tie her death to the murdered sex workers. They had no idea that they were dealing with a serial killer.

The Police caught on soon enough. Another sex worker from Gratz, 35-year-old Elfriede Schrempf, disappeared on March 7, 1991. What made her disappearance different from the others at this point were the taunting phone calls that were made to Edfriede’s parents. Edfriede’s parents’ phone number was unlisted so authorities felt the calls may have come from the person that abducted her. Elfriede’s skeletal remains weren’t be discovered until October 5, 1991. Her body was found in a wooded area outside of Gratz covered in leaves.

What Did the Victims Have in Common?

Thinking that perhaps these sex worker murders were isolated to Gratz turned out to be false. As four more prostitutes would go missing from Vienna within the month. Twenty-three-year-old Sabine Moitzl’s body was discovered on May 20, 1992, along with Karin Ergolu, age twenty-five. Both women were found in wooded areas outside of Vienna. They were strangled to death by articles of their clothing. The other two women who went missing were Silva Zagler, age twenty-three,  and Regina Prem age thirty-two. Silva’s body would be discovered among a stand of trees. In October 1991, Regina’s husband received a call from her killer telling him that he was her executioner. GOD had told him to do it. She was left at a place of sacrifice and her face was turned towards hell.

What all these victims had in common is that they were all strangled with articles of their own clothing, and were left in various stages of undress. In addition, they all had bruises on their bodies.

Time Travel

One day a 70-year-old retired police detective, August Schenner, was reading about the murders of area sex workers. He felt that he had seen this M.O. before in terms of the manner of death by strangulation with clothing belonging to the victim. Schenner had investigated similar crimes in 1974 and the person that was ultimately convicted was Johann ”Jack” Unterweger.

Back in 1974, Schenner was investigating the murder of two women. Eighteen-year-old Margaret Schaefer was abducted by Unterweger and a female sex worker, Barbara Scholz in December 1974. Barbara and Margaret had been friends. The couple took Margaret into the nearby woods where they tied her up and began to sexually assault her. When Unterweger demanded that Margaret have sex with him, she refused. He became enraged and bludgeoned her with a steel pipe. He then left her nude body lying face up covered in leaves.

When Jack Unterweger was taken into custody he confessed to Margaret’s murder. He claimed that when he began to strike Margaret he had a vision of his mother whom he hated. So he took all that rage out on Margaret until she was dead.  A psychiatrist would end up diagnosing Unterweger as a sexually sadistic psychopath with narcissistic and histrionic tendencies who was prone to acts of rage and anger. He was deemed an incorrigible predator.

The body of a second victim, Marcia Horvath, was discovered in Lake Salzachsee near Salzburg. Jack Unterweger denied having committed that murder. Unterweger stood trial and was convicted of Margaret’s murder in 1976. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The authorities did not move forward with trying Unterweger for Marcia’s murder since he was already serving a life sentence.   

Life Behind Bars

Jack Unterweger was born on August 16, 1951, in Steiermark, Austria to a Viennese sex worker and an unknown American soldier stationed in Austria after WWII. Unterweger didn’t have an easy upbringing. He was raised in poverty and had an unstructured home life. His mother was arrested and abandoned Jack Unterweger when he was two. He was predominantly raised by his grandfather in a one-room cabin. His grandfather was not what one would describe as loving and kind, but more of an alcoholic and abusive tyrant. He would also draw Jack into his crimes by having him help steal area farm animals.

By the age of 24, Jack Unterweger had sixteen criminal convictions on his record. Mostly due to sexual assaults and theft-related offenses. His first arrest for sexual assault came at the age of 16 against a sex worker. He would spend most of those nine years behind bars. When he was released briefly he murdered Margaret Schaefer.

Jack Unterweger Reinvents Himself in Prison

When Unterweger started serving his life sentence in 1976 he was illiterate as he had not attended school. Over the next 14 years, he reinvented himself. He learned to read and write while incarcerated in Stein Prison. Jack Unterweger would publish poems, plays, short stories, and an autobiography about his life published in 1983 entitled “Purgatory or The Trip to Prison – Report of a Guilty Man.”  In his book, he painted himself as a victim due to his life circumstances.  His works brought a lot of attention from critics praising him and he even won literary awards.

These works made him a celebrity with influential Austrian citizens calling for his release from prison claiming he was rehabilitated through his art. Calls for his release started in 1985. At the time Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschlager refused the petition for Unterweger’s release on grounds that he had to at least serve a minimum of 15 years. However that day came on May 23, 1990. The calls for Unterweger’s release were granted and he was released after serving 15 years of a life sentence. At the time, a psychiatrist surmised that Unterweger had channeled his aggression through his creative writings.

Freedom

Not wasting any time, Jack Unterweger frequented the television circuit posing himself as the model for prison rehabilitation. His autobiography started to be taught in schools and was even turned into a movie. His children’s stories were performed over Austrian radio. He was the celebrated guest at high society dinner parties and the money started to flow in.

Unterweger was seen in Austria driving a Ford Mustang and wearing designer clothes. He was even hired by a popular German magazine to cover the sex worker murders.  To the public, he restored the community belief that even the most heinous criminals could be rehabilitated, but what the public didn’t know is that they had been snowed. Within weeks of his release, Unterweger began killing again.

On April 4, 1991, Austrian police developed a task force to focus on the slayings. This was for the first time in Austria’s modern history that they were dealing with a serial killer. They felt that due to the similarities of the killings, there was one individual who was committing these murders. One of their main suspects was Jack Unterweger based on the information shared by retired detective August Schenner. One Austrian Federal detective, Dr. Ernst Geiger began discreet surveillance on Unterweger never believing he was truly reformed.

Jack Unterweger Travels to L.A.

Amid these murders, Unterweger was hired by another Austrian magazine and on June 2, 1991, he traveled to Los Angeles, California in the United States. His task was to write about crime in the United States. Specifically how attitudes towards prostitution vary between the two countries. Unterweger was able to arrange several ride alongs with police in L.A. He focused specifically on areas populated by prostitutes.  

Officer Geiger noticed that when Jack Unterweger traveled to the United States the killings stopped in Austria. Police began to look into the paper trail that Unterweger left to see if they could tie him to the areas where sex workers had last been seen. There were able to place him in all the murder locations.  Now, this could be explained away as he would have been there due to his job writing about the murders. But investigators determined that he always arrived in the murder locations before the murders took place. It was through this research that they were able to tie Unterweger to Blanca’s murder in Prague in September 1990.

L.A. Murders

On June 20th the first of three bodies were found around L.A. The first victim was Shannon Exley, a thirty-five-year-old prostitute who was found nude in Boyle Heights with her bra wrapped around her neck. DNA collected from her body would show seven different profiles, but detectives at the time had no one to compare them to. Then on June 30th, a second victim was found in the same area; a 33-year-old prostitue name Irene Rodriguez. She had been found behind a tractor-trailer about a mile from where Shannon’s body had been found. She had also been strangled with her bra. Then on July 10th victim number three was discovered. 26-year-old Peggy Booth, who also worked in the sex trade industry.  Peggy was slightly different from the other two victims as her body was found in a Malibu canyon.

All three victims would be tied together due to their manner of death. Each had been horrifically beaten and strangled with their bras. Each victim had also been penetrated by a tree branch.

Returning Home

On October 22, 1991, Untergewer was brought in for questioning when he returned to Austria. He told investigators that he has talked with sex workers in the past, but that it was for his job. On occasion, he had bought their services, but he denied knowing any of the victims. Only having circumstantial evidence they did not have enough to hold him. 

Investigators worked on gathering more evidence. They found a car that Jack Unterweger owned when he first got out of prison but had been bought by a new owner over a year ago. Still, technicians were able to find one hair on the passenger seat headrest. The hair was sent off to a university lab for analysis of the hair root in the hopes of getting a DNA sequence to match one of the victims. Investigators lucked out when a match was made to the first victim. Blanca Bakolva was from Prague and was killed in September 1990. Unfortunately, stronger evidence was needed for an arrest since all it proved was that Blanca had been in Unteweger’s car.

Police Obtain Search Warrant

Investigators began to question area sex workers to see if they had any information they could share on Jack Unterweger. The sex workers that did respond reported that Unterweger would insist that they wear handcuffs when they had sex.  One worker reported that she saw Unterweger approach her friend Heidemarie Hammerer the night she disappeared. She was also able to tell investigators that Unterweger wore a brown leather jacket the night he picked up Heidemarie.  

Based upon the hair analysis results and the identification from the sex workers investigators were able to obtain a warrant to search Unterweger’s apartment. When investigators arrived Unterweger was not there, but they did collect clothing including the brown leather jacket. They also collected receipts from a trash can. One of those receipts was from a restaurant in Malibu, California from nine months earlier. 

Unfortunately, no direct evidence was found during the search that could tie Jack Unterweger to the murders. At this point, the investigation began to stall. Since Austrian police had not worked any serial killer cases they decided to reach out to the FBI for assistance through the U.S. Embassy in Austria. They were connected with Special Agent Greg McCrary who specialized in criminal profiling. Agent McCrary agreed to work with Austrian authorities to provide a single or multiple killers profile. He was looking for a signature pattern to the crimes specifically focusing on the victims.

Full Circle

Meanwhile, a communication was sent to authorities in Los Angeles. It informed them that Jack Unterweger was under suspicion in Austria for seven murders and that they knew that he had traveled to California the previous summer per the restaurant receipts. As soon as the communication was received, Detective Fred Miller with Los Angeles Police Department reached out to the Austrian investigators letting them know that they had three unsolved murders with a similar M.O. to the Austrian ones.

Detectives in Los Angeles began to recreate a timeline of Unterweger’s movements from the time he landed in California on June 2, 1990. Meanwhile, Jack Unterweger continued to work in media and even appeared on talk shows claiming that the police were trying to frame him for the murders because they were inept at finding the real killer.  Unterweger remained a popular figure in Austria with many citizens siding with him.

Ritualistic Behavior Similar to European Murders

Hotel Cecil - Jennifer Boyer, CC BY 2.0 , via flickr
Hotel Cecil Jennifer Boyer CC BY-ND 2.0

L.A. Detectives were able to find out where Jack Unterweger had been staying. The Cecil Hotel was located at 643 South Main Street which was close to where the first two victims were last seen.

Meanwhile, Agent McCrary’s profile showed that the perpetrator had killed the European victims due to his impotence and feelings of insecurity about his masculinity.  When he was unable to complete the sexual act after being stimulated by the sex workers he lashed out in anger. He felt that they were shaming him so he strangled them and left them exposed in humiliating positions. With the Los Angeles victims, McCrary saw ritualistic behavior similar to the European ones. There was also an absence of a sexual assault. McCrary felt there was only one killer and that killer was an organized one.

In August the university crime lab finalized their report on the fiber analysis of the clothing confiscated from the search warrant on Unterweger’s apartment. The brown leather jacket that Unterweger owned was tested. The testing showed that the fibers from the lining of the jacket matched the fibers found on  Heidemarie Hammerer’s body.

Investigators wanted to link Unterweger to all the murders not just Heidemarie’s. So next they utilized VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) at the FBI Headquarters loading fifteen detailed criteria of each of the victims from the U.S. and Europe. The computer statistically linked all eleven murders to Unterweger. Agent McCrary felt that Unterweger was an intelligent psychopath who was highly manipulative.   

Flight Isn’t An Indication of Guilt

An arrest warrant was obtained and the Austrian SWAT team raided Unterweger’s Vienna apartment, but he had fled along with his teenage lover, Bianca Mrak. Bianca was18-years-old and had met Jack Unterweger at a wine bar where she was a waitress. The couple would lead an international manhunt through Switzerland, France, Canada, and eventually back to the United States.

Unterweger didn’t stay quiet while on the run. He would call into Austrian media proclaiming his innocence in one breath and taunt the police in the next. He claimed that his flight wasn’t a show of guilt and he would be more than willing to return to Austrian if the arrest warrant was withdrawn. Fortunately for authorities, the couple left a trail of receipts that police followed like a trail of bread crumbs to Miami Florida. Bianca’s mother had been wiring the couple’s money. When the couple contacted her again from Miami asking for more money, her mother notified investigators. The reason for hiding out in Miami was because Unterweger’s girlfriend liked actor Don Johnson who starred in Miami Vice.

Unterweger was taken into custody with no resistance on February 27, 1992. He was accused of murdering 11 women in total; seven in Austria, three in California, and one in Czechoslovakia. All since his release from prison 13 months prior. While being held in Miami DNA samples were collected and a match was made through semen analysis to Shannon Exley. Some had been found on her body.

Tug-of-War

With Austria and the United States both wanting to try Jack Unterweger a jurisdictional battle began between the two countries. Czechoslovakia was not interested in trying him and left it up to one of the two other countries. Eventually, it was agreed that Unterweger would be tried in Austria for not only the seven murders that occurred there but also the murders that occurred in the United States and Czechoslovakia. Unterweger was extradited to Austria and indicted on May 27, 1992, for all 11 murders. In Austria, their laws allow for prosecution of any crimes anywhere in the world if they were committed by an Austrian citizen. Prosecuting Unterweger was going to be difficult as much of the Austrian public still admired him.

Due to legal delay, Unterweger’s trial didn’t begin until April 20, 1994. The trial lasted for two months with the FBI agents testifying as to their investigation. They tied Jack Unterweger to both the European and United States murders based on forensic and circumstantial evidence. According to one L.A. Detective who attended Unterweger’s trial, he likens it to the OJ Simpson trial as to the amount of media attention it received.

Jack Unterweger Sentenced to Life

A bomb blast occurred outside the courthouse but didn’t delay the jury deliberations. Johann “Jack” Unterweger was convicted on nine of the eleven counts of murder in a 6:2 majority. In Austria, at the time a majority was allowed to convict. He was acquitted of the two others mostly due to the deterioration of the bodies and not having enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to convict.

The judge didn’t waste any time sentencing Jack Unterweger to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a maximum-security institution. Life in prison wouldn’t last that long for Unterweger as he was found dead in his cell on June 29, 1994, just six hours after he was sentenced. He hung himself from a curtain rod in his cell using the drawstring from his prison uniform. It is said that he used the same knots that he used on his victims. There were also several cassette tapes found in his cell, but to this day their contents have not been released. FBI Agent McCary felt that Unterweger killing himself was not due to him feeling distraught over returning to prison, the very place he said he would never go back to, but more as one last act of control.

The kicker to all this is that Unterweger’s convictions were not considered legally binding under Austrian law since he had indicated that he planned to appeal.

Pop-Culture

Jack Unterweger may have taken his own life, but his notoriety will live on.  In 1985, while Unterweger was still in prison for the murder of Margaret Schaefer, German music artist Falco wrote the song “Jenny” which depicted a murderous rapist who vaguely referenced Unterweger’s crimes. In 2008, actor John Malkovich portrayed Unterweger in a stage production entitled “Infernal Comedy.”  In an article in The Guardian, John Malkovich talked about meeting Unterweger not knowing at the time that he had already killed three women.

Unterweger’s story can also be seen on the small screen with episodes about his crimes on an episode of FBI Files:  Killer Abroad. Investigative ID crime series “Horror at the Cecil Hotel” episode 3 entitled 1402 highlighted Unterweger’s crimes. The most recent reference regarding Unterweger’s stay at the Cecil Hotel was on Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.

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