In the mid-1990s, Jack Unterweger He left prison after 15 years. In the following 18 months He ended up becoming a celebrity and a renowned writer in Central Europe, especially in his home country of Austria. He published books, reissued earlier texts, gave lectures, had several productions of his plays, wrote cover articles for major circulation magazines, interviewed prominent figures, was hired by Austrian public television, and toured the United States.
In that period, too, killed 11 women in four different countries.
Jack Unterweger He had been convicted in 1974 for the murder of a woman. She was released 15 years later after a campaign led by Austrian writers, intellectuals, journalists, celebrities and politicians. Among them were two future Nobel Prize winners in literature: Elfriede Jelinek and Gunther Grass. These men and women of thought They maintained that the books Unterweger had written in his cell showed his transformation, his rehabilitation. The Radical Chic (as Tom Wolfe once called them) were very important, indeed essential, for him to leave prison.
His liberation was celebrated with a mobilization, cheers and many newspaper columns.
From that moment on Jack Unterweger began a dizzying double career: as a celebrity and as a serial killer.
In general, serial killers are not international, they usually kill in the same place. Unterweger, taking advantage of the possibilities offered by his new star status and pampered by the intelligentsia, killed in four different countries: Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and the United States.
His childhood was hard. He was always in contact with crimeHis mother worked as a prostitute and was arrested several times for various crimes. After the woman was sentenced to several years, Jack had to go live with his grandfather. The man was no better: a pimp, with a long criminal record, a serial abuser of women, a cattle thief. Jack left his grandfather’s house and lived on the street. From the age of 16 to 24, Jack was arrested 16 times. It covered a good part of the penal code: theft, injuries, sexual assaults. Until At 24 he was arrested for the murder of a woman who was engaged in prostitutionThe victim was Margaret Schäfer, who was 18 years old. She was found naked in a vacant lot; she had been severely beaten: she had marks on her buttocks, her arms, her chest. The murderer had strangled her with a bra. The body was found in a forest, covered with a thick layer of leaves.
It took almost a year for police to discover that Jack Unterweger was the killer. Once he was stopped, the job became easier. Jack confessed. The trial was swift; the defendant cried silently at each hearing. He seemed remorseful. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of review of the sentence after the first 15 years.
In prison, Jack learned to read and write. Little by little he began to produce texts. First some poems; then, children’s stories. He continued with stories and plays. Until he managed to publish his memoir Purgatory: Report of a Guilty Man, the story of his wild and marginal life and the transformation behind bars that came with literature.
The book became a boom in Austria. Sales skyrocketed and many writers and intellectuals came out to praise the stark account of Jack’s downfall. And they believed in their redemption.
It is not known whose idea it was. But the truth is that in a few weeks Dozens of Austrian intellectuals and artists began to pressure the authorities to have Unterweger released. The Austrian president, the one who could constitutionally grant the pardon, bought some time by saying that the sentence was not reviewable until the 15 years of detention were completed. A few months later, after that deadline, the pressure became unbearable.
The most respected voices in the country were calling for the release of the prisoner who had become a renowned writer. The besieged president signed the reduced sentence. Jack Unterweger was immediately released.
They interviewed him and hired him as a journalist. Until He even had his own television show. It was a permanent source of consultation every time crime was discussed or when a relevant police case appeared.
When a woman was found dead in a vacant lot in late 1990, covered with broken branches, naked, beaten and strangled with a bra, no one doubted him. Even though the murder bore his distinctive marks (the bra strangling the victim would become his signature) he was not put on the list of suspects. On the contrary: they sent him to cover the incident. He even interviewed the police chief and they discussed the most significant details of the case together.
He himself covered his own crimes in the press.
Months later he traveled to the United States as a special envoy for one of the many media outlets that had hired him.
In the middle of his triumphant journey, he arrived in Los Angeles. He covered the Gay Pride parade, appeared as an expert on police cases and He boldly sought to interview Cher. He was encouraged to advise the Californian police on how to prevent violent crimes or how to find murderers on the run. Meanwhile, he killed three prostitutes.
Both his American and European crimes were very similar. He would hire a prostitute, they would talk, he would convince her to have sex with her hands or handcuffs tied, they would have violent but consensual sex, he would take them to a large place (a parking lot, an open field, a forest), he would threaten them with death and let them escape a few meters: naked, with their hands tied, often gagged, they would not get far. He would chase them while hitting them on the butt and back – with stilettos, wood or iron – until they were dead. He caught up with them and strangled them, preferably using the victims’ bras. He would hide the corpse under branches or dry leaves and leave the place.
An investigator suspected him. When he was notified that the police were looking for him, he fled to Canada.. The news crossed the ocean. The Austrian police saw the obvious: these murders of women were too similar to have different perpetrators. In their absence, Unterweger’s home was raided. They found knives, ropes and other evidence. In his car they found hairs that after being analyzed by forensics were determined to belong to three of the victims.
A few weeks later, Jack returned clandestinely to the United States. They arrested him and extradited him to Austria. There he was tried for 11 murders.
Jack Unterweger had become the archetype of recovery; Radical Chic They wanted to see in him the symbol of recovery, of someone who overcame his original problems, who conquered destiny, who overcame family adversities and a problematic childhood and adolescence. It was the poster of something they wanted to see, something they imagined, but that did not exist in reality.
One thing that must be acknowledged is that Unterweger’s trait made things easier: his extreme narcissism produced a chameleon-like personality who managed to get what he wanted from his interlocutor, a master of manipulation. The most extreme case could be that of the parents of his first victim: from prison, Unterweger got them to contribute funds to finance his education.
He was especially effective with women. When the court convicted him for the second time and found him guilty of more than a dozen murders, At the exit of the room there were more than twenty women (girlfriends, lovers, candidates, platonic relationships, admirers) who were crying because they believed that an injustice was being done to Jack and they continued to claim his innocence.
Writers, it is known, are not good at analyzing reality.especially the current situation. Things in real life happen too quickly and the work of those who write is slow, mediated by time and distance. Borges already said it when he was asked if he was intelligent: “If you give me a few years to think, I am intelligent. If you ask me immediate questions, like yours, I am rather stupid.”
Another characteristic that often affects the judgment of writers – including intellectuals, actors and other artistic fields – is the excessive importance they give to their own work and their opinions. Many are convinced that the release of their next book will change the world.a world, on the other hand, that is constantly indebted to them.
And since those of us who write overvalue our work, many believed that Unterweger’s ability to write, his good looks, and his calm, soft speech were irrefutable proof that he had reformed, that it was an absolute injustice to leave him in prison. They were convinced that the fact of having written a good book, made him worthy of freedom. They were wrong.
Almost none of those who strongly requested his release expressed regret. when it was shown that after leaving he had become a ruthless serial killer.
One more thing: some recent research casts doubt on whether Unterweger was the author of the books he signed.
It wasn’t the first time it happened. A few years before, Norman Mailer had led a crusade to have Jack Henry Abbott, a long-serving convict, released after publishing emotional memoirs of a criminal. Mailer and his obstinacy achieved the objective. A month and a half after obtaining a pardon and being free, Abbott stabbed a waiter at a New York bar twenty timesHe returned to prison and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the new murder. A decade later he committed suicide in his cell. No writer visited him again or prayed for him.
A renowned psychiatrist concluded about the Austrian criminal: “This case shows that If you educate a psychopath, what you will get is an enlightened psychopath and not much more.”
Jack Unterweger was found guilty of each of the crimes for which he was charged and He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release. The illustrated serial killer returned to prison.
It didn’t last long. The first night, June 29, 1994, 30 years ago, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.
Not having a bra on hand, she used the cord that served as a trouser belt and a sheet.
