A Voice from Prison
Unterweger had signed up for writing courses, and was soon editing a prison newspaper and literary review. Eventually he was writing poems, short stories, and plays that won him some attention in the outside world. In 1984, his prison autobiography,
Fegefeuer
(Purgatory), was a bestseller and his rage-filled tale “Endstation Zuchthaus” (Terminus Prison) won a prestigious literary prize. In his writings, he admitted that by the time he had committed the murder that sent him to prison for life, he had fifteen prior convictions for such crimes as rape and burglary. “I wielded my steel rod among prostitutes in Hamburg, Munich and Marseilles,” he wrote. “I had enemies and I conquered them through my inner hatred.”
His memoir begins with a tone of existential despair. “My sweaty hands were bound behind my back,” he wrote in
Fegefeuer,
“with steel chains snapped around my wrists. The hard pressure on my legs and back makes me realize that my only escape is to end it. I lay awake, removed from the liberating unconsciousness of the sheep. Bathed in shit, trembling. My miserable small dreams are a daily reminder. Anxiously I stare into the unknown darkness of the still night outside. There’s security in darkness. I try to divert my thoughts from wondering about the time. I ask only for the immediate moment, for in that lies my strength. It’s still night, already late into the night, getting closer to morning.”
Unterweger gave the impression that he was himself a victim, and he lied about his rough life. He falsely claimed his mother and her sister had been prostitutes, that an aunt (who didn’t even exist) had been murdered, and that he’d been forced to live with an abusive, alcoholic grandfather. (Unterweger’s stepsister insisted that this was inaccurate.) Critics and prison reformers embraced his supposed honesty and hailed him as an example of how art can redeem a criminal. Journalists contacted him for interviews and it wasn’t long before support swelled among café intellectuals—
Literarniks
—to set him free. It seemed clear from his ideas and ability to write that he could contribute to the betterment of society. In fact, a prominent sex researcher said that Unterweger was remorseful, understood his past actions, and could keep himself from relapsing.
On May 23, 1990, just before his fortieth birthday, he won parole. He was granted a generous government subsidy to assist him in making the transition from prison to the world. “That life is over now,” he told the press. “Let’s get on with the new.” What he meant was that he was ready to kill again.
In his new life, Unterweger became the darling of Viennese intellectuals. He was much in demand, attending book launches, literary soirees, and opening nights.
Fegefeuer
was made into a movie, and the former convict was a frequent guest on talk shows. A traveling theater troupe presented his plays, inviting him to the openings, where he presented himself as a suave and stylish figure in white suits, silk shirts, and gold chains. He purchased several flashy cars, and whenever he showed up in Vienna’s trendy champagne bars, he charmed the women.
Unterweger was good at sniffing out stories that the public craved to read. It wasn’t long before someone thought he ought to be writing about murder, since he knew that subject firsthand, so he avidly pursued such cases, wrote about them, and talked about them on television. Regarding the recent string of prostitute murders, he hounded investigators in print about their failure to arrest someone. He interviewed prostitutes in the streets, wrote forcefully about “the Courier,” and alerted the public that, contrary to what the police said, their worst fears were true: Austria had a serial killer.
Clandestine Investigation
Eventually, investigators began to view him as a suspect, given his background. He had started early, stealing cars and breaking into businesses. He seemed to despise prostitutes and had once forced a young woman into acts of prostitution and taken her money—a way to degrade her. But their first task was to ensure that it was physically possible for Unterweger to commit any of the crimes.
They instituted a discreet surveillance of him, but he did not act in a suspicious manner. He went about his business, meeting literary colleagues and dining with various women. Then on June 11, 1991, three days into the surveillance, he flew to Los Angeles to write a series of freelance articles about crime in that city for an Austrian magazine.
During the five weeks that Unterweger was in Los Angeles, the murders in Austria stopped. Dr. Ernst Geiger, the number two man in the Austrian Federal Police and the most experienced detective on the force, took charge of the investigation. He knew he had to build a clear case against Unterweger or eliminate him and move on, because the public would turn on the police if they falsely accused such a popular figure. Through credit-card receipts at hotels, restaurants, and rental-car agencies, investigators pieced together Unterweger’s movements. They placed him in Graz in October when Brunhilde Masser was murdered and again in March when Elfriede Schrempf disappeared. He was in Bregenz in December when Heidemarie Hammerer was taken, and a witness said that Unterweger resembled the man with whom Hammerer was last seen. On that night, this witness said, the man had worn a brown leather jacket and red knit scarf. The police listed these items on a warrant.
They also determined that Unterweger had been in Prague the previous September. Contacting authorities there, they learned that his visit had coincided with the unsolved murder of Blanka Bockova, and during the times when the four victims were abducted in Vienna, Unterweger was there as well. They had enough evidence to warrant an interview with the famous writer.
On October 22, 1991, officers of the Criminal Investigation Bureau in Vienna questioned Unterweger about the Austrian murders. The lead interviewer already knew his suspect, because as a journalist, Unterweger had questioned
him
about the series of murders for an article. There was the chance that the bureau’s interest in him might pressure him to confess, but while he admitted seeing hookers, he denied knowing any of the victims. Although Unterweger had no alibis, investigators had no evidence, so they had to give up.
In retaliation, Unterweger wrote more articles about the mishandling of the investigation. Many of his new cronies supported him, taking up the cause that he was being targeted and persecuted.
Around this time, the missing Regina Prem’s husband and son, who had unlisted numbers, received telephone calls from a man who claimed to be her killer. He accurately described what she was wearing the night she disappeared. He was her executioner, he said, and God had ordered him to do it. She had been left in “a place of sacrifice” with her face “turned toward hell.” He also said, “I gave eleven of them the punishment they deserved.” Three months later, in January 1992, Prem’s husband found five empty cigarette packs of the brand that she preferred rolled up in his mailbox. Among these packs was a passport photo that Regina had carried of her son.
Geiger questioned Austrian prostitutes, who described Unterweger’s desire that they wear handcuffs during sex. That was consistent enough with the killer, so the police continued their surveillance. Geiger also tracked down the BMW that Unterweger had purchased upon his release from prison. He’d replaced it with a VW Passat, but its new owner allowed the police to go through it. They found a hair fragment, which might or might not help, but which they sent for analysis.
In February 1992, the Interior Ministry created a special commission for further investigation, which involved investigators from Vienna, Graz, and lower Austria, with Geiger leading it. He was determined to rearrest Unterweger and hoped for useful results from the lab analysis.
Manfred Hochmeister, at the Institut für Rechtsmedizin in Berne, Switzerland, found sufficient skin on the root of the hair shaft from the car to perform a DNA analysis using the PCR technique. They compared it to the DNA of each of the victims and found that it matched the first victim, Blanka Bockova, from Prague. That placed the strangled woman with Jack Unterweger, since he had driven the car at the time, and made it possible for police to get a warrant to search Unterweger’s apartment in Vienna.
When investigators arrived, he was not at home, but their hunch about him inspired a comprehensive search. They discovered a menu and receipts from a seafood restaurant in Malibu, California, as well as photographs of Unterweger posing with female members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Opening a closet, they received a nice surprise: a brown leather jacket and red knit scarf, which they seized.
Geiger contacted the LAPD to ask about unsolved murders in the city and discovered that they were investigating three seemingly linked murders of prostitutes. Geiger pressed for details: all had been left out in the open, strangled with their bras, and killed during the time when Unterweger had been in the city. Shannon Exley, thirty-five, was found on June 20, 1991, on a hill near the Pomona Freeway in the Boyle Heights area; on June 30, Irene Rodriguez was dumped on pavement on First and Myers streets in Boyle Heights; and then twenty-six-year-old Peggi Jean Booth (aka Sherri Ann Long) was strangled and left in brushland on Corral Canyon Road in the Malibu Hills. Her body was discovered on July 10.
Geiger mentioned Unterweger being there and learned that the L.A. cops were familiar with him. He had introduced himself as a European journalist and said he was working on an article about prostitution in L.A., so he needed to know where these women might be found. Using the receipts recovered at Unterweger’s apartment, Geiger realized that the places where each victim was last seen alive were near one of the seedy, twenty-five-dollar-a-night hotels in which Unterweger had stayed. Now, for the first time, the LAPD had a viable suspect for their serial killings and Geiger had even more supporting information for his own case. He also found the two articles that Unterweger had published upon his return from California. “Real life in L.A.,” Unterweger had written, “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.”
In Switzerland, analysts at the University of Berne had finished their examination of the leather jacket and red scarf from Unterweger’s apartment. Fibers from these items were consistent with those found on the body of Heidemarie Hammerer. No one could definitely identify the scarf as the source of the evidence, but it could not be eliminated either, and it allowed Geiger to obtain an arrest warrant. Once again, when the police arrived at Unterweger’s apartment, he was gone—off on a holiday with his girlfriend, Bianca Mrak, a pretty eighteen-year-old who had met him in a wine bar where she worked as a waitress.
Meanwhile, Unterweger’s friends told him that the police were seeking information about him, so he fled the country, with Bianca in tow. The couple ended up in South Beach. From there, Unterweger called Austrian papers to insist that he was being framed and asked his friends for support. The authorities learned that Bianca’s mother was sending money via wire transfers, so they contacted her to tell her their suspicions about the man who was with her daughter. She agreed to help.
Unterweger offered a deal: he promised to return and answer questions if the arrest warrants were withdrawn. He wrote a letter in his defense to Austrian officials, which he wanted published in newspapers so the public would read his claim and decide for themselves about his innocence. “My flight was and is no confession,” he insisted. “It is a different type of despair.” He went on to point out that there was no way to prove anything against him. “I was doing well,” he wrote, “perhaps too good—and fate decided to punish me once more for my debt from the past. But in the moment, I still have something to say. If a fair, neutral official of justice is invited to determine that the warrant against me is unjust, I am ready to place myself at this person’s disposal.”
One magazine,
Erfolg,
offered him a substantial fee for the exclusive story of his escape. He agreed to do it, happy for both the money and the publicity, and gave its editors an address. They passed this along to Geiger.
To everyone, Unterweger made the same claim: he had an alibi for every one of the murders. The police were giving out a “controlled history.” They had singled him out as a scapegoat because they were upset over his parole and his published criticism of them, and were intent on sending him back to prison. Until he could get a fair hearing, he said, he would remain on the run.
Bianca wired her mother to send cash, providing a Miami address, and Mrs. Mrak informed the police. (By some accounts, the editor of
Erfolg
only pretended to hire him so that he would go to the money-exchange office and into the hands of police.) The information was conveyed to Interpol, which alerted U.S. officials. The U.S. marshals took it from there. They arrested Unterweger, while an agent accompanied Bianca to the place where she and Unterweger were staying. A search of their rooms turned up Unterweger’s travel journal, which indicated that he was contemplating murdering Bianca.
Unterweger was detained in order to await extradition, but it was unclear whether he was going to California or to Austria. Although LAPD detectives Fred Miller and Jim Harper arrived to question him, it was deemed best to turn him over to his native country. To strengthen their own case, Miller and Harper obtained a search warrant for tissue samples, so they drew Unterweger’s blood and took hair samples and swabs of saliva for DNA testing. His DNA matched that found in semen from one of their victims, but she also had semen from six other men, so this case was weak. Unfortunately, there had been no discharge in or on the other two prostitutes.
The detectives told Unterweger that in California he faced the possibility of the gas chamber, so he quickly agreed to be deported. He had Austrian public opinion on his side, and the actual physical evidence the police had there was flimsy. He believed he could beat the rap. In a fairly good mood, he was sent back to Austria on May 28, 1992.