Jack Unterweger | Serial Killer
Jack Unterweger
Born: 08-16-1950
Vienna Woods Killer
Australian Serial Killer
Crime Spree: 1974; 1990–1992
Death: 06-29-1994
Jack Unterweger
A native of Styria, in southeastern Austria, Johann ‘Jack’ Unterweger was the illegitimate son of an American soldier and an Austrian prostitute. Some accounts state that the girl was a teenage bartender and waitress, rather than a sex worker, but was none the less in frequent trouble with the law herself. His father was not involved at all and never met his son.
Jack was born on August 16, 1950, shortly after his mother was released from prison on a fraud charge. He was raised early among hookers and pimps, growing up wild with an unpredictable temper. His young mother was unable, or inwilling, to take care of him so he was eventualy sent to live with his grandfather.
Starting Young
Jack was a chronic truant by age nine and logged his first arrest at 16 for assaulting a prostitute. Over the next nine years, he accumulated 16 convictions, mostly for sexual attacks on women, and spent all but 12 months of that time behind bars. Briefly freed in 1976, he was charged with murder after he bludgeoned another streetwalker with an iron bar, then strangled her with her own bra. In court, he admitted his crime, telling the judge, “l envisioned my mother in front of me and I killed her.”
Jack was sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole in 15 years for the woman’s death and the assault of four other women. Unterweger took it in stride and began reinventing himself as an author of “important” literature. Over the next 14 years, he produced various poems, plays, short stories, and an autobiography that made him the toast of Viennese café society. Influential Austrians petitioned the government for his release, and the “rehabilitated” killer was paroled on May 23, 1990.
“That life is over now,” he told the press. “Let’s get on with the new.”
The New Jack Unterweger
Overnight, Jack Unterweger became a fixture on television talk shows, posing as a model of prison rehabilitation, enjoying most-favored-guest status at high-society cocktail parties.
Money follows celebrity, and Jack Unterweger sported designer clothes, drove a Ford Mustang with the license tag reading “Jack 1,” and acquired a blond girlfriend the same age as his last victim.
Unfortunately, Jack’s “new life” was a complete charade. Austrian police reported that Unterweger killed at least six prostitutes within his first 12 months of freedom.
In June 1991, Jack got a chance to take his show on the road. An Austrian magazine commissioned him to write about crime in Los Angeles. Winging off to L.A. with his lover, Unterweger wangled several ride-alongs with local police. He wrote a couple of articles, focusing primarily on Hollywood prostitutes, but Jack Unterweger also had a more personal interest in his subject.
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Hiding In Plain Sight
Hiding in Plain Sight is the chilling account of serial killer Jack Unterweger, one of the most clever, manipulative predators of the twentieth century, and one of the most dangerous. (Amazon)
The Series features 6 True Crime Quickies for your reading pleasure:
The Killings of Jack Unterweger
Jack Unterweger is accused of killing 10 to 12 sex workers on two continents. He usually killed them in the same way. He would complete his deed by strangling them with their bra straps and leaving them for dead in the woods. He was dubbed ‘The Vienna Woods Killer’ due to the fact that many of his victims were murdered and dumped in wooded areas.
His first victim, 35-year-old Shannon Exley, was found in Boyle Heights on June 20th. Number two, 33-year-old Irene Rodriguez, was found in the same neighborhood 10 days later. Peggy Booth, age 26, was found dead in a Malibu canyon on July 10th. All three women were hookers, all three had been savagely beaten before they were strangled with their own bras, and all three bodies were sexually violated with tree branches. (Some accounts refer vaguely to a fourth, unnamed victim in San Diego, but no charges were ever filed in that case.)
Jack Unterweger was safely back in Austria by the time Interpol officials recognized descriptions of the L.A. killer’s modus operandi in February of 1992. An Austrian SWAT team raided Unterwegers Vienna apartment, but their suspect was already gone, embarked with his teenage lover on a jaunt that would take them through Switzerland, France, and Canada and back once more to the United States.
Along the way, he paused for telephone calls to the Austrian media, alternately taunting police and proclaiming his innocence. A trail of credit card receipts led man-hunters to Miami, Florida, where Jack Unterweger was captured without resistance.
Jack Unterweger Back In Jail
Jack Unterweger was accused of killing 11 prostitutes since his release from prison/ Six in Austria, three in Los Angeles and two more in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs didn’t want him, but Austria and the United States argued over jurisdiction, his homeland winning out when Austrian officials agreed to try Unterweger for five foreign murders as well as the six committed on their own soil. Extradition was thereby approved and Los Angeles authorities packed up their forensic evidence for shipment across the Atlantic.
Back home in Graz, Jack Unterweger was indicted on 11 murder counts in August of 1992, but legal maneuvers delayed his trial for nearly two years.
The proceedings finally began on April 20, 1994, and lasted for two months, including testimony by FBI experts imported from Quantico, Virginia.
Jack Unterweger seemed confident throughout the trial, never failing to smile for the cameras, but evidence was mounting up against him. A bomb blast at the courthouse failed to disrupt jury deliberations on June 28th, and Unterweger was convicted that afternoon on nine murder counts and acquitted of two others.
The judge promptly sentenced him to life imprisonment in maximum security, but Jack Unterweger had the last laugh. At 3:40 A.M. on June 29, jailers found him hanging from a curtain rod in his cell, the drawstring from his sweatpants looped around his neck. Several audio cassettes were recovered from his cell, but their content has never been divulged.
source: murderpedia | en.wikipedia.org | biography.com | ranker.com
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