Johann "Jack" Unterweger (16 August 1950 – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who committed at least twelve murders in Austria, West Germany, Czechoslovakia and the United States.
Initially convicted in 1976 of a single murder, Unterweger began to write extensively while in prison. His work gained the attention of Austrian intellectuals, who interpreted it as evidence of his supposed rehabilitation. After significant lobbying, Unterweger was released on parole in 1990. Upon his release, he became a minor celebrity and worked as a playwright and journalist, but within months he resumed his killing spree. Unterweger hanged himself in prison after being convicted of nine more murders in June 1994.
Early life Unterweger was born in Judenburg, Styria, in Austria, to Theresia Unterweger, a barmaid and waitress from Klagenfurt. Theresia was a petty criminal who was jailed several times at for fraud, trespassing, theft, forgery and embezzlement, having received early release due to her pregnancy. Theresia had been on her way to Graz by car when she went into labour. Unterweger claimed in interviews and his autobiography that his mother was occasionally engaged in prostitution, but Austrian judicial records do not list any convictions or arrests for prostitution. His mother stated that Unterweger invented the allegation to slander her and "make his book sell better".
The father's identity was not given in the birth record. Theresia claimed that Unterweger's father was Jack Becker, a U.S. Army soldier from New Jersey whom she had met in 1949 during his station in Trieste, later listing "Jack Bäcker" as her son's father in legal guardianship papers. His mother chose the nickname "Jack" for her son this way, but he was more frequently called "Hansi" during his childhood.
In January 1951, less than a year after Unterweger's birth, Theresia was imprisoned in Salzburg for a previous fraud conviction, leading to her son being given into the care of a foster mother in Plainfeld for a year. In February 1952, Unterweger was put into custody of his grandfather, Ferdinand Wieser, and his life partner Maria Springer, with whom he was to remain until the age of eight. Unterweger described Wieser as a philandering alcoholic and reputed "rough fellow" who regularly used his grandson to help him steal farm animals. Unterweger also alleged that his grandfather often brought home female strangers and forced Unterweger to watch the pair have sex. Government records, neighbours, and relatives, including Springer's two adult children who lived with the couple in the beginning, contradicted this characterization, saying that Unterweger was cared for and that neither Wieser or Springer drank excessively. Similarly, it was pointed out that Wieser did not go out regularly due to poor health, suffering from a partial facial paralysis, near-blindness and deafness of the left ear, as well as emphysema and bronchitis. The family lived in a wooden lodge in the Ortschaft , Carinthia. Springer claimed that Unterweger had a tendency to misuse Wieser's trust and had pit Wieser against Springer by "tattletaling" on her.
In March 1953, Theresia married American soldier Donald van Blarcom. The same year, she began paying monthly child support of 100 schilling. Unterweger stated that after seeing a picture of his new stepfather, he began doubting his mother's initial claim and that he believed van Blarcom was also his biological father due to their physical resemblance.
In June 1958, Springer broke up with Wieser and as he was too infirm to care for his grandson alone, Unterweger's great-aunt Juliana Wieser briefly became his legal guardian, living with her in nearby Straßburg for a few months. During this time, Unterweger claimed that he witnessed his best friend Klaus get run over by a road roller. The local gendarmerie confirmed that a similar incident had occurred in the same timeframe, when a six-year-old boy named Helmut Salzer was fatally crushed under the wheel of an excavator, but according to Unterweger's cousin Martha Lupar, he did not know Salzer, nor was he present during the boy's death. In April 1959, Unterweger was again taken into foster care and put into the custody of the Drofenik family in Liebenfels. Between 1962 and 1965, Unterweger was brought up in an Evangelical reform school in Treffen. He dropped out of school in 1965 and took an apprenticeship as an assistant hotel waiter in St. Veit an der Glan, a position he held for six months before being fired. His probation officer was informed by a youth welfare employee that Unterweger was dangerous and known to harass girls at his former school. Throughout 1966, Unterweger entered several other hotel waiter apprenticeships in St. Anton, Mondsee, and Bad Hofgastein, but left each one after a few months.
Unterweger's first conviction was in November 1966, after he stole a total of 527 schilling from two hotel guests at work. He was sentenced to three days jail with a subsequent 13-month stay at the , a federal juvenile detention facility, in Vienna's quarter for rehabilitation. After his release in December 1967, Unterweger continued to work as a waiter at various hotels, often being dismissed for workplace theft. Unterweger claimed that he joined a boxing club in St. Veit, where he supposedly had a 6-0 match record before being ousted after being falsely accused of stealing funds. Carinthia boxing federation president Karl Blaha and St. Veit Box Club chairman Willibald Piketz denied Unterweger's claims, saying he was never a member and that there was no record of either his fights or a theft linked to him. When Unterweger turned 18, the regional court sent a letter to his mother, informing her that they would not provide further social services to Unterweger as "educational measures are unlikely to be successful". From this point on, Unterweger drifted through Austria and worked occasional labour jobs.
First offences Between 1966 and 1974, Unterweger was convicted sixteen times. His offences were mostly for theft and burglary, but throughout the early 1970s, the crimes also included pimping and sexual assault, as well as several counts of physical assault.
Between 1968 and 1969, Unterweger served two sentences for theft, totalling ten months. In summer 1969, he was sentenced to four months imprisonment for burglary at a kiosk. In 1970, Unterweger was sentenced to seven months imprisonment for the kidnapping a minor from her legal guardians and theft, with the sentence extended by three months after he sent a threatening letter to a woman from prison.
On 13 May 1971, in Salzburg, Unterweger lured sex worker Monika H. into his car, then drove her to the moors outside of the city. Inside the vehicle, Unterweger hit H. in the back of the head with a metal rod, stripped her naked, tied her up with underwear and sodomized her with the rod while masturbating. H. alerted passersby of the rape after which Unterweger was arrested. While jailed, Unterweger attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills, for which he was transferred to a psychiatric unit and released without returning to police custody. Later sources claim that the rape occurred in 1974 and that the victim was a teenage student named Daphne. In August 1971, Unterweger crossed into West Germany, but was detained for three weeks in October of the same year and deported back to Austria, where he spent fifteen months imprisoned for multiple counts of vehicle theft.
On 1 April 1973, 23-year-old Yugoslavian national Marica Horvath was found murdered in a lake of the Salzach near Salzburg. She had been bound and gagged with pantyhose and a distinct necktie. The same month, Unterweger was arrested on suspicion of the murder, as the tie had been bought in Wels, where he lived at the time. There was no physical evidence against him, however, and his underage girlfriend at the time gave a false alibi, due to which the investigation was dropped. August Schenner, the lead officer in the homicide case, noted that Horvath's murder bore striking similarities to Unterweger's modus operandi. Schenner would unsuccessfully attempt to reopen the case to convict Unterweger of another murder in 1983 and kept in touch with Vienna's police department during their investigation into Unterweger during his serial murders in 1992.
On 22 October 1973, Unterweger picked nurse Maria W. as a hitchhiker in Kitzbühel. Unterweger drove to Oberndorf, claiming he had to run an errand there and when the two were headed back to the main road, Unterweger abruptly braked the vehicle and began punching Maria W. while attempting to rape her. W. broke free of his grasp and fled into the woods while screaming for help. After another physical struggle, Unterweger relented and agreed to drive her to her parents back in Kitzbühel, convincing her to not press charges on the way over. W. relayed the actual sequence of events while being treated at her hospital in St. Johann and alerted the authorities on 20 November 1973. During police interrogation, Unterweger admitted to beating W., but claimed that he had undressed her in preparation for consensual sex and that most of her and his own injuries were the result of a car crash.
Shortly after again being convicted of theft in March 1974, Unterweger entered an abusive two-week relationship with Elisabeth L. in Rohrbach. He beat and sexually assaulted L., keeping her from speaking out under threat of abducting her child and cutting the child's face with razor blades. In July 1974, Unterweger physically assaulted two women, with one victim losing an incisor. The same month, Unterweger met Anneliese E. and moved to Switzerland with her, working as a disc jockey and waiter. There, the couple met West German national Barbara Scholz, who also became Unterweger's girlfriend, but shortly after Scholz was deported back to Germany, Unterweger and Anneliese E. followed suit in November 1974. Scholz and E. were both underage and financed Unterweger's lifestyle through prostitution alongside other teenaged girls.
First murder conviction On the evening of 11 December 1974, Unterweger and Scholz burgled the home of Scholz's parents in Ewersbach, when 18-year-old Margret Schäfer, a friend of Scholz, caught them in the act. They convinced Schäfer to keep quiet and accompany them in the car. After Scholz stole the equivalent of 100 schilling from an acquaintance's apartment, the group reached a parking lot, where Unterweger overpowered Schäfer, tied her up and stole her wallet, promising to release her outside of town. Unterweger stopped at the forest near Herborn and leaving Scholz in the car, Unterweger marched Schäfer into the treeline. Unterweger beat her several times with an iron bar, tied her up with her pantyhose, raped her with the weapon and manually strangled Schäfer to death. After covering the body with dirt and leaves, Unterweger tied Schäfer's bra around her neck post-mortem to frame the killing as solely sexually motivated.