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THE LADYKILLER

This might not be global news, but Austria’s most notorious serial killer Jack Unterweger died. He committed suicide in his cell right after he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the court. he chose to hang himself using the same knot he strangled...

This might not be global news, but Austria's most notorious serial killer Jack Unterweger died. He committed suicide in his cell right after he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the court. Over here this is as bad as it can get – it's not like you will get raped by your fellow inmates or fried to death on an electric chair. Even though Jack indeed would have faced an existence with a relatively harsh retrenchment of freedom he could have had the balls to get it over with after he brutally strangled at least 12 women. But he chose to hang himself using the same knot he strangled his victims with. This famous little detail is the first thing you will hear when some bug-eyed Austrian academic tells you the whole story and finishes with a paean of praise on how manipulative, charming and clever Unterweger was. Oh, that Jack! Under the Austrian law he is technically innocent, even though found guilty, because he died before the verdict was applied. He fooled the whole country by pretending to be a resocialized murderer with a penchant for poetry and the people loved it and love it still – especially women. Let's take a look at the types he attracted.

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FEMALE INTELLECTUALS

In his youth Unterweger had been prosecuted several times for raping, assaulting hookers, robbing, and generally being a huckster. It reached a peak when Unterweger strangled his girlfriend's friend and was given a verdict of life in prison. In jail he started educating himself, reading books, and writing an autobiography called

Purgatory

(

Fegefeuer oder die Reise ins Zuchthaus

). The book was one of those bestsellers everybody talks about but nobody bothered reading. Therefore all the radio stations and articles cited the first three pages only, which is fine. After reading the opening break that goes something like "And the rain poured down in strings from the sky…" you should feel a very natural reluctance anyway. In the book Unterweger tries to capture readers' sympathy by desperately using all of his mediocre writing skills. So his grandfather was an abusive alcoholic, his mother a prostitute, the weather sucked, he had only one pair of Lederhosen, the girl was mean, he was so lonely in jail, on and on – he wasn't even shy about lamenting his sex-deficit. In the end he killed an 18-year-old and all he blabs on for 200 pages is how badly life treated him and how endlessly sorry he feels for himself, haunted by his nightmares and bad conscience. If his writing or his literary talent were remotely noteworthy he wouldn't have wasted it on trying to explain himself, appearing likable, and mimicking Austria's literary fads of the early 80s. He even used the lower case letters trick. That's low. That and his limitless egocentricity, paired with a ridiculous clothing style, must have made him the darling of literary mastermind Elfride Jelinek. No wonder, as these are her signature qualities, developed to extensively explain her inner life to the public. No one outside of Austria would ever pay attention to that subjective, pretentious crap. But birds of a feather flock together, and so Jelinek along with a bunch of other intellectuals from the socialist party signed petitions like mad to get Unterweger freed. They found their personal Jesus. He tricked them all in such an obvious way. Before he became a media darling there was this almost ingenious incident with the dumb journalist. This story is too good to be true – one of my Jack Unterweger favorites! When he was still in prison this journalist visited him almost on a daily basis to write an article about his life. She was mesmerized by the charming murderer. He allegedly wrote her a little poem called "A love poem for Death." I can imagine him slipping it through the bars, looking up at her and then saying "Sonja, I wrote this for you, so you can understand my feelings." Sonja loved it and saw it as her duty to free this tortured soul from prison with the help of Vienna's intellectual scene. What her well-read friends must have missed is that this poem is originally by Hermann Hesse. Jack was smart enough to change the title though.

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After he got out of jail – all the sweet-talking couldn't save him from the statutory minimum of 15 years – the smart elite dragged him from one TV show to another. He was the socialists' prime example of resocialization and that in the end deep down everybody is a good person. Unterweger embodied the fundaments of their political beliefs. His literary attempts made perfect sense in their world of gallery openings, readings, red wine, refined humor, public TV, and parched women. Someone that skillful, talented, well-mannered, and eloquent wouldn't possibly be capable of rape and murder. When they were proven wrong, one journalist of the liberal daily newspaper

Der Standard

wrote in final despair: "Please not Unterweger!" The obnoxious hoodlum that Unterweger obviously was took a big dump on humanity, kindness, and trust.

TEENAGE GIRLS

In the two years that Unterweger enjoyed his life as a free man and darling of the media, he allegedly had sex with 150 women, he told his psychiatrist later. He did the best he could and somehow managed to trick a 17-year-old, relatively attractive schoolgirl with a big nose and big thighs into a relationship with him. At that time he was 38, had false teeth, and was dressed up like a pimp. Obviously nobody found this disturbing, for he still appeared on TV regularly and seemed to be a respectable guest. This girl Bianca was the girlfriend of a resocialized murderer and minor celebrity who had "Make Love Not War" tattooed on his chest. She more or less worked voluntarily in dubious clubs in Austria and Switzerland. He would often vanish for a couple of days and then come back for the money. Of course it turns out that she had no idea that he was out strangling her colleagues. And you know what, I believe her. That girl must have been blind and deaf anyway; she chose to be with this guy in the first place. She later stated in interviews that she had a hard time being called a slut by random people on the streets after the trial. Why the hell did she then appear in a red, skintight number on the cover of Austria's biggest newspaper

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Die Krone

in the tackiest pose you could imagine? Later, Bianca had the guts to celebrate her 19th birthday in a brothel, inviting pimps, old men and weird columnists.

PROSTITUTES

Imagine you are a prostitute in some part of Upper Austria, Styria, or let's say Czechoslovakia – or whatever you call it now (there you go Eastern Bloc, feel included – you're welcome). You are wearing a red suede jacket, a white mini skirt, and white heels. It is close to midnight and you are freezing your ass off on a Sunday on some road. Up comes a '72 white Mustang with cherry red interior. The driver is the cheesy thug type with gold chains, tattoos on his chest and a long leather coat. He asks you if you would like to follow him to a place far away, park the car, and go deep into some creepy woods where no hikers or joggers ever pass to have sexual intercourse with him. He must have somehow seen that you are desperately craving the next bump of Rohypnol, or worse even, a sip of detergent. There is no other good reason why you would follow that shady asshole more than half a mile away from your trusted parking lot. You must have never watched TV or even owned a book. The only reason why you would go in that creepy forest is that you are the most naïve person or simply the most desperate junkie, growing up in an environment where no adult would ever talk to you. Wait, that really could be the case. If it is I feel sorry – otherwise not. Of course he was charming and somewhat handsome, but hookers aren't supposed to fall for that. That's their job. He must have told them that he understands how hard their life is (he basically told everybody a blatant lie of how his aunt was a prostitute), promised to marry them, and save them from their shitty existence. At this point all people who still have a soft spot for the sympathetic murderer can go fuck themselves. I really don't know what magic he worked on those women. Maybe he was a hypnotist or a trained Jedi. It otherwise can't be explained how a tacky guy with an obvious douchebag attitude, merely 5"5' tall, could talk them into literally leaping into the dark. Unless a wise man with a hat (who puts Luke Perry by your side) forces you, there is no way you should ever do that, especially if you earn your living as a prostitute. Nevertheless, I can see how Hollywood might want to turn his life into a movie, or maybe a play. Who would play the leading role? My guess is Sean Penn.

Illustrations by Ben Ross