Jack Unterweger

Johann "Jack" Unterweger (16 August 1950  – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who committed murder in several countries – Austria, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the United States.

While incarcerated he wrote short stories, poems, plays and an autobiography, Purgatory or The Trip to Prison – Report of a Guilty Man,[7] that later served as the basis for a documentary.

[10] Writers, artists, journalists and politicians agitated for a pardon,[11] including Jelinek and German novelist Günter Grass,[12] along with the editor of Manuskripte magazine, Alfred Kolleritsch.

Unterweger himself hosted television programmes which discussed criminal rehabilitation[13] and worked as a journalist for the public broadcaster ORF, where he reported on stories concerning the very murders for which he was later found guilty.

[14] After law enforcement agencies chased him and his girlfriend, Bianca Mrak, through Switzerland, France, and the US, he was finally arrested by US Marshals in Miami, Florida, on 27 February 1992.

[14] Based on a psychiatric examination, Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Reinhard Haller diagnosed Unterweger with narcissistic personality disorder and presented his findings to the court on 20 June 1994.

[19] That night, Unterweger killed himself at Graz-Karlau Prison by hanging himself with a rope made from shoelaces and a cord from the trousers of a tracksuit, using the same knot that was found on all the strangled sex workers.