For my paper, I chose to examine the case of Johann “Jack” Unterweger, a convicted serial killer who for a short time gained worldwide notoriety for his crimes but now is barely remembered except by those who were alive during his exploits. Unlike his more famous brethren such as Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, or John Wayne Gacy, Unterweger is no longer a household name, but at one time he was known in Europe and the United States as the former murderer who was rehabilitated to a life of literature and reporting. Only later did the truth emerge that Unterweger had never given up his murderous urges and was in fact continuing to kill while using his supposed rehabilitation as a cover to gain access to potential victims.
I chose Unterweger precisely because he was no longer a “famous” serial killer and because I thought it was fascinating that he was able to fool so many educated people into thinking that he should be released from prison early after his first murder conviction. Many serial killers are often suspected of murder before they are finally apprehended and brought to justice, but it is rare for a serial killer to be caught and convicted after just his first murder only to be released from prison to resume killing again. As the saying goes, “Hindsight is 20/20,” but it seems remarkable to me that the warning signs that seemed to be present in Unterweger’s background were not enough for officials to think he was likely to kill again if released from prison after his first murder. Perhaps the lessons learned from the mishandling of the Unterweger case will help prevent future cases from having such catastrophic results. What also seems remarkable is that Unterweger was apparently somehow able to keep his murderous and sexually deviant urges in check while in prison for fifteen years unless he was released and able to kill again.
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Born in 1951 in Austria, Johann “Jack” Unterweger was the son of Theresia Unterweger, a waitress from Vienna, Austria, and an unknown American serviceman she met in Italy who did not stick around to be a part of his son’s life. It was rumored that she was also a prostitute in her spare time. Unterweger’s mother later abandoned him as well, forcing him to move in with his alcoholic grandfather. His grandfather used him to help commit various crimes around Carinthia, Austria, and eventually Unterweger started to branch out to commit crimes of his own. At age sixteen, he was arrested for assaulting a prostitute, and some say this act was caused by his resentment of his own mother.
Unterweger had a few incidents that could be seen as precursors to the murders he later committed. Because his crimes started so early in life, Unterweger not only failed to attend college, but he also didn’t finish high school. Throughout his late teens and early adult years, Unterweger was charged and convicted of several counts of theft and buglary, as well as pimping and sexual assault. At the young age of twenty-six, Unterweger was convicted of first-degree murder after killing a young German woman named Margaret Shaefer by strangling her with her own bra and was sentenced to life in prison. Little did the Austrian police know that this would be his modus operandi for future crimes. While serving time in prison, Unterweger learned to read and write. He began writing poems, plays, and short stories, and he even wrote an autobiography titled Purgatory or The Trip to Prison – Report of a Guilty Man. This book became a best-seller and earned him a great deal of respect from many figures in the literary world. The book was even integral in a campaign to gain Unterweger an early release from prison, and in 1990, that release was granted even though Unterweger had only served fifteen years of his sentence.
After being released, Unterweger was a literary celebrity in Austria and throughout much of Europe. Unterweger appeared on many television and radio shows doing interviews, and he eventually hosted his own show on national television. Unterweger’s autobiography was taught in schools, and the stories he had written for children were performed on the radio. He even worked as a reporter for a public broadcaster, and it was later revealed that he even reported on some of the murders he would later be convicted of committing.
Unterweger’s celebrity status gave his greater access to victims, and he abused his position as a reporter to restart his killing spree. While masquerading as a “reporter,” he murdered seven prostitutes in Austria, one in Czechoslovakia, and three more in the United States, where he had been sent to report on the difference between European and American views on prostitution. All the women had been strangled to death with their own bras, the same method Unterweger had used in his first murder. Many of the murders occurred during the first year after Unterweger was released from prison. By the time Austrian officials began to connect him to the murders there, Unterweger had already fled to Switzerland before traveling to France and eventually the United States.
Unterweger was eventually caught by the U.S. Marshals in Miami, Florida. Even while awaiting extradition and trial, Unterweger freely gave interviews proclaiming his innocence and called on his colleagues in the journalism world for support. Unterweger was extradited back to Austria where he stood trial for eleven counts of murder. He was convicted of nine charges of murder and aquitted on two counts. Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole this time. On the same day that he received his life sentence, Unterweger took his own life by hanging himself with a rope made from shoelaces and a piece of cord from his state-issued prison jumpsuit. As further proof of his guilt, the knot in Unterweger’s crude noose was the same as the knot used to strangle the prostitutes.
Serial killers are frequently diagnosed to have serious mental illnesses, and this seems logical in light of their despicable deeds. After all, it makes sense that someone who would have so callous of an approach to the lives of other human beings probably has something dysfunctional with his or her mental state. As it turns out, Unterweger did suffer from a mental disorder, but unfortunately for his victims, this diagnosis did not occur after his serial murders were completed. At his trial, a psychologist testified that Unterweger suffered from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as well as being a sexual sadist. People with narcissistic personality disorder display a long-term pattern of feelings of exaggerated self-importance, an excessive need for admiration by others, and a lack of empathy for other people. Scientists are not sure what causes narcissistic personality disorder or sexual sadism, but it is easy to make a case that Unterweger chose his victims based on his anger at his own mother, perhaps as a result of his feeling abandoned by her at an early age. Unterweger’s mother sometimes worked as a prostitute, and all of his murder victims were sex workers as well.
Throughout my research, I have learned many things not only about Jack Unterwger, but about serial killers and their tendencies as a whole. Many serial killers have mental problems that affect the frontal lobe of the brain. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls emotional expression, memory, judgement, and sexual behaviors. This could be an explanation for the poor choices they have made throughout their lives. Certainly, any mental problems suffered by serial killers are in no way an excuse for the terrible things that they have done, but it is definitely a contributing factor. For example, Unterweger made poor choices by succumbing to his criminal urges to commit rape and murder, and this could be due to a frontal lobe disorder. I say this because the frontal lobe, if functioning properly, should have made Unterweger realize that the things that he was doing were morally wrong. The frontal lobe should help to control his impulses to act in these ways. He was also diagnosed with sexual sadism disorder. People diagnosed with this also tend to have other problems such as poor impulse control, being anti-social, being dishonest, and lack of empathy. These traits are evident in Unterweger. Though he did confess to the first murder, he denied all allegations to follow, which was clearly dishonest given the amount of evidence against him, the lack of an alibi, the circumstances of the later killings matching his first murder, the verdicts at his trial, and finally the knot in his self-fashioned noose that matched the knot used to strangle Unterweger’s victims. Perhaps the lessons learned from the Unterweger case will help prevent future situations of releasing a serial killer from prison too soon and allowing them to resume their deadly ways.
Works Cited
- Blanco, Juan Ignacio. “Jack Unterweger: Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers.” Jack Unterweger | Murderpedia, the Encyclopedia of Murderers, murderpedia.org/male.U/u/unterweger-jack.htm.
- “Jack Unterweger.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 16 Apr. 2019, www.biography.com/crime-figure/jack-unterweger.
- Oliver, Mark. “This Killer-Turned-Author Convinced Everyone He Was Reformed - Then He Started Killing Again.” All That's Interesting, All That's Interesting, 2 Jan. 2019, allthatsinteresting.com/jack-unterweger.
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