Johann 'Jack' Unterweger - International Serial Killer. (True Crimes Book 15)

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On December 31, 1990, Heidemarie’s body was discovered by hikers in a heavily forested area about 10 miles outside of Gratz. The body had been left exposed to the elements, but her body was relatively preserved due to the cold temperatures.Heidemarie had been covered in leaves. It appeared that she had been redressed at some point with the perpetrator leaving her legs bare.A piece of material from her slip was found lodged in her mouth.

The real story, which Malkovich will bring to a Vienna stage in an opera-chamber theatre production which premieres tonight, was that Unterweger, the reformed prisoner turned celebrated poet and journalist, had begun a brutal killing spree within six months of his release.

1937 – Grace E. Magro

After his release, Unterweger became a literary celebrity, appearing on talk shows and booking speaking engagements. Fegefeuer was made into a feature film, and the former murderer became a journalist. Sentenced Again and Suicide But the newly-freed Unterweger seemed to have grown far beyond the violence that defined his early years. He’d become something of an Austrian literary sensation. He gave readings, staged his plays, and worked as a reporter. In fact, Unterweger established himself as a key journalist investigating the recent string of prostitute murders. Shamelessly, Unterweger interviewed Vienna’s chief of police and penned newspaper essays about the deaths. The idea that the poster boy for rehabilitation cruised around the country strangling hookers, paying for gas, food, and lodging with state subsidies, was too embarrassing to contemplate,” Leake writes.

On March 12 1992, detectives Miller and Harper flew from Los Angeles to Miami to interrogate Unterweger. "He'll be expecting you," Geiger told them. "We think he's more afraid of California justice than of ours. Especially your gas chamber." They came with an affidavit for a search warrant for taking blood and hair samples. Unterweger's blood could be compared with the sexual assault kits from Rodriguez and Exley. At 6pm, they were led into the visitors' area of the prison.It was not long before the first body was found. In September 1990, Blanka Bokova, a Czech prostitute, was strangled with her own underwear. Unterweger was in Prague at the time, where he claimed to be researching the city's red light scene for a magazine. While outwardly Unterweger seemed as if he was a reformed criminal and intellectual, many around him said he seemed hostile toward women. Some female journalist who routinely worked with him said they believed he "hated women" and were confused why so many women rallied around him.

They hatched a plan. They would pose as journalists from the Culture section, trying to get a scoop on Unterweger's latest book (whatever that was). The investigation into the murders was crawling along. The police had received a tip - from the inspector, now retired, who had investigated Unterweger before - that they should focus their attentions on him. When Unterweger turned up at Edelbacher's office to talk about a story he was writing on homelessness in Los Angeles and Vienna, Edelbacher told him he was one of 130 possible suspects. Unterweger said it was absurd. "After all those years in Stein, there's no way I would commit a crime."And when it was over, hours after an Austrian court had pronounced him guilty June 28, the jailhouse bard who was so good with knots braided his shoelaces into a noose and hanged himself. He grew up tough and illiterate, supporting himself through petty thievery and pimping. "I wielded my steel rod among the prostitutes of Hamburg, Munich and Marseilles," he later wrote. "I had enemies and conquered them through my inner hatred."