Murder is one of the worst crimes that can be committed anywhere in the world. In fact, even thinking about granting forgiveness to a person who has committed this kind of crime is really difficult. However, Jack’s story is one of those that does not exceed the unthinkable.
In addition to his heinous crimes, Jack was recognized for his talent with lyrics. The man published works that later became big hits.
The beginning
Johann Unterweger, better known as Jack, was born on August 16, 1950 in Judenburg, Styria. He grew up in Unterweger together with his Austrian mother and his grandfather, who was supposedly an alcoholic.
Because his family did not have abundant financial resources, her mother had no choice but to engage in prostitution.
He was raised mostly by his grandfather, who was a widower and used to bring sex workers into his home. It was not uncommon for the little boy to end up unconscious, drunk and lying on the ground after drinking with them.
During his adolescence, he preferred to be on the street and not at home, since at home there was always a bad atmosphere due to the uncomfortable situations that his grandfather generated.
Due to the bad influence of his predecessor, he began to commit small crimes such as assaulting prostitutes, which is why he was in jail more than once.
his crimes
In 1974, at the age of 24, he committed his first homicide. The victim was a young German woman, 18 years old, named Margaret Schäfer.
According to the police report, the man raped her and then viciously beat her with an iron stick until she was lying helpless and unconscious on the ground.
As reported by the ‘ABC’ media, he strangled her and threw her into a forest near the place of the murder, with the aim that her body would decompose and there would be no trace of her crime.
(Also: Santa Marta: councilman’s husband murdered with a weapon with a silencer).
Due to his sharpness, he was not caught on the spot. It even took the Police more than a year of investigation to reach the conclusion that Johann Unterweger was the author of the crime. In fact, It was he himself who confessed it.
Throughout the trial he was crying and asking for a second chance. However, the judge decided to give him a heavy sentence: life imprisonment.
The birth of a writer
While he was in prison, he enrolled in a literacy program, through which he learned to read and write, since he had not studied since he was a child because his family never bothered him to go to school.
At that time, he became aware of the immense world of reading and was greatly inspired by books, which led him to want to be a great writer.
His beginnings with this passion began with the publication of a collection of poems, followed by a saga of children’s stories, although he was never satisfied with that and decided to venture into much larger projects.
Time later he wrote more stories and two novels, until managed to publish his autobiographywhich he titled as ‘Purgatory, a trip to jail’.
(You may be interested: The woman who became a friend of her mother’s murderer to solve her crimes).
The work was a great success in sales, so much so that the rights to this writing were sold to make a movie of his life called ‘Jack’, which was released in 2015 and starred actor Johannes Krisch.
“No subject is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman. There is an age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and there is an age when a woman must be beautiful to be beautiful.”wrote in her autobiography about her perspective on gender and her appearance.
Second opportunity
In several of the interviews that were conducted with him while he was in prison, Unterweger always expressed that he was very sorry for the crime he committed.
Jack was excusing himself after the difficult childhood he lived because of his grandfather, who was in charge of him, which led him down a bad path.
According to the aforementioned medium, he stated that he was willing to re-enter societycontributing in what stood out the most, writing.
Because of his strong declarations to receive a new opportunity, several Austrian writers – among them was Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 – started a movement, joined by other authors and politicians, to request the novelist’s freedom. .
(Keep reading: ‘You decided to kill him’: the story of the crime that shook Córdoba).
In this way, the Austrian government granted him a pardon -cause of extinction of criminal responsibility, which supposes the pardon of the sentence.
So on May 23, 1990 he was released and it did not take long for the news to spread and replicate in national and international media.
His return as an assassin
Although the writer was shown as a person who put crimes aside to focus on his passion, it did not take long for him to return to crime.
In fact in September of the year 1990 murdered another woman. The police found the victim in a forest completely naked, beaten, raped and strangled, something similar to the crime committed by Jack.
Since 1990, it has been proven that he has killed six women – five in Austria and one in the Czech Republic. In addition, in June 1991, three others – Sherri Ann Long, Shannon Exley and Irene Rodríguez.
The detective who was in charge of investigating Unterweger’s first case was the one who began to suspect the coincidences in the recent crimes with the first one he perpetrated. One way or another, the man linked the killer to the victims.
(You can read: Drugged, he killed a man; in prison he became a successful writer).
In the place where he stayed in the city of Los Angeles evidence was found that incriminated him: a red scarf of the same material which was found in the neck of one of the victims.
Killer’s End
When he found out that he was being investigated, he ran away with his girlfriend, an 18-year-old girl. However, he was captured in the United States and extradited to Austria to stand trial for the 1992 murders.
On June 29, 1994, ‘Jack’ Unterweger was found guilty of eleven murders and sentenced to life in prison without any chance of being released.
During his trial he showed no remorse or fear. He simply concluded with some very specific words: “I will not spend years in jail again, I will not be able to.”
That same day, he committed suicide in his cell just six hours after being found guilty for all his crimes.
You can also read:
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-The ‘army of the dead’ that faced the Germans: ‘They spit out their lungs’
-The murderer of criminals who claimed the lives of more than 70 and is now a ‘youtuber’
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