Corpus Delicti, Knowledge Solution, Issue 4, June 1997
by Friederike Blümelhuber


The Role of the Criminal Profiler in the Case of Jack Unterweger

It is amazing with what ignorance Europe in general, and Austria in particular, approaches the process of criminal profiling [6]. The USA is the world's leading producer of serial killers with 76 percent. Europe comes in a distant second with merely 17 percent [5]. In my opinion, this statistical data has to be questioned, because law enforcement does not always recognize the serial nature of crimes and link them together as an undeniable series [6]. Even though Austria is a small country, we already have had some cases where criminal profiling could have been very helpful and probably would have prevented the death of some victims. In my opinion, this problem will become even more serious in the European Community, because travelling between countries is now as easy as travelling between states in the USA, which especially helps a serial killer to elude the authorities.

The roots of criminal profiling began in the USA in the late 50s. Jack Unterweger, who committed his first homicide in 1970, soon began crossing jurisdictional and international boundaries. At the time, Austrian authorities had no idea how to apply profiling techniques and did not understand the concept of crime scene signature. If profiling techniques had been utilized at the times that the crimes were committed by investigating authorities in Austria, Unterweger's earlier crimes would have been linked together much earlier.

From 1968 to 1975, Jack Unterweger committed 16 delicts ranging from burglary to sexual abuse, many of which exhibited the typical characteristics of his later crimes. Both of his first two sexual crimes, a rape and a homicide with sexual features, show essential features of his later deeds.

The first homicide was committed by Jack Unterweger on his neighbour Margret Schäfer, with the help of the clandestine prostitute Barbara Scholz. Barbara Scholz asked Margret Schäfer to join her for a ride in a car together with her and Jack. After a short ride, Jack caught Margret Schäfer, bound her hands with a belt of her coat, and then together with Barbara Scholz, burglarized Margret's apartment. Finally, they drove into the woods, Jack forced her to undress, and, as Margret Schäfer refused, knocked her with his fist and then again and again with the cudgel against her head. After having bound her once again, he drug her to a tree, covered the body with leaves and strangled her with her bra wound tight around her neck, which caused Margret Schäfer's death.

The expert testimony of Prof.Dr.Klaus Jarosch in the trial 20 Vr 552/75 of the Court of Salzburg says: "Jack Unterweger is emotionally impoverished, sensitive and excitable, he tends to sudden fits of rage and anger. His physical activities are enormously aggressive with sexually sadistic perversion�. He is an emotionally impoverished, explosive, aggressive psychopath. The later development to a habitual criminal is most outerly probable, he is an incorrigible perpetrator. Recidivism has to be expected with certainty."

At this first sentence for murder of Jack Unterweger, I think it would have made sense to look for some special features. His upbringing can be described as harsh, his childhood as deprived. He was brought up by his grandfather who was a notorious drinker and who changed his mistresses faster than his shirts [9].

While serving a life sentence for murder, Jack Unterweger started to write and became famous. His work had considerable commercial merit, and in a relatively short time Unterweger had published a book and several plays. His charisma began to grow alongside his fame, and despite of the formerly mentioned comments on his personality, Jack Unterweger was granted parole in May 1990 [7], much earlier than would normally have been expected, given the seriousness of his crime. Shortly after his dismissal in September 1990, his next victim was murdered.

To be fair, one has to take into account that the late finding of some victims made things more difficult. Because of this reason I will give a list of the victims, not in the sequence of being murdered, but in the sequence of being found.

#

name

date of death

date of finding

country

lying on…

state of dressing

injuries

muti- lations

physical evidence

1

Blanka Bockova 14.-15.9.90

15.9.90

Czech Republic

back, covered with leaves

undressed, with jewelry

strangled & stabbed

none

 

2

Heidemarie Hammerer 5.-6.12.90

31.12.90

Austria

stomach, covered with leaves

dressed, with jewelry

strangled

none

 

3

Brunhilde Masser 25.-26.10.90

5.1.91

Austria

stomach, covered with leaves

undressed with jewelry

strangled & stabbed

none

 

4

Sabine Moitzi 16.-17.4.91

20.5.91

Austria

stomach, covered with leaves

undressed with jewelry

strangled with tights

none

 

5

Karin Eroglu 7.-8.5.91

23.5.91

Austria

stomach, uncovered

undressed with jewelry

strangled w bodytrikot

none

 

6

Shannon Exley 19.-20.6.91

20.6.91

USA

stomach, uncovered

nearly undressed

strangled with bra

none

typical knot in the bra

7

Irene Rodriguez 28.-29.6.91

30.6.91

USA

back, uncovered

undressed

strangled w bra/belt

none

typical knot in the bra

8

Silvia Zagler 7.-8.4.91

4.7.91

Austria

stomach, covered with leaves

undressed with jewelry

unknown

none

 

9

Sherri Ann Long 3.-4.7.91

11.7.91

USA

back, uncovered

dress, with wrist watch

strangled with bra

none

typical knot in the bra

10

Elfriede Schrempf 7.-8.3.91

5.10.91

Austria

stomach, covered with leaves

undressed with jewelry

unknown

none

 

11

Regina Prem 28.-29.4.91

16.4.92

Austria

parts of skeleton were found

unknown

unknown

unknown

 

data obtained from [1], [2], [3], [4] and [6]

Another essential piece of behavior evidence had also been missed: as experience has taught criminal profilers, some types of serial killers may deliberately seek ways of inserting themselves into an investigation. This was exactly what Jack Unterweger did. Even Hofrat Max Edelbacher, head of the security office of the Viennese Police Department, answered frankly all the questions of the "reporter" Jack Unterweger [9]. Probably Unterweger would have been able to continue his career as a serial killer much longer, if he had not murdered three prostitutes in Los Angeles. After these three murders, Unterweger's situation dramatically changed.

Jim Harper, a homicide detective working on this case, recognized the common features of three crimes, where three women had been strangled with their own bras, that had been knotted and wound tightly around their necks. These three bras were taken for comparison to Lynn Herold of the LA County Crime Laboratory, whom I had the honor of meeting in 1995 at The FBI Symposium in San Antonio, Texas. Herold is a criminalist, a professional whose job is to apply the physical sciences to the analysis of physical evidence from a crime scene. Each year she examines countless pieces of evidence from thousand of crimes. She regards her work largely as puzzle solving. Ligature used for strangulation is a particular enthusiasm, and Herrold teaches crime scene personnel how to remove them from bodies. Since the way a knot is tied can often indicate who committed the murder, the knot is never untied. Instead, the ligature is cut close to the knot, leaving it intact. This had been done with the bras.

When Lynn Herrold examined the bras, she found that they had been expertly stripped down to act as lethal garrotes. It was inconceivable, she said, that more than one person had committed these crimes [3]. A criminal profile was not prepared until Jack Unterweger's detention, pending investigation, when the FBI was put in charge of the case.

Finally, I would like to specify the facts which all cases had in common. Jack Unterweger had been present at the time of the murder in every single case. All targeted women belonged to a high risk group; they were both strangers and prostitutes. Prostitutes are at a high risk for being targeted by serial offenders because they are a transient population. However, they represent a low risk for the offender, for this same reason. The offense was planned, the victim was transported to the crime scene (by car), and the dead bodies had been hidden. The victims were predominantly naked when found, and some of them were stabbed, but none of them showed any kind of mutilations. Jewelry was not taken from the victims.

All together, the crime scene characteristics were typical for a psychophatic, well organized perpetrator. But these are nevertheless only clues. The actual evidence proving Jack Unterweger was the murderer of at least two of the above mentioned women, was more than one-hundred red PAN-fibers found on Heidemarie Hammerer corresponding to Jack Unterweger�s red scarf, and the DNA-analysis of a hair found in Unterweger�s Ford Mustang belonging to Blanka Bokova.

The professional criminal profile was prepared by Gregg O. McCrary, James A. Wright, and John E. Douglas (all members of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes NCAVC, a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation) as late as February 14, 1992. This profile mainly dealt with the Czech case and the seven Austrian cases of murder, and led to the conclusion that all eight cases show the typical signature of one single person. After comparing the eight European murders to the three in the United States, the experts came to the following conclusion: If we succeed to prove, that the perpetrator of one of those cases of murder was present at the same time and in the same area of the other cases of murder, it is highly probable that this one perpetrator committed all eleven homicides [1].

After the guilty verdict of the court in Graz, Austria, Jack strangled himself in his cell using exactly the same knot he had used for strangling his victims.

Bibliography

  1. Indictment of the Court of Graz, 1994.
  2. Deviant and Criminal Sexuality, National Center For The Analysis of Violent Crime, Quantico, 1991.
  3. Traces of Guilt, Forensic Science and the Fight Against Crime, Hugh Miller, BBC Books, 1995.
  4. Crime Classification Manual, John E. Douglas et al., Lexington Books, 1995.
  5. The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, Harold Schechter and David Everitt, Pocket Books, 1996.
  6. Behavior Evidence: Understanding motives and developing suspects in unsolved serial rapes through behavioral profiling techniques, Brent E. Turvey, Internet, June 1996.
  7. Serial Killer Hitlist - Portraits of the worst killers in history, http://home1.inet.tele.dk/chilsta/killer1.htm
  8. Wilson, D. Seaman, "The Serial Killers" Virgin Publishing Ltd. 1995
  9. News, No. 16, April 16 - 21, 1994

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