Serial Killer Documentary - The Vienna Strangler

0:00We all deserve a second chance in life, for our small indiscretions or when we show real change in ourselves. But some people just shouldn't be given that chance. This week we discuss Jack Ounterveger, the Vienna Strangler. Let's open the serial killer file. Johannes Jack Ounterveger was born August 16th, 1950 in the province of Stereo, Austria, to a single mother, Teresa Ounterveger. Teresa left home in her late teens to work as a barmaid in Waitress and was a petty criminal, committing theft and fraud, but was also purportedly a prostitute.

1:02She met an American soldier in Trieste Italy and became pregnant soon after. For much of her pregnancy she was jailed for fraud but was released and returned to Grazostria to give birth to Jack. Jack spent much of his childhood in the care of his maternal grandfather after his mother was arrested in 1953. He claimed they lived in poverty and his grandfather was an abusive alcoholic who introduced him to drinking at a very young age. Surrounded by the CD Underbelly of Austrian society, he was raised around prostitutes and pimps, eventually adopting the lifestyle, acting as a pimp to a local prostitute. Likely due to the abandonment by his mother, he developed a hatred of women and a penchant for violence. Jack assaulted a prostitute at the age of 16 and was arrested and later accumulated over 16 more convictions into early childhood, mainly for petty crime and sexual assaults.

2:03But his first murder, committed when he was 24 years old, set the precedent for what was to come. In 1974, Jack was in a relationship with a prostitute, Barbara Scholes, and while out driving, he spotted a friend of hers, an 18-year-old German woman named Margaret Schaeffer. According to testimony by Barbara, the pair picked her up after robbing Margaret's parents' house and drove her to an isolated location. When she refused to have sex with him, he struck her in the head and strangled her to death with the strap of her own bra, abandoning her body in the woods. Jack confessed to seeing his mother's face in Margaret's and said he simply snapped. He was arrested and convicted for the crime in 1976 and was sentenced to life in prison. The forensic psychologist who examined him at his trial declared him a sexually sadistic psychopath with narcissistic and histrionic tendencies and believed he

3:04was a severe danger to society. However, in prison, Jack flourished. He had been illiterate prior to his incarceration and taught himself to read and write, and with his new skills wrote children's books, poetry, and a best-selling autobiography titled Pergatory or the Trip to Jail, Report of a Guilty Man in 1983. His accomplishments in good behavior earned him the esteem of the literary community in Austria, who saw him as a reformed man, and sought to have him pardoned in 1985. Though he was required to serve the 15-year minimum of his sentence, he continued to write and gain more favor in the Austrian public, and he was finally paroled on May 23, 1990. Jack became a media celebrity, appearing on television shows, working for magazines, and reporting for public broadcaster ORF, working on crime stories. Outwardly, he maintained the appearance of a 40-year-old wealthy, intellectual bachelor

4:08surrounded by beautiful young women. But little did the public know that beneath the surface lay a monster in hiding. Bodies of prostitutes began turning up in Vienna shortly after Jack's release. On September 15, 1990, the body of 30-year-old Blanca Bacova was found by Vlatava River in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was nude, except for her wedding ring and socks. A few weeks after Blanca's body was found, 39-year-old Brunhilde Masser, a well-known prostitute in the area, was reported missing. In December, Heidi Marie Hammer, a local prostitute, went missing, and her body was found near Gras on New Year's Eve. Five days later, the decomposing body of Brunhilde Masser was found near Bregan's Austria. All three women were poorly concealed by leaves and branches partially nude, and were strangled using an intricate slipknot. Police face difficulty

5:10in handling the cases. Prostitution was legal in Austria. No witnesses came forward, and little physical evidence could be tied to a particular person. The only clues were several unidentifiable red fibers found on Heidi Marie's clothing. On March 7, 1991, another prostitute by the name of El Frida Schrempf disappeared from the same area as Brunhilde. On October 5, that same year, her skeletal remains were found, convincing the authorities that they had a serial killer on the loose. Within the span of a month, four more prostitutes would disappear from Pensning Vienna. As for Jack Ountervigor, his career was only growing. In June of 1991, Jack flew to Los Angeles, California to write for an Austrian magazine about the differences in attitude towards prostitution between the United States and Austria. There, he participated in ride-alongs with police under the guise of research, all while committing

6:15more crimes. The bodies of 21-year-old Shannon Exley, 33-year-old Irene Rodriguez and 26-year-old Sherry Long were found in the area within the span of a month. All three women were involved in prostitution and had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled with a piece of their clothing, which had knots identical to the ones used in the Austrian murders. Jack was not on the police's radar until 70-year-old retired investigator August Schener noted the similarities between Jack's first homicide and the recent local killings. Police now had to investigate a man who, by all appearances, was a well-adjusted former criminal-turned celebrity writer. Looking through his credit card and car rental records, police linked Jack to the victims at the time each disappeared. Witnesses reported seeing a man wearing a leather jacket and red scarf with two of the victims just before

7:15they went missing. After obtaining warrants, police searched Jack's apartment in Vienna and his car and found the red scarf that matched the fibers found on Heidi Marie Hammer. DNA evidence connected him to the murder of Blanca Bacovah and the Los Angeles murders. Upon being tipped off by friends, Jack and his 18-year-old girlfriend Bianca Mrock fled Austria across Europe, traveling to Canada and entering the United States. He contacted the press in Austria and played the victim, accusing police of framing him for their lack of suspects, but that didn't stop authorities from hunting him down. Jack and Bianca were apprehended by US Marshals on February 27, 1992, while collecting money from a Western Union in Miami, Florida. Jack chose not to fight extradition to Austria because facing murder charges in California meant facing the death penalty. He returned to Austria four months later, not long after, the bodies of four prostitutes turned up. Sabine Moizzi was found in a wooded

8:21area just outside of Vienna on May 20, 1992, followed by the body of Karen Eroglue three days later. The remains of Sylvia Zagler and Regina Pram were never found, but it is believed Jack killed them in April of 1991 and dumped their bodies near Graz. In June 1994, in the trial of the century, as it was called, Jack was tried for 11 counts of murder. Throughout the proceedings, he attempted to manipulate and charm the jury into buying his innocence, but he was very much unsuccessful. He was found guilty for nine counts of murder on June 28, 1994, and was sentenced to life in prison. The next night, Jack hanged himself in his prison cell, where he died. In total, Jack Wintervager was attributed to the deaths of 12 women, including that of Marcia Horvath, whom he was accused of killing but never tried for. Because Jack had not exhausted his appeals, Austrian law does not sustain his conviction

9:25after his death, so the law may technically consider him innocent, but his infamous legacy as a serial killer proves otherwise. Thank you for watching. Please be sure to check out my Patreon linked below to help keep YouTube creepy. If you'd consider even pledging $1, that would be an incredible help. Thank you for your consideration. And now be sure to check out another one of my videos and of course subscribe to my channel because you won't want to miss what's next, and I'll see you next time.