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The Celebrated Author Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer · FBI Files

0:01
Speaker 1: One by one, prostitutes die across Central Europe. Austrian authorities
0:08
Speaker 1: believe one man is responsible. But they have no experience
0:14
Speaker 1: hunting serial killers. They turn to an FBI profiler for help.
0:22
Speaker 1: He finds the same killer has come to America. And
0:25
Speaker 1: the death count keeps rising until the FBI stops him.
1:01
Speaker 2: Beginning in 1990, Europe found itself in the clutches of
1:05
Speaker 2: a serial killer. He became an international outlaw, hopping from
1:09
Speaker 2: country to country to evade capture and to kill again.
1:14
Speaker 2: I'm Jim Kallstrom, former head of the FBI's New York office.
1:18
Speaker 2: Legal cooperation between countries and continents is not common, but
1:21
Speaker 2: neither are serial killers in Europe. Desperate to apprehend him,
1:26
Speaker 2: Austrian authorities called on the FBI for help.
1:35
Speaker 1: In Austria, the exchange of sex for money has been
1:38
Speaker 1: legal for years. Here, prostitutes walk the streets for men
1:44
Speaker 1: willing to pay for their services. Throughout most of the 1980s,
1:59
Speaker 1: Heidemarie Hammerer worked in the city of Bregenz as a prostitute.
2:04
Speaker 1: a licensed professional for almost 10 years. She was used
2:13
Speaker 1: to unusual requests.
2:15
Speaker 3: But on the night of December 5th, 1990, a customer
2:18
Speaker 3: went too far.
2:35
Speaker 1: The killer hurriedly redressed his victim. Then he dragged her
2:38
Speaker 1: through a secluded forest some 10 miles away and left
2:41
Speaker 1: her body. The crime went undiscovered for three weeks. On
2:56
Speaker 1: the morning of New Year's Eve, 1990, a pair of
2:59
Speaker 1: hikers stumbled upon Hammerer's body. Though the body had been
3:04
Speaker 1: left exposed to the elements, the winter temperatures helped preserve
3:08
Speaker 1: the remains. Austrian authorities determined that Hamara had been strangled
3:15
Speaker 1: with her own pantyhose. Her wrists were bruised from restraints.
3:21
Speaker 1: At the autopsy, they found no sexual discharge on her body,
3:26
Speaker 1: but they did find fibers that were inconsistent with her clothing.
3:31
Speaker 1: She was only the first victim. Over the next several months,
3:37
Speaker 1: three more prostitutes died violently throughout Austria. Brunhilde Masser was
3:43
Speaker 1: recovered in a stream bed near Graz. Elfriede Schrempf, also
3:48
Speaker 1: from Graz, was found nearby in the woods. Near Vienna,
3:53
Speaker 1: Sylvia Zagler was discovered in a stand of trees. The
3:58
Speaker 1: women had all been bruised, strangled with their pantyhose, and
4:01
Speaker 1: left in various states of undress, lying face down in
4:05
Speaker 1: wooded areas. The Austrian public was shocked. On April 4th, 1991,
4:12
Speaker 1: the authorities gathered their most experienced investigators to focus on
4:16
Speaker 1: the slayings. Because of the similarities in the four cases,
4:21
Speaker 1: investigators reasoned that one person was responsible. Austria had its
4:32
Speaker 1: first serial killer in modern history. They had no experience
4:37
Speaker 1: investigating these offenders.
4:41
Speaker 3: Dr.
4:41
Speaker 1: Ernst Geiger, one of Austria's leading detectives, was assigned to
4:45
Speaker 1: coordinate the hunt.
4:47
Speaker 4: No lead was promising. All the leads ended nowhere. We
4:54
Speaker 4: had no real suspects.
4:57
Speaker 1: The first break came when a retired policeman read of
5:00
Speaker 1: the murders in a Salzburg newspaper. They reminded him of
5:05
Speaker 1: a case he solved in 1974. Detective Geiger received a
5:15
Speaker 1: phone call from the retired officer. 15 years earlier, he
5:20
Speaker 1: told Geiger, a young woman had been strangled with one
5:23
Speaker 1: of her undergarments and dumped in the woods. just like
5:29
Speaker 1: the present victims. The killer was caught and convicted, but
5:33
Speaker 1: had recently been paroled. Detective Geiger took the name of
5:37
Speaker 1: the ex-convict, Johann Jack Unterweger.
5:45
Speaker 4: Jack Unterweger was paroled after 15 years because he had
5:54
Speaker 4: murdered a young girl before and while he was in prison.
6:02
Speaker 4: He became a writer, quite a famous writer.
6:07
Speaker 1: But was it possible that this famous writer could be
6:10
Speaker 1: a serial killer? Geiger and his team began looking into
6:14
Speaker 1: the journalist's background. Until 1990, Jack Unterweger had led a
6:20
Speaker 1: difficult life. He was born to a German prostitute who
6:25
Speaker 1: quickly abandoned him. He suffered neglect and abuse, shuttling between
6:30
Speaker 1: various foster situations. As a teenager, Jack began to play
6:37
Speaker 1: out the rage of his dismal childhood. By age 25,
6:42
Speaker 1: that fury earned Unterweger a life sentence. Unterweger continued his
6:52
Speaker 1: education and started writing while in prison. He published letters, plays,
7:01
Speaker 1: short stories, and an autobiography. In the book that became
7:07
Speaker 1: a bestseller, Unterweger painted a tragic tale of himself as victim.
7:12
Speaker 1: Critics and the public alike embraced the author for the
7:15
Speaker 1: apparent honesty with which he confronted his past. The literary
7:20
Speaker 1: community suggested that art had redeemed him. Eventually, the press
7:26
Speaker 1: and the public at large demanded that his life sentence
7:29
Speaker 1: be commuted. On May 12th, 1990, Austrian authorities agreed. The
7:39
Speaker 1: 40-year-old Austrian walked out of prison. He was a free man,
7:46
Speaker 1: determined never to spend another minute of his life behind bars.
7:52
Speaker 1: Shortly after his release, he was hired by a major
7:55
Speaker 1: German magazine to cover the prostitute murders. He promised to
8:01
Speaker 1: use his writing in a socially conscious way. He told
8:04
Speaker 1: his editor that he wanted to give voice to the
8:06
Speaker 1: dispossessed caught in the underbelly of society, as he once was.
8:14
Speaker 1: By July 1991, after two more prostitutes were found strangled,
8:19
Speaker 1: Psychologist Tom Mueller of Austria's Criminal Investigation Division joined the team.
8:25
Speaker 5: When we started the investigation against Jack Unterwege, it was
8:28
Speaker 5: pretty hard because all his friends were within the media
8:31
Speaker 5: and they couldn't understand that he could be the bad guy.
8:38
Speaker 1: Even among investigators, only a handful considered this celebrity journalist
8:42
Speaker 1: a possible suspect. Through receipts and travel records, Geiger and
8:49
Speaker 1: Mueller learned that Unterweger had been at each murder location.
8:55
Speaker 1: This was not suspicious in itself, since he was covering
8:57
Speaker 1: the story as an investigative journalist. Yet he always reached
9:02
Speaker 1: those destinations before the murders took place. Investigators also discovered
9:09
Speaker 1: that Unterweger had visited Prague in September 1990. just before
9:14
Speaker 1: a Czechoslovakian woman, Blanka Bokova, was strangled with her pantyhose.
9:20
Speaker 1: She was the earliest victim in the string of murders
9:22
Speaker 1: that now totaled seven.
9:25
Speaker 5: And what was outstanding for us, that exactly at any
9:28
Speaker 5: time where Czech hang out at any place in Prague,
9:32
Speaker 5: in the western part of Austria, in the southern part
9:34
Speaker 5: of Austria, exactly in that time period there was always
9:37
Speaker 5: a dead body somewhere in the woods.
9:52
Speaker 1: In Austria, another woman, Regina Prem, had been missing for
9:55
Speaker 1: months and presumed dead. Her family waited desperately for news
9:59
Speaker 1: of her fate. In October of 1991, the grief-stricken husband
10:05
Speaker 1: and son received a chilling phone call to their unlisted number.
10:10
Speaker 1: The caller told him that he was Regina's killer and
10:13
Speaker 1: described what she was wearing the night she disappeared. The
10:18
Speaker 1: caller claimed that he was the executioner. that God ordered
10:22
Speaker 1: him to do it, that she was left lying on
10:24
Speaker 1: the place of sacrifice with her face turned towards hell.
10:31
Speaker 1: The phone call was cruel torture to an already traumatized family.
10:38
Speaker 1: When police recovered her body, they confirmed Regina Prem was
10:41
Speaker 1: the killer's eighth victim to date. The discovery put them
10:47
Speaker 1: no closer to stopping the killer. Vienna, October 22nd, 1991.
10:58
Speaker 1: Austrian authorities questioned Unterweger for the first time. With no
11:03
Speaker 1: hard evidence to connect him to the crimes, they hoped
11:06
Speaker 1: for a confession. He admitted to consorting with prostitutes for
11:12
Speaker 1: his writing assignments and for sex. But he denied knowing
11:18
Speaker 1: the victims. Although his alibis were weak, investigators were forced
11:23
Speaker 1: to release him. Their evidence was merely circumstantial, and his
11:30
Speaker 1: public support was growing. But Mueller and Geiger still believed
11:36
Speaker 1: Unterweger was a strong suspect and continued digging into his past.
11:41
Speaker 1: They tracked down the car Jack drove when he was
11:44
Speaker 1: first released from prison. But it had been a year
11:48
Speaker 1: since he sold it, and the likelihood of finding any
11:50
Speaker 1: usable evidence was slim. The team uncovered little except a
11:57
Speaker 1: hair fragment. Although it was a long shot, investigators sent
12:07
Speaker 1: the hair fragment to the University of Bern for analysis.
12:12
Speaker 1: Enough of the hair root remained for lab technicians to
12:15
Speaker 1: extract a DNA sequence. That sequence was compared to those
12:20
Speaker 1: of the victims. Of the eight women slain, The DNA
12:26
Speaker 1: from the hair matched the earliest victim from Prague, Blanka Bokova,
12:30
Speaker 1: killed in September 1990. It was a breakthrough, but that
12:36
Speaker 1: only proved the woman was in the car when Jack
12:38
Speaker 1: owned it. Investigators needed stronger evidence. Now back at police headquarters,
12:45
Speaker 1: Geiger questioned Austrian prostitutes. They recognized Unterweger as a regular
12:56
Speaker 1: customer who insisted they wear handcuffs during sex. More importantly,
13:02
Speaker 1: one recalled seeing him approach her friend, Heidemarie Hammerer, the
13:06
Speaker 1: first victim discovered in Bregenz. She also remembered he wore
13:12
Speaker 1: a brown leather jacket on that night. On the strength
13:19
Speaker 1: of this identification and the hair fragment found in his car,
13:23
Speaker 1: Geiger obtained a warrant to search Unterweger's apartment. When the
13:39
Speaker 1: police arrived, Unterweger was nowhere to be found. They took
13:45
Speaker 1: away clothing, including a brown leather jacket for forensic examination.
13:51
Speaker 1: Then one of the detectives discovered some receipts in a
13:53
Speaker 1: trash can. They were from a seafood restaurant in Malibu, California,
13:59
Speaker 1: dated nine months earlier. Jack Unterweger had been to the
14:04
Speaker 1: United States. But the apartment search yielded less than the
14:08
Speaker 1: investigators had hoped. They found no hard evidence that directly
14:14
Speaker 1: tied Unterweger to the slayings. Since their case was still
14:19
Speaker 1: too weak to issue an arrest warrant, the investigation stalled.
14:24
Speaker 1: Jack Unterweger was still one step ahead. To stop him,
14:31
Speaker 1: Geiger needed help from those more experienced with catching serial killers.
14:39
Speaker 1: He needed the FBI. The Austrian investigators visited the U.S. Embassy.
14:48
Speaker 6: U.S.
14:48
Speaker 1: Embassy. They met with legal attache Julianne Slisko, an FBI
14:53
Speaker 1: agent stationed in Vienna. Hoping you could help us with
14:56
Speaker 1: the FBI. Slisko called the criminal profiling unit in Quantico, Virginia.
15:04
Speaker 4: Hi, Agent McCrary.
15:05
Speaker 1: She was patched through to Special Agent Greg McCrary. Now retired,
15:12
Speaker 1: McCrary spent the last 10 of his 25 years in
15:15
Speaker 1: the FBI, pioneering the science of profiling.
15:21
Speaker 6: The Austrians contacted the FBI because they were trying to
15:25
Speaker 6: tap into our experience of dealing with serial homicide investigations.
15:30
Speaker 6: This was the first serial murder investigation in modern history
15:34
Speaker 6: in Austria.
15:35
Speaker 1: McCurry agreed to assist the Austrians. He would help them
15:39
Speaker 1: determine if one perpetrator could have committed all the murders.
15:47
Speaker 1: When Geiger told Slisko that Unterweger had traveled to LA
15:50
Speaker 1: the previous summer, she authorized a telex to be sent
15:54
Speaker 1: to California to inform local authorities. Over the next several days,
16:04
Speaker 1: Geiger and Mueller prepared for their trip to the FBI,
16:08
Speaker 1: packing crime scene reports, autopsy protocols, and photos. Then they
16:16
Speaker 1: received a call from L.A. Detective Fred Miller. Miller had
16:21
Speaker 1: received their telex and said that California had suffered a
16:24
Speaker 1: similar pattern of killings during the prior summer. Now investigators
16:30
Speaker 1: turned their attention to L.A., 6,000 miles away, in the
16:34
Speaker 1: hunt for the Austrian serial killer. By the fall of 1991,
16:41
Speaker 1: eight women had been found dead in Central Europe. The
16:47
Speaker 1: prime suspect was Austrian celebrity writer, Jack Unterweger. But little
16:53
Speaker 1: forensic evidence tied him to the crimes. And the public
16:57
Speaker 1: believed the police were pursuing an innocent man. An FBI
17:03
Speaker 1: telex from Vienna to California caught the attention of Los
17:06
Speaker 1: Angeles detective, Fred Miller. He and his partner, Jim Harper,
17:11
Speaker 1: had been working for months on a series of unsolved murders.
17:18
Speaker 1: In style and pattern, the L.A. crimes resembled the ones
17:21
Speaker 1: that Unterweger was suspected of in Austria.
17:25
Speaker 7: This immediately lit the fires, and it was just unbelievable
17:29
Speaker 7: to go all these eight months without the suspect turning
17:33
Speaker 7: up or another murder. This was quite a boost to
17:37
Speaker 7: the investigation.
17:39
Speaker 1: The American and Austrian investigators compared notes. The cases were
17:44
Speaker 1: clearly similar. The victims were prostitutes. All had been strangled
17:51
Speaker 1: using intimate apparel. And all the bodies were left in
17:54
Speaker 1: remote locations. Now, Miller and Harper began to reconstruct Unterweger's
18:01
Speaker 1: visit to California. They checked the airlines, car rental agencies,
18:06
Speaker 1: and hotel logs. From these, they created a timeline of
18:10
Speaker 1: his movements.
18:13
Speaker 7: We learned that he came to Los Angeles in June
18:16
Speaker 7: of 91 on vacation. before, right around June the 2nd
18:20
Speaker 7: or 3rd, and that he'd left around the 17th of July.
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Speaker 1: In the summer of 1990, Unterweger visited LAPD headquarters.
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Speaker 7: I'm a journalist.
18:35
Speaker 1: He strolled into the public relations office, presented his press credentials,
18:39
Speaker 1: and signed up for the ride-along program. This program allows
18:44
Speaker 1: civilians to tag along with police and their cruisers as
18:47
Speaker 1: they patrol the city. As all Jack's credentials were in order,
18:52
Speaker 1: the request was accepted. Jack, Jack, Unterweger. Unterweger claimed he
19:03
Speaker 1: was writing a German magazine story, contrasting American and European prostitution.
19:13
Speaker 1: He asked to be shown where the city's prostitutes hung out.
19:17
Speaker 1: The officers introduced him to the seedier areas of Los Angeles.
19:23
Speaker 1: Detective Jim Harper explains.
19:25
Speaker 8: I mean, if you come to a city as big
19:27
Speaker 8: as Los Angeles, you know, prostitutes don't hang out everywhere.
19:30
Speaker 8: You got to know where they hang out. What better
19:33
Speaker 8: way to do that than get a ride along with
19:34
Speaker 8: the police department?
19:38
Speaker 1: Witnesses last saw 21-year-old Shannon Exley in the vicinity of
19:42
Speaker 1: 7th Street and Main Street.
19:46
Speaker 6: What's that you're saying?
19:48
Speaker 1: She had been working the streets since she'd run away
19:50
Speaker 1: from home at 16. Her life ended on June 20, 1991.
19:59
Speaker 1: Her nude body was found with her bra wrapped around
20:02
Speaker 1: her neck. Marks on her feet told investigators she had
20:07
Speaker 1: already been strangled when she was dragged some 50 feet
20:10
Speaker 1: to where she was found. Medical technicians were able to
20:17
Speaker 1: isolate DNA sequences from the semen of seven men. But
20:22
Speaker 1: LA detectives had no suspects with whom they could compare
20:24
Speaker 1: the samples. 10 days later, investigators discovered a second prostitute,
20:32
Speaker 1: Irene Rodriguez, She was found behind a tractor trailer only
20:37
Speaker 1: a mile and a half from where Exley's body had
20:39
Speaker 1: been dumped. Both women had been strangled with their bras,
20:45
Speaker 1: and both were last seen in the vicinity of 7th
20:47
Speaker 1: and Main Street. The detectives discovered that Unterweger was living nearby.
20:57
Speaker 7: We learned that he stayed at the Cecil Hotel, which
20:59
Speaker 7: is located at 643 South Main, which is right on
21:02
Speaker 7: the corner of 7th and Main Street, and that's the
21:03
Speaker 7: location where close proximity where both our victims were last seen.
21:08
Speaker 1: A third victim, Sherry Long, was found near Malibu less
21:12
Speaker 1: than two weeks later. Once again, Unterweger was staying at
21:17
Speaker 1: a hotel in the vicinity Long was last seen. Around
21:24
Speaker 1: her neck, her bra was tied tightly. Detective Jim Harper
21:32
Speaker 1: remembers the unique method of strangulation.
21:37
Speaker 8: The way the bras were tied around their neck was
21:41
Speaker 8: nothing that I had seen before. Look, somebody took a
21:45
Speaker 8: lot of intricate time to really take time with the
21:48
Speaker 8: victim and put it around their necks and tie it.
21:53
Speaker 1: Los Angeles criminalist Lynn Harold compared the knots to see
21:57
Speaker 1: if there was a pattern in the way each had
21:58
Speaker 1: been made and tied.
22:02
Speaker 3: In order for the knots to be made, The wearing
22:06
Speaker 3: apparel had to be dismantled in some form. It's not
22:10
Speaker 3: like the bras were just taken and tied in a
22:12
Speaker 3: square knot, but they were stripped of the elastic always
22:16
Speaker 3: on the left side. And if three people randomly went
22:20
Speaker 3: out and strangled three people, it is extremely unlikely that
22:26
Speaker 3: all three of them would come up with this same scenario.
22:31
Speaker 1: Now, Geiger and Mueller added the information from the Los
22:34
Speaker 1: Angeles murders to their own case and headed to Virginia.
22:39
Speaker 1: They hoped that the FBI could determine whether one man
22:42
Speaker 1: had indeed killed all 11 women. Back in Austria, Jack
22:50
Speaker 1: Unterweger maintained a high profile The celebrity journalist continued to
22:57
Speaker 1: publish his articles and appeared on television to talk about
23:00
Speaker 1: the murders. He told audiences that the Austrian police were
23:05
Speaker 1: inept at finding the real killer and had singled him
23:08
Speaker 1: out as a scapegoat. Unterweger claimed that the authorities were
23:12
Speaker 1: determined to send him back to prison, even if that
23:15
Speaker 1: meant framing him for the grisly crimes. Unterweger remained popular
23:22
Speaker 1: with the public at large and in the nightclubs where
23:24
Speaker 1: he was a regular. To his fans, and especially women,
23:31
Speaker 1: he was still charming. He boasted the police had no evidence,
23:37
Speaker 1: only theories. And they would never be able to send
23:41
Speaker 1: him back to prison. In August 1992, Austrian detectives arrived
23:50
Speaker 1: at Quantico, Virginia. They needed an experienced FBI profiler to
23:57
Speaker 1: help them capture the serial killer that had left 11
23:59
Speaker 1: women dead in Central Europe and California. The Austrians came
24:07
Speaker 1: with 12 boxes of evidence. Special Agent Greg McCrary refused
24:16
Speaker 1: to look at any information on the prime suspect, Jack Unterweger.
24:23
Speaker 1: He didn't want any preconceived notions to interfere with his analysis. Instead,
24:28
Speaker 1: McCrary wanted to focus on the victims.
24:33
Speaker 6: I wanted all the case materials on all of the homicides, victimology,
24:36
Speaker 6: a lot about the victims and their background, their history.
24:39
Speaker 6: the method and manner of death, autopsy reports, crime scene photos,
24:44
Speaker 6: everything that was available from an investigative point of view.
24:48
Speaker 6: What we didn't want is suspect information. We just wanted
24:53
Speaker 6: to take an objective look at all of the cases
24:56
Speaker 6: to see what we thought, if they might be related
24:58
Speaker 6: or not, and the type of offender that we thought
25:01
Speaker 6: might be most probably involved in committing these crimes.
25:05
Speaker 1: Let's get to work. McCrary did not presuppose that the
25:09
Speaker 1: crimes were linked. He examined the similarities among the cases
25:14
Speaker 1: to see if they were unusual enough to have been
25:17
Speaker 1: committed by one perpetrator. He began to look for a
25:22
Speaker 1: behavioral thumbprint, a criminal signature in each of the murders.
25:28
Speaker 6: A signature crime analysis is an assessment of the behavioral
25:32
Speaker 6: aspects of the crime, which can in some cases be
25:36
Speaker 6: a single event, but more often it's a constellation of
25:40
Speaker 6: behaviors that are consistent from crime to crime to crime.
25:43
Speaker 6: And this allows us to link crimes together behaviorally based
25:47
Speaker 6: on the behavior of the offender. McCrary looked for patterns.
25:57
Speaker 1: He examined everything known about the 11 women. How similar
26:01
Speaker 1: were their lifestyles? Almost all the women were prostitutes, except
26:06
Speaker 1: for the first woman slain in Prague.
26:08
Speaker 7: This is a map of Vienna.
26:15
Speaker 1: A companion last saw Blanka Bokova on September 14th, 1990,
26:19
Speaker 1: leaving a bar in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Bokova worked as a
26:29
Speaker 1: sales clerk at a butcher shop, but was known to
26:32
Speaker 1: trade sex for favors. Her body was left on the
26:39
Speaker 1: bank of the Vlatva River in a stretch of woods
26:41
Speaker 1: near Bokova's home. The killer had strangled her with her
26:46
Speaker 1: own nylon stockings. He left her naked, covered with sticks
26:52
Speaker 1: and twigs. He threw her clothes and identification in the river.
27:02
Speaker 1: The first victim Austrian police found had been a registered
27:04
Speaker 1: prostitute for 10 years, Heidemarie Hammerer. In the early part
27:11
Speaker 1: of her career, she had suffered several violent attacks from customers.
27:17
Speaker 1: So she was known to be cautious. Hammerer was last
27:21
Speaker 1: seen outside a parking garage on December 5th, 1990. Like
27:30
Speaker 1: the first five victims, Hamara was found in the woods
27:32
Speaker 1: close to water. They all had restraint bruises on their
27:36
Speaker 1: arms and wrists. And autopsies found no semen on any
27:41
Speaker 1: of the European victims. To the profiler, this suggested that
27:47
Speaker 1: the killer struck out of impotence. He was terribly insecure
27:51
Speaker 1: about his masculinity. When he could not perform after being
27:56
Speaker 1: sexually stimulated, the killer lashed out in anger. He strangled
28:01
Speaker 1: the women he blamed for shaming him. Then he left
28:04
Speaker 1: their bodies in humiliating positions. Next, they focused on the
28:13
Speaker 1: LA murder victims. Did they fit the pattern that had
28:17
Speaker 1: been established in Europe? Shannon Exley was found face down
28:24
Speaker 1: in a grassy area near a freeway exit. She was nude,
28:28
Speaker 1: except for a T-shirt and a pair of socks. She
28:33
Speaker 1: had been dragged 50 feet from the pavement to the
28:35
Speaker 1: location where she was discovered after being strangled with her brassiere. Again,
28:44
Speaker 1: this crime, like the others in LA and Europe, showed
28:47
Speaker 1: the killer had preferences and that the violence itself had
28:51
Speaker 1: become erotic to him.
28:54
Speaker 6: It became clear that there was a pattern to these homicides,
28:58
Speaker 6: that there was sort of a ritualistic behavior that occurred
29:02
Speaker 6: in each of these crime scenes. Each woman was similar
29:05
Speaker 6: in nature, either a prostitute or a woman who traded
29:08
Speaker 6: sex for favors. They were on the street when they
29:13
Speaker 6: were contacted, when they were picked up, very usually very surreptitiously.
29:17
Speaker 6: No one really saw these women get into a car, uh,
29:21
Speaker 6: They were transported out to an area, they were murdered,
29:23
Speaker 6: the ligature strangled with an article of their own clothing,
29:26
Speaker 6: disposed in a similar manner in an outdoor setting, absence
29:31
Speaker 6: of sexual assault.
29:34
Speaker 1: After a week, the study of the victimology convinced McCrary
29:37
Speaker 1: that there had indeed been only one killer. behind the
29:40
Speaker 1: 11 homicides. The FBI agent and the Austrian detective spent
29:46
Speaker 1: the following week drawing up a profile of the assailant.
29:51
Speaker 1: The evidence suggested the killer had a good degree of mobility.
29:56
Speaker 1: He was older, intelligent, sophisticated. and an organized offender. To
30:05
Speaker 1: criminal psychologist Tom Mueller, this described Jack Unterweger.
30:10
Speaker 5: I would say Jack was a very, very good example
30:14
Speaker 5: for a typical type of organized offender, and I would
30:18
Speaker 5: say he was a typical example for a natural psychologist.
30:23
Speaker 5: He was able to understand the needs of other people.
30:27
Speaker 5: He was able to come close to other people, to
30:30
Speaker 5: listen to other people, and then to manipulate them.
30:35
Speaker 1: But the geography worked against the theory that there was
30:37
Speaker 1: one killer. The murders had occurred in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and
30:42
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. With minor exceptions, most serial killers stay regional
30:49
Speaker 1: and pray within a comfort zone. But enough time had
30:55
Speaker 1: elapsed between the slayings to permit one culprit to move around.
31:01
Speaker 1: Now the profiler compared Unterweger's travels to the chronology of
31:04
Speaker 1: the murders.
31:06
Speaker 6: And when I overlaid Jack Unterweger's timeline on the timeline
31:10
Speaker 6: of the crimes, they fit perfectly. And that was really
31:15
Speaker 6: a dawning moment, the aha moment, the moment that's really
31:18
Speaker 6: exciting in analysis like this, because now you have a
31:21
Speaker 6: suspect whose movements correlate perfectly with each of the homicides,
31:25
Speaker 6: as well as his prior homicide that he had been
31:27
Speaker 6: convicted for, bearing a lot of similarities to these homicides.
31:30
Speaker 6: We can put him in each place at each time
31:32
Speaker 6: these crimes occurred. And either Jack Underveger was the unluckiest
31:37
Speaker 6: man in the world to have been there, or he
31:40
Speaker 6: was an excellent suspect.
31:44
Speaker 1: In Austria, Unterweger continued to enjoy his freedom and notoriety.
31:50
Speaker 1: Some women still found him appealing, even though the former
31:53
Speaker 1: convict was a prime murder suspect. This perplexed Detective Fred Miller.
32:01
Speaker 7: One of the interesting facets of Jack Unterweger was that
32:05
Speaker 7: he could carry on a normal relationship with a female
32:08
Speaker 7: and still be this cruel and murder other females.
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Speaker 1: High school student Bianca Mrak was one of those that
32:18
Speaker 1: fell under his charm. The impressionable 18-year-old met Unterweger in
32:24
Speaker 1: a wine bar where she worked as a waitress. She
32:27
Speaker 1: was flattered by the attention from the celebrity writer. He
32:33
Speaker 1: told her he was tiring of all the publicity in
32:35
Speaker 1: Austria and might leave the country, maybe to Switzerland. She
32:41
Speaker 1: agreed to go with him wherever he went. August 1992,
32:50
Speaker 1: Agent Greg McCrary of the FBI worked with Austrian detectives
32:55
Speaker 1: to solve a series of 11 murders. Eight women were
32:59
Speaker 1: killed in Central Europe, three more in Los Angeles. All
33:04
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence pointed to celebrity journalist Jack Unterweger as the culprit.
33:11
Speaker 1: Then they received a phone call from the University of Bern.
33:23
Speaker 1: Austrian lab technicians had completed the fiber analysis of clothing
33:27
Speaker 1: confiscated from Unterweger's apartment weeks before. The inspection had yielded results.
33:38
Speaker 1: Fibers from the lining of the brown leather jacket matched
33:41
Speaker 1: those on the body of Heidemarie Hammerer, the first prostitute found.
33:46
Speaker 1: It was hard forensic evidence that tied Unterweger to one
33:49
Speaker 1: of the victims. But investigators wanted to conclusively link the
33:54
Speaker 1: suspect to all the victims. The FBI had another tool
33:59
Speaker 1: that could do just that, VICAP. the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.
34:06
Speaker 1: The computer database holds the details of 10,000 solved and
34:10
Speaker 1: unsolved US homicides. A programmer inputted the particulars of the
34:15
Speaker 1: European and Los Angeles cases. Details of the victims, their
34:20
Speaker 1: manner of death, locations where they disappeared, and where they
34:24
Speaker 1: were found were all fed into the computer. McCrary ordered
34:29
Speaker 1: an extensive breakdown A multi-dimensional search with 15 cross criteria
34:34
Speaker 1: that could show if the crimes were connected. 48 hours later,
34:40
Speaker 1: the detectives were called back to the Vicab room to
34:43
Speaker 1: hear the answer. The results were stunning. The computer statistically
34:51
Speaker 1: linked all 11 slaves. Jack Unterweger was the killer. The
34:59
Speaker 1: FBI had given the Austrians solid proof for their case.
35:04
Speaker 1: But Unterweger was still at large. The Austrian detectives immediately
35:10
Speaker 1: returned to Vienna. Armed with the FBI profile, authorities issued
35:18
Speaker 1: an arrest warrant for Johann Jack Unterweger. Again, the police
35:25
Speaker 1: descended upon the Reiter's residence. But Jack was gone. He
35:35
Speaker 1: had abandoned his flat. Geiger called his office and ordered
35:41
Speaker 1: his team to check all of Austria's ports of exit.
35:46
Speaker 1: Within hours, all train stations and airports were canvassed. but
35:54
Speaker 1: they found no sign of Unterweger. The serial killer was gone.
36:05
Speaker 1: Unterweger had already fled with Bianca Marac beyond the reach
36:09
Speaker 1: of Austrian authorities.
36:15
Speaker 6: Jack Unterweger is a very good representative of an intelligent
36:22
Speaker 6: psychopath He became an award-winning author and playwright. But psychopaths
36:27
Speaker 6: are very, very manipulative, and they have a supreme ability
36:30
Speaker 6: to con other people.
36:32
Speaker 8: Hello?
36:33
Speaker 5: Hello? Ja. Ja.
36:35
Speaker 8: Ich bin hier.
36:36
Speaker 1: On a stop in Paris, Jack called into television shows
36:39
Speaker 1: and protested his innocence.
36:43
Speaker 5: Ja.
36:44
Speaker 1: He said his flight was not an admission of guilt,
36:47
Speaker 1: but an attempt to evade a frame-up by the police.
36:50
Speaker 3: Was?
36:52
Speaker 1: He promised to return to Austria and answer all questions
36:55
Speaker 1: if the arrest warrant was withdrawn. Despite his media appearances,
37:03
Speaker 1: the Austrian police had no idea where Unterweger was hiding.
37:10
Speaker 1: In Vienna, investigators interviewed Unterweger's friends. They were unfazed by
37:18
Speaker 1: the fact that he had been indicted for multiple murders.
37:22
Speaker 1: They said that Jack had run off for a holiday
37:24
Speaker 1: in America with Bianca Marac, a former waitress from the
37:27
Speaker 1: wine bar. Bianca was known to live with her mother,
37:38
Speaker 1: so Geiger paid a visit to Mrs. Marac. She acknowledged
37:43
Speaker 1: that she had been in contact with a fugitive couple,
37:46
Speaker 1: sending them money via wire transfers. They were in New
37:52
Speaker 1: York and heading down to Florida. Geiger told her to
37:57
Speaker 1: contact him if her daughter called again. Mrs. Merak agreed.
38:05
Speaker 1: Just days later, she got a call from Miami. Her
38:10
Speaker 1: daughter needed more money. Mrs. Merak promptly informed the Austrian police. U.S.
38:19
Speaker 1: Marshals were waiting at the Western Union. The marshals ID'd
38:24
Speaker 1: the couple as they drove up.
38:30
Speaker 3: U.S.
38:30
Speaker 8: Marshals, you're under arrest.
38:32
Speaker 3: U.S. Marshals, you're under arrest.
38:36
Speaker 1: Montevideo was quickly apprehended. He was jailed in Miami to
38:44
Speaker 1: await extradition. Both the nation of Austria and the state
38:50
Speaker 1: of California wanted to prosecute him. LAPD detective Fred Miller
38:54
Speaker 1: began conferring with his Austrian counterparts.
39:00
Speaker 7: After Jack's arrest in Miami, we dealt almost on a
39:05
Speaker 7: daily schedule with the Austrian authorities, trying to put the
39:09
Speaker 7: information they had on their murders together with the information
39:13
Speaker 7: on the California murders. The Austrian authorities made trips to
39:17
Speaker 7: Los Angeles, They provided us with whatever materials we needed,
39:21
Speaker 7: photographs of the crime scenes, information on their victims, information
39:25
Speaker 7: on Jack.
39:28
Speaker 1: The Austrians wanted to process Unterweger in their court for
39:32
Speaker 1: all 11 murders. But they knew that would be difficult.
39:39
Speaker 1: The Austrian public perceived Jack as a celebrity. Detectives would
39:45
Speaker 1: have to convince them that Jack's private evil side was
39:48
Speaker 1: the reality. Special Agent Greg McCrary explains.
39:54
Speaker 6: What's interesting with Jack, if you look at different pictures
39:57
Speaker 6: from different parts of his life, many times he's Natalie
40:00
Speaker 6: attired with a bow tie and has this almost young,
40:04
Speaker 6: innocent looking face. But then if you see him with
40:07
Speaker 6: his shirt off and you look at these really diabolical
40:11
Speaker 6: involved prison tattoos that are typical of the more violent,
40:16
Speaker 6: psychopathic offenders you have in prison, you You see the
40:19
Speaker 6: dichotomy between Jack's outward appearance and the inner psychopathology becomes
40:25
Speaker 6: more apparent.
40:28
Speaker 1: The LAPD detectives obtained a search warrant for tissue samples
40:31
Speaker 1: from the prisoner. In Miami, a technician drew blood, took
40:37
Speaker 1: hair samples and swabs of saliva for DNA testing. The
40:42
Speaker 1: samples were sent back to a Los Angeles lab for analysis.
40:48
Speaker 1: His DNA matched that found in the semen from Shannon Exley.
40:52
Speaker 1: But Exley's body contained semen from six other men, and
40:57
Speaker 1: there was no sexual discharge found in the other two L.A. prostitutes.
41:05
Speaker 1: Jack Unterweger worried that he would be transferred to California
41:08
Speaker 1: where a death penalty was possible. He did not want
41:11
Speaker 1: to die in the gas chamber. But if he went
41:15
Speaker 1: back to Austria, He could be tried for the crimes
41:17
Speaker 1: on both continents. Criminal psychologist Tom Mueller explains.
41:24
Speaker 5: If an Austrian citizen is committing a crime wherever in
41:27
Speaker 5: the world, the Austrian law is responsible for that guy.
41:31
Speaker 5: So the American authorities gave the clearance to bring Mr.
41:37
Speaker 5: Unterweger here back to Austria.
41:40
Speaker 1: But Unterweger could delay this by fighting extradition. L.A. detectives
41:46
Speaker 1: pressured him. They assured Unterweger that he would be found
41:51
Speaker 1: guilty in California and reminded him of the state's death penalty.
41:57
Speaker 1: Fearing the gas chamber, he agreed to deportation. Despite the evidence,
42:03
Speaker 1: he still enjoyed popular support at home, and Unterweger believed
42:08
Speaker 1: he could persuade a jury that the authorities were wrong.
42:13
Speaker 1: But the Austrians were betting on the FBI profile. When
42:20
Speaker 1: Jack Unterweger returned to his native Austria, he faced 11
42:23
Speaker 1: counts of murder. Seven women were killed on Austrian soil.
42:31
Speaker 1: But the laws of the Central European country allow its
42:34
Speaker 1: citizens to be tried for crimes committed anywhere in the world.
42:40
Speaker 1: The murder indictment had done little to diminish the writer's
42:42
Speaker 1: support in the media. As he sat in jail awaiting trial,
42:49
Speaker 1: Jack continued to lobby the press that the police had
42:52
Speaker 1: framed him. His case saturated the news. In this highly
42:58
Speaker 1: charged environment, Austrian prosecutors prepared for trial. If they wanted
43:06
Speaker 1: to win, they had to present an airtight case. LAPD
43:12
Speaker 1: detective Jim Harper journeyed to Vienna for the trial.
43:16
Speaker 8: The OJ case here in LA is the only thing
43:18
Speaker 8: I can kind of equate it to. It was that
43:20
Speaker 8: big over there. It was all over the newspapers, headlines.
43:24
Speaker 8: I mean, and when we came into this town to testify,
43:29
Speaker 8: it was.
43:29
Speaker 1: A big deal.
43:30
Speaker 8: We were all over the front pages of the paper,
43:31
Speaker 8: the whole deal.
43:35
Speaker 1: The trial was held before a three-judge tribunal. The prosecution
43:39
Speaker 1: argued their case with minimal physical evidence. They were counting
43:46
Speaker 1: on Agent McCrary's behavioral profile.
43:52
Speaker 6: So it became increasingly important to link these crimes together behaviorally.
43:57
Speaker 6: That really was the only way that Jack could be
43:59
Speaker 6: linked to this entire series of crimes. So that became
44:02
Speaker 6: the critical component in the prosecution of Jack and where
44:05
Speaker 6: we were most able to assist the Austrian authorities.
44:09
Speaker 1: McCrary related to the judges what he had deducted at Quantico.
44:19
Speaker 1: The killer always chose prostitutes or those who traded sex
44:23
Speaker 1: for favors. He was criminally sophisticated, older, at least in
44:32
Speaker 1: his late 30s. He wasn't panicky nor disorganized. He possessed
44:43
Speaker 1: inner rage, but it was very controlled. The victims had
44:50
Speaker 1: bruises on their wrists as if they had been restrained
44:52
Speaker 1: with handcuffs. McCrary was convinced Unterweger would ask the prostitutes
44:59
Speaker 1: to wear them to fulfill his sexual fantasy. But it
45:03
Speaker 1: was about control. The killer wanted their hands secured to
45:07
Speaker 1: prevent them from resisting. McCrary's testimony linked the victims together.
45:15
Speaker 1: Across two continents, the trail of deaths followed Jack Unterweger.
45:21
Speaker 1: Where he went, women died. While he visited Los Angeles,
45:27
Speaker 1: three prostitutes were murdered, and their slayings mimicked those in Europe.
45:35
Speaker 1: Shannon Exley and the other two American women were strangled
45:38
Speaker 1: to death. The offender used their brassieres as ligatures. And
45:47
Speaker 1: Unterweger tied the knots on the ligatures in exactly the
45:49
Speaker 1: same way as he had on the ones in Europe.
45:56
Speaker 1: McCrary pointed out that the probability was infinitesimal that more
45:59
Speaker 1: than one killer committed the crimes.
46:03
Speaker 6: What are the chances that more than one offender would
46:05
Speaker 6: be not only choosing to ligature strangle a victim with
46:09
Speaker 6: an article of her own clothing, but he would tie
46:12
Speaker 6: the knots in exactly the same way? Very, very remote
46:15
Speaker 6: chance that we've had different offenders committing the crime in
46:18
Speaker 6: that manner.
46:20
Speaker 1: But the defense argued there was a difference. The victims
46:24
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles had been strangled with their brassieres, and
46:27
Speaker 1: women in Europe had been strangled with their pantyhose. but
46:32
Speaker 1: McCrary countered that European prostitutes do not wear brassieres. What
46:38
Speaker 1: mattered to the killer was that he used an intimate
46:41
Speaker 1: article of the victim's clothing.
46:47
Speaker 5: L.A.
46:47
Speaker 1: Criminalist Lynn Harold was asked to compare the knots from
46:50
Speaker 1: the pantyhose to those from the bras.
46:54
Speaker 3: In the case of the pantyhose, you had one leg.
46:58
Speaker 3: The second leg was double-backed on itself. and used as
47:02
Speaker 3: the third segment for the weaving or braiding in a
47:06
Speaker 3: manner extremely similar to one of the bra cases where
47:10
Speaker 3: the two pieces of elastic formed two segments and the
47:14
Speaker 3: left strap was pulled through as the third braid.
47:21
Speaker 1: In all, the trial lasted two and a half months.
47:29
Speaker 1: On June 28, 1994, A jury in Graz, Austria found
47:34
Speaker 1: Johann Jack Unterweger guilty of nine of the murders. The
47:39
Speaker 1: remaining victims were found too badly decomposed to convict Unterweger
47:43
Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt. The verdict meant life in prison
47:49
Speaker 1: to a man who swore he would never spend another
47:52
Speaker 1: day behind bars. And he never did. Wintervega strangled himself
48:02
Speaker 1: with a nylon cord stripped from his uniform.
48:06
Speaker 6: We normally think of suicide as coming from depression or
48:09
Speaker 6: someone who feels shame or guilt or remorseful in some way.
48:14
Speaker 6: This is not at all what was going on when
48:16
Speaker 6: Jack committed suicide. More psychopathic offenders like Jack do it
48:20
Speaker 6: to exert control, and it's the last great defiant act
48:25
Speaker 6: that he exercised to wrest control of this situation away
48:29
Speaker 6: from the government, away from the authorities, he would not
48:32
Speaker 6: allow himself to be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
48:37
Speaker 1: Jack Unterweger proved that serial killers are not just an
48:40
Speaker 1: American phenomenon. European law enforcement agencies realized that to fight
48:47
Speaker 1: criminals of this sort, they would have to follow the
48:49
Speaker 1: FBI's example.
48:52
Speaker 8: What we.
48:54
Speaker 5: learned out of their case was that in Austria and
48:57
Speaker 5: even in Europe, we didn't have a similar system like WICAP,
49:00
Speaker 5: Violent Crime Apprehension Program. The Criminal Psychology Service tried to
49:05
Speaker 5: get a similar system here to Austria, and therefore we
49:08
Speaker 5: can work with all sex crime cases and homicide cases.
49:16
Speaker 1: Now, thanks to the lead of the FBI, many countries
49:19
Speaker 1: have adopted profiling and a computerized criminal database in the
49:24
Speaker 1: hopes that open borders and conflicting jurisdictions will no longer
49:28
Speaker 1: allow these predators to escape justice.
49:53
Speaker 6: Thank you.