Close combat behind bars

Homeless killer beats up Stückel murderer

At the age of 16, K. – who does not want to be unrecognizable at his own request – became a two-time homeless killer. Now he has beaten up two convicted murderers.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Daniel Scharinger, Reinhard Holl, Zwefo)

Austria's most dangerous prisoners in bloody close combat: The long-sought double murderer (19) injured a notorious life prisoner and the instigator of the bloody deed against a young woman, some of them seriously, in the Garsten prison in Upper Austria. Now he faces an even longer prison sentence.

With around 250 places, Garsten prison in Upper Austria, a former Benedictine monastery, is the second forensic-therapeutic center for the enforcement of measures (mentally abnormal offenders) in the country. Austria's most dangerous prisoners, who were sane at the time of the crime but are classified as mentally ill, are incarcerated there.

They wrote gruesome crime stories
Two of them wrote gruesome crime stories. One was a phantom who spread fear and terror among the homeless in Vienna for weeks as a knife attacker.

During the trial, the 16-year-old at the time of the crimes revealed his "uncontrollable desire to kill" and how he searched for "easy victims" at night in lonely places in his hometown of Vienna, armed with a stiletto knife. Two men died, one woman barely survived. The verdict: 13 years' imprisonment under the Juvenile Penal Code, combined with committal to a psychiatric hospital.

At the age of 16, K. – who does not want to be unrecognizable at his own request – became a two-time homeless killer. Now he has beaten up two convicted murderers.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Daniel Scharinger, Reinhard Holl, Zwefo)

Cellmate stabbed girlfriend 200 times
The cellmate of the now 19-year-old is also a notorious lifer. Fifteen years ago, the then 22-year-old law student was unanimously convicted by a jury of murdering his girlfriend (21). In a so-called overkill, he stabbed the young woman 200 times in bed. He then dismembered her and disposed of the body parts in the trash.

My client is off drugs. He felt pressured by his cellmate and didn't know what else to do.

Strafverteidiger Manfred Arbacher-Stöger vertritt den Obdachlosenkiller

Bild: Anja Richter

During a cell visit to allegedly exchange pills, the situation between the two convicted felons escalated. The homeless phantom, half his age, beat up the soon-to-be 38-year-old perpetrator ("He hit me 30 to 40 times on the back of the head"). The convicted murderer's glasses frame was also broken.

"Help, I'm being beaten!"
Just two weeks earlier, the 19-year-old, whose internal "justice traffic light" is red for high danger, had inflicted an open nasal bone fracture on a cellmate. This inmate is also no stranger to crime. He was convicted as the instigator and getaway driver in the robbery and murder of a 20-year-old woman in Zell am See (Salzburg). During the attack behind bars, he panicked and called the prison guards' emergency intercom: "Help, I'm being beaten!"

The charge of aggravated assault will likely extend the prison sentence of Vienna's former knife phantom.