“I had to kill someone”

Eight Years in Prison for Cemetery Killer (14)

The crime scene at the Baumgarten Cemetery in Vienna-Penzing(Bild: Zwefo)

Jenny was just 14 when she killed a complete stranger at the cemetery in Baumgarten. The 64-year-old retiree died simply because the girl had a pure desire to kill. In a monotone voice, she described the gruesome crime in detail. She stabbed her victim an inconceivable 82 times—even one juror found it too much to bear...

Jenny (name changed) is escorted into the courtroom by nine correctional officers. Although every seat in the room is occupied, it is silent as the 14-year-old takes her seat in the center with a blank stare. Monotonously and without any sign of emotion, Jenny recalls February 23: “I got up and I just noticed a tension.” And it simply wouldn’t go away. “I couldn’t think about anything anymore. I was so tense. Then I took my knife and thought about the crime. That I had to do it. That I had to kill someone.” A plan she later carried out.

Left the shared apartment without a word
A week earlier, she had bought a folding knife with a wooden handle. Jenny packed it up and left the supervised shared apartment in Vienna-Penzing around half past one in the afternoon. “She said she’d like to go out,” her case worker recalls. “My impression of her was that she was rather emotionless. She didn’t show much engagement. But that’s how I’d always known her,” the social worker explains. 

After talking with a friend: “I wanted it even more”
But inside, the 14-year-old was seething. “I talked to my friend about it. I told her I felt the urge to do it. She encouraged me,” the girl says. “That she wouldn’t do it?” the judge asks. The shocking answer: “Then I wanted to do it even more.” On Rennbahnweg, Jenny finally got her hands on ten Xanax pills—and swallowed them all. “I always feel drunk afterward, and then I get this rush.”

The crime scene at the Baumgarten Cemetery in Vienna-Penzing(Bild: Zwefo)

In this state of intoxication, the girl then drove to Baumgarten Cemetery. “It just happened so suddenly that I absolutely had to do it.” What? “Kill someone.” On February 23, the 64-year-old retiree was visiting the family grave, strolling through the rows of graves. That’s when the 14-year-old literally hacked her to pieces with a pocket knife. It could have happened to anyone, because Jenny’s motive was pure lust for killing.

Then I walked around until I found someone. There was this woman.

Jenny war am Friedhof, um ein Mordopfer zu finden

And even as the teenager described the bloody deed, she remained completely impassive: “I set my bag down and tried to stab her in the back. Then I pushed her a little and threw her to the ground. Suddenly she was lying there and wasn’t fighting back anymore. I wanted her to bleed out quickly.”

Lay judge couldn’t bear to look at the injury photos
The medical examiner speaks of an inconceivable 82 (!) stab and cut wounds inflicted on the pensioner—51 of them to the head and neck. Images of these wounds were apparently shown to the lay judge during the trial. For one juror, the sight was so unbearable that he stormed out of the courtroom and, a few minutes later, asked to be excused due to “health issues.”

The girl had called for help. I wonder why nothing was done sooner.

Verteidigerin Astrid Wagner

Bild: Martin A. Jöchl

Jenny follows these events just as dispassionately as she gives her testimony. Just as she behaved after the horrific murder. “I took a photo of her and sent it,” says the 14-year-old. “I wanted my friends to know that I was just going to prison.” Or was it just showing off? Because the girl talks about being a big true-crime fan and having talked about serial killers with her friend time and again. “She especially liked the one who eats people. I don’t know his name”—she’s probably referring to the American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer...

Defense attorney Astrid Wagner(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

Caregiver considered bloody hands “plausible”
At four in the afternoon, she finally returned to the supervised shared living arrangement. “I noticed that the knuckles on both her hands were bloody. She said she’d twisted her ankle and had caught herself with her hands. “That sounded very plausible,” the caregiver said on the witness stand. They would have left her alone—even while she was washing her dirty clothes in the bathroom. It wasn’t until she herself called emergency services that anyone was even alerted.

The trial reveals the conditions that seem to actually prevail in such MA11 supervised residential facilities. Not only was 14-year-old Jenny—who had already been hospitalized for self-harm—able to buy a knife and keep it in her room, but the girl also apparently did not attend school regularly. “We had a hard time waking her up,” says the caregiver. Every day, Jenny also watched violent videos and videos of killings—nothing was monitored.

The 14-year-old faces two to ten years in prison at the Vienna Regional Court. The jury ultimately sentenced the girl to eight years in prison. She will also be placed in a forensic-therapeutic center. According to a psychiatric evaluation, she is extremely dangerous. The verdict is already final.