Just hours after he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for strangling nine prostitutes in Austria and the Los Angeles area, an infamous author-inmate was found dead in his Austrian prison cell Wednesday, an apparent suicide victim.
The body of Jack Unterweger, 43, was found hanging from a curtain rod, according to the Austrian Ministry of Justice. Officials said he apparently had used a cord from his jogging pants to hang himself. Unterweger, whose autobiography had made him the darling of the Viennese cafe intellectual set and helped win him parole in from an earlier murder sentence, was found guilty Tuesday of nine more murders--all of them committed while on parole.
Prosecutors said his latest victims included Shannon Exley, 35, Irene Rodriguez, 33, and Peggy Jean Booth, 26, all of whom were slain during the summer of , when Unterweger was visiting Los Angeles. During the trial in Graz that concluded Tuesday, Unterweger maintained his innocence in the nine latest murders, begging the jury to spare him from a life behind bars.
Unterweger, the son of an Austrian streetwalker and an American soldier, was raised among prostitutes in an Austrian village. At the age of 25, he was arrested and charged with beating a prostitute and strangling her with her bra. Convicted of murder, he was sentenced to life in prison.
While in prison, Unterweger wrote stories, plays and an autobiography. Hailed as a model of rehabilitation, he was released from prison in Profitable offers poured in, and within months, Unterweger was wearing expensive suits, driving a flashy American convertible with personalized license plates and appearing regularly on television talk shows. But during those same months, prosecutors say, six more prostitutes in Austria were strangled, in most cases with their bras.
