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8 - Partners in crime: the use of forensic DNA technologies in Austria

from Section 2 - National contexts of forensic DNA technologies and key issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2012

By
Barbara Prainsack
Edited by
Richard Hindmarsh  and
Barbara Prainsack
Richard Hindmarsh
Affiliation:
Griffith University, Queensland
Barbara Prainsack
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Summary

INTRODUCTION: AUSTRIA'S ‘FIRST SERIAL KILLER’ AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FORENSIC DNA DATABASE

In spring 2008, the small Alpine republic of Austria made it into world headlines in the reporting on a bizarre and disconcerting criminal activity. On 27 April, police had discovered a cellar dungeon in which 42-year-old Elisabeth F. had been abused and held captive by her father for 24 years. During that period she bore seven children, of whom six survived. Upon being rescued by the police, some of Elisabeth's children saw sunlight for the first time in their lives. The entire world was in shock.

Many Austrians remembered that this was not the first time they had made headlines with a horror story. Johann (‘Jack’) Unterweger, the illegitimate son of a Viennese prostitute and a member of the US Armed Forces, ‘gave Austria its first serial killer’, as an Austrian weblog put it. At age 24, Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison after murdering an 18-year-old German woman who, as he later stated, reminded him of his mother (Gepp 2007). He spent his life in prison writing short stories and he also authored a book, an autobiography titled Purgatory: A Journey to Jail (1983), which in a twist had also rendered him the darling of the local celebrity scene. Released from prison in 1990 – after having served only 16 years of his life sentence as a result of devoted lobbying efforts on the part of celebrity friends – Unterweger was celebrated as a model case of rehabilitation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Genetic Suspects
Global Governance of Forensic DNA Profiling and Databasing
 , pp. 153 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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