Adolf Schandl

Adolf Schandl (* 1936 in Vienna ) is a former Austrian criminal who became known as a stone escapee and Karlau hostage-taker .

Early crime

In 1967 and 1968, Adolf Schandl and his girlfriend committed three armed robberies and shot two people. For this he was on 11 June 1970 by the Regional Court of Vienna Criminal for triple aggravated robbery and two counts of attempted murder to ten years in heavy prison sentenced and in the prison of Stein transferred. In October 1971 Schandl tried to escape with a fellow prisoner and was able to jump over the prison wall into the open. However, because he broke his leg, he was quickly arrested again.

Stone eruption and escape

Stein Prison

During the weekly legal aid day, Schandl and three other inmates were brought before the examining magistrate on November 4, 1971. Schandl and two other inmates, including the one with whom he had tried to escape in October, agreed to take hostages during this appointment and thus get out of the prison. In addition to the judge, a secretary and two guards were also present. Since it was after 5 p.m. and the workforce was drastically reduced at that time, the two officers were armed with firearms. Schandl and his two fellow inmates, Alfred N. and Walter S., took this opportunity and overpowered the guards. After they had acquired the two service pistols, they started negotiations with the prison management. They demanded civilian clothes, safe conduct with two of the hostages and a two-day lead in which they should not be searched, only then would they release the hostages. A ten minute ultimatum was given. The negotiators succeeded in extending the ultimatum to 7:30 p.m. and obtaining the release of the two guards and the secretary. Instead, the police commander of Krems an der Donau had offered himself as a substitute hostage. With the judge and the commanding officer hostage, they drove out of the prison in the judge's car. Justice Minister Christian Broda had authorized the prison management to open the prison gates and assured the perpetrators a lead of at least 30 km.

After they drove into a dead end in Vienna-Penzing and police vehicles gathered at the entrance to the dead end, they turned around and broke through the ring of emergency vehicles. Then they drove to Vienna's Westbahnhof , got off there with their hostages, took a newspaper seller as an additional hostage and got into a taxi, also taking the driver hostage. Then, at the suggestion of the police commander, they drove to the Vienna police headquarters to negotiate directly with the police. The saying of the then Police President Holaubek became legendary when he was persuaded to take on the task “It's me, the President!”. Schandl and his accomplices were guaranteed a further escape lead until Friday noon, after which they released the seller in return. After several unsuccessful attempts to break open parked cars and short-circuit them, they stopped a car with two occupants in Breitenlee and forced them to change into a taxi. Then the perpetrators drove both cars to an abandoned quarry, disabled the taxi and left the taxi driver and the two men tied up. With the two remaining hostages, the perpetrators continued their escape in the new vehicle. They later released the judge and the commanding officer after they had promised not to alert the police for 20 minutes.

Schandl and his accomplices drove on to Vienna's 7th district , where they broke into a car and short-circuited it. But before they could drive away, the owner of the car and two other men showed up and drove the perpetrators to flight. However, one of the perpetrators returned to the car and drove after his accomplices, who then stopped their pursuers with warning shots and also jumped into the getaway car. In Davidgasse, Schandl got out of the car and fled alone, his two accomplices hijacked a patrol car and holed up in a residential building surrounded by police units, where they surrendered after a 72-hour escape. Shortly afterwards, Adolf Schandl stole another car and drove it to the wife of an acquaintance who, however, was not at home. After going into hiding with friends for a few days, on November 15 he stood in front of the door of the mother of one of his fellow inmates in Taubergasse. He threatened the woman with a knife and made himself at home with her. Although he still wore the same civilian clothes as when he fled and visited nearby coffee houses, he went undetected. The woman did not dare to alert the police because she believed her son was involved in the escape.

After the police had checked all of Schandl's cell contacts, the house on Taubergasse was also observed and Schandl was finally arrested in the apartment in the early morning hours of November 20th without resistance. He was sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison for fleeing and the crimes he committed. In 1985 he was released early, but in 1992 sentenced to 19 years imprisonment for collective robbery and an exchange of fire with the gendarmerie and again transferred to the Stein prison. At the beginning of October 1996 he was transferred to the Graz-Karlau prison because of an acute risk of escape .

Hostage-taking in Karlau prison

Graz-Karlau Prison

Within a few weeks, Schandl managed to find two accomplices there for an attempt to escape during his one-hour daily courtyard walks. These were the murderer and pimp Peter Grossauer, as well as the Palestinian terrorist and two-time murderer Tawfik Ben Ahmed Chaovali . On November 14, 1996, the three men were allowed to shop together in the institution's business for reasons that have not yet been clarified. Chaovali pulled a knife out of a plastic sack deposited there and overpowered two security officers with knife stabs, while Schandl and Grossauer pounced on the three saleswomen and tied them up. A third guard managed to pull his two seriously injured colleagues into the corridor before sounding the alarm. Chaovali then tied home-made bottle bombs around the women’s bodies. He had stolen the nitro thinner required for this from the prison workshop. In the meantime, Schandl phoned the prison management and asked for a helicopter and eight million schillings. At the same time, he threatened to kill the women and commit suicide if the demand was rejected, and to torture and sexually abuse the hostages if they tried to gain time. The police were alerted immediately, which in turn called the Cobra Task Force for help. A specially trained chief negotiator from Negotiating Group South managed to extend the ultimatum while snipers took a stand.

After around nine hours, the Cobra officials prepared to free the hostages and installed special door opening devices, which was covered by the noise of a helicopter, which was supposed to simulate the hostage takers fulfilling their demands. However, Tawfik Ben Chaovali heard the officers and cursed them through the closed door while they assured him that they would only deliver the ransom. After Schandl had opened the door and took over a suitcase full of money, he went back to his accomplices and opened the suitcase there. The Cobra officers used this moment of distraction to blow open the doors, fire warning shots over the heads of the hostage-takers and finally overwhelm the perpetrators. During the two minutes and 14 seconds of access, everyone involved was unharmed. The perpetrators were then body searched and placed in solitary confinement. The hostage-taking also resulted in the prison's security and detention conditions being tightened.

Whereabouts

On December 18, 1997 he was sentenced to 19 in a jury trial at the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Graz, his accomplices to 19 and 17 years in prison, respectively. The appeal and nullity appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court on June 23, 1998. On February 11, 2009, Adolf Schandl was transferred from the high-security wing of the Karlau prison to the Garsten prison. Although his previous sentence set his release to 2027, he was released early in June 2012 on strict probation.

Trivia

For the ORF documentation Cobra - take it over! The hostage-taking in the Graz-Karlau prison was re-enacted and supplemented with original film and sound recordings.

In October 2014, Schandl's memoir was published under the title Jailbreak. Just don't die in prison at PROverbis Verlag in Vienna. The ghostwriter was the Graz author Engelbert Gressl.

In 2018 a film was made about and with him.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Sometimes the life of the hostages really only depended on a hair . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 6, 1971, p. 4 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
2. ↑ Gangster escape after 2 ultimatums . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 5, 1971, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
3. ↑ Vienna breathes a sigh of relief: the gangsters surrendered . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 7, 1971, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
4. ↑ "Wiener Weg" confirms: Schandl was left with no choice . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 21, 1971, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
5. ^ "News.at" about the hostage-taking
6. ↑ Supreme Court judgment according RIS database RIS - 14Os55 / 98 - Decision Text
7. ↑ Raffaela Lindorfer: Stein escapist released early . Article in the courier dated June 14, 2012.
8. ↑ ORF.at about the documentation Cobra - take it over!
9. ↑ http://www.proverbis.at/html/buecher23.html