Favorite girls murders

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As Favoritner girl murders are sexually motivated crimes of violence against Alexandra Schriefl († 1988, 20 years), Christina Beranek († 1989, 10 years) and called Nicole ostrich († 1990, 8 years), in the 10th Vienna district Favorites occurred and led to the most extensive and costly investigations in Austrian criminal history to date.

For a long time, the investigators believed in a serial offender. It was not until the introduction of DNA analysis and a DNA database that the murderer of Alexandra Schriefl was arrested in 2000 and the murderer of Nicole Strau was arrested the following year. Only the murder of Christina Beranek remained unsolved, although the public prosecutor and investigators are sure that Alexandra's murderer is also responsible for this crime.

Murder of Alexandra Schriefl

On the night of October 26, 1988, the Austrian national holiday , the 20-year-old saleswoman Alexandra Schriefl from Vienna-Favoriten was attacked, abused and strangled. She had previously visited the “Azzurro” discotheque on Himberger Strasse with friends and was last seen alive at a nearby telephone booth around 02:30, from where she called her boyfriend to pick her up. When her boyfriend arrived, however, Alexandra was already gone. When she had still not shown in the late morning, a search was initiated. It was not until eleven hours after her disappearance that her naked body was found tied to a tree behind a billboard on Himberger Strasse. She had been strangled with her stockings and sweater on.

The investigators targeted a masked man who had molested and attacked women in the area several times since July, a car driver who, according to a testimony, had spoken to Alexandra and was seen in front of the discotheque, and three young boys who, according to another testimony, were seen Alexandra should have followed after leaving the discotheque. Within a few weeks, more than 500 people were questioned, including visitors to the discotheque and a subsequent bowling alley who were there on the night of the murder, as well as previously convicted sex offenders and victims of such attacks. However, no culprit could be identified.

On November 11, 1988, Alexandra Schriefl was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery, attended by over 250 mourners .

Murder of Christina Beranek

On Thursday, February 2, 1989, 10-year-old Christina Beranek disappeared on the way home from school on Josef-Enslein-Platz in Favoriten. She was last seen alive shortly before 5 p.m. when she bought a Mickey Mouse notebook in a tobacco shop in the Per-Albin-Hansson settlement .

After a private search, she was found by her father on the 14th floor of house number 2 of the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung at around 11 a.m. the next morning. The girl was half undressed, abused, strangled and tied with her clothes to a railing in stairwell B. Forensic medicine found that the girl was killed between 5 and 10 p.m. the day before. The perpetrator must have intercepted her shortly after her visit to the tobacco shop in the few meters to the house. It remained unclear whether he killed her immediately or moved her to another house first. The girl's school bag had been locked in a meter box on the 13th floor by the perpetrator, but with a key that was available in any hardware store.

The investigators immediately established a connection to the murder of Alexandra Schriefl, as this crime had taken place less than five minutes' walk away and the perpetrator had acted very similarly in the execution. In addition, the murderer had also taken an item of clothing from his victim as a trophy. The police suspected the perpetrator in the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung, one of the largest municipal housing estates in Vienna with over 11,000 inhabitants at the time.

What followed was the most extensive investigation in Austrian criminal history. The investigators checked around 1,000 people from Favoriten alone, including all 580 male residents of the complex at number 2 who were older than 13 years. In addition, all 650 apartments in the complex were checked, in one case even with a court order. The entire plastic floor of the plateau on which Christina was murdered was cut out and taken to the laboratory. Even specialists from the German Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden were involved in the search for clues. Hundreds of posters were put up in the area of ​​the entire settlement, on which Christina was shown in a color photo montage with the clothes she had worn on the day of the murder. The municipality of Vienna assumed the costs. The grabber bonus was increased to 160,000 schillings (around 22,000 euros based on today's purchasing power).

On February 13, the officials finally believed they had caught the perpetrator. An officer from Lower Austria, who was stationed in Vienna years ago, tracked down the 20-year-old Werner K. In 1984, he sexually molested nine little girls, including one of them, in the elevators of the Per-Albin-Hansson settlement in staircase B at number 2. The officers found out that he had gone to school with Alexandra Schriefl and that he had no alibi for the night of the murder. However, he was exonerated by a blood group test and had a solid alibi for the night of Christina's murder.

On February 17, 1989 Christina Beranek was buried in the crematorium of the Vienna Central Cemetery. Interior Minister Franz Löschnak was among the more than 400 mourners .

Murder of Nicole Strau

On December 22, 1990 around 5:30 p.m., eight-year-old Nicole from Favoriten was on the way home from her uncle, who lived on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse. She used tram line 71 and then changed to bus 15 A. Then their trail was lost.

Her body was found the next day at around 10:20 a.m. in the Laa forest . The forensic examination revealed that Nicole had been raped before she died, before being strangled with her shoelaces and beaten to death with a broken branch.

In this criminal case, too, over 1,600 people were checked.

Manhunt

All three murders occurred in the same area, the three victims were female, young, raped and strangled. There was only about 26 months between the crimes, and no perpetrator could be identified in any of the cases. In addition, the first two victims were murdered in almost identical ways. This long led investigators to believe that the same perpetrator must have committed the crimes. Almost 4,000 people were examined and questioned, including hundreds of men who had already been convicted of sexual and moral offenses.

Searches in the television series Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved on the murders Schriefl and Beranek (September 1989) and Strau (January 1991) were unsuccessful.

At that time there was no DNA analysis in Austria , only the less precise determination of blood groups; a disagreement was considered to be proof that someone could not have been the culprit.

When the DNA database was put into operation in Austria on October 1, 1997, Alexandra Schriefl's DNA was the first to be included in it. What was missing now was a sample from a suspect.

Arrests and convictions

In September 2000, chance came to the aid of the investigators. Herbert P. (* 1968) was involved in a scuffle and attacked the intervening police officers, thus fulfilling the act of resisting state violence. At that time it was customary to take a DNA sample (oral cavity swab) from suspects of this class of offense, which was also done in the Herbert P. case. Three weeks later, the computer found a match with a DNA trace from the Alexandra Schriefl case. Herbert P. was arrested on October 1, 2000 on suspicion of murder. Herbert P. was one of the first to be questioned after the night of the murder in 1988. Due to a mistake in the Forensic Medicine Institute in Vienna, the wrong blood type was determined for him, which is why he was no longer suspected.

The files on the other two murders were then reviewed again. 25 people who had been among the closest suspects in the Nicole Strau murder case in 1990 were again scrutinized. The criminalists decided to ask everyone for a DNA sample. 24 of them agreed, only Michael P. (* 1966), who was already known to the police, could not be found. At the time of the murder of Nicole, he was in a relationship with her aunt, from whom he had received an alibi at the time. On September 27, 2001, he was arrested near his home address on an arrest warrant. He refused to testify and refused to have a DNA sample taken. The investigators found that he had already refused a DNA collection in the 1990s and was then simply forgotten. This time, however, the acceptance was ordered by a judge and could therefore also be forcibly accepted, which was also applied due to his persistent refusal. On November 28, the hit report came in relation to the murder of Nicole Strau.

In the meantime, Herbert P. was sentenced to 15 years in prison on December 11, 2001 for the murder of Alexandra Schriefl. He was spared the maximum sentence of 19 years and 275 days imprisonment for a miscarriage of justice. On June 13, 2002 Herbert P.'s appeal was rejected and the sentence became final. He was also charged with the murder of Christina Beranek, but DNA traces of this crime could no longer be secured, which is why the proceedings were discontinued in March 2002. Criminal psychologist Thomas Müller and public prosecutor Ernst Kloyber testified, however, that Herbert P. was definitely also to be the murderer of Christina.

On December 2, 2003 Michael P. was finally sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Nicole Strau. During the sentencing, the jury's decisions caused a stir. Although forensic medicine said there could be no more than one other person out of a trillion with the same genetic traits, one of the jurors actually credited the crime to the other. For example, there was a 7: 1 guilty decision on the offense of sexual abuse. Even more astonishing, however, was the fact that two other jurors believed him to be the rapist but not the killer. For the murder allegation there was the decision 5: 3 guilty. If only one other juror had not mistaken him for the rapist or the murderer, the decision would have been 4: 4 and the accused might have been acquitted.

watch TV

An episode of the documentary series Im Kopf des Verbrechers with Joe Bausch is dedicated to the case.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A girl tied to a tree, strangled . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna October 27, 1988, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  2. ↑ New lead in the Schriefl murder case: Was a trio of perpetrators at work? In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 2, 1988, p. 7 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  3. ↑ Viennese disco murder: an autopsy also suggests the act of a trio . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 3, 1988, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  4. ↑ Disco murder: old customers under examination . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 4, 1988, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  5. ↑ Regular guests of the disco gave Alexandra the last escort . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 12, 1988, p. 10 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  6. ↑ 10-year-old abused, murdered in a residential building . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 4, 1989, p. 13 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  7. ↑ murder in favorites: Even six months ago, 13 year-old was attacked . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 6, 1989, p. 7 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  8. ↑ Testimony triggers the greatest action in criminal history . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 9, 1989, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  9. ^ Sex murder in Favoriten: Now the first house search in the settlement . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 10, 1989, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  10. ↑ The police thought they knew Christina's murderer . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 16, 1989, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
  11. ↑ Are there any witnesses to the Strau murder? (Wienweb.at)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.wienweb.at  
  12. ↑ File number XY unresolved 08.09.1989 - Bestie von Favoriten. Accessed October 4, 2019 (German).
  13. ↑ Gerhard Lukesch: Girl murderer calls for a new procedure . In: Upper Austrian news . September 3, 2008 ( nachrichten.at [accessed May 30, 2017]).
  14. ↑ RIS - 15Os23 / 02 - Justice (OGH, OLG, LG, BG, OPMS, AUSL). Retrieved May 30, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Schriefl murder: Supreme court confirms 15 years imprisonment (News.at)
  16. ↑ Beranek murder case remains unsolved: proceedings are discontinued (News.at)
  17. ↑ Judgment in the murder case Nicole Strau made: Lifelong for Michael P. (News.at)

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