Hugo Schenk

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Hugo Schenk (1849-1884)
Skull of the executed Hugo Schenk, exhibited in the Vienna Crime Museum (in the background an illustration of the execution)

Hugo Schenk (born February 11, 1849 in Czech , † April 22, 1884 in Vienna ) was an Austrian impostor and serial killer who murdered four maids with the help of his accomplice Karl Schlossarek (1858-1884) .

Deeds

Hugo Schenk, the son of a judge in Teschen, came from a better family. His brother worked as a community doctor in Maria Taferl . In 1869 and 1870, at the beginning of his criminal career, he posed as Prince Boleslav von Wilopolsky, who had fled the Tsar's henchmen from Warsaw, and tried to get the dowry of the supposed brides as a marriage swindler in Olomouc in Moravia and in Rosenburg in Lower Austria . Sentenced to five years of heavy imprisonment in the Mürau prison on December 5, 1870 for a number of serious frauds , from which he was pardoned and released after two years.

At the age of 32 he was again sentenced to two years of hard prison in the Stein prison for fraudulent marriage . In prison he met Karl Schlossarek, who was imprisoned for theft. After his release in January 1883, Hugo Schenk met 34-year-old Josefine Timal, who worked as a maid in Vienna, pretending to be a railway engineer and promising her marriage. Josefine Timal put her trust in him, quit her job, packed up all her valuables and drove with him on the alleged honeymoon in Krakow . However , he raped her at the Gevatterloch near Mährisch Weißkirchen . With the help of his accomplice Karl Schlossarek, he gagged and tied Josefine Timal, robbed her and sank her into the abyss with a heavy stone.

Because Hugo Schenk was of the opinion that her aunt Katharina Timal, who worked as a maid in Ceske Budejovice , might notice her niece's disappearance, he planned to murder her too. He wrote her that he had married Josefine Timal and invited her and her belongings to his estate. On June 21, 1883 he picked her up from the train station and drove her to Krummnussbaum , where he overpowered and killed her on the banks of the Danube together with Schlossarek. After taking away all of her valuables, they sank Katharina Timal in the Danube . Only six weeks later Hugo Schenk murdered the maid Theresia Ketterl in a ravine in Lilienfeld to get her valuables. On December 28, 1883, the two murdered and sank the maid Rosa Ferenszi in the Danube near Kittsee in order to get at her valuables.

execution

Hugo Schenk was arrested on January 10, 1884, and Karl Schlossarek only one day later. Both were to death by the strand condemned and on 22 April 1884 in the courtyard of no. 1 of the Vienna Regional Court executed .

Others

Hugo Schenk's skull, which was autopsied and neurologically examined after the execution by the Viennese neurologist Moriz Benedikt , is in the Vienna Crime Museum. The writer Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948) dealt literarily with Schenk's crimes in the story A Woman Waiting for Hugo Schenk . Some folk songs were written about Hugo Schenk, including In a Bergschacht, in a deep valley , which was recorded in a Tyrolean song manuscript in 1918 (Tyrolean Folk Song Archive, Sign. IIIGB100, p. 88).

literature

  • Ludwig Altmann: Hugo Schenk and his comrades . ( = From the archive of the gray house - A collection of strange Viennese criminal cases , Volume 2). Vienna-Leipzig-Munich 1925.
  • Moriz Benedikt, Rudolf Frank: Anthropological findings with the murderer Hugo Schenk . In: Wiener Medical Blätter, Volume XIV., No. 1 (1885).
  • Michael Kirchschlager: The girl murderer Hugo Schenk. Historical Criminal Library, Volume 1. ISBN 3-934277-15-2
  • Egon Erwin Kisch: A woman who is waiting for Hugo Schenk. In: Ders .: Prague Pitaval. Collected works in individual editions. Edited by Bodo Uhse and Gisela Kisch. II / 2. Berlin / Weimar: Aufbau, 1975, pp. 34–44.
  • Trial of the girl murderer Hugo Schenk and his comrades, heard in Vienna in March 1884 before the exceptional court. Edited according to authentic reports . Vienna 1883.
  • Bernhard Purin: Hugo Schenk - a marriage swindler and serial killer visiting Rosenburg. In: Horner Calendar 2015 ( Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Söhne ), pp. 93-103.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Illustration from: Proceß of the girl murderer Hugo Schenk and his comrades, heard in Vienna in March 1884 before the exceptional court. Edited according to authentic reports . Vienna 1883.
  2. ↑ Actapublica - Moravský Zemský archive Brno. In: actapublica.eu. Retrieved April 26, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Schenk, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austro-Hungarian serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Czech
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1884
Place of death Vienna