Johann Kastenberger

Johann Kastenberger (born October 1, 1958 in St. Leonhard am Forst , Melk district , † November 15, 1988 in Lower Austria near St. Pölten ) was an Austrian bank robber , murderer and marathon runner . He went down in Austrian criminal history as the “Pumpgun Ronnie”.

Life

Childhood and youth

Johann Kastenberger was born under a different family name as the first of seven children of a railway employee. However, the latter questioned the paternity of his firstborn shortly after the birth. After a paternity test, Johann was given his mother's maiden name.

After the now stepfather left the family in 1970, the mother took care of herself and the seven children with odd jobs. Johann helped her by looking after the younger siblings and helping out in a hardware store. However, his academic performance suffered from this effort and he was downgraded during secondary school .

Sporting recognition

On the other hand, Kastenberger found recognition in sporting terms. Due to his good football performance, he got the opportunity to join the youth team of an Austrian Bundesliga club . However, he had to refuse this offer because he would not have been able to support his mother if the move was necessary. Instead, he focused on running, where, according to a former training colleague, he was unbeatable.

Kastenberger was later a successful marathon runner. In the 1980s he won several fun runs in Austria and since 1988, with a time of 3:16:07, has been the record holder of the Kainach Mountain Marathon , which is considered the most demanding Austrian mountain run with an altitude of 1,800 meters.

Failed career

As a student, however, he lacked stamina. He broke off training at a higher technical college after less than a year, and it was similar during his basic military service at the military sports and hand-to-hand combat school of the Austrian Armed Forces .

Criminal career

First robberies and imprisonment

Kastenberger's criminal career began in 1976 with attempted robberies on a Viennese taxi driver and a supermarket.

On Tuesday, January 25, 1977, he robbed the Volksbank branch in Pressbaum (St. Pölten-Land district), threatened the cashier and the branch manager and fled with 70,000 schillings (around 5100 euros ). However, due to the employee's description of the perpetrator, he was arrested shortly afterwards on a train at Vienna's Westbahnhof . Kastenberger still had the booty with him and made a confession. He was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, which he served in Stein Prison. During his imprisonment, he made four escape attempts, which failed and prevented him from being released early.

After his release from prison in 1984 he met a woman and moved with her, his girlfriend, to her apartment in Vienna- Simmering .

Murder of a classmate

On Tuesday, August 13, 1985, shortly after midnight in Mautern an der Donau (Krems-Land district) , Kastenberger shot and killed the 28-year-old unemployed car mechanic Ewald Pollhammer. Kastenberger knocked on the door and shot Pollhammer with a pump gun when the door was opened . Pollhammer's 24-year-old wife and their 6-year-old son, who had already gone to bed, found him dead; the murderer had already fled. Pollhammer had attended the same vocational retraining course as Kastenberger.

Bank robbery series as "Pumpgun Ronnie"

Less than eight hours after this crime, he stormed the Raiffeisenkasse about 30 kilometers away in Hafnerbach (Sankt Pölten-Land district), but had to flee without prey. The masked and in a stolen vehicle parked in front of the bank box Berger was observed by a passerby, who then warned the two employees in the bank. When they pressed the alarm button, Kastenberger fled. The police immediately suspected him, but his girlfriend gave him a false alibi .

On Friday, November 20, 1987, shortly before the ticket office closed, he attacked the Raiffeisenkasse in Groß Sierning (Sankt Pölten-Land district), threatened the two employees, stole 100,000 schillings (around 7,300 euros) and fled with a stolen car, which he did not own Had stolen from a timber store minutes earlier. The escape vehicle was seized almost an hour later at the end of a forest path, but Kastenberger escaped on foot through the Dunkelsteinerwald .

On Friday, February 19, 1988, he attacked three banks in a row, first at 8 a.m. at the Creditanstalt Simmeringer Hauptstrasse in Vienna with a booty of 1.2 million schillings (around 87,200 euros), and was first filmed by surveillance cameras. After the attack, he fled again in a stolen car that he had stolen from a tobacco shop in Schwechat about an hour and a half earlier . At around 4.30 p.m. he attacked Volksbank Kirchstetten (Sankt Pölten-Land district), stealing 330,000 Schillings (around 24,000 euros). Without changing the getaway car, he drove on the Westautobahn past St. Pölten to Markersdorf (Sankt Pölten-Land district), where just 30 minutes later he robbed the local savings bank and stole another 300,000 schillings (about 21,800 euros). Despite triggering a major alarm, during which the gendarmerie monitored all streets in the area, sent out patrols and deployed a helicopter, he was able to escape again.

On Monday, March 21, 1988, at around 9:55 a.m., he achieved the greatest coup: when he attacked a Länderbank branch on Krottenbachstrasse in Vienna-Döbling , he threatened the five employees, stole two million schillings (about 145,000 euros) and escaped in a getaway car . The very next day, he also attacked the Gärtner Bank in Vienna on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse (one million schilling loot (around 73,000 euros)) and the following day the Creditanstalt Vienna in Dornbacher Strasse (one million schilling loot (around 73,000 euros)) . During the last raid, he was followed by witnesses but escaped again.

Since he did all of these things with a pump gun and a Ronald Reagan mask, he soon became known as the pump gun Ronnie . Due to the numerous attacks by the perpetrator, Vienna's police chief Günther Bögl called a crisis summit in the police headquarters, at which discussions were also held with the security officers of the financial institutions. Pump gun Ronnie was declared the most wanted person in the Vienna Security Office. The reward for clues leading to his arrest was increased to 370,000 shillings.

The police described the perpetrator as about 1 meter 65 to 1 meter 73 tall, dark-haired, around 30 years old, 70 to 80 kilograms and as “pretty quick on his feet”.

arrest

On Friday, November 11th, 1988, Johann Kastenberger was arrested. The police, who had already suspected Kastenberger in 1985, found out that since 1984 he had apparently had large sums of money after serving several years in prison without a job. The description of the perpetrator also agreed with him. One officer also noticed on a surveillance video that "Pumpgun-Ronnie" was wearing blue skinny jeans with turned-up legs just like Kastenberger.

On the basis of this evidence, Kastenberger was questioned and his apartment was searched. The investigators found two keys for safe deposit boxes that still contained almost 5.5 million schillings (almost 400,000 euros) from the loot. Kastenberger then confessed to the eight bank robberies he was accused of and the murder of Ewald Pollhammer. During interrogation, he testified that he only killed the man because he smoked during a wifi retraining course for locksmiths in St. Pölten . That bothered the athlete Kastenberger so much that he shot the man. His friend Veronika J., who had confessed to giving her boyfriend a false alibi, was also arrested.

Escape and suicide

The next day the officers wanted to record his confession in the Rennweger barracks in Vienna. Kastenberger was taken to an office of the survey group because the only secured interrogation room had been smashed by arrested intruders only a few days earlier. When an officer removed the handcuffs from him, Kastenberger jumped out of the window on the first floor, landed on the hood of a car parked underneath and escaped despite an immediate alarm search.

On Sunday evening, passers-by reported a suspicious walker in Sparbach (Mödling district) who matched the description of the perpetrator. Two officers from the Hinterbrühl gendarmerie post met the suspect in their civilian vehicle at the entrance to the town and carried out a personal check. The suspect, who was actually Kastenberger, kept quiet and allowed himself to be searched without resistance. However, since he could not identify himself, the officers wanted to take him to the post. Kastenberger went to the vehicle and pretended to get in, but suddenly turned around, stole the service weapon from an officer, tore himself away and fled. Here, too, the immediate alarm manhunt was unsuccessful.

On Monday evening, Kastenberger tried to steal a car in Gaaden (Mödling district) and take the driver hostage, but fled when she made him aware of a police patrol passing by. Despite the use of sniffer dogs and hundreds of officials in the forest areas of the Anninger , Kastenberger continued to disappear.

On Tuesday he overpowered a man in Maria Enzersdorf (Mödling district), tied him up and stole his car. However, the man managed to break free and alert the police. The crew of a police helicopter discovered the stolen vehicle shortly afterwards on the western highway . After a while, Kastenberger stopped on the shoulder, ran through a forest and stole another vehicle in Waasen (Sankt Pölten-Land district), with which he continued his escape on the western motorway.

Shortly after 3 p.m. he broke a police roadblock near St. Pölten and was shot in the process. A projectile had penetrated the trunk lid, back seat and driver's seat of his getaway car and hit Kastenberger in the back. Shortly thereafter, he stopped his car and committed suicide by shooting in the head. More than 450 officers with 34 service dogs and three helicopters took part in the largest manhunt in Austrian post-war history.

Suspected more murders

On May 26, 1984, the 51-year-old Helene Bubendorfer was shot with an assault rifle in her gas station café in Purkersdorf (St. Pölten-Land district) after a failed robbery. Despite a warning shot in which a 17-year-old guest was injured, the woman had refused to hand over money to the perpetrator and instead picked up the phone. The same perpetrator attacked the Hotel Wien-West in Bahnhofstrasse a little later, but was unable to steal anything here either. A large-scale search for the perpetrator and his escape vehicle that was extended to the whole of Austria remained fruitless.

On July 25, 1986, 58-year-old police officer Friedrich Roger was shot with an assault rifle of the same caliber in front of the Vienna guard room at Freudenauer Hafen . A stranger had smashed a window in the guard room with stones. When Roger went outside to check that he was okay, he was killed in an ambush by a shot in the head; he left a wife and three children. The perpetrator stole the dead man's radio, handcuffs, service pistol with 14 rounds and his car keys. The victim's car, which the perpetrator used to escape, was later seized across from the indoor swimming pool in Simmering; the perpetrator had left the radio and handcuffs in it. Despite the most intensive manhunt, neither a suspect nor a motive could be identified. There were no fingerprints and no witnesses.

On October 10, 1986, the 40-year-old prostitute Brigitte Hranka in Vienna-Leopoldstadt was threatened with a gun by a man who had got into her car. He stated that he hated police officers and prostitutes and therefore wanted to kill them. When Hranka's dog started barking in the back seat, the perpetrator shot him. Hranka then managed to jump out of the car and escape after a wild scuffle in which she was injured. The perpetrator then also jumped out of the vehicle and fled, but had previously lost the magazine of his pistol during the fight, which is why he did not succeed in the fatal shot at Hranka during the fight in the vehicle. Investigators found out by the serial number of the magazine that it was the magazine from the gun of Friedrich Roger.

On September 30, 1988, almost two years after this incident, Brigitte Hranka was shot at night by a man with a pump gun while driving a car in Vienna's Prater. She did manage to drag herself to a driver, but the perpetrator pursued her and shot her in the back of the head in front of the witness. Here, too, a manhunt was unsuccessful.

After Kastenberger's death, further investigations were carried out to obtain clues as to his perpetrator in the three murders. It was found out that Helene Bubendorfer was murdered only three months after Kastenberger's release from prison and that his preferred running route passed the police station in Freudenau-Hafen. He was also familiar with car streaking on the Prater, as he occasionally brought a prostitute friend there in his car.

However, since Kastenberger could no longer be questioned about the crimes and the weapons, including his pump gun, could never be found, the crimes remained unsolved.

reception

In 2002 the novel Der Räuber by Martin Prinz , based on Johann Kastenberger, was published , which Benjamin Heisenberg filmed in 2009 under the title of the same name . It celebrated its world premiere in February 2010 in the competition at the 60th Berlin Film Festival .

literature

• Martin Prinz: The robber . Jung and Jung, Salzburg and Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-902144-40-8 .

Web links

• Detailed report on Kastenberger , in Tagesspiegel, March 7, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Markus Huber, Eva Winroither: Ronnie runs. In: Der Tagesspiegel . March 7, 2013, accessed October 22, 2013 .  
2. ↑ 19th Int. Kainach Mountain Marathon (PDF; 0.7 MB)
3. ↑ "Great Station" for robbers . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 26th 1977, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
4. ↑ Victim opened the door to his killer . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 14, 1985, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
5. ↑ Hafnerbach: Masked man attacked Raika, but fled without prey . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 14, 1985, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
6. ↑ Bank robbers looted 100,000 schillings . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 21, 1987, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
7. ↑ Robber “worked” in piece: two bank robberies with MP . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 20, 1988, p. 11 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
8. ↑ No trace of the CA robber and his 1.2 million . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna February 22, 1988, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
9. ↑ Bank robbers with a carnival mask and pump gun looted two million . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 22, 1988, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
10. ↑ The robber with the mask keeps Vienna in suspense . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 24, 1988, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
11. ↑ File number XY of November 7, 1986, search by the Austrian authorities for the murderer of Friedrich Berger: "He has been described as 1 meter 65, so quite small"
12. ↑ http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/Pumpgun-Ronny_Die_Realitaet_war_brutaler_als_der_Film-Krone-Reportage-Story-187215
13. ↑ Desolate interrogation room: This was how "Ronnie" was able to escape . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 14, 1988, p. 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
14. ↑ The escape is over: "Ronnie" shot himself in St. Pölten . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna November 16, 1988, p. 10 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
15. ↑ Feverish search for a robbery . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna May 28, 1984, p. 5 ( Arbeiter-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
16. ↑ Friedrich Roger, died July 25, 1986. ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In the memorial book of the Federal Ministry of the Interior on kuratorium-sicherheites-oesterreich.at . Retrieved December 1, 2013.  
17. ↑ Policeman ran his murderer right in front of the gun barrel . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna July 26th 1986, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
18. ↑ A major manhunt for psychopaths: Police murderer struck again . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna October 11, 1986, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
19. ↑ File number XY ... unsolved , broadcast on May 12, 1989
20. ↑ Prostitutes "executed": One trace leads to neo-Nazis . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna October 1, 1988, p. 9 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).