Sadistic serial killer Werner Kniesek went down in criminal history as one of Austria’s most dangerous criminals. Werner went off the rails at an early age, stealing, skipping school, and repeatedly running away from home. For these reasons, on June 5, 1962, his completely overwhelmed mother told him that Werner would have to live in a home from then on. When Werner heard this, he stabbed his mother several times with a bread knife before fleeing to Germany with her money, where the 16-year-old Werner was arrested and extradited back to Austria. After two years in juvenile detention, Werner was released and continued his criminal career. He committed several burglaries and shot a 73-year-old woman for no reason. Werner was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on grounds of insanity. Due to good behavior, he was released in January 1980. Werner had even been granted a three-day prison leave so that he could look for work. Once free, he used the money he had earned in prison from illegally distilling schnapps to buy a gas pistol in Vienna. He then took the train to St. Pölten, where he got into a taxi and asked to be taken to the “Am Eisberg” housing estate. There he broke into the Altreiter family’s villa. In the chic villa, he encountered the 26-year-old son Walter, who was in a wheelchair. Werner soberly informed him that he was going to kill him, but would wait a little longer. A little later, his 55-year-old mother Gertrude came home. Werner overpowered the widow in the hallway. Shocked, Gertrude thought it was a robbery and wrote Werner a check for 20,000 schillings. Before he tied Gertrude up, she had to take her heart medication so that she would not lose consciousness later when Werner tortured her to death. But first, he strangled her son Walter with his bare hands in front of the crying Gertrude. Then it was Gertrude’s turn, whom Werner strangled with a noose after hours of torture. A few hours later, her 34-year-old daughter Ingrid came home and found not only the bodies of her mother and brother, but also Werner. Ingrid begged Werner for her life, but he tortured, abused, and beat her before strangling her and then the family cat. Werner then lay down to sleep next to the bodies, which he packed into the trunk of the family’s Mercedes the next day. He drove to the bank to cash the check. He went on a shopping spree with the money, then took a break at a restaurant in Karlstetten. The guests there found the taciturn man with the large amount of cash, who did not even take off his black gloves while eating, suspicious, so one guest noted the car’s license plate number and informed the police. They drove to Villa Altreiter, where they found a broken window. As there was no sign of the residents, an Austria-wide search for the car and the family was launched. Before midnight, the Mercedes was found at Salzburg train station with the bodies in the trunk. Werner, who had returned to the car after a short bathroom break, was arrested on the spot. During questioning, he confessed to the horrific murders, which he had committed out of pure lust for killing. Werner Kniesek was sentenced to life imprisonment and committed to an institution for mentally abnormal offenders, from which he attempted to escape in 1983, but failed.
Pure bloodlust
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