Isabella Mueller (crime writer) 
Of all days, a brutal murder took place in Vienna on New Year’s Day 2023. That morning, Wojeiech M., a 51-year-old homeless Polish man suffering from severe alcoholism, was out and about in Vienna’s 22nd district, Donaustadt, looking for alcohol. He was specifically looking for houses with unlocked doors so that he could break in and search for alcohol. Indeed, he found what he was looking for in the home of a 74-year-old chemist, whose front door he was able to push open easily. Wojeiech initially gathered all sorts of alcoholic drinks into his carrier bag until he was interrupted by the chemist. A struggle ensued. Wojeiech managed to overpower the pharmacist, whose legs he tied up. He repeatedly slammed the pharmacist’s head against the wall. He also assaulted him with the pharmacist’s Nordic walking poles. Once the pharmacist was dead, Wojeiech calmly took a shower, helped himself to clothes from the wardrobe and left the house with a new pair of shoes and the pharmacist’s bulging wallet. The next day, the pharmacist was found by a couple who were friends of his and who had been celebrating with him until shortly before midnight. After the murder, Wojeiech first travelled to Graz. A few days later, he returned to Vienna. A week after the murder, he set out once more in search of unlocked doors and found what he was looking for at a young family’s home. He broke into a house in Vienna’s 21st district, Florisdorf, where he attacked a 31-year-old woman with a kitchen knife and struck her on the head until she was unconscious. After plundering their alcohol supplies, he left the house, on the first floor of which the four- and five-year-old children were having a bath. They later discovered their mother, who had since died from her severe head injuries, and waited by her side until their father returned from a business trip on the evening of 8 January 2023. Wojeiech was quickly apprehended as the perpetrator, as he shamelessly knocked on the family’s front door the very next day, just as journalists were present. They immediately called the police, who arrested Wojeiech. Wojeiech already had a criminal record in Germany for property offences. He was also under investigation for abusing his partner. According to a psychiatric expert, Wojeiech suffers from a severe personality disorder; he was sentenced to life imprisonment with committal to a forensic therapy centre for the brutal double murder. This verdict is not yet final, as an application for annulment and a criminal appeal have been lodged.
