
Günter Lorenz (born 1964 or 1965 in
Wels
Wels (; Central Bavarian: ''Wös'') is a city in Upper Austria, on the Traun River near Linz. It is the county seat of Wels-Land, and with a population of approximately 60,000, the List of cities and towns in Austria, eighth largest city in Aus ...
) is an
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
n murderer.
Double murder
On February 15, 1983, the bodies of 43-year-old Sieglinde Eckert and her eldest daughter, 18-year-old Ursula, were found in Ungargasse 12 in
Landstraße. A police doctor found that the cause of death in both victims was a shot to the head from a rifle loaded with explosive bullets. The bodies of the victims were highly disfigured- enough for the officials to initially be unable to distinguish between mother and daughter, with only the younger daughters being able to identify the two.
Despite questioning all the neighbours, nobody had seen an armed man or heard a gunshot. There were no signs of a forced entry in the apartment door, which led investigators to believe that the victims might have known the offender and opened the door for him. The questioning of a friend of Ursula provided a possible lead to the officials. She said that she had talked to Ursula shortly before the murder, who stated that she had recently been visited by her ex-boyfriend, Paul, and that he had a weapon with him- which resulted in her ceasing communications with him. The police investigated Paul, who was found to be Günter Lorenz. He was an 18 year old who had just passed his exams with distinction and was living in a
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
caretaker's apartment. In the first round of interrogations, he denied having anything to do with the murders until the investigators found personal belongings of the victims in his home. He then said that he had wanted to rob his ex-girlfriend, but did not dare to do it alone, which is why he had asked his 16-year-old Peter Daubinger to accompany him. However, Daubinger, according to Günter, had brought a weapon with which he murdered the two women and had fled with their belongings. Since Daubinger was untraceable, the police initiated a search for him and warned of his threat. In the meantime, Daubinger was presented as the culprit in the media.
Confessions and sentencing

After two days of interminable interrogations, Lorenz began to contradict himself. It was then ascertained that Lorenz and Daubinger could never, as stated by Lorenz, have stolen 10,000, but instead a maximum of 2,000
shillings
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence ...
, and thus Daubinger could possibly have stolen the remaining 8,000 shillings. Finally, Lorenz confessed to having murdered the two women himself. He used a
Gewehr 98 with explosive ammunition, normally used for big game hunting. He had bought the ammo in a Viennese gun shop. In order to be able to wear it concealed, he had sawn off the piston and used a piece of carpet as a
silencer. After a few hours, he finally confessed to the murder of his cousin, who was killed with three gunshots and then beheaded on February 9 in an abandoned construction site on the banks of the
Danube
The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...
near
Reichsbrücke, in order to render it difficult to identify. Lorenz then led the investigators to Daubinger's body, which he had buried under a snowdrift on Donauinsel.
The extreme cold-blooded and unrepentant nature of the 18-year-old not only astonished the investigators, but later led to the imposition of the maximum penalty. Just before he wrote a confession, he had asked with a smile if he could start studying and practising sport in jail, and learned about the choice of books in detention centers. He also gave no comprehensible motive to date and said only that he did not like the three victims and thought they conspired against him. At first he even tried to portray Daubinger's killing as self-defense. The police assume he murdered his victims out of pure lust for killing.
Despite having a notable
personality disorder
Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental health conditions characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the culture. ...
and mental dysfunction to a great extent, he was declared sane.
Docent
The term "docent" is derived from the Latin word , which is the third-person plural present active indicative of ('to teach, to lecture'). Becoming a docent is often referred to as habilitation or doctor of science and is an academic qualifi ...
Dr. Willibald Sluga from the Department of Psychiatry said that he did not know a single crime that was comparable to it and that it was committed by a mentally ill individual. Prosecutor Ernst Kloyber "has not experienced such crimes in 15 years of work experience" and demanded the maximum penalty, while Lorenz's defender Gunther Gahleitner cited the accused's poor childhood and wanted for him not be condemned, but be sent to a mental institution. The last words of the defendant were: "My defender is psychotic."

On March 14, 1984, Günter Lorenz was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by presiding Justice Paul Weiser and was sent to a mental institution. In 2004, his dismissal was prevented by a psychiatric report, whereupon he began rampaging in Mittersteig Prison, threatening a psychologist and smashing furniture. He was overwhelmed by seven officials and was later transferred to the Stein Prison.
Impact
The characteristic murder of Daubinger triggered an outrage. His picture was published in the newspapers and he had been named a "murderer", "double murderer" and "killer", based solely on Lorenz's statements. His affiliation to the
right-wing
Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...
scene and his alleged obsession with weapons were proven completely unfounded. Many newspapers then published a letter of apology in their daily editions, in which they accused themselves of the media's judicial murder.
The book and film rights for Lorenz was secured by ''
Stern
The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. O ...
'' magazine. The price guaranteed him the coverage of his lawyer's fees.
The murders also triggered a political discussion about the weapons law. The two deputies to the National Council,
Robert Lichal and
Harald Ofner, called for a tightening of the weapons law, while Interior Minister
Erwin Lanc and deputy Hans Hobl emphasized that laws alone cannot prevent such bloody acts. It was criticized that requirements for the acquisition of handguns were strict, while they were relatively liberal for the acquisition of long guns such as
pump action
Pump action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by moving a sliding handguard on the gun's forestock. When shooting, the sliding forend is pulled rearward to eject any expended cartridge and typically to cock the hammer or ...
shotguns
A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, peppergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small ...
and
carbines. However, with the introduction of a firearms license, more than 1.2 million gun owners would have to be prosecuted, and then a subsequent increase in the illegal arms trade was feared, so the laws remained untouched.
The murder weapon, together with original newspaper reports, can be seen in the Vienna Crime Museum.
In addition, the case of Günter Lorenz was examined in the book ''Traces of Evil''. ()
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lorenz, Günter
Year of birth missing (living people)
Austrian people convicted of murder
Living people
1960s births
People with personality disorders