From love for a serial killer to criminal lawyer by Josef Fritzl “He was almost in tears”: Josef Fritzl remains in custody

Astrid Wagner tried it. She wanted to return Josef Fritzl to freedom, despite being sentenced to life imprisonment in the prison system for “sane, mentally abnormal lawbreakers.” An 88-year-old man who has really earned his ‘Monster van Amstetten’ takeovers. For 24 years he held his own daughter in an underground cellar prison in his home in Lower Austria, raped her thousands of times and fathered seven children with her, one of whom died immediately after birth.

«Fritzl is completely harmless these days. “I wouldn’t be afraid to move into a shared apartment with him or live in a house with him,” Wagner told “Bild” before the court hearing on Thursday. She was optimistic.

She still hasn’t gotten Fritzl out. The court ruled that he could at least be transferred from enforcement measures to normal prison. After 15 years. Fritzl is thus released from special detention nine years earlier than his daughter escaped his torment.

A few minutes after the announcement, Astrid Wagner responded to this assessment to plus24.at: “It was a first big step, a first partial success.” Fritzl expressed his regret in court. And Wagner believes him, as she emphasizes:

Who is this woman who speaks thus of a man who kept his daughter as a serf? Who fights for his freedom? A “top lawyer”, a “star criminal lawyer”, write the Austrian media. “Austria’s most eccentric criminal lawyer,” says the NZZ. An ‘author’, it says on Wikipedia. A ‘murder whore’, says hate letters to Wagner. “A very beautiful woman,” says her more than 2,000 followers on Instagram. An ‘animal rights activist’, Wagner himself would say.

Wagner is, above all, a woman fascinated by the evil that lies dormant in people.

Romance with serial killer Jack Unterweger

As a lawyer, Wagner rarely sides with the victims. Instead, she devotes herself primarily to defending those whose atrocities regularly spark horrors across national borders: a woman who drowned her two daughters in a swimming pool, a young man who stabbed his mother in delirium, a mother who murdered her son almost to death in a dog crate, a murderer who partially sank his victim in the lake, partially dismembered him and made goulash out of it* – and now Josef Fritzl.

*Speaking of which, the “sea killer,” as he is also known, works in Fritzl’s prison kitchen. Bild already took this as an opportunity for the next title: “Cannibal fries schnitzel for Fritzl in prison”.

Wagner has reached this point in her life for one reason above all: because she fell in love more than thirty years ago. To a serial killer. In Johannes “Jack” Unterweger.

In 1974, Jack Unterweger strangled a woman in the woods for the first time. Before that he had tied her up and robbed her. In 1976 he was given a life sentence. While in prison, Unterweger begins writing about his life. So good that he received countless love letters from women, he was awarded the ‘Ingeborg Drewitz Literature Prize for Prisoners’ in 1989 and even the Austrian cultural scene eventually campaigned for his release. The intellectuals believe that he is a good example of successful resocialization.

Under this pressure, Unterweger was released again in 1990. Where he immediately continues the murder. Unterweger strangled at least nine prostitutes in Austria, the Czech Republic and the US with their own underwear. After a spectacular escape to the US, he was arrested again in 1992.

Shortly afterwards, Unterweger receives a letter from a 29-year-old lawyer who actually wants to specialize in tenancy law. In the letter she introduces herself as the ‘critical lawyer’ Astrid Wagner, who does not want to join the ‘media bias’ against him. This is followed by further letters, first declarations of love and meetings under his wing. Wagner leaves her former partner for the killer.

Ultimately, there are 200 visits, a fleeting kiss through the cell bars and a not entirely legal, strange gift that the murderer and the young lawyer exchange: pubic hair tied with ribbons, hidden in a laundry package. Wagner tells the Austrian newspaper “Profil”:

Bonnie and Clyde syndrome?

On June 29, 1994, the Austrian court sentenced Unterweger to life imprisonment for nine murders. The next night he hangs himself in his prison cell. He ties his rope, made from a cord from his sweatpants and a shoelace, with the same knot he used for his victims.

Unterweger dies so soon after the announcement of the verdict that the conviction is not yet final. A fact that Wagner still adheres to today. She declined to describe Unterweger as a “convicted serial killer” to the “NZZ”. He is a ‘suspected serial killer’.

Even thirty years after his romance with Unterweger, Wagner still finds positive words for him. Jack was “very intelligent”. With “a lot of empathy”. “I have never met anyone in my life who looked like him in any way,” she told the Kleine Zeitung in 2023.

Various media suspect that Wagner suffers from hybristophilia. Also called Bonnie and Clyde syndrome. It is a mental illness in which individuals are attracted to serious criminals such as murderers and rapists.

Wagner even took a position on this in 2019 in a YouTube report by Y-Kollektiv: “I have always been attracted to extremes.” But something else is activated in her when she is confronted with such perpetrators. “Too bad” would be most accurate. “I always end up seeing this helpless child.”

The relationship with the serial killer Unterweger has taught her one thing above all, as Wagner tells the Kleine Zeitung: don’t judge anyone. “There are always reasons why someone commits a crime, such as a terrible childhood, exceptional psychological situations or intense emotional flows.”

The “Gallery of Horror”

The romance with Unterweger had such an impact on Wagner that after his death she soon decided to renounce the simple life of a ‘little lawyer’. Instead, she qualified as a lawyer, moved from Graz to Vienna and over the years developed a reputation as a criminal lawyer in ‘high-profile criminal cases’.

Many journalists have now tried to understand and understand Wagner. Many came to her office in her law firm for this purpose. And it was not unusual for them to stand in the doorway in complete shock.

A “Gallery of Horrors” calls it “Profile”. “The best of her career as a criminal lawyer,” is how the “NZZ” describes it. On the walls of Wagner’s offices hang oversized portraits of Josef Fritzl, Jack Unterweger, the sea killer Alfred Ulrich and the “ice lady” Estibaliz Carranza, who murdered her husband and then her partner, dismembered their bodies, put them in a freezer and then filled with concrete under her ice cream parlor in Vienna.

They were all or still are Wagner’s customers.

Wagner is happy that Fritzl’s portrait now hangs in this “Gallery of Horrors”. She had liked it for a long time. “But I had no personal relationship with him,” Wagner told the “NZZ”.

But in 2022 that will change. Josef Fritzl sends Wagner a manuscript of over 200 pages. An autobiography. He wants Wagner to publish them. He heard from his fellow prisoner, the sea killer, that he had come to the right place with this request. Wagner’s customer, who has already given her two cookbooks and congratulates her on her birthday every year with a card.

Wagner reads the manuscript, but does not publish it. Instead, she begins visiting Fritzl in prison and writes her own book: “The Abyss of Josef F.”

It will be published in 2023 and will contain passages from Fritzl’s manuscript. For example, when he describes how the idea of ​​locking up and abusing his daughter came to him: “like a small, lost leaf drifting across the asphalt of the street before being carried away by the wind. A vague idea I was playing with.” Fritzl does not mention his atrocities, but instead speaks of a “dark secret”.

Ultimately, Wagner becomes not only Fritzl’s biographer, but also his criminal lawyer.

She loves being the brilliant, empathetic one

The Kleine Zeitung once wanted to know why it does not reject these cases. And Wagner replied: “You have earned your reputation. When things go badly, you turn to lawyers who have a great understanding of such matters.” It is not enough to know the paragraphs exactly. Because:

Wagner likes to portray herself as an empathetic, brilliant woman, and as someone who stands up for her values, speaks out, finds clear words and also likes to provoke.

On her Instagram profile you will find a photo of her posing bare-chested by the lake, as well as selfies with a headscarf and the caption: “To the ‘moral guardians’: settle your stupid argument about the sovereignty of interpretation over a piece of cloth with each other – and not on the heads of us women!” A protest against the headscarf ban, which was hotly debated in Austria in 2020.

In between, Wagner campaigns for more animal protection in countless posts and videos. And she recently posted videos of pro-Palestinian speeches she gives in central Vienna.

Wagner likes to be in public and yet reveals little about himself. Above all, enjoy the attention that ‘being different’ brings you.

She skillfully cultivates her image as a mystery. Whether consciously or unconsciously. And even if that means fighting for the freedom of serial killers, rapists and mothers who torture their children.