"Working for the devil"

Triple murder: application for institutionalization

The police at the crime scene in Engerthstraße.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

Following the horrific murder of three young women in an erotic studio in Vienna's Engerthstraße, the Vienna public prosecutor's office has applied for the Afghan asylum seeker to be placed in a forensic therapy center. According to an expert opinion, the 27-year-old man was of unsound mind at the time of the crime. He will therefore take his place before the jury at his trial not as a defendant but as a victim. 

According to court expert Peter Hofmann, the man acted under the "significant influence of his mental disorder", namely paranoid schizophrenia, when he committed the horrific act on February 23. The man had arrived in Austria at the end of 2021 via Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary. According to the accommodation application, he met a refugee helper in a refugee camp on his escape route. In his view, the woman was a witch who had bewitched him.

Knife bought especially for murders
"He discovered a verse in the Koran about an enemy. When he read this verse, God gave him the command to wage jihad against these enemies," writes the Vienna StA. The man had bought three knives of different sizes in a supermarket - according to the application, for the purpose of killing prostitutes who, in his opinion, worked for witches and the devil. 

Lawyer Philipp Springer defends the victim.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

Enormous use of force
On the evening of the crime, the Afghan left the apartment to go to a mosque for Friday prayers. He had the knives with him. At around 8 p.m., he rang the bell at the Asian studio in Engerthstraße. He is said to have taken off his shoes in the entrance area and gone to the second floor with the owner. She assigned him a room. When the prostitute came into the room, he violently attacked the woman as soon as she entered the room and killed her with 16 stab wounds.

Flowers at the crime scene in memory of the victims of the triple murder.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

The man is said to have then searched the studio for other prostitutes to kill. He stabbed his second victim 20 times. The 27-year-old stabbed the operator, who had fled into the bathroom, more than 60 times, according to the petition. The woman was the third victim of the shocking crime. 

It was a killing spree
Expert witness Hofmann explains that the crime was a killing spree in which the man wanted to kill as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. A date for the jury trial has not yet been set. The Afghan is being represented in the case by Philipp Springer: "I am optimistic that medicine will make progress in the treatment of schizophrenia in the coming decades and that he will then be able to live with his family in Iran again," says the lawyer.