Application for committal

Triple murder: 96 stabs with “massive force”

The ice-cold triple murder in Vienna-Brigittenau shook the country on February 23.

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

The application for committal for the triple murder in the Asian studio in Vienna's Engerthstraße reveals deeply shocking details. According to the application, the 27-year-old Afghan attacked the women with massive brutality. He was not sane during the terrible rampage.

According to court expert Peter Hofmann, the man acted under the "significant influence of his mental disorder", namely paranoid schizophrenia, when he committed the terrible act on February 23.

He apparently pretended to visit the brothel as a customer that evening. He took off his shoes in the entrance area and was taken by the operator to room number 3 on the second floor.

Into the massage studio with three knives
There he waited for his first victim, the prostitute Y.. The man had three knives with him. When Y. entered the room, the 27-year-old immediately stabbed the woman 16 times, with two attacks resulting in punctures.

The schizophrenic perpetrator stabbed the second victim, the prostitute K., 20 times and also tried to cut the Chinese woman's throat. According to the prosecution, the deep cuts caused the poor woman to be "almost decapitated".

"Particularly brutal and aggressive"
The third victim, the operator Z., was overpowered by the attacker in the bathroom. She had fled there after hearing the screams of the first two victims. Z. was even attacked 60 times with the knives. "It can undoubtedly be deduced that the victim was particularly brutal and aggressive during the murders, so that two knife blades broke off completely from the handle and the tip of one knife broke off," writes the Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office in its 15-page application for placement.

After the three acts, the man searched the studio, looking for further potential victims on the ground floor and in the cellar, whom he believed to be witches in his delusion.

I am optimistic that medicine will make progress in the treatment of schizophrenia in the next few decades and that he will then be able to live with his family in Iran again.

Anwalt Philipp Springer vertritt den 27-Jährigen.

Bild: Klemens Groh

A fourth woman remained undetected
One witness, who was in room number 5 with a suitor, was lucky. She remained undetected. The Afghan put on his shoes and left the brothel, was eventually found on an embankment covered in blood and arrested by the police. He was sober at the time of the crime and, according to an expert opinion, had not consumed any drugs.

It remains to be seen when the jury will decide on the institutionalization of lawyer Philipp Springer's client.