Amok hunter in Upper Austria

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(Bild: Horst Einöder/Flashpictures)

The biggest unanswered question in the Roland Drexler case now seems to have been clarified: The amok hunter from the Mühlviertel region had already died on the day of the double murder, according to the results of his autopsy. As is well known, the body was only found after several days and an unprecedented police operation.

Following completion of the investigations to determine the cause and time of death of Roland Drexler, who shot two people in the Mühlviertel on October 28 and whose body was found on November 2 in a wooded area not far from one of the two crime scenes, the preliminary expert opinion to narrow down the time of death has now been submitted to the Linz public prosecutor's office.

Suicide as the cause of death was confirmed by the autopsy at the Salzburg Forensic Medical Institute just a few days after the body was found.

"Fresh" corpse to be ruled out
According to this expert opinion, the corpse had probably been lying in state for five days, which equates to death on October 28. From an entomological (insectological) point of view in particular, a lying-in period of less than 48 hours before the day the body was found can be ruled out.

Larvae found on the body
This result is based on several findings. Larvae were recovered from the place where the body was found and during the autopsy and prepared by the Salzburg Institute of Forensic Medicine for further examination in the forensic entomology laboratory of the Department of Forensic Medicine in Frankfurt am Main.

In addition, tissue samples were taken from Roland Drexler's body during the autopsy to analyze the protein degradation that had taken place and the probable temperature at the place of discovery was reconstructed on the basis of weather data.