"Caused grief"

Pilnacek’s widow destroyed cell phone with Bunsen burner

An explosive case has developed around the deceased head of the judiciary.

(Bild: APA/EXPA/JOHANN GRODER)

The tragic death of former top judicial official Christian Pilnacek is known to have led to an explosive legal dispute. Now the case has been enriched by an explosive anecdote: according to documents, Pilnacek's widow Caroline List, President of the Regional Criminal Court in Graz, destroyed his cell phone with a Bunsen burner.

Two books will be published in February on the passing of the deceased former head of justice Christian Pilnacek. Above all, the questions of what exactly happened on the night of his death and what happened to Pilnacek's laptop and cell phone afterwards also seem to be of great importance for the case. As is well known, the Public Prosecutor's Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption initiated proceedings concerning the seizure of Pilnacek's IT equipment by the police in Lower Austria. The suspicion is that the police demanded that Pilnacek's girlfriend Karin Wurm hand over the equipment without sufficient authorization.

An anecdote from investigation files has now come to light. Pilnacek's widow Caroline List, President of the Regional Criminal Court in Graz, stated in a witness hearing in April 2024 that she had destroyed Pilnacek's cell phone with a Bunsen burner. "I had enough grief with my husband's cell phones," she is said to have said, according to Der Standard. Pilnacek's cell phone apparently reached his widow after his death via the police and the lawyer Rüdiger Schender.

List himself does not want to comment on this. However, as the "Krone" learned, there were no proceedings pending at the time of the destruction in which List would have had to present the cell phone to a prosecuting authority.