Elfriede Blauensteiner

 

Elfriede Martha Blauensteiner (born 22 January 1931 in Vienna; died 16 November 2003 in Neunkirchen, Lower Austria ) was an Austrian serial killer who went down in Austrian criminal history as the "Black Widow".

Story

Blauensteiner, a gambling addict, sought out her wealthy and infirm victims, whose inheritances she allegedly embezzled, through advertisements. She then gambled away the ill-gotten gains in various casinos. One of her victims was 77-year-old pensioner Alois Pichler in 1995, whom she met—as well as a later victim—through a personal ad she placed. She rendered him unconscious using Euglucon, a blood sugar-lowering medication combined with an antidepressant called Anafranil, and then let him slowly freeze to death. She placed ice-cold towels on her victims and called emergency services at the "right" moment. The victims who were still alive then died in the hospital within the next few hours. Another victim was the widow Franziska Köberl, whom she also murdered with Euglucon in 1992 to get her hands on her savings accounts. The cases were solved after the nephew of one of the murder victims felt cheated out of his inheritance and became suspicious.

Elfriede Blauensteiner initially confessed to the murder of six men, but later recanted these confessions. Medical evidence based on toxicological findings (Walter Vycudilik) was established for three deaths, those of two men and one woman. Subsequently, Blauensteiner was first convicted of one murder in Krems in 1997. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. In Vienna in 2001, she was convicted of murder in two further cases. In high-profile court appearances, she sometimes denied any guilt. At one hearing, she appeared with a golden crucifix, held it aloft, and quoted Pontius Pilate from the New Testament: "I wash my hands of it." The then-President of the Senate and later President of the Supreme Court, Johann Rzeszut, spoke at the time of a "dimension of injustice that is actually too great for an earthly court." Her defense lawyer was the Austrian Elmar Kresbach. 

Elfriede Blauensteiner was imprisoned in the Schwarzau Correctional Facility from 1997. She died in 2003 at the age of 72 from a brain tumor and was buried in the cemetery of the Simmering Crematorium (Group E11, Number 18). The grave was cleared in 2016.

Artistic works on the serial murders

The story of Elfriede Blauensteiner served as the basis for the 2001 film "The Praying Mantis". Christiane Hörbiger played the lead role.

At the Linz State Theatre (Eisenhand venue), an “operetta criminelle” about Elfriede Blauensteiner premiered on May 9, 2007, with a libretto by Silke Dörner and music by Peter Androsch.

Literature

Elfriede Blauensteiner - Excuses. Elfriede Blauensteiner. A Confession, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2026, ISBN 978-3-552-07636-5.

report

Otto Stangel: History | Federal State in Portrait: Elfriede Blauensteiner – Vienna's "Black Widow" today at noon, ORF 2, January 11, 2016. In: TVthek, orf. at, accessed on October 7, 2019. – Video (4:18)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfriede_Blauensteiner