SERIAL KILLERS: WHEN THE VICTIM IS A PROSTITUTE

Prostitutes, as we have already said in previous articles, have been co-stars in the vast majority of noir novels and films. Beautiful, tough and with a cynical touch, they have accompanied detectives and private investigators, making the protagonist fall in love with impossible relationships.

But what happens when reality surpasses fiction and they become tragic victims of ruthless serial killers?

For lovers of police reality shows and real horror stories, the kind that fill us with intrigue and give us chills, we are going to show you the hard side of life.

Get ready for a sinister tour in which we will meet the most cruel and disturbed serial killers of prostitutes in history.

During this macabre journey we will discover both the criminals who were arrested and earned the worst fame and social repudiation, as well as others who, with an extreme capacity for manipulation, have managed to evade justice and have gone unpunished, remaining a mystery. to be resolved for the police today.

Analyzing their psychological profiles, we will see that these disturbed people have one point in common: Their obsession with prostitutes. But why?

In certain countries where the profession is not regularized, there is great vulnerability for prostitutes. The fear of filing a complaint when carrying out an illegal activity puts them in the crosshairs of these depraved people, and the fact that many of them lead a hidden parallel life, generates great difficulties for the investigation once the crime has occurred. All this makes them potential targets that are easier to access and where the chances of not being discovered are enormous.

Another common point that is found when the biography of these murderers is analyzed is that many kill to assert themselves, probably a consequence of a latent insecurity or a maternal trauma in their childhood. They create an alter ego with the fantasy of control, a power that they would not have naturally.

For many, paying for a sexual service means fulfilling their fantasies, being that person they don't dare to be with the rest of the world. This in the head of a serial killer, is the perfect setting to execute his act of horror.

JACK UNTERWEGER, AUSTRIA.

Johann "Jack" Unterweger, from Austria. The son of a single mother from Vienna and an American soldier, Unterweger grew up in extreme poverty with his grandfather, whom he described as a compulsive alcoholic. In his early years of youth he was sent to prison on several occasions for small crimes, especially for assaults on prostitutes, an obsession that already gave the first indications of him from a very early age.

In 1974 Unterwerger committed his first murder when he ended the life of 18-year-old German Margaret Schäfer, whom he strangled with his own bra.
He was sentenced to life in prison. During his stay in prison he began to write short stories, poems, plays and his autobiography, of which they made a film.
Because of the popularity of his stories, artists and intellectuals from the Austrian extreme left, such as the writer Elfriede Jelinek (who won the Nobel Prize in 2004), petitioned for Unterweger's forgiveness.

This is how on May 23, 1990, after 15 years in prison, he was released.

From that moment on, Unterweger was invited to many television programs and was positioned as a symbol of the rehabilitation of prisoners.

In 1991, Jack Unterweger was hired by an Austrian magazine to write about a crime that occurred in Los Angeles, and describe the differences between prostitution in the United States and Europe.

There he met a local police officer from the North American city and accompanied him during his patrols through the red light district. During that stay in Los Angeles, Unterweger killed three prostitutes (Shannon Exley, Irene Rodríguez and Sherri Ann Long), savagely raped and strangled with their own bras. In fact, the police found evidence of six more murders, a year after his release.

"During that stay in Los Angeles, Unterweger killed three prostitutes, savagely raped and strangled with their own bras."

This fact shows that it was a regrettable decision, very poorly taken, to release this criminal.

In Austria, Unterweger was accused of twelve other murders, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of redemption.

However, the same night he entered prison, he committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell with a rope made from his shoelaces and his belt, with a knot similar to the one used to kill his victims.

JOEL RIFKIN, NEW YORK.

Rifkin was born in New York in January 1959. When he was three weeks old he was adopted by a wealthy couple from Long Island.

He had poor academic performance and an introverted personality; his classmates made him the object of ridicule and scorn on a daily basis. He graduated from High School and then studied for a few years at the State University of New York.

After leaving university, Rifkin began working as a gardener.

On February 20, 1987, his adoptive father committed suicide by overdose after suffering from prostate cancer for several months.
That same year Rifkin was arrested during a police operation in Hempstead, after offering money for sex to an undercover police officer.

"He had poor academic performance and an introverted personality; his classmates made him the object of ridicule and scorn on a daily basis."

Rifkin committed his first murder in 1989, when he killed prostitute Heidi Balch in her East Meadow home.

He dismembered her body, removed her teeth and fingertips, put her head in a paint can and left her near a golf course in Hopewell, New Jersey, got rid of her legs and dumped the rest of her torso. and arms in the East River around New York City.

On March 5, 1989, poor Balch's severed head was discovered on the seventh hole of the golf course, and a month later her legs were found in Pequonnock Creek near Jefferson Township, New Jersey.

He killed 16 more women over the next four years, all of them sex workers.

The last of her macabre crimes was committed in June 1993, Tiffany Bresciani, a prostitute who worked on Allen Street in Manhattan, was with her pimp and boyfriend, Dave Rubinstein. Rifkin told Rubinstein that he would return in 20 minutes.

After Tiffany did not return, Rubinstein called police with a description of the 1984 Mazda pickup Rifkin was driving. Dave Rubinstein committed suicide by overdose less than two weeks later.

This crime was what brought Joel to justice, after a 20 to 25 minute chase, which ended when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a light pole. In the trunk of the vehicle they found the body of young Tiffany.

He was convicted of nine counts of second-degree murder in 1994 and sentenced to 203 years to life in prison.

JACK THE RIPPER, LONDON.

Jack the Ripper is the name given to probably the most famous serial killer in history and to whom at least five homicides are attributed in the London neighborhood of Whitechapel (East End) in 1888.

What has shocked from the beginning was his modus operandi, which was characterized by cuts to the throat, mutilations in the genital and abdominal area, removal of organs and disfigurement of the face. All of his attacks were on women who were dedicated to prostitution.

The overcrowded and squalid Victorian London of the mid-19th century was the perfect setting for committing crimes. Lower class neighborhoods proliferated as well as poverty, violence, alcoholism and prostitution..

"All of Jack the Ripper's murders were of women who were engaged in prostitution."

Although approximately three hundred suspects were investigated, the police investigation was ineffective in clarifying the identity of this fearsome murderer.

Due to the type of injuries suffered by the victims, the police initially considered the butchers, surgeons and doctors as suspects.

They never succeeded, nor did they verify the exact number of victims.

The myth of Jack the Ripper has been the central concept of several literary, artistic and cinematographic works that, in general, combine real events with fictional and horror elements, helping to consolidate an allegory around the murderer that prevails in contemporary times.

SAEED HANAEI, IRAN.

Saeed Hanaei was born in Mashhad, Iran in 1962. Even as a child, he had a complicated relationship with his mother, who violently abused him.

Hanaei claimed that she frequently scratched him hard enough to draw blood and tried to bite off chunks of his flesh. Perhaps that was the trigger for his criminal personality and the deep resentment towards women he had.

Saeed Hanaei lived with his wife and three children while working as a construction worker in Mashhad and serving as a volunteer in the Iran-Iraq war.

Between 2000 and 2001, Saeed Hanaei killed 16 women in the Iranian city of Mashhad. All of them were prostitutes.

He met them at her house, when they arrived he gave them the money and while the girl was counting it, he surprised them from behind her, choking them with the veil until he took their lives. He threw their bodies in vacant and open fields.

"Between 2000 and 2001, Saeed Hanaei killed 16 women in the Iranian city of Mashhad. They were all prostitutes."

The case shocked the country, but above all it acquired dimension when Saeed was discovered since, far from showing remorse, he argued that his sexist crimes were a divine mission to clean the streets of his country.

He also underwent various psychological tests that showed that he did not suffer from any type of mental illness. He was fully aware of his actions and defended his cynicism with chilling confidence.

The event was on the front pages of newspapers and in the media for months. Hanaei, instead of being considered a fearsome murderer of women, was applauded as a hero by more than one citizen and even some well-known politicians. It was a clear example that machismo ran through the veins of a corrupt country in which women were second-class beings, who could be murdered for their way of dressing or for wearing makeup or without a veil.

Saeed's family defended him from the first day, stating that the crimes were in the name of Ala, that it was a purification of the city.
Even one of his sons (a minor at the time) told in a televised interview and in great detail, the sinister way of killing that his father had, proud of these facts.

Despite everything, the police arrested him in July 2001. Hanaei was found guilty and hanged in the early hours of April 8, 2002 in Mashhad prison.

Several films were made telling his story, one of them "Holy Spider" came to reflect a raw and quite critical look at the life and crimes of Iran's most feared serial killer.

REX HEUERMANN, NEW YORK.

Rex Heuermann seemed like a very normal man, no one suspected him for a long time. A successful family man and architect, with a good socioeconomic status.
However, he kept the New York police force in check for more than a decade.

The crimes attributed to him occurred from 1996 to 2011. All of the victims were young prostitutes who were found along the Ocean Parkway greenway, near the coastal towns of Gilgo and Oak Beach, in Suffolk County, and in the Jones Beach State Park area of Nassau County. The police believe he murdered more than 10 whores over a period of almost 15 years.

For years the investigations were inconclusive. In 2010, a hair that had been found in the bag that wrapped one of the victims was analyzed, yielding negative results since it was degraded. However, recently in 2023, through a DNA test with much more advanced technology, they were able to prove Heuermann's involvement in these atrocious murders.

"The crimes attributed to him occurred from 1996 to 2011. All the victims were young prostitutes."

Once identified, a deep investigation began that yielded some horrifying results. More than 200 firearms were found in his house, and pages related to child pornography, sadistic material, and information on his victims and disappearances were found in his computer's Internet search history.

It is believed that the detainee's house, less than nine km from where the skeletal remains of several of the victims were located, could have been the scene of multiple of the crimes.

The police came to this conclusion based on the fact that the suspect's wife, Asa Ellerup (married to him since 1996 and who has just filed for divorce), and his son and stepdaughter were always out of town at the time of the crime. the murders, and this led to think that the victims could have been summoned there.

The strategy would give the detainee control to access what he might need when committing the crimes and hiding them. To this day he continues to investigate trying to find parts of the bodies that could have been kept as "trophies" in his house.

Currently the investigation continues with Rex Heuermann in prison without the possibility of bail.




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