A martyrdom that a 39-year-old woman suffered in her apartment in Vienna-Brigittenau last summer was examined by a jury in the Gray House on Monday. Her former partner was admitted to a forensic therapeutic center in accordance with Section 21 Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code. He had “beaten the woman to a pulp,” as forensic pathologist Christian Reiter explained at the trial. The placement in the enforcement of measures is already legally binding.
According to Reiter, it was an “excess of violence that is rarely seen on this scale”: neighbors had alerted the police on the morning of July 27th because they were worried regarding the 39-year-old following her partner had already dead rat and bloody clothes thrown out of the window onto the sidewalk. Officials found the seriously injured woman in the bathroom, who was immediately taken to a hospital. As it turned out, she had suffered serial rib fractures and severe head injuries with bleeding between the meninges. Her chest cavity was already filled with air as a result of the injuries.
Schizophrenia as a cause?
Prosecutor Ursula Schrall-Kropiunig would have accused the 43-year-old of attempted murder if a psychiatric report she obtained during the investigation had not come to the conclusion that the man was mentally incompetent due to schizophrenia and therefore not guilty. Consequently, the public prosecutor demanded that the man, who according to the report was dangerous, be placed in a forensic therapeutic center. According to his own statements, he first noticed the emergence of psychological problems in 2018. Despite this, he continued to use cannabis. “To be able to sleep well,” as he explained to the jury.
However, smoking weed had a negative effect on the course of his illness. The man was admitted to hospital several times, most recently in June 2023 and then shortly before the brutal attack on his girlfriend, whom he had met in 2022. In June, police took him to a psychiatric hospital following he rioted at a coffeehouse. A few weeks later, he cut his partner’s forearms, allegedly because he wanted to “feed flies.” As the 39-year-old later reported to the police and also to the public prosecutor in her contradictory interrogation, her boyfriend had become more and more “irrational” and claimed, among other things, that he was God and might turn back time.
Unbelievable violence
Just a short time following he was released from a psychiatric ward on July 26th, he attacked his partner at home with incredible violence. The decisive factor was that he apparently suspected her of having an affair with another man. Among other things, he beat the 39-year-old with a charging cable – the forensic doctor spoke of “whipping” based on the documented signs of injury. He also hit her in the left eye region with the cable.
“The pupil was torn and the lens of the eye was damaged,” reported Reiter. This led to “sustainable damage to vision”. Since then, the 39-year-old has only been able to distinguish light from dark in her left eye. In addition, the man had also strangled her with a strangling tool, as evidenced by marks on her neck, and had punched and kicked her with his fists and feet.
The 43-year-old stated that he might no longer remember the crimes he was accused of committing. When asked whether and how often he had argued with his ex-partner, he said: “From time to time.” However, neighbors reported to the court that there were loud arguments every day in the couple’s apartment.
This article was updated at 4:36 p.m.
