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BLUDGEONED TO DEATH: Officials removing the body of one of the victims of the man's killing spree, which police described as 'exceptionally brutal', in Vienna. -- PHOTO: AP
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VIENNA - AN AUSTRIAN man has confessed to hacking his wife, daughter, parents and father-in-law to death with an axe, leaving a bloody trail across the country, police said yesterday.
The authorities described the attack as 'exceptionally brutal'. It comes as the investigation continues into Josef Fritzl's 'House of Horrors' in Amstetten, the Telegraph reported.
Police said the 39-year-old man walked into a police station in Vienna at 3.20am, covered in blood and in a 'confused state', and confessed to the murders, the Times of London reported. He said: 'My dead wife and my dead child are in my flat.'
Officers rushed to the scene of the crime, the family home in an affluent part of Vienna, and found the bodies of the man's wife and seven-year-old daughter.
Both had been bludgeoned to death with an axe, police said. The bodies of the man's parents and father-in-law were later found at their homes in Upper Austria province.
The man, a self-employed public relations consultant, told police he wanted to spare his family the shame of financial ruin caused through speculative financial dealings, criminal investigator Thomas Stecher said at a news conference.
Police said the man started by killing his 42-year-old wife, who worked at the Finance Ministry, and his daughter early on Tuesday morning.
His daughter's body was found in a walk-in closet and his wife in a bathroom, both draped with cloth, the authorities said.
He said he then drove to Ansfelden in Upper Austria province, where he beat his parents - ages 72 and 69 - to death, police said. Then, he told officers, he went to the city of Linz to kill his 80-year-old father-in-law in the evening.
The man, whose identity was not revealed, told police he decided to turn himself in after unsuccessfully trying to hang himself.
Investigators found letters of explanation next to the bodies of the victims. The axe has also been recovered.
The suspect, who is in custody under constant surveillance in case he makes another suicide attempt, was 'calm, collected and showing no emotion', Mr Stecher said.
'He is completely matter-of-fact...almost without emotion,' Mr Stecher added.
Austria is still trying to come to terms with another horrific crime that came to light two weeks ago when it was revealed that a 73-year-old man in the town of Amstetten had held his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and forcing her to bear seven children from that abuse.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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