Elfriede Blauensteiner was arrested in Vienna early on January 11, 1996. She was 64, a widow with long-running money troubles, and in the days that followed she told investigators that she had killed people one after another in order to inherit from them. About a month later she withdrew every confession. Two trials, in Krems in 1997 and in Vienna in 2001, found her guilty of three murders: Alois Pichler, Franziska Köberl and Friedrich Döcker. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, and she died in November 2003 while still serving her sentence.
Her method, as the case was later described, was poison given in the guise of care. She found elderly people who were well off and needed looking after, often through newspaper personal ads, took them into her home, and gave them large doses of Euglucon, a drug used to lower blood sugar, and the antidepressant Anafranil. The Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported that the poisonings came after the victims had signed over or left her their money and property.
Blauensteiner grew up in Favoriten, a working-class district of Vienna, with five brothers and sisters, in poor circumstances, the news magazine profil wrote in 2016. Much of her childhood fell in the Nazi period and the Second World War. In conversations recorded in 2001 with the court psychiatrist Sigrun Roßmanith, later turned into a book by the journalist Florian Klenk, she described violence from her mother and fear of her stepfather. "If the mother stamps you into the floor," she said, "then you can imagine what the stepfather was like," according to the Tiroler Tageszeitung's account of the book.
Her first marriage ended in divorce after the birth of her daughter. Profil reported that she later stated on record that she had hated men ever since. She married a second time; her second husband, Rudolf Blauensteiner, died on August 10, 1992, at the age of 52.
Poverty followed her into adult life, and she looked for quick money at the gaming tables. In the recorded conversations she said that for weeks she drove to the casino in Baden every Saturday with her young daughter to play roulette. "I always lost," she said. "500 schillings. Every Saturday." Profil described the gambling as an addiction that put her into money trouble again and again, and the killings were later tied to the need for money that followed.
As she grew older, Blauensteiner began to look for people through the contact ads in the newspapers. Profil wrote in 2016 that she searched for people who were wealthy and needed care, and took them into her home. The same magazine reported that her lawyer forged the wills of those she cared for; no outcome of any case against him has been reported.
Alois Pichler and other victims came to her through newspaper ads, according to Oberösterreichische Nachrichten. Profil's 2018 account of one court hearing gives a sense of how the ads ran on even as her charges died. The judge asked why she had gone to the casino while Friedrich Döcker lay dying, and why she had already placed a new personal ad. She answered, smiling toward the courtroom, that she had gone out "for distraction." She could not go to a coffeehouse, she said, because she could not drink coffee and did not smoke. "What am I supposed to do?"
Franziska Köberl was Blauensteiner's neighbor. Profil reported that she died in 1992 and that Blauensteiner wanted her savings books. In the 2001 conversations Blauensteiner insisted that Köberl, whom she called her "Sorgenmutterl," a pet name roughly meaning "little mother I worried over," had left her things out of affection, and that "the police wrote it all up wrong."
Friedrich Döcker was her companion, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten wrote; profil, in 2018, called him her husband. He died in 1995 in her care. Years later she disputed the record of his case. "The transcripts are not right," she told the psychiatrist, according to the Tiroler Tageszeitung. She spoke of a stroke and said: "No murder."
Alois Pichler died in November 1995 in Rossatzbach, in Lower Austria. His death began the case. A nephew who believed he had been cheated of his inheritance became suspicious and went to the authorities, according to both profil and the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.
Tests later found traces of the drugs, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported.
Blauensteiner described the arrest in memoirs published in 1997. "On January 11, 1996, at 6:40 a.m., my bell rang like a storm," she wrote, and then she was arrested. At first she was suspected in three cases. In the days after the arrest she surprised investigators by confessing that she had killed people in order to inherit from them. In her statements she admitted five murders, one of them as an accomplice, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported.
Investigators described her as "calculating through and through," the paper wrote, and said she cooperated only when there was clear evidence against her. Before the investigating judge she took the confessions back. The Tiroler Tageszeitung put the withdrawal at about a month after her arrest. In later statements she again and again denied the killings she had first admitted.
Her statements about her second husband were among the most quoted. Profil reported that she said of him, without remorse, "Rudi deserved to die." His death was not brought to trial.
The first trial, for the death of Alois Pichler, opened at the Krems regional court on February 10, 1997. Profil described the proceedings as at times absurd, because she confessed to murders and then withdrew the confessions again. She showed no remorse. One remark became the best known of the trial: "No man is a loss when he dies." In another appearance she held up a golden crucifix and, in the manner of Pontius Pilate, declared, "I wash my hands in innocence."
The court in Krems found her guilty of murder in 1997 and sentenced her to life imprisonment. That conviction had become final before the Supreme Court ruled on the Vienna case in December 2001.
A second trial in Vienna dealt with the deaths of Franziska Köberl and Friedrich Döcker. In 2001 the Vienna court convicted her of murder in both cases. On December 17, 2001, an appeal panel of the Supreme Court, the Oberster Gerichtshof, upheld the guilty verdicts. Johann Rzeszut, whom the paper described as president of the Supreme Court, spoke of a dimension of wrongdoing "that is really too great for an earthly court," the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported.
In the same year she spoke at length with the court psychiatrist Sigrun Roßmanith. Those recorded conversations, held after she had withdrawn her confessions, show her pushing back against the case files point by point, according to the Tiroler Tageszeitung's account of the book that later drew on them. She disputed what the files said about an emergency doctor and about the criminal investigators, and claimed the murders she had first admitted had been pinned on her.
Blauensteiner was remembered as a cheerful widow who presented herself in court as a talkative media figure, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten wrote. She also took several media outlets to court for calling her names such as "Weibsteufel," roughly "she-devil," and "schwarze Witwe," "black widow." The tabloids often called her "Killer-Omi," profil noted in 2018.
Profil's Angelika Hager described her in 2018 as a histrionic personality "as if from the picture book of personality disorders." Hager wrote that her biggest disappointment was not the life sentence but that Christiane Hörbiger, and not Elizabeth Taylor, would play her on screen.
The film was made. "Die Gottesanbeterin" ("The Praying Mantis"), released in 2001, starred Christiane Hörbiger as Blauensteiner, profil reported.
Blauensteiner spent six years in the women's prison at Schwarzau, profil wrote. She died on November 16, 2003, of the effects of a brain tumor, the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported.
In his 2026 book Klenk also drew on conversations with Blauensteiner's daughter and with a grandchild. The daughter described a mother who was unpredictable. When her parents divorced, her mother comforted her and gave her confidence. "She loved me, and she was cruel to me," the daughter said. In fits of rage, she said, her mother often beat her. When the daughter's cat scratched the wallpaper, her mother put the animal in a sack and struck it against the wall in front of the girl, the Tiroler Tageszeitung reported from the book.
The book, titled "Ausreden" ("Excuses"), turned the transcripts of the psychiatric conversations into a monologue in Blauensteiner's own voice. Its title refers to the withdrawal of her confessions. Klenk's afterword also deals with how some journalists worked when the deaths became public in January 1996.
Only three deaths were proven in court. Profil wrote in 2018 that three poisoning murders were proven and that she was suspected in other unexplained deaths. According to the Tiroler Tageszeitung, three further deaths that she was suspected of, and had first confessed to, never led to charges.
Profil's 2016 account named some of the other people who died in her care. It called Otto Reindl, a man who needed care and died in her care in the late 1980s, her first victim, and it listed Erwin Niedermayer among those who died while she looked after them. Her second husband, Rudolf Blauensteiner, died in 1992. None of these deaths was tried, and none is a conviction.
The reports also differ on small points. Profil in 2018 called Friedrich Döcker her husband, while the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten called him her companion. Profil in 2016 gave her lawyer a part in forging the wills, but whether he was charged or convicted has not been reported.
Childhood in the Favoriten district of Vienna, one of six children, much of it during the Nazi period and the Second World War.
First marriage ends in divorce after the birth of her daughter.
Late 1980s: Otto Reindl dies in her care (profil; never charged).
1992: her neighbor Franziska Köberl dies (murder conviction, Vienna, 2001).
August 10, 1992: her second husband, Rudolf Blauensteiner, dies at 52 (never charged).
1995: her companion Friedrich Döcker dies (murder conviction, Vienna, 2001).
November 1995: Alois Pichler dies in Rossatzbach, Lower Austria; a nephew goes to the authorities.
January 11, 1996: arrested in Vienna early in the morning; confesses to five murders, one as an accomplice.
Within about a month of the arrest: withdraws the confessions before the investigating judge.
1997: her memoirs are published.
February 10, 1997: trial for the death of Alois Pichler opens at the Krems regional court.
1997: convicted of murder in Krems and sentenced to life imprisonment.
2001: recorded conversations with the court psychiatrist Sigrun Roßmanith.
2001: the film "Die Gottesanbeterin," with Christiane Hörbiger, is released.
2001: convicted in Vienna of the murders of Franziska Köberl and Friedrich Döcker.
December 17, 2001: an appeal panel of the Supreme Court (OGH) upholds the Vienna verdicts.
November 16, 2003: dies of the effects of a brain tumor after six years at the women's prison at Schwarzau.
January 2026: Florian Klenk's book "Ausreden," built on the 2001 conversations, is published.