Chef who ‘disembowelled girlfriend’ is son of the infamous Bratislava Strangler
A chef accused of butchering his girlfriend is the son of an infamous murderer put to death for killing two women when he was a toddler.
Jozef Hanuska, 47, was arrested after the disembowelled body of his partner, named only as Patricia, was found in her apartment in the Slovakian capital Bratislava.
She had been horrifically mutilated, with her heart carved out and placed next to her corpse, her intestines and other organs stuffed into a bucket. A British passport sat on the sheet covering her body. What part that played in the murder remains unclear.
But the most disturbing aspect of the crime is its haunting echo of events four decades ago when Hanuska’s father, known as the Bratislava Strangler, haunted the city.
Jozef Hanuska’s father
Jozef, then aged three, spent the night of September 12, 1979, with his mum at her parents’ home.
His dad, Stefan Pantl, wasn’t with them – at least not for the whole night.
He spent the late evening prowling outside the Bratislava’s Hotel Krym, looking for women.
After eventually stepping inside out of the cold, he set his sights on two friends sitting and drinking at the bar, 24-year-old Olga and 22-year-old Vlasta.
What did Stefan Pantl do?
Pantl took a shine to Vlasta and persuaded the pair to come back to his new flat, where he poured them glasses of wine.
Olga soon fell asleep and Pantl tried his luck with Vlasta, only to be rebuffed. When Olga similarly rejected him, his temper snapped.
He pulled the cord from his bathrobe, slipped it around Olga’s neck and silently choked the life out of her. He then left her on the sofa and went back into the other room where he pestered Vlasta for sex once more.
When she turned him down a second time he battered her and tried to throttle her with a belt.
Vlasta managed to struggle free and tried to run off into the dark, but Pantl caught up with her before she could escape.
After overpowering her he finished the grim task he had started, this time using a stick to press down on her throat.
How the ‘Bratislava Strangler’ was caught
Pantl took Olga’s body out of the flat and dumped it next to Vlasta’s.
He hurled their jewellery into the Danube, except Olga’s chain. He took that home to give his wife as a present.
But the women’s bodies were soon discovered and the net quickly began closing in on Pantl.
He confessed to his wife, but lied that Vlasta had compelled him to kill her friend before he murdered her too to ensure her silence.
When detectives came knocking, Pantl’s wife insisted her husband had been with her and their son Jozef all night.
But Pantl eventually came clean, telling police he had been enraged at the rejection.
What happened to Stefan Pantl?
Although he claimed it was out of character, it would soon emerge that Pantl usually got what he wanted when it came to the opposite sex – by force.
The true number of his victims remains unknown, but his subsequent trial heard from three women he attacked between thee summers of 1978 and 1979.
Pantl was convicted of all charges and sentenced to death.
After Slovkia’s supreme court threw out an appeal the punishment was carried out on July 30, 1981, when Jozef Hanuska was four or five.
What is Jozef Hanuska accused of?
More than 40 years later, Jozef now stands accused of a similarly horrifying crime.
Hanuska allegedly inflicted a slew of horrific cuts on 48-year-old Patricia, who was found dead on Thursday lying naked on her bed.
She had deep gashes on her neck, cheek and thigh, while her chest had been ‘opened’, according to local media.
Several of her organs and a piece of her thigh were said to have been cut out and placed in a bucket next to the bed, and her heart was found nearby on the floor.
Slovakia’s president, Zuzana Caputova, condemned Patricia’s murder as a ‘heinous and reprehensible act’.
In a Facebook post she wrote: ‘I was very saddened by the news about the brutal murder of 48-year-old Patrícia in Ružinov, Bratislava, who, according to media reports, suffered from serious intimate partner violence.
‘I am very sorry and express my sincere condolences to the family and close friends.
‘It is unacceptable that such the most tragic forms of violence against women occur repeatedly in our country.’
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