The police found a man dead in his Favoriten, Vienna apartment on Tuesday evening. They established stabbing as the cause of death. Investigators in the busy city found a woman in the apartment too. Someone had bludgeoned her to death.
The Favoriten City Police Department found the door unlocked, with the bodies showing signs of lying there since Sunday. At first, the assumption was that a third party was responsible and on the run. But now the outlook appears even more tragic.
They now think it was a murder-suicide.
The press identified the man as an Austrian poker player, Twitch-streamer, and DJ. He appears to have killed the unidentified woman with a hammer before stabbing himself to death.
Heute — the Austrian newspaper that broke the story — has avoided naming the poker player. However, they end their article on the story with, “as a rule, we do not report suicides unless the circumstances of the suicide cause people to pay particular attention to it." But a user on 2+2 identified the alleged murderer and suicide victim as Mario Zwanzleitner.
Zwanzleitner streamed poker and Counter-Strike on his Twitch channel under the username “YouPayMyF458”. That's a reference to the Ferrari 458, a car he seemed especially fond of. Zwanzleitner posted photos of the vehicle on his public Facebook page. He also posted memes skeptical of COVID and claimed that PokerStars was rigged against him.
On top of this, he reportedly told a neighbor that he was training to be a Navy SEAL in the U.S. The same neighbor told a local newspaper: “at home, there were guns on the wall.” Although gun ownership is legal in Austria, one friend told the press that Zwanzleitner was banned from owning one.
“Only a matter of time”
Other 2+2 users were quick to point out that this is not Zwanzleitner’s first violent incident.
The 33-year old poker player “had a criminal record and apparently was sentenced to 32 months in 2016 for the attempted rape / assault of an 86-year-old woman,” according to user “Barry Urinstein.”
Other posters backed "Barry" up. One, “BobiBoban1”, added that “His streams were always fun to watch, because he tilted very fast and spewed away his big stacks, after some bad beats. This is the reason, why his streams were so hyped.”
He also shot at neighbors with a BB gun. One of these neighbor's used the word “Gewalttäter” — a "violent offender." They added that they believed “it was only a matter of time before something happened again.”
Hindsight is 20-20.
The victim
The newspapers are keeping a tight lid on who the victim might be.
One possibility is that she was Zwanzleitner's girlfriend. She may have been the same woman who he reportedly chased at knife-point from his apartment on a previous occasion.
The event in question happened earlier this year, though no domestic violence charges appear on Zwanzleitner's record.
The unnamed victim is the 18th woman murdered this year in Austria. Zwanzleitner is survived by an 11-year old daughter.
Featured image source: Facebook
