‘Woodsman’ rapist caught
A convicted rapist nicknamed “The Woodsman” has been arrested after being on the run for one week.Friedrich Osterbauer is accused of having seriously injured a call girl in Graz the weekend before last. Magdalena D., 29, identified Osterbauer as the man who strangled her with a cable before slashing her throat when she was briefly awoken from an artificially induced coma. The Bulgarian is currently recovering at the LKH hospital in Graz where she underwent a six-hour surgery after the incident.Osterbauer was jailed for kidnapping and raping his then girlfriend in 1998 before being sentenced to jail for several break-ins. He was set to walk free in November 2011, and has been living in the minimum security wing of the Karlau prison in Graz for some months.The 48-year-old has been permitted to leave the jail for some hours twice a week during that period. A countrywide manhunt started for the man described as a “ticking time bomb” by police.He was caught in woodlands in Lower Austria on Saturday. The man has already admitted and precisely described the attack against the call girl.However he denied having anything to do with the death of an elderly farmer. The body of Maria P., 71, was found lying in a pool of blood by her brothers at the farming estate in Kirchberg am Wechsel a few kilometres from where Osterbauer was arrested the next day.Experts are currently examining the bloodstains on the suspects jacket. Osterbauer was nicknamed “The Woodsman” as he lived in the forests of the Bucklige Welt region in Lower Austria where he has once again been caught for some weeks while hiding from police after a string of burglaries the 1980s.Karlau jail staff representatives have criticised juridical authorities for having allowed Osterbauer to leave the prison for some hours on a regular basis. They say his mental state was not properly checked and accuse officials of having tried to reduce the number of inmates as many of the prisons in Austria have reached capacity.