Ice cream killer pleads guilty to killing lover and boyfriend
Cold-blooded Estibaliz Carranza, 34, pleaded guilty to killing her husband and her boyfriend in court in Vienna, Austria, today (Monday) on the first day of the hearing.
Ice cream parlour owner Carranza – dubbed the Ice Lady by local media – admitted killing the men, cutting them up into pieces and cementing them into her floor in the Austrian capital before fleeing to Italy. She admitted today in court that her actions were ‘repulsive’.
Under Austrian law despite the guilty plea, it is the court that decides what she is guilty of, and the trial with all the evidence is still going ahead before the guilty
plea is accepted – and the charges.
Shortly after the trial began the woman entered her plea. She spoke about her first boyfriend in Spain – she admitted that even back then she had had fantasies of murder.
She spoke of her first marriage to victim Holger Holz – who she met as an Au Pair in Germany. She told the court that soon after they married ‘he became a totally different person’. She said he would shout abuse at her the whole time and she could not explain why she nevertheless decided to move with him to Vienna – where they opened an ice cream parlour together in the district of Meidling.
But things did not improve, and as the marriage deteriorated she felt there was no other option then to kill him to get him out of her life. She took a weapon from his weapons’ cupboard and shot him.
She said: “There was no shortage of weapons, he was mad about guns.”
She then described how she cut him up with a chain saw and put parts of the body in the freezer. She admitted: “It was like something out of a horror movie. There was blood everywhere, I remember I could not get the smell of blood out of my memory – I could not get rid of the smell.”
She then moved onto her second victim Manfred Hinterberger, an ice cream machine representative – who she told the court she was madly in love with. But in 2010 however she had been convinced he was having an affair, a claim for which there was no proof. When she had tried to talk to him, it had quickly escalated into an argument before he went off to bed.
She said: “He simply turned around and walked off. That was the end of it for him. I was so angry. I had a pistol under the mattress. I took it out and shot him.”
The next morning she started to cut the body into pieces and then loaded them into the car and took them to the ice cream parlour.
She said: “I know what I did was horrendous and wrong. I felt so miserable, like I couldn’t go on. I would have ended it all but I didn’t have the courage to kill myself.”
The bodies were found after the cellar under the ice cream salon had to be broken up for plumbing work.
Spanish-born Estíbaliz who also has Mexiucan citizenship and speaks fluent English, German and Italian was pregnant from her current lover when the bodies of her victims were discovered. She fled in a taxi to Italy and the baby was confiscated shortly after birth and handed to its father whom she had married in a prison service.
The court also heard today (Monday) from the taxi driver who drove her to Italy on June 7th 2011 as she fled. He told the court that the woman had about a problem, and he said he wanted to help her without knowing what it was.
He checked into a hotel in Italy under his name – he told the court she appeared calm and normal. He said she only became more nervous when he was asking more about her problems.
By Wednesday the court is set to hear 27 witnesses. It is expected the verdict will be given on Thursday.
Public Prosecutor Petra Freh described the defendent as “Ice cold and a highly dangerous woman” who was dominating and high maintenance.
Freh is pushing for her to be sent to an institution for mentally disturbed offenders and said expert reports had concluded she committed the crime whilst suffering from a personality disorder.
Her defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer who also represented Josef Frtizl painted a different picture of his client, saying the relationships she had with the murder victims were anything other than harmonious.
He said his client was a very disturbed person, who did not choose to be so disturbed.
Court shrink Adelheid Kastner – who judged incest monster Josef Fritzl sane enough to be tried – spent more than 30 hours questioning Carranza at her prison in Linz.
A 140-page report into her mental state ruled that she is fit to stand trial for the double murder.
She said: “She suffers from a personality disorder, she has serious mental and psychological abnormalities. It has to be feared that the woman could commit further acts with serious consequences,” concludes the analysis.
Dr Kastner stated that she believes Carranza has a “one in three” chance of committing another murder.
The trial continues.