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08. 09. 10. - 14:00

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08. 09. 10. - 14:00

Haunted mayor alarmed by praline discovery

The mayor of an Upper Austrian town has found a praline at her front door two years after receiving murder threats.

People’s Party (ÖVP) Rüstorf Mayor Pauline Sterrer informed police about the discovery, according to the Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten newspaper.

The discovery evokes memories of the case of former Spitz Mayor Hannes Hirtzberger who suffered irreversible damage to his brain after eating a strychnine-laced Mon Chéri praline placed on the windscreen window of his car in February 2008.

Local Heuriger (wine tavern) owner Helmut Osberger was sentenced to life in prison for the murder following the incident. Osberger was reportedly at war with Hirtzberger over a rejected building permission.

The former mayor of the town in Lower Austria was in intensive care at a local clinic for nine months. Hirtzberger is still in a vegetative state.

Sterrer started getting threatening letters around two years ago. One of them warned her: "In drei Tagen bist du tot." (You’ll be dead in three days."), the name of a teen horror movie shot in the area.

It went on: "Be careful what you eat, be careful what you drink. Always look back! And the Lord will be close!"

Provincial police official Alois Lißl said today (Weds) it had not been determined yet whether the chocolate placed at her door contained poison. Lißl stressed investigations focused on Sterrer’s suspicion someone had hacked into her e-mail account several times despite many password changes and other security precautions.

"This is annoying because I obviously send many confidential messages being a mayor," Sterrer said.

Residents of another Upper Austrian town were asked to the polls last June after its Social Democratic (SPÖ) mayor killed himself three months earlier.

Walter Ernhard hanged himself in a garden shed after he received a box of pralines containing two dead mice and a threatening letter accusing him of being to blame for Ansfelden’s financial woes.

A report by the provincial audit office revealed shortly before the incident that the town of 16,000 people had debts of around 12 million Euros.

Fellow SPÖ member Manfred Baumberger took 57.46 per cent of the vote in June to succeed Ernhard.

Austrian Times

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