Swedish ‘Laser Man’ Given Second Life Sentence Over Holocaust Survivor Murder

John Ausonius, also known as “laser man.” Image by Getty

By Ari Feldman February 22, 2018

A Swedish man who has already served two decades of a life sentence in Sweden for racially motivated killings was sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for murdering a Holocaust survivor, the Telegraph reported.

John Ausonius, also known as “laser man” for the laser telescope he used in his sniper shootings, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sweden for killing an Iranian man and injuring ten others between 1991 and 1992. Ausonius was sentenced in Germany for killing Blanka Smigrod, a 68-year-old Holocaust survivor, near her Frankfurt home in 1992.

Ausonius is thought to be the inspiration for Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a shooting spree in Norway in 2011.

Police determined that Ausonius killed Zmigrod after he argued with her in a restaurant where she was the coatcheck attendant in Frankfurt, where Ausonius was staying while he was on the run from Swedish authorities. Police initially closed the case in 1996, but reopened it in 2014 and had Ausonius extradited to Germany in late 2016 to stand trial.

It is not clear in which country Ausonius will spend the rest of his life sentence.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO