Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

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

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

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.