The police are investigating the mysterious case of the disappearance of the 32-year-old influencer Stefanie Pieper from Graz, and at the moment it is not excluded that the worst scenarios will happen.
After the disappearance, which was reported on Sunday, the boyfriend with whom she was occasionally in a relationship was soon arrested in Slovenia, and the police detained two more people from his family, her brother and stepfather. It is a case that shook Austria.
Pieper went missing on Sunday morning. After returning from the Christmas party at 7 o’clock, she texted her friend that she had arrived home. Later that day, in the early afternoon, she was supposed to appear for a photo shoot in the center of Graz, but she did not come. The disappearance was reported to the police in the evening.
Already on Monday night, in the border area between Styria and Slovenia, her 31-year-old boyfriend Peter M., with whom she had been in an occasional relationship for years, was arrested. Suspicions intensified when his red Golf was found burned in the parking lot of the Mond casino next to the Špilje border crossing.
Investigators believe that he tried to cover up the traces of the crime, but there is still no sign of the missing woman. The Slovenian suspect is currently in custody, and a possible extradition was decided yesterday. Slovenian authorities searched his grandmother’s house yesterday and also searched the forests in the border area.
A new shock followed when the spokesman for the State Prosecutor’s Office in Graz, Arnulf Rumpold, confirmed that two more men had been arrested. The ex-boyfriend’s brother and stepfather are also suspected of being connected to the young woman’s disappearance.
Meanwhile, a neighbor of the 32-year-old confirmed that he saw the suspected boyfriend in the stairwell of her building in Graz around the time of her disappearance, raising the possibility that he was lying in wait for her there.
Slovenske novine published more details about the case.
“Some strange person is on the staircase,” Stefanie allegedly wrote to a friend on WhatsApp at seven in the morning and added that she saw a “dark figure” in front of her apartment. It is her last known message.
When she didn’t show up for work a day later, a concerned fellow photographer went to her apartment. It was Peter M. who opened the door for him, described by the media as an unsuccessful amateur poker player and occasional security guard. The photographer allegedly noticed blood stains on the walls in the apartment, which shocked him and immediately after leaving he called the police.
Police officers later found the mobile phone of the influencer discarded in the nearby bushes, and later, near the casino in Šentilje, a red Golf that was believed to belong to Peter M. Slovenian police confirmed today that they arrested the 31-year-old owner of that vehicle.
“Near the car, the owner of the vehicle, a Slovenian citizen with a permanent residence in Austria, was located, who, through the collection of information, was found to be suspected by the Austrian security authorities of involvement in the disappearance of his former partner, a 31-year-old woman, a citizen of Austria,” said Anita Kovačič from the Maribor Police Department.
Peter M. could not explain how his car caught fire. In the meantime, the investigation also extended to his brother and stepfather.
Csilla Legenstein, the influencer’s mother, made a public appeal for help in the search.
“My daughter has been missing since Sunday morning. Any useful information will be financially rewarded. Please help me find my daughter,” she said. The police do not rule out the possibility that Stefanie is the victim of a serious crime.
(TYPE/Source: Klix.ba/Photo: Instagram)
