Austrian prosecutors formally charged Patrick M., a 31-year-old Slovenian former nightclub security guard, with the murder of beauty influencer Stefanie Pieper on Monday, alleging he strangled her, stabbed her neck, and stuffed her body into a turquoise suitcase that was later found buried in a Slovenian forest — possibly while she was still alive, according to the New York Post. The Graz public prosecutor’s office announced the indictment on September 21, 2026, ten months after Pieper, 32, vanished from her apartment in Graz, Austria, on November 23, 2025.
Patrick M., a previously unconvicted Slovenian national, now denies killing Pieper after initially confessing to the murder in March 2026 and blaming jealousy over their recent breakup, the New York Post reported, citing German tabloid Bild. He has admitted only to transporting and burying her body in a remote wooded area near Majšperk, south of Maribor, in Slovenia’s Haloze wine region. Austrian prosecutors say forensic analysis of his phone found he had searched online shortly before the killing for how long strangulation takes to cause unconsciousness — queries prosecutors have described as the kind of research a “strangler” would conduct.
Prosecutors allege that on the morning of November 23, 2025, Patrick M. used a key he still possessed to enter Pieper’s apartment following an argument, then strangled her until she lost consciousness and inflicted stab and cut wounds to her neck. Facial injuries on the body were consistent with someone struggling inside the suitcase, prosecutors said, and it is “quite possible that she was still alive when she was placed in the suitcase,” according to a March 2026 statement prosecutors released at the time. An autopsy confirmed strangulation-related injuries but could not definitively determine when Pieper died — meaning she may have suffocated during the cross-border drive.
Pieper, an Austrian beauty influencer with an Instagram following who had participated in campaigns about violence against women, according to Austrian outlets, was last seen at a Christmas party on November 23, 2025. She sent a friend a WhatsApp message warning of “a creep in the stairwell” after leaving the party, the New York Post reported. When she failed to appear for a scheduled photo shoot the next day, the photographer told Austrian outlet 5Minuten that she “would never have simply cancelled,” which raised the alarm. Investigators later found her phone discarded near her apartment and the couple’s golden retriever alone inside the flat; the couple had separated recently but had stayed in contact over the dog. According to Bild, Patrick M.’s Volkswagen Golf was later found burned near the Slovenian border.
The Graz indictment charges Patrick M. with murder under §77 of the Austrian criminal code, plus interference with a corpse. Under Austrian criminal law, a murder conviction carries 10 to 20 years or life imprisonment, with parole eligibility typically reviewed after 15 years. His defense, according to Bild, has described him as devastated and claimed he acted in a trance during an argument in which Pieper allegedly picked up a knife — claims contradicted by the prosecution’s account and by the pre-incident “strangler” searches. Austrian media reports have also referenced possible drug use around the time of the incident. The Austrian outlet 5Minuten reported in March that Austrian authorities initially investigated Patrick M.’s brother and stepfather on suspicion of aiding in the transport and burial of the body but dropped the case against them after finding no evidence of their involvement in crimes committed on Austrian soil. Slovenian police are now reviewing whether to open separate proceedings regarding any assistance they may have provided on Slovenian soil, which falls outside Austrian jurisdiction.
A trial date at the Landesgericht für Strafsachen Graz has not yet been set. Pieper’s body was recovered on November 29, 2025, six days after she disappeared, following Patrick M.’s directions; he was arrested in the Slovenian border town of Šentilj and extradited to Austria for the proceedings. The case adds to a wider pattern of influencer-targeted violence and stalking incidents Hypefresh has tracked, including the Cleveland double-homicide case in which two young girls were found dead in suitcases in March 2026 and the earlier strangulation case involving California surfing legend Kurt Van Dyke, who was strangled and stabbed in Costa Rica.
Read also Hypefresh’s earlier coverage of the stalking of streamer StrawberryTabby after a viewer tracked her down in real life, the case of an obsessed Canadian gamer who posed as an Amazon driver in a California murder plot, and the original @nypost X post on the Pieper indictment.
