12 Disturbing And Gruesome Facts About Estibaliz Carranza, The Ice Cream Killer

Estibaliz Carranza - full name Goidsargi Estibaliz Carranza Zabala - is one of the most interesting female killers known to date. Known as the Ice Cream Killer, Zabala was a beautiful, young woman who owned an ice cream parlor in Austria. But despite her pleasant exterior, she was a cold, calculated killer who took the life of two men. The gruesome details of her crime - and of her life - are bone chilling. 

Carranza was a woman driven by one goal in life - to become a mother - and when the men in her life couldn't deliver, she killed them. She might've gotten away with it, too, if workers inspecting her ice cream shop hadn't been allowed to go down in her basement. Carranza hid two dismembered bodies in freezers and tubs, frozen in concrete, and then covered in air fresheners in the basement of her ice cream store. 

In 2011, maintenance workers and plumbers discovered the grisly secret in the basement of Carranza's ice cream shop. They called authorities, but Carranza was already gone. She took a cab to the city of Udine, Italy, 300 miles from her home in Vienna. They had to travel across the Alps to get there. She was found living with a street musician and then was extradited back to Austria to stand trial. 

Carranza was so violent that a typical women's prison couldn't hold her. Instead, the Austrian government transferred her to a special all-male prison. This new prison, located in Asten, Upper Austria, is staffed with a number of nurses, therapists, doctors, and prison guards. As of 2017, it holds 91 men and Carranza. Additional women could be transferred there in the future. 

Carranza believed her main goal in life was to have children. According to her prison memoir, My Two Lives: The True Story of the Ice Lady, despite everything she had going for her, she only wanted kids, not a career. When her ex-husband stopped having sex with her shortly after their marriage she wondered, “How was I going to get pregnant?” This led to their divorce and later his murder. 

Carranza discovered that she pregnant  - at last! as she had always wanted a baby - shortly before her secret was discovered. According to her memoir, she was looking forward to a happy future when several maintenance workers stumbled upon the bodies entombed in concrete in her shop's basement.

Her most recent lover was the father of her child. Carranza gave birth to a baby boy who is in the custody of her parents. The name of the child has not been publicly released. 

Apparently in Austria, convicted murderers can write and publish their memoirs while in prison. Carranza's book, co-written with a journalist named Martina Prewein. The book, titled My Two Lives: The True Story of the Ice Lady, begins when she discovers she is pregnant. Everything else unfolds in a series of flashbacks. She said the money from the book goes to the victims's families.

After dismembering her ex-husband and boyfriend, Carranza decided it was a good idea to stash their bodies in the basement of her ice cream shop. She placed their body parts in small freezers, as well as in garden containers, which were then filled with concrete. In order to further mask the bodies's smell, she placed air fresheners around them. This worked, and no one knew they were down there until several plumbers entered the basement to do some maintenance on the shop. 

Carranza confessed to both murders. She claimed in court she made both men into "monsters and finally they made me a beast." The jury found her guilty, but not before a court-ordered psychiatric assessment deemed her "mentally abnormal." The court said she had a personality disorder, and decided it was possible she would kill again unless she sought treatment. According to the assessment, Carranza saw herself as a princess who wanted to be rescued by a man, and who was not happy unless one was treating her as such. 
 

Carranza violently shot her boyfriend, Hinterberger, because he supposedly cheated on her. She sliced up his corpse, and then stashed it in the basement of her ice cream shop. Then, showing little remorse for the acts that she committed, Carranza went out to get a manicure, because her nails were wrecked. Apparently, looking good mattered more to her anything else. 

In March 2011, Carranza married her "third boyfriend" and father of her child. She was behind bars at the time, and remains so. Their child lives with Carranza's parents. According to Carranza, her new husband is, “very gentle, the opposite of macho,” she said. “He would not bring me into such a situation.”

Estibaliz Carranza killed her ex-husband, Holger Holz, in 2008, and her boyfriend two years later. She shot both in the back of the head, then dismembered them with a chainsaw. She reportedly killed her ex-husband after divorcing him because he wouldn't move out of their house, and claimed he was violent and lazy. She have killed her boyfriend, Manfred Hinterberger, an ice cream machine salesman, because he was allegedly having an affair. Before she could confront him about it, she came across him passed out drunk and decided to just kill him instead. 

After killing them, she used a chainsaw to dismember them in the basement of her shop. She hoped that the sound of her ice cream making machines would cover the noise.