An Austrian man gave himself up to police yesterday after hacking his family to death with an axe, allegedly to save them from financial ruin.

The 39-year-old, who for legal reasons has been identified as Reinhard S, first killed his wife, Barbara, 42, and his daughter, Natalie, 7 in their family home in a prosperous Vienna district. By his own admission, he repeatedly struck them on the head with an axe that he had bought at a DIY store.

He then drove 170 kilometres (105 miles) to his parents’ house in the city of Linz. He then killed them with repeated blows of the axe as they slept in front of the television in their living room. They were identified as Engelbert and Gabrielle S.

The next stop was Ansfeld, a town near Linz, and home of his father-in-law. The old man, identified as Heinrich R, was felled as he opened his front door. On his return to Vienna, the murderer calmly walked into a police station at 3.20am yesterday covered in blood and in a “confused state” and confessed to the crimes. “My dead wife and my dead child are in my flat,” he told the officers.

Police said that the suspect claimed he had murdered his entire family to spare them from disgrace. “He claims to have borrowed a six-figure sum from someone from the family but then lost it in failed investments,” a police spokesman said. “According to him, the motive for the gruesome murders was to spare his family from the shame of finding out that he become financially ruined.” Detectives arriving at the family apartment in a three-storey house Vienna’s upmarket 13th District found the mutilated bodies of his wife and daughter, their heads “severely injured”. Barbara S was reportedly lying in a pool of blood in the bathroom, while the body of their daughter had been placed in a walk-in wardrobe and covered with a blanket.

The suspect told police that he killed his daughter after she watched him murder her mother. He also confessed to killing his father-in-law and his own parents.

Reinhard S, a PR consultant, told police that he had tried to commit suicide by hanging himself in a wood. It was after that botched attempt that he returned to Vienna to compose several confused notes trying to “explain and excuse” his crime, police said. He told officers that he bought the axe for the purpose of murdering his family.

Alois Lissl, the chief of police in Linz, said: “The attacks were extremely brutal and he always aimed for the head as he struck his victims. We found several confused letters in which he tried to explain and excuse his deeds. It would appear that we are dealing with a premeditated crime.” The suspect and his wife were described as a “well-to-do” family.

The news of the killing spree comes two weeks after it was revealed that another Austrian, Josef Fritzl, 73, imprisoned his daughter in a purpose-built dungeon not far from Linz, and kept her as a sex slave for 24 years, fathering seven children with her.

Michael Braunsperger, a police spokesman, said: “The suspect appears entirely composed and is answering all questions without showing any emotion. He has given a detailed account of what he had done. It is not possible to conclude whether he is suffering from some mental disorder, but one would assume that a normal person would not be capable of committing such a crime in cold blood.”

A neighbour who lives next door to the apartment said: “We admired the family. She was working on her career and he was taking care of the child. There is nothing unusual about them.

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