A middle class father who hacked to death his wife, daughter, elderly parents and father-in-law has told police he killed them to save the family from the shame of financial ruin.

Reinhard Steinbauer, a public relations executive for the Austrian Parliament, used an axe to kill his wife, Barbara, 42, and daughter, Natalie, 7, at their home in a prosperous Vienna district.

He then drove 180km to his parents’ home in Ansfelden, Lower Austria to kill Engelbert, 72, and Gabriela, 70, with the same axe. Later he drove to the neighbouring city of Linz and killed his father-law, Heinrich Reiter, 80, on the doorstep of his home.

The massacre has shocked a country which is still attempting to come to terms with the case of Josef Fritzl who kept his daughter in a dungeon beneath his house for 24 years and forced her to bear him seven children.

Like Mr Fritzl, Mr Steinbauer was apparently an affluent and respected member of society. He worked as a freelance PR counsellor while his wife was a high-ranking civil servant in the finance ministry.

After the killings Mr Steinbauer drove around aimlessly for several house and unsuccessfully tried to hang himself before handing himself into police in the early hours of Wednesday morning saying: “The bodies of my dead wife and children are lying in my flat.”

Police found the body of Mrs Steinbauer in the bathroom and Natalie’s in a walk-in closet. Their remains were partially covered in sheets. The axe used in the killings was discovered in a rucksack behind the back seat of his rental car.

Letters in which Mr Stainbauer apologised for his actions have been found next to the bodies of his parents and father-in-law but none has been discovered by his wife and daughter.

Mr Steinbauer was described as “calm” and “composed”, showing no emotion when initially questioned by police.

He said the had killed his family because he wanted to spare them the “shame” of finding out that he was bankrupt. He apparently borrowed a six-figure sum from his relatives and then lost over €300,000 on failed investments.

A neighbour of the family in Vienna’s affluent 13th District said: “It all appeared idyllic. I always had the impression that he was a real super dad.

Karl Dobnigg, an Austrian MP, said: “He was always taking good care of his daughter, and would sometimes come late to work because, for an example, he had to take her to the doctor.”

One of Austria’s most prominent psychiatrists, Professor Max Friedrich, said: “It was no rampage, but rather a premeditated murder, meticulously and consciously planned.

“His cognitive abilities were intact, as he drove a car from Lower Austria to Vienna knowing that he killed people. This man must have had an immeasurable hate of everything connected to him and his partner. It was a revenge spree aimed at destroying everything related to his roots.”

Politicians and commentators have defend the reputation of their country after claims of a possible “Austrian syndrome” following the case of Natascha Kampusch, the schoolgirl who was kept for eight years in an underground cellar near Vienna, as well as the latest news on Mr Fritzl and the Steinbauer families – all within the space of less than two years.

Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer challenged a “general condemnation” of his country and called for a new campaign to improve Austria’s image. He said: “We will not allow the whole of Austria … to become hostage to brutal single criminals. We will defend the reputation of our country.”

An editorial of the Austria’s best-selling broadsheet the Kurier read: “Foreign media have unleashed themselves on our country, where evil, it would appear, is not only confined in one place.”

PR experts have however questioned the sense of a campaign to improve the country’s reputation. One commented in a local newspaper: “What kind of campaign could be possibly devise, surely not a motto along the lines of ‘come to Austria, we are not paedophiles’.”

Wolfgang Bachmayer, a leading opinion pollster, claimed that the damage done to the country’s image was not substantial in the long term. He said: “The damage to the image is limited, and the deeply-rooted clichés about music and dance could in the worst case only be scratched on the surface.”

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