Josef Fritzl found guilty/sentenced to life in a psychiatric facility

[Mysticalmom]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/27/austria.cellar.ap/index.html

A woman has told police that she was held prisoner in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.

Lower Austria police said in a statement that the 42-year-old woman, identified as Elisabeth F., had been missing since August 29, 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening following a tip.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, told reporters that the 73-year-old father, identified in a separate police statement as Josef F., had been taken into custody.

In a chronology of events outlined in a statement, police said Elisabeth F. had apparently sent a letter a month after her disappearance asking her parents not to search for her.

During police questioning, Elisabeth F. told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984.

During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused by her father and gave birth to six children, the statement said.

In 1996, she gave birth to twins but one died several days later because it was not appropriately cared for. Josef F. had then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the statement said.

Police said Elisabeth F. appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning.

She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.

One of her children, identified as 19-year-old Kerstin F., is currently hospitalized in the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten in very serious condition.

APA cited police as saying Josef F. has been arrested but had not confessed.

APA quoted Gerhard Sedlacek, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in St. Poelten, as saying that the surviving children -- three boys and three girls -- are aged between 5 and 20.

DNA tests are expected to determine whether Josef F. is the father of the children

[TigressPen]

OMG!! This poor woman. How tragic a life she lived. :1222423: I hope if it's proven those children are her father's children, he lives behind bars for the rest of his sadistic life.

I wonder if he abused Kerstin too.

[Roamer]

Well, of course she's disturbed. She's had no contact with the outside world for 24 years. :mad: Sounds like she never had the opportunity to learn how to take care of all these kids, or the tools and/or medical care they needed.

I wonder where the mother was.

[packy]

Good question, where was her mother. And did the just make up a story that she sent a letter to her parents, since her father was the one who held her prisoner.

Very sad and I hope she can be helped.

[London Lass]

Austrian 'hid daughter in cellar'

A 73-year-old Austrian is under arrest on suspicion of hiding his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her, police say.

The existence of the woman, believed missing since 1984 and now 42, emerged apparently after a teenage child fell ill and had to be taken to hospital.

Both the alleged abduction victim and her alleged daughter, who is 19, are now receiving medical treatment.

A police investigation in Amstetten, Lower Austria Province, is continuing.

The suspect, named only as Josef F, was arrested on suspicion of incest and keeping his daughter in captivity.

Police believe the man fathered six children, including one who died in infancy.

DNA tests will be taken to establish whether Josef F was indeed their father.

'Dead baby burnt'

The alleged incest and abduction came to light after a search was begun by the authorities for the mother of the sick 19-year-old.

Since her discovery, her alleged mother, named as Elisabeth F, has been receiving medical and psychological treatment, police said.

She appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning and agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father, and that her children would be taken care of, they added.

The six children are three boys and three girls aged between five and 20.

The police have issued a statement giving details of the alleged abuses Elisabeth recounted to them.

She said she had been sexually abused by her father since the age of 11.

Josef allegedly lured her into the cellar of their house in Amstetten on 28 August 1984, drugging and handcuffing her before locking her up.

"Abused continuously during the 24-year-long imprisonment", Elisabeth bore six children while a seventh, one of a set of twins, died soon after birth.

The dead baby was allegedly taken out of the cellar and burnt by Josef.

Wife 'unaware'

Elisabeth said Joseph had provided her and three of her children, who were locked up along with her, with clothing and food.

His wife Rosemarie had allegedly not been aware of what was going on.

A police spokesman quoted by Reuters said the 19-year-old girl, named as Kerstin F, was dropped off at the Amstetten hospital last weekend.

"The girl is seriously ill and is fighting for her life," the spokesman said.

The discovery of another Austrian woman, who was held captive in a cellar by an abductor for more than eight years, gripped the country in 2006.

Natascha Kampusch finally escaped from her kidnapper, 44-year-old Wolfgang Priklopil, who killed himself shortly afterwards.

Ms Kampusch was abducted at the age of 10 in 1998 and held in a small, windowless cellar beneath Priklopil's garage in the commuter town of Strasshof, 25km (15 miles) outside Vienna.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7369851.stm

************************************************** ********

I can't believe this story - it's so hard to believe that there are people like this out there!? OMG!

[London Lass]

Sorry I added the news story on the same topic - my fault, I didn't see that the story was already on here...apologies to everyone!

[gramvof14]

I find it very hard to believe that his wife didn't know anything about what was going on in her own home, if he kept 3 of the children locked up with the mother (his daughter,) how did he explain the other 3 children to his wife???
Did she think the stork brought them??:duh: Give me a break. This man should be hung.:doh::71541::duh::mad:

[spike404]

Amazing! Hollywood cannot think up the horror stories that occur in real life. Stories like this, such as when a serial killer is exposed, always make me wonder, "How many hundreds more are out there?"

[LiveLaughLuv]

I find it very hard to believe that his wife didn't know anything about what was going on in her own home, if he kept 3 of the children locked up with the mother (his daughter,) how did he explain the other 3 children to his wife???
Did she think the stork brought them??:duh: Give me a break. This man should be hung.:doh::71541::duh::mad:

Just what I was thinking Gram. How the hell did he hide the 6 children? How did they eat, wash, no school?

It it just beyond my imagination to think a father could do this to his child. Her mother was just satisifed with a letter not to look for her?

Outrageous!

I think he needs to be tortured first before being put to death.

[Faith]

(CNN) -- Austrian police believe a 73-year-old man held his daughter captive in his cellar for the past two decades and had seven children with her,:shock: according to police and state-run news reports Sunday.

The woman, identified as 42-year-old Elisabeth F., has been missing since 1984 when she was 18 years old, police said at a news conference.

The situation came to light earlier this month after her daughter -- a 19-year-old woman, identified as Kristen F. -- was hospitalized after falling unconscious, according to police.

She was admitted to a hospital in Amstetten, outside Vienna, by her grandparents with a note from her biological mother requesting help.

But police said a DNA test later revealed her grandfather, Josef F., was also her father, according to ORF, Austria's state-run news agency.

That sparked a police investigation which revealed that Josef F. may have fathered seven children with his daughter, forcing her and the six surviving children to live in the cellar of his house, according to ORF's Peter Schmiberger.

The children are now between the ages of five and 19 years old.

Police are awaiting DNA tests to verify their relationship to Josef F.

"One can't imagine how it could happen, how nobody could realize anything of what was going on in the cellar of this house," Schmiberger told CNN. "It's quite unimaginable."

Acting on "a confidential tip," Amstetten police apprehended Josef and Elisabeth F. on Saturday for questioning, according to a police statement.

Once police assured the daughter that she would never have contact with her father again, "she was able to tell the whole story," Schmiberger said.

Josef F. had allowed some of the children out of the cellar, telling people they were his grandchildren.

Police said he explained their presence by forcing his "missing" daughter to write notes over the past few years saying she had dropped them off at his house because she could not take care of them.

But police said two of the children they found in the cellar had never seen the light of day.

Schmiberger said the man apparently lived upstairs with his wife, with whom he had seven other children, adding to the mystery of why no one told Austrian authorities about the man's other family living in the cellar.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/27/austria.cellar/

[Roamer]

Like you wouldn't know if a woman was giving birth, let alone a woman and kids living in your basement.

If the mother lives in that house, she should be arrested and charged, too, for letting it go on.

[Faith]

This is just SICK-- incomprehensible.

I will tell my grandchildren of this story and explain to them this is not the proper way of living and for them to fight.....fight.......fight.... if ever in a situation like this. :mad:

[Roamer]

If she was only 11 when he put her there, and cut her off from everything and everyone, she probably had no idea of what to do other than obey him, poor child.

[LiveLaughLuv]

I wonder if these children suffer any health problems.

Here's another from Australia, only thing they are proud of their relationship.




Dad and daughter admit incest produced babies

Father and daughter reveal incest on Australian television show

Couple have had two children, with one dying soon after birth

Judge bans couple from having sex to prevent another pregnancy


(CNN) -- An Australian man and his daughter have created a furor after going on television to admit an incestuous relationship which has produced two children.


John Deaves and his daughter Jenny pictured in the 60 Minutes interview.

John Deaves, 61, appeared on the 60 Minutes show with daughter Jenny, 39, and their child -- nine-month-old Celeste, Melbourne's The Age newspaper reported.

Last month Judge Steven Millsteed banned the couple from having sex with each other, but released them on a three-year, $460 good behavior bond. Court transcripts also revealed their first child died in 2001 from a congenital heart disorder.

The couple told 60 Minutes that they fell in love in 2000 when they "discovered each other later in life." Deaves had left the family home when Jenny was a baby, and did not see her again for 30 years. What do you think of the couple's relationship?

However, the Age reported Deaves' former wife, Dorothy, disputed their claim that they were virtual strangers when they fell in love.

"They were in contact all the time," she said. "His youngest daughter [from his second marriage] didn't even know they were together and she is really traumatized -- she is hurting terrible."

Deaves' first wife and Jennifer's mother, Joan, said children deserved a better chance in life than one that originated from incest.

"I just think that the whole relationship is dreadful," she told News Ltd.

"These incestual [sic] relationships produce children and the children have problems and it's not fair to kids."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/incest.aust/index.html

[LiveLaughLuv]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/incest.aust/index.html#cnnSTCVideo


Video of them telling their tale! When the child is older they will explain to her that her father is also her grandfather. How nice!

[London Lass]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/incest.aust/index.html#cnnSTCVideo


Video of them telling their tale!

OMG...these stories are getting more bizarre by the minute!

[Mysticalmom]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/incest.aust/index.html#cnnSTCVideo


Video of them telling their tale! When the child is older they will explain to her that her father is also her grandfather. How nice!

Wow that video just creeped me out :shock: Its so hard to believe they have that nonchalant way of speaking about it...I feel so bad for the cute baby growing up is hard enough without having that burden too!

[LiveLaughLuv]

'House of Horrors' father confesses

NEW: Father confesses he held daughter prisoner for nearly 24 years

NEW: Man known as Mr. F. admits fathering seven children by his daughter.

NEW: One of the seven children died and was burned in an oven, Mr. F. said

The 42-year-old woman had been missing since 1984, when she was 18

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- A 73-year-old man has confessed to holding his daughter captive in his home cellar for nearly 24 years and fathering seven children by her, Austrian police say.


Mr. F. has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and having seven children with her.

Austrian police spokesman Franz Polzer told CNN, the man, known as Mr. F., admitted holding his daughter hostage in a windowless cell in the basement of his home for more than two decades.

Mr. F. also told police that one of the children he fathered with his daughter Elisabeth F. was a twin who died.

Mr. F. also admitted he burned the body of the dead child in an oven, according to Polzer.

Further DNA tests will now be carried out to confirm fatherhood, Polzer said.

Elisabeth F., 42, is described as "very disturbed" and having trouble talking to police about her ordeal, reports CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen.

She went missing in 1984, when she was 18 years old, police said at a news conference Sunday.

The situation came to light earlier this month after her daughter -- a 19-year-old woman, identified as Kristen F. -- was hospitalized in Amstetten after falling unconscious, according to police.

She was admitted to a hospital in Amstetten, outside Vienna, by her grandfather with a note from her biological mother requesting help. Amstetten is a rural town about 150 km (93 miles) west of Vienna.

But police said a DNA test later revealed her grandfather, Mr. F., was also her father, according to ORF, Austria's state-run news agency.

That sparked a police investigation, which revealed that Mr. F. may have fathered at least six children with his daughter, forcing her and three of the surviving children to live in the cellar of his house, according to ORF's Peter Schmitzberger.

The children are now between 5 and 19 years old.

Polzer told ORF that the 73-year-old led police to several hidden rooms in his cellar accessible only by an electronic passcode that he provided to police.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/28/austria.cellar/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[Roamer]

He burned the newborn in the oven???? :mad:

This guy doesn't have a human bone in his body.

[LiveLaughLuv]

Polzer told ORF that the 73-year-old led police to several hidden rooms in his cellar accessible only by an electronic passcode that he provided to police.

Hidden rooms that need a passcode? This man really went over the top to ensure those in that basement would not get out. I just can't imagine what this woman and her children must have went through. Disgusting that a father would do this do his own daughter.

I hope they all can overcome what they endured!

[Roamer]

The younger kids might be able to overcome it because kids are pretty flexible, but I don't think the mother who had them all will. Too long, too much physical and emotional abuse for all those years, and too much brainwashing by her sperm donor.

[rem16]

If she was only 11 when he put her there, and cut her off from everything and everyone, she probably had no idea of what to do other than obey him, poor child.

I think the article said that he began having sex with her when she was 11, but kidnapped her when she was 18. Just unimaginable horror.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=562377&in_page_id=1811&ct=5

[LiveLaughLuv]

<snipped certain paragraphs from article>The couple had told authorities they had found the children outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, each time with a note from their mother saying she was unable to care for the baby herself. The engineer told the authorities that his "missing" daughter had mysteriously returned on three occasions to dump three other children on his doorstep. He claimed each time she had left a note saying she was unable to look after them.


Alexander, 12, Monika, 14, and Lisa, 16, were formally adopted by Mr Fritzl and attended school.


In fact, Mr Fritzl had forced his daughter to write the notes. They will also want to investigate a claim by the imprisoned 42-year-old's mother that she had no knowledge of what was happening in the chambers beneath her living room. The electrical engineer has been arrested and the six children taken into care. His wife, Rosemarie, 60, who is the mother of Elisabeth, has told detectives she was unaware of the imprisonment and years of sexual abuse supposedly taking place in the basement of the three-storey home.


Great article Rem. Now I understand things a little better. I was wondering how he kept those children secret and how one was allowed to attend school. Those kept with his daughter never saw the light of day, how sad!

This POS had it all figured out. Was mother that naive to think her daughter would just put these children on her doorstep, not knowing where she is was satisfied with that?

What an elaborate layout in the basement. I wonder how long it took him to build those rooms, bathroom, kitchen and mother upstairs smelt nothing cooking?

This is so outrageous, I have to believe this man has many screws loose. I do hope he doesn't get off on an insanitylike defense.

:1222423: For Elisabeth and her children I do hope they can recover from this outrageouos ordeal. I just can't imagine, I just can't! :1187603408.CR.Mothe

[Roamer]

It's hard for me to believe that her mother knew nothing of what was going on.

[London Lass]

It's hard for me to believe that her mother knew nothing of what was going on.

I agree, she must have known something was going on.

[LiveLaughLuv]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/28/austria.cellar/index.html?eref=rss_topstories#cnnSTCVideo

House of horrors detailed 4:02
Austrian police describe the cellar where they say a man confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years.

[Faith]

I do not believe the mother. She had to know......PLUS- how did he feed them? The mom had to know. IMO


http://static.sky.com/images/pictures/1673312.jpg
Elisabeth before she went missing


The youngster, 19-year-old Kerstin, was said by police to be "gravely ill".

This just makes me very ill..

[Tempus Teapot]

Was the mother an invalid, unable to get around and relying on the husband for everything?

I just can't imagine living in a house (being the co-owner with my husband) and not knowing every nook and cranny of that house, every room every floor - unless I was physically unable to get around.

[London Lass]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7372477.stm

His wife, Rosemarie, with whom he had seven of their own children, appears to have been unaware of the alleged crimes, police said.

The security chief for Lower Austria, Franz Prucher, said he had been down into the cellar where it was easy to understand how the abuse was not discovered.

"The cellar is very deep," he said. "There you can cry and nobody will hear, nobody. There you can cry as loud as you can, you can hear nothing."

************************************************** ********

Personally, if I received a note from my child saying don't find me, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference...I would move heaven and earth to find them!

[Texas53]

My understanding on the news last night was that he told the wife that their daughter lived somewhere else and could not raise her babies, so they were left with he and the wife to raise. After a couple of kids are left on the door step, you would think she would begin to wonder.

Many times the wife suspects something is wrong. However, many do not want to accept the fact that something is wrong and blame the child (victim) or totally ignore the situation. I hope there is someway this man can be put on a death row. How sick and perverted for him to do this to his own child and make her children live this way. :mad:

[Faith]

Was the mother an invalid, unable to get around and relying on the husband for everything?

I just can't imagine living in a house (being the co-owner with my husband) and not knowing every nook and cranny of that house, every room every floor - unless I was physically unable to get around.

I think if I was bed ridden I would still know what was happening around me. You can't keep a crying baby quiet, a sick baby quiet.

I do not believe this mother.

[Roamer]

I can't believe her either, Faith. Not for a minute.

[LiveLaughLuv]

updated 42 minutes ago

DNA: Sex captor fathered daughter's children

DNA confirms Austrian man fathered 6 children with his daughter

Josef Fritzl kept daughter imprisoned under home for 24 years, police say

Fritzl, who appeared in court Tuesday, has admitted guilt and faces 15 years

Teenaged daughter is induced coma, two sons also receiving medical treatment

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- DNA tests have confirmed that Josef Fritzl fathered six children with his daughter, whom he kept imprisoned under his home for 24 years, police in Austria said Tuesday.


Josef Fritzl appeared in court after admitting raping his daughter and fathering her seven children.

Authorities have said that a seventh child, also apparently fathered by Fritzl, died shortly after birth.

A police spokesman also said authorities believed it was "improbable" that Fritzl was hiding other people in another location.

The 73-year-old appeared in court Tuesday as Austrians struggled to come to terms with its second horrific abduction case in two years.

The retired electrical engineer faces a possible 15 years in prison if charged and convicted of rape.

In court, he appeared calm and showed no emotion, according to an Austrian reporter present. Fritzl spoke, saying that he wanted to redeem himself, said Sabrine Arndt, of Pro7/Sat1 TV station.

The female judge presiding said he would be kept in custody, the reporter said, but gave no indication for how long.

Fritzl was on Monday moved from the town of Amstetten -- where he kept his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and three of her children in the cellar of his house -- to the courthouse in nearby St. Poelten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria.

The central European country's newspapers were filled with details of the case, which has shocked the nation.

"Horror father breaks silence," "Hiding a double life without wife knowing" and "Soundproof dungeon behind 300kg steel door" were headlines in Die Kronen Zeitung.

It also ran a story questioning how people could survive deprived of sunlight for so long.

Die Presse went with "The man who deceived the world" and also accused authorities of allowing the atrocities to happen.


Thomas Birgfellner, a reporter with Austrian broadcaster ORF, said there was a strong belief that Fritzl -- who installed an electronic security door in the cellar -- must have had help from other people.

"Everyone has said he could not do it alone. He could not install it alone, and now they have to investigate if there were some other people who assisted him," Birgfellner told CNN.

CNN's Phil Black reported that Austrian police were trying to deflect comparisons with the case of Natascha Kampusch, who 18 months ago escaped from a basement cell near Vienna in which she had been held since she was kidnapped as a 10-year old on her way to school.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/29/austria.cellar/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[Roamer]

15 years is all he gets???? I realize he's not a young man, but he ought to get life, and be deprived of sunlight in a very small, dark cell. :mad:

[Tempus Teapot]

Did authorities only find out about all of this because the "father" confessed and directed them to where the woman and children were living?

This is a horrifying and very confusing "story".

moo

[LiveLaughLuv]

Did authorities only find out about all of this because the "father" confessed and directed them to where the woman and children were living?

This is a horrifying and very confusing "story".

moo

No, Tempus. My understanding is when he took his daughter/grandaughter to the hospital after falling ill, her mother, his daughter, put an sos note on her, I think that is what lead to his confession, after they rescued who was in that basement.

[Tempus Teapot]

No, Tempus. My understanding is when he took his daughter/grandaughter to the hospital after falling ill, her mother, his daughter, put an sos note on her, I think that is what lead to his confession, after they rescued who was in that basement.

Thanks. To say "good for her" seems like a gross understatement. I would imagine her whole life was spent looking for an opportunity to get help and get out of there.

It's heartbreaking.

moo

[Faith]

This case leaves me at a loss for words. I cannot comprehend such actions by anyone.

It will take years of counseling for these children and that may not help.

My heart aches for them.

[rem16]

CNN) -- Police, medical professionals and those who know Josef Fritzl are struggling to piece together how he led a double life for more than two decades in a small Austrian town.

Those who knew Fritzl describe him in such contrasting terms -- friendly, reclusive, arrogant, a kindly grandfather -- that it seems no one really knew him at all.

At his home on Ybbsstrasse in the quiet town of Amstetten, east of Vienna, the 73-year-old retired electrician lived with his wife, Rosemarie, and the three children he has admitted to fathering with his daughter.

In addition to those three children, Fritzl fathered four other children with the now 42-year-old daughter daughter he kept imprisoned in the cellar, police said.

The children were products of years of sexual assault Fritzl inflicted on her, police said. Two boys and a teenage girl were locked up with their mother in a basement dungeon. A seventh child he fathered with his daughter died, and Fritzl burned the infant's body, police said.

The three children who were locked up had not ever seen the light of day, investigators said.

Fritzl had been lying to his wife for years, telling her his daughter had dropped off the three children at the house because she could not take care of them, police said. In reality, Fritzl had forced his imprisoned daughter to write letters that made it seem that way. Police say Fritzl's wife was unaware of the other children in the cellar.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/29/austria.cellar.profile/index.html

[London Lass]

Full article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7374647.stm

Austrian vigil for cellar family

Amstetten's residents wanted to show solidarity with the victims

Hundreds of people have held an emotional candlelit vigil in the Austrian town where Josef Fritzl kept his daughter in a cellar for 24 years.

The residents of Amstetten were showing solidarity for the woman, Elisabeth, and the children she bore him.

"We want to show that Amstetten is not a town for criminals", said the mayor.

Police say DNA evidence confirms Mr Fritzl's confession that he is the father of his daughter Elisabeth's six surviving children.

Several hundred people gathered for an emotional tribute on Tuesday evening to Mr Fritzl's family.

The event was organised by a local convent school. Children, their parents, teachers and nuns lit candles and stood in the rain to express their solidarity and outrage.

[TeeOne]

When the three infants came to the house, the father said the 'missing' daughter had dropped them off on the doorstep, only leaving a note.
I find it hard to believe the mother didn't wonder why the husband was going to the basement so much and how did he get and sneak food and supplies down there. I just can't believe the mom didn't know something.

[LiveLaughLuv]

Incest family hold 'astonishing' reunion

Austrian family terrorized by decades of incest meet for the first time

Josef Fritzl kept daughter imprisoned under home for 24 years, police say

Fritzl, who appeared in court Tuesday, has admitted guilt and faces 15 years

Natascha Kampusch, kidnap victim for eight years, offers her help to family

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Family members at the center of a bizarre incest and imprisonment case spanning 24 years have held an "astonishing" reunion, medical officials say.


Josef Fritzl appeared in court after admitting raping his daughter and fathering her seven children.

"They met each other on Sunday morning," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday. "And it is astonishing how easy it worked, that the children came together and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together."

Investigators say 73-year-old Josef Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a cellar for 24 years. He raped her repeatedly, they say, and eventually fathered seven of her children.

Elisabeth and two of her children were reunited Sunday with three of her other children and her mother, Kepplinger said Tuesday. The three children and her mother lived in the home above the cellar.

Elisabeth's eldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin Fritzl, remains in hospital.

A seventh child died years ago, shortly after birth. Fritzl told police he burned the infant's body in a furnace.

The story of the family's imprisonment began to unravel a week ago, when Kerstin fell seriously ill with convulsions and was hospitalized.

Austrian police Wednesday denied reports that they were investigating possible links between Fritzl and the unsolved murder of a woman.

Franz Polzer, director of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said Fritzl had owned an Austrian hotel near where a woman was found murdered decades ago. However, they were not investigating the incident at this stage.

Meanwhile, an Austrian girl who was held prisoner in a basement for eight years said the family faced a long period of adjustment.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/30/austria.meeting/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[Mysticalmom]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/30/austria.meeting/index.html
AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Josef Fritzl, the man Austrian police say has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven of her children, twice holidayed in Thailand while she remained trapped in a cellar below his house, according to German media reports.

Josef Fritzl appeared in court after admitting raping his daughter and fathering her seven children.

"He went [to Thailand] without his wife; apparently she had to look after the children... once he had a very long massage from a young Thai girl at the beach. He really loved that," Paul H told the newspaper, which featured video footage of Fritzl laughing and receiving a massage in Thailand on its Web site.

"Once I saw how Josef bought an evening dress and racy lingerie for a very slim woman in Pattaya [Thailand] on the beach. He got really angry when he realized I saw him. Then he told me that he has a girlfriend on the side. The items were meant for her. He told me not to tell his wife." Watch footage of Fritzl on vacation at a Thai beach resort »

The pair had also ventured to Oktoberfest.

Paul H said he had visited Fritzl's house three times, the last in 2005.

"We sat out on the terrace and had a really nice evening... the kids were well behaved, however, they had a great respect for their father. They were never allowed downstairs into the cellar but we never thought anything of it," he told Bild.

"Now that I think of the dungeon down there, I feel really sick in the stomach."

Paul H said Fritzl was a DIY "genius," constantly extending and building on to the house.

Meanwhile, family members at the center of the incest and imprisonment case have held an "astonishing" reunion, medical officials said.

"They met each other on Sunday morning," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday. "And it is astonishing how easy it worked, that the children came together and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together."

Investigators say Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a cellar for 24 years. He raped her repeatedly, they say, and eventually fathered seven of her children.

Elisabeth and two of her children were reunited Sunday with three of her other children and her mother, Kepplinger said Tuesday. The three children and her mother lived in the home above the cellar.

Elisabeth's eldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin Fritzl, remains in hospital.

A seventh child died years ago, shortly after birth. Fritzl told police he burned the infant's body in a furnace.

The story of the family's imprisonment began to unravel a week ago, when Kerstin fell seriously ill with convulsions and was hospitalized.

Timeline
1977: Elisabeth Fritzl claims she was first abused by her father Josef when aged 11.

1984: Elisabeth is allegedly lured into house cellar, drugged and handcuffed by her father. She is forced to write letters saying she has run away.

1988: Her first child, Kerstin, is born.

1989: Elisabeth gives birth to her first son, Stefan.

1993: Nine-month-old Lisa is left on the doorstep of the Fritzl house.

1994: Another child, Monika, arrives and is adopted by the Fritzls.

1996: Elisabeth gives birth to twins, but one dies after three days. Josef allegedly burned the body.

1997: Alexander, the surviving twin, joins the children upstairs.

2003: A letter from Elisabeth arrives saying she had a second son, Felix, the previous year. He is raised in the cellar.

2008:

April 19: Kerstin is taken to that hospital after falling serious ill. Doctors discover that her grandfather is her father.

April 20-27: Josef releases Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix and tells his wife they are returning.

April 26: Police pick up Josef and Elisabeth near the hospital where Kerstin is being treated.

April 27: Josef admits his guilt after Elisabeth's statement.

April 28: Police search house and discover cramped cellar with special security door.

April 29: Josef appears in court. Austrian police Wednesday denied reports that they were investigating possible links between Fritzl and the unsolved murder of a woman.

Franz Polzer, director of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said Fritzl had owned an Austrian hotel near where a woman was found murdered decades ago. However, they were not investigating the incident at this stage. (more at link)

[LiveLaughLuv]

I still would like to hear from the mother of Elisabeth. She hasn't said one word yet. I'm wondering how she feels after finding out about her husbands secrets.

This is one twisted man. It wouldn't surprise me if he is involved in that unsolved murder. He's got nothing to loose, so if he did murder that child he needs to own up to it.

He can face 15 years, at his age this is a death sentence. Hopefully, no one from his family will visit him in jail and he is left to rot away in his 6X6' cell!

[Tempus Teapot]

I still would like to hear from the mother of Elisabeth. She hasn't said one word yet. I'm wondering how she feels after finding out about her husbands secrets.

This is one twisted man. It wouldn't surprise me if he is involved in that unsolved murder. He's got nothing to loose, so if he did murder that child he needs to own up to it.

He can face 15 years, at his age this is a death sentence. Hopefully, no one from his family will visit him in jail and he is left to rot away in his 6X6' cell!

It's outrageous to me that this man will be sentenced to less time than he actually had imprisoned and raped his own daughter. She was his prisoner for basically all of her life, and imprisoned in a cell for over 20 years - and the authorities believe 15 years in jail is enough? I think he should be in jail until the day he dies. If that's 20 years from now, then that's how long he should be in jail. If it's 40 years from now, then that's how long he should be in jail.

40 years is still not as long as his duaghter suffered at his hands.

moo

[LiveLaughLuv]

April 29, 2008

Austria: incest father has sex assault conviction
Josef F, who confessed to keeping his daughter in a cellar and fathering her seven children

The Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter and fathered a hidden incestuous family with her had previously been convicted of sexual assault, The Times has learnt.

Josef F has at least one other conviction, for arson, and he allegedly spent time in prison in the late 1960s. Austrian prosecutors said that they were aware of the allegations and trying to trace the records in court archives.

The revelation came as Austria struggled to come to terms with how the appalling abused of his children could have remained undiscovered for almost a quarter of a century.


According to most of their neighbours, Mr F and his wife Rosemarie appeared to be upright citizens – and commendable in the way that they had raised the three children dumped on their doorstep by the daughter who had walked out of their lives to join some kind of cult 24 years earlier.

"They appeared normal, just like any other family," Guenter Prameiter, who runs a bakery just down the street, said.

Mrs F "always looked after the kids so well, taking them to school. We said ‘It’s incredible what she manages to do at her age’," remarked another neighbour.

"They had a swimming pool in the garden. We would hear them [the children] laughing, the three of them," said a third.

But none of them – until now – had the faintest idea of the horrors taking place in the makeshift dungeon that Mr F had built beneath his nondescript house in the industrial town of Amstetten, in eastern Austria.

Mr F, 73, an electrical engineer with various other business interests, confessed to the police yesterday that he had held his daughter Elisabeth, 42, captive in three windowless underground rooms ever since she disappeared in 1984. He also admitted that he had fathered seven children by her, though he insisted that no force was involved.

He confessed also that he had tossed the body of one of those seven children into the building’s furnace after the baby died at birth.

The police said that three of the children "never saw sunlight" until they were freed over the weekend.

The dungeon in which they lived was so small that the older ones had to watch as his father delivered his daughter’s subsequent children. Presumably they also had to watch as he had intercourse with his daughter to beget them – she claims that he repeatedly raped her – and regularly beat her. The dungeon contained one padded room, its walls and floor covered in rubber, the purpose of which is still unclear.

Yesterday the police described the revelations as "one of Austria’s all-time worst crimes". Guenther Platter, the country’s Interior Minister, called it "unfathomable".

The Osterreich newspaper called it "the worst crime of all time". Despite that, the police said that Mr F, whom they described as "domineering, aggressive and tyrannical", appeared unrepentant.

Mrs F allegedly knew nothing of the evil that was taking place in the basement of her own home. "You have to imagine that this woman’s world fell apart," Hans-Heinz Lenze, a local official, said.

Her ignorance seems almost incredible given her husband’s previous record, the extraordinary stories that he asked her to believe and the fact that he built the basement cell quite literally under her nose and kept his secret family there for more than two decades.

Mr F asked his wife to believe that Elisabeth simply walked out of their lives on August 28, 1984, when she was 18. That was the date on which he allegedly sedated and handcuffed her and locked her in the cellar. A month later he produced a letter – written by her, but dictated by him – in which she asked her parents not to search for her.

Three times in subsequent years, in 1993, 1994 and 1997, Mr F produced babies that Elisabeth had allegedly left on the doorstep of their house, with notes saying that she could not look after them. Mrs F duly raised the three children.

All that time Elisabeth and her expanding family were living in the dungeon. It was hidden behind a 1m-high iron door that could be opened with a numbered code which only Mr F knew. The door was itself concealed behind shelves, and the police said that he used to tell his captive children that if anything happened to him, then they would die in the dungeon.

The police yesterday released photographs showing the door opening onto the narrowest of passages, a living area, a small kitchen and two bedrooms. The ceilings were no more than 5ft 6in high. Elisabeth had done her best to decorate them, with a toy elephant on top of a medicine cabinet and stickers showing a chubby butterfly and smiling octopus on the walls. There were hot plates for cooking and the prisoners’ only contact with the outside world came via a radio, television and a video recorder.

It was the television that finally helped Elisabeth to escape. Her father had apparently taken her eldest daughter out of the dungeon after she became seriously ill and delivered her to hospital.

Elisabeth saw a televised appeal from the hospital for the girl’s mother to come forward, and she persuaded her father to release her. The police then picked up Mr F and Elisabeth close to the hospital on Saturday. Mr F gave the police the code to his secret dungeon Asked why Mrs F was not being investigated, Colonel Franz Polzer, a police spokesman, replied: "Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?"

A spokesman at the local school which Elisabeth’s other three children attended described Mrs F as "the perfect grandmother" and a member of the Parents’ Association who helped to organise school events. Elisabeth said that she and her children got food and clothing only from her father and her mother was not involved.

Mr F had seven other children by his wife – six daughters and a son aged between 37 and 51. They, too, have denied knowing anything of their sister’s fate, as have the occasional tenants who rented a flat in the house.

But it appears that some people did know that Mr F had a shady past. A spokeswoman for a company where he was employed as an engineer and procurement manager during the 1970s told The Times: "He did an excellent job, but there was always something uneasy about him as it was widely known that he had served time in prison for a sexual offence."

The Times also found several neighbours who said that he was known as a former sex offender by older members of the community.

One 50-year-old said: "I was 10 at the time, but I remember how we children were afraid to play near Mr F’s house because of the rumours that he had raped a woman and spent some time in jail for it."

Despite Mr F’s record, it appears that he was able to persuade the social services, friends and family that Elisabeth had run away in 1984 and subsequently left the three children on his doorstep.

Forensic experts spent yesterday searching the dungeon, and took away boxes of evidence. Mr F was questioned by a judge who extended his custody for two weeks until the investigation has been completed.

He is likely to face a string of charges including manslaughter or murder, rape, kidnapping, coercion and grievous bodily harm.

Colonel Polzer, the police spokesman, described Mr F as "extremely fit and in excellent physical condition" despite his age, as well as "extraordinarily sexually potent".
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3835640.ece

[awakening2lite]

some images

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20080430/2008_04_28t062500_302x450_us_austria_abuse.jpg?x=2 31&y=345&sig=EKL0XjMmhBQgbGbXa7q1hA--

http://media.monstersandcritics.com/galleries/1175601/0132808050085.jpg
entrance to the cellar

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/05_01/newfritzlCEN_468x636.jpg
Smiling: Josef Fritzl enjoys a holiday in Thailand as his daughter and her children by her languish in the dungeon he created beneath his own home

[Roamer]

No matter what they say, I just cannot believe the mother didn't know (or refused to accept) that all this was going on.

Maybe he had her brainwashed and scared, too.

[awakening2lite]

Sex slave dungeon: Rescued children communicate with their mother using animal-like growls
30th April 2008

The children who were imprisoned in a cellar with their mother for their whole lives speak to each other in growls, it emerged today.

They speak normally to strangers - despite not having a wide vocabulary - but communicate in animal-like noises when alone together.

Austrian police chief Leopold Etz, 50, said: "When the media write that the children speak, this is just half-true. Among each other, they communicate with noises that are a mixture of growling and cooing.

"If they want to say something so others understand them as well, they have to focus and really concentrate, which seems to be extremely exhausting for them."

Fresh details about the health of the family Josef Fritzl, 73, kept locked in his family home in Amstetten, Austria were revealed by police today.

The pensioner imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children.

Three, Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18 , and Felix, five, were forced to live with her in the cellar.

They all have defective immune systems and the eldest, Kerstin, 19, who is critically ill with kidney failure, has lost most of her teeth due to vitamin deficiency.

Her collapse, initially caused by an infection which led to cramping, prompted Fritzl's complicated secret to unravel when she had to be taken to hospital and her mother was asked to come forward.

Doctors said today that she is being kept in a coma and is on a life support machine to keep her brain functioning and to keep her breathing.

Dr Berthold Kepplinger told a press conference today: "She is not expected to improve dramatically in the next few days.

"We will of course do our best and use every means available to care for Kerstin and help her in her fight for her life."

It was also revealed that both sides of the family are now all living together in a special room in the psychiatric clinic near to their home.

They even organised a small birthday party for one of the children in the room, which is 70 by 80 square metres and isolated from other patients.

The doctor said: "The young people can play and have their personal toys... the food in the clinic they enjoy particularly, they told us.

"Yesterday, we had a little improvised birthday party for the son with a birthday cake and everyone was enthusiastic about that."

He added: "The members of the family talk a lot with each other. After such a long separation they are very happy to be together again... The family has developed a feeling of positive and constructive togetherness.

"The family needs time now and does not want to be seen in public. We have to accept that this family after this martydom and trauma and shock has a right to be private..."

Monster: Josef Fritzl is now refusing to speak to detectives after signing a confession

The two boys and Elisabeth have had to get used to daylight and having space and were trying to "find their balance" in their new environment, he explained.

All three children are suffering from vitamin D deficiency and are anaemic. Stefan is being tested to see if his sight and hearing are damaged.

The low ceilings in the cellar have left the family with cramped physical posture, and Felix, five, mostly crawls rather than walks. He and his brother are having physiotherapy to improve their posture.

Dr Kepplinger said they were taught some reading and writing by Elisabeth - but she had forgotten most of her education.

The 42-year-old, who was locked up at the age of 18, only told police about the abuse she suffered at her father's hands after they promised she would never have to see him again.

It was revealed today that after confessing to locking her up and father her children, Fritzl has now stopped co-operating with detectives.

"The accused continues to refuse to give any further information and make a statement about the circumstances that he is accused. This will probably not be happening in the near future", prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said.

"Despite this refusal to give evidence, the public prosecutor will try to form a picture of the character of the accused and will attempt to speak with him."

Police have pledged to leave no stone unturned in their investigation to try to calm fears that other "house of horror" crimes could happen in the future but believe it will take months to unravel Fritz's secret life.

Reporters were told: "We have to bring to light every aspect of the suspect's life. It is our duty to investigate the concurrent circumstances which made it possible that such a crime which shocked all of us deeply could happen."

Both sides of the Fritzl family including Elisabeth and her mother Rosemarie, 68, had an emotional reunion on Sunday where both women sobbed as they embraced.

The mother told her daughter: "I am so sorry, I had no idea."

Elisabeth was also reunited with the three other children her father had taken away from her at birth.

Monika, 14, Alexander, 12, and 16-year-old Lisa were allowed to lead apparently normal lives upstairs with him and his wife.

Their two brothers and sister, meanwhile, were deprived of light and forced to live in the cellar below them.

Stefan and Felix have so far reacted to the world outside their dungeon with amazement. Felix asked: "Is that God up there?" when he saw the moon for the first time.

Mr Etz said he was very excited when he saw a cow. "He is full of joy and excitement, he slaps the air when he can't control his excitement," he said.

Felix also hums a tune to himself that police think his mother must have sung when putting him to bed.

They are all in psychiatric care to help them come to terms with the revelation about their father and the life he inflicted upon them.

Elisabeth gave birth to seven children in total during her time in the dungeon, one of which died three days after being born 12 years ago.

Yesterday DNA tests revealed that Fritzl was the father of Elisabeth's six surviving children.

The retired electrician, who experts have said has a "power complex", reportedly told his secret family he would turn the dungeon into a gas chamber if they tried to escape.

Psychologists say that the ordeal suffered by the four at his hands would mark them indefinitely.

Bernd Prosser, a clinical psychologist told Austrian television, said: "The four will never be able to live normal lives. I am afraid it is too late for that."

Chief Inspector Etz was the first police officer to set eyes on the frightened Stefan and Felix. He said: "They both looked terrified and were terribly pale.

"They were taken upstairs from the underground bunker and appeared overawed by the daylight they had never experienced before.

"The real world was completely alien to them."

A hospital spokesman said: "All sides have had a lot to come to terms with - to accept that just two floors below members of their family were hidden away and that their grandfather is also their father.

"The stories they were raised with - that the mother had joined a bizarre sect and abandoned them at birth - have also been exposed as lies."

The shocking story emerged at the weekend after Kerstin fell into a coma and Fritzl took her to hospital. Doctors grew grew suspicious and called police, who rescued the family on Saturday night.

Last night villagers in Amstetten, which lies 74 miles west of the Austrian capital Vienna, held a caddle-light vigil for the family.

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=562724&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

[Roamer]

This story gets sadder and more shocking every single day. Those poor people!

[London Lass]

He is one of the sickest individuals I have ever heard about - and it seems to be getting worse!

[Cat]

15 years is all he gets???? I realize he's not a young man, but he ought to get life, and be deprived of sunlight in a very small, dark cell. :mad:

I'm shocked, too, Roamer. OMG, the horror of it all.

[London Lass]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7377344.stm

The Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years often spent nights in the cellar, his sister-in-law has told an Austrian newspaper.

Josef Fritzl used to go into the cellar every morning at 0900 "apparently to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms," Christine R said.

"Often he even stayed down there for the night," she added. "Rosi [his wife] wasn't allowed to bring him a coffee".

The newspaper, Oesterreich, did not give Christine's family name.

She said Mr Fritzl "was a despot, I hated him". She said he "always belittled" his wife Rosemarie, who has told police she knew nothing about the captives in the windowless cellar.

Rosemarie's daughter Elisabeth was imprisoned and sexually abused by her father in the cellar for 24 years, in the quiet town of Amstetten.

Seven children were born from the abuse, three of whom remained incarcerated with her, never seeing daylight until they were released earlier this week.

Door inspection

Elisabeth and the children are now in care with the Austrian authorities, who are protecting their privacy at a psychiatric clinic. The oldest daughter, Kerstin, is fighting for her life in hospital.

Josef Fritzl, in police custody, is refusing to answer any more questions, as police try to piece together his life.

Investigators are examining the cellar door, to see how Mr Fritzl operated it. He told police that he used a coded keypad to open it remotely.

Police are checking his claim that the heavy reinforced concrete door would open automatically if he were absent for a long time.

He also reportedly told his victims they would be gassed if anything happened to him. Technicians are trying to establish if this was more than a threat.

[LiveLaughLuv]

This is so heartbreaking. :1187603408.CR.Mothe

I wondered if those childrend suffered any ill effects of the incest, then I read about their health and no sunlight and my heart just aches. The quarters were so small down there even their posture suffered.

Those poor children and their mother suffered so much in 24 years, never seeing the light of day, vitamin deficiencies, immune problems, posture, teeth there is so much wrong with them I do hope they can overcome all this and learn to live normal lives.

This is one sick sonofabitc* and I hope and pray he gets more time than just 15 years. This is so outrageous. How he pulled this off for 24 years is beyond my imagination, no one asked questions, mother especially. I would have never been satisfied with a letter stating not to look for me. What in the world is going on. Then mother tells Elisabeth, I am so sorry, I had no idea. Somehow I believe that. Seems Fritzl is a control freak and must have ordered his wife to never ask or speak about the daughter who ran away! Could be she was submissive to him, he ruled his roost with an iron fist! :(

[rem16]

Her face haggard and her hair lank and grey, she looks at least 20 years older than her actual age of 42.

But this is the first shocking image of Elisabeth Fritzl as she is today - 24 years after she was first locked up in a dungeon by her own father, Josef.

The artist's impression shows a woman with short, bluntly cut grey hair and a heavily-lined face - all indications of the decades of trauma she has suffered at his hands.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=562937&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Just horrible beyond words..

[Roamer]

Oh, my. She was a lovely young girl and now she's aged far beyond her years because of this evil, evil man.

[LiveLaughLuv]

:1187603408.CR.Mothe

[LiveLaughLuv]

Dictator dungeon father would spend entire nights in cellar with incest family... as wife slept upstairs
Last updated at 17:28pm on 1st May 2008


Cellar monster Josef Fritzl had not had sex with his wife "for years" and would often sleep overnight with the daughter he kept prisoner in his basement dungeon, according to his sister-in-law.


Mr Fritzl told his wife and family living above ground that he was working on plans for machines he was making in the cellar and that he was never to be disturbed.

Details of his bizarre double life, which lasted 24 years, were revealed by his sister-in-law Christine, 56, who is a sister of Mr Fritzl's 60-year-old wife Rosemarie.

His sister-in-law said that in hindsight, Fritzl's daily routine in which he balanced his "normal" life and his house of horrors was "uncanny".

"Every day at nine o'clock he would go down in the cellar, allegedly to draw plans of machines that he then sold on to companies," she explained.

"Often he would stay down there for the whole night, and Rosemarie was not even allowed to bring him a cup of coffee."

Meanwhile, police announced that Fritzl appeared to have been planning to release his secret family this summer after becoming sick of looking after them and of Elisabeth, the daughter he had repeatedly raped for decades.

Officials have also revealed how he posed as Elisabeth in a phone call to Mrs Fritzl in 1994, 10 years after he first locked her up in their cellar.

He faked her voice to ask his wife to look after one of his secret children he himself had placed on their front doorstep.

Mrs Fritzl reported the call to police who passed it on to the prosecutors' office, which is reponsible for missing and abandoned children and they tried in vain to track down Elisabeth.

But critically, they never searched the Fritzls' home in Amstetten because they believed they had no reason to suspect them.

Reinhard Nosofsky, regional police department official, said: "Rosemarie Fritzl made a report about it at Amstetten police station in 1994. This report was passed on to the prosecutors' office.

"She could not explain the call and had not recorded it. We now know it was Fritzl."

Christine, whose surname was not released, is the first member of Mr Fritzl's close family to speak publicly. She said Mr Fritzl, 73, who was known as "Sepp", ruled his household like a military dictatorship.

The electrical engineer fathered seven children with his wife before imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth at the age of 18 in 1984 in the family home in Anstetten, Austria. He fathered another seven children with her.

She also spoke of Fritzl's rape conviction in the 60s and suggested Austria's policy of deleting past offences from their records helped him hide his later crimes.

"Sexual offences should never be deleted from criminal records. If they had known perhaps then the authorities would have kept a better eye on him," she said.

She added: "If Josef was still free, I would have never dared to give this interview.

"Josef is a despot, I always hated him. I was 16 when he was locked up on rape charges and I found that crime simply disgusting, not least because he already had four children with my sister at that point.

"Josef used to work in Linz a lot at that time, and was sleeping at the home of his parents, Franz and Rosa. At night he would often go off on his bike - and then he once climbed into a woman's flat on the ground floor.

"I was only a teenager and I deeply despised him for that. In fact I had always hated him. He was born as a criminal and he will die as a criminal."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=563210&in_page_id=1770

[LiveLaughLuv]

Timeline

1977: Elisabeth Fritzl claims she was first abused by her father Josef when aged 11.

1984: Elisabeth is allegedly lured into house cellar, drugged and handcuffed by her father. She is forced to write letters saying she has run away.

1988: Her first child, Kerstin, is born.

1989: Elisabeth gives birth to her first son, Stefan.

1993: Nine-month-old Lisa is left on the doorstep of the Fritzl house.

1994: Another child, Monika, arrives and is adopted by the Fritzls.

1996: Elisabeth gives birth to twins, but one dies after three days. Josef allegedly burned the body.

1997: Alexander, the surviving twin, joins the children upstairs.

2003: A letter from Elisabeth arrives saying she had a second son, Felix, the previous year. He is raised in the cellar.

2008:

April 19: Kerstin is taken to that hospital after falling serious ill. Doctors discover that her grandfather is her father.

April 20-27: Josef releases Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix and tells his wife they are returning.

April 26: Police pick up Josef and Elisabeth near the hospital where Kerstin is being treated.

April 27: Josef admits his guilt after Elisabeth's statement.

April 28: Police search house and discover cramped cellar with special security door.

April 29: Josef appears in court.





AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- A man who previously rented an apartment from a now-73-year-old man accused of holding his daughter captive in his cellar for 24 years told CNN Thursday he saw the man's son enter the off-limits basement.


Josef Fritzl admits raping his daughter and fathering her seven children.

1 of 2more photos » Alfred Dubanowsky said he rented a ground-floor apartment at Josef Fritzl's home from 1995 through 2007. He said there was a verbal agreement between Fritzl and the house's tenants that they were not to enter the cellar or the garden or photograph the premises or they would be kicked out.

Police said Monday that Fritzl also made clear to his wife and children that they were not allowed to go into the basement.

Fritzl has confessed to keeping his daughter Elisabeth in the basement for more than two decades, where he repeatedly raped her and fathered seven children with her -- six of whom survived, police say.

Dubanowsky said he saw Fritzl's son, also named Josef Fritzl, enter the cellar. He also saw the elder Fritzl enter the basement frequently at night.

Once when he asked to talk to the younger Fritzl, the older man told him his son was working and "not to distract him," Dubanowsky told CNN's Frederik Pleitgen.

It was not clear whether the younger Fritzl went into the secret section of the cellar where police said the woman and children were kept, or whether he knew of their captivity.

Dubanowsky said he heard strange noises coming from the cellar sometimes, but Fritzl told him it was coming from the heater in the home's boiler room.

The police investigation will examine whether any accomplices were involved in the case but police spokesman Franz Polzer said so far there were "neither technical nor biological traces of any other person in cellar" other than Fritzl.

Meanwhile, Fritzl's sister-in-law said in an interview published Thursday that the man often spent many hours in the cellar and would sometimes stay there all night.

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"Every day at 9 in the morning Joseph would go into the cellar," said the woman, identified as Christine R., in the article on the front page of Austria's Oesterreich newspaper.

"He said he was drawing engineering plans that he would sell to companies," said the woman, the sister of Fritzl's wife. "Often he would stay there all night." She said his wife was not even allowed to bring him coffee.

Fritzl is alleged to have threatened to gas his prisoners if they harmed him or tried to escape, the Associated Press reported.

Austrian authorities said the imprisoned children, who for years had not seen the light of day, were slowly adapting to sunlight. Officials also debunked reports in a few British newspapers that some of the children could not walk or speak in sentences.



The 19-year-old girl, who was locked in the basement along with her mother and two brothers, remains in an artificially-induced coma in an Amstetten clinic. She is suffering from a kidney ailment that worsened because she did not receive medial treatment sooner, authorities said.

"We cannot expect any dramatic changes in her condition in next few days," Dr. Albert Reiter said. "We will make every effort to help as best as we can, perhaps in a few weeks we hope some positive change for the better."

Fritzl had told his wife that Elisabeth, who is now 42, ran away from home aged 18, police say.

The Fritzls adopted three of the children who Josef said were left on his doorstep as infants by his runaway daughter. Fritzl has confessed to incinerating the body of the infant that did not survive, according to police

Fritzl has yet to be charged, but he can be held by police for 14 days without formal charges while the investigation is under way. That amount of time can be extended by a judge.

A spokesman for the prosecution, Gerhard Sedlacek, said Fritzl had stopped talking to police since making his initial confession. Investigators intend to begin questioning him again next week, Sedlacek said.

Austrian police spokesman Franz Polzer said the investigation would likely last a couple of months. Police plan to interview at least 100 people who lived in the same apartment building as the Fritzls over the past 24 years.

Authorities are looking into media reports that Fritzl may have had a prior rape conviction in the 1960s, but have no information because criminal records are expunged after a certain number of years under Austrian law.

However, Polzer denied reports that authorities were looking into Fritzl's ties to the unsolved murder of a young woman more than 20 years ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/01/austria.inquest/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

[London Lass]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7377344.stm

'Second man' at Austrian cellar

A lodger at the Austrian house where a father allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter says he saw another man go to the cellar where the abuse happened.

Alfred Dubanovsky told the BBC the man was introduced as a plumber.

His claim contradicts those of investigators who say the father, Josef Fritzl, had no accomplice.

[Roamer]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4768253&page=1

Elisabeth Fritz's Trauma Like 'Walking Dead'
Daughter of Incest Aged 20 Years in Dungeon
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
May 2, 2008


Elisabeth Fritzl as a 15-year-old and the torture chamber where she was held for 24 years. Now 42, the mother of six looks as old as their 67-year-old grandmother, according to Austrian police.

More PhotosThe gruesome details made headlines in European papers this week when she was found in an Austrian basement after 24 years of imprisonment.

Reportedly raped by her father at age 11, drugged and cast in a dungeonlike cellar at 18, and for months tied to a pole and offered the choice of sex or starvation, the daughter of Josef Fritzl has paid a heavy price.

In her underground prison, Elisabeth Fritzl bore seven children through incest and was never allowed to see daylight or interact with anyone other than her tormentor father and her children.

Now above ground and reunited with her mother and the three children she did not see for years, Fritzl looks haggard, hunched over, lined and gray. European media reports say the 42 year-old looks more like the sister of her 67-year-old mother than her daughter. And doctors say she will need an extensive, well-structured system of physical and psychiatric rehabilitation.

"This case is so unique, we can only look for approximations," Dr. Stuart Goldman, a psychiatrist at Harvard University's Children's Hospital in Boston, told ABCNEWS.com. "This would include long-term prisoners subject to extreme mental anguish and parents who have witnessed horrendous acts in some of the genocidal conflicts around the world."


The 'Walking Dead'
Goldman has worked with Cambodian survivors of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. Like Fritzl, they appeared to function normally but were plagued with residual symptoms.


"Some say they 'died' back when the events were occurring and felt like the walking dead," he said. Similar effects of post-traumatic stress disorder have been observed among Holocaust survivors.

In her first medical exam since she was found in the basement, Austrian doctors said Fritzl's teeth were horrifically decayed. She and her three children have complicated medical problems, including vitamin D deficiency, anemia and bad posture. Kerstin, her 19-year-old daughter, is in an induced coma after collapsing last week. She is still in a critical condition and fighting for her life.

Vitamin D deficiency can cause rickets, a disease of malnutrition caused by lack of sun exposure that is rarely seen today, according to Goldman. As a result, her bones are likely weakened and deformed. Because of the cramped space, low ceilings and little opportunity to exercise, Fritzl may also have problems with movement.

[awakening2lite]

1 hour ago

EXCERPT

Investigators plan to use sonar technology to probe the yard of an Austrian man who held his daughter captive for 24 years to ensure that no more underground dungeons exist on the property, police said Friday.

Leopold Etz, chief of homicide investigations for Lower Austria province, said investigators are also questioning more than 100 people who lived in Josef Fritzl's house.

Those people lived in the building over the years that Fritzl held his daughter Elisabeth prisoner in a secret dungeon, fathering seven of her children.

Others who have come forward saying they knew the 73-year-old Fritzl are also being questioned.

"We're casting a wide net," Etz said. "It's a lot of work."

He said officers were combing the entire property, photographing, filming and mapping it. They also plan to use sonar to determine if there are any more secret underground spaces on the property, Etz said.

continued at source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gdI0YfeJ78M9DHXK6YF71fjFnJCwD90DI6100


Good for them. I'm glad they are being very thorough.

[Roamer]

I am, too. No telling what they'll find.

[awakening2lite]

I am, too. No telling what they'll find.

I'm amazed a man could hide his lunacy, for 24 years, from the people living around him or working with him.

[LiveLaughLuv]

I'm amazed a man could hide his lunacy, for 24 years, from the people living around him or working with him.

As am I.

I just can't believe that no one else witnessed this, no one questioned this man. Even as he vacationed, did he worry that his "other" family would have enough to eat? Oh, sorry, he has no compassion whatsoever, so I know he didn't care!

Hoping they check with a fine tooth comb.

[awakening2lite]

2 hours ago

AMSTETTEN, Austria (AFP) — Austrian authorities investigated reports Friday that 'house of horrors' father Josef Fritzl had previous sex crime convictions as public outrage mounted over the incest abuse case.

A police file on Fritzl, 73, who police say has admitted keeping his daughter as a sex slave in a cramped dungeon for 24 years whilst she fathered seven of his children, revealed he had a previous sexual assault conviction, a regional newspaper reported.

In the cellar itself, investigators said that their work was proceeding only slowly and would likely take weeks.

Investigators had found there was not just one, but two heavy steel doors to the dungeon which could only be opened with a remote control device, chief investigator Franz Polzer said.

Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten said details of Fritzl's previous conviction -- and another for attempted rape -- had turned up in a police file in the archives of the Upper Austria region.

Authorities in neighbouring Lower Austria, where the case was uncovered last weekend, have claimed that they knew nothing about possible earlier convictions of Fritzl, 73.

But the newly discovered file allegedly covers the suspect's attempted rape of a 21-year-old woman in a forest near the city of Linz in September 1967 and the sexual assault on a 24-year-old woman in Linz a month later.

The documents have now been handed over to prosecutors in Lower Austria, the report said. Normally they would be locked away from the public eye for 50 years in accordance with Austrian law.

Prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek told Austrian television ORF that the convictions would not have any bearing on the new case because they had long been expunged from Fritzl's record, as laid down by Austrian law.

Fritzl "has the right to say his record is clean, because the crimes and his punishment for them took place so long ago," Sedlacek said.

Depending on the crime, a conviction in Austria can be expunged after five but no longer than 15 years, unless the crime carries a life sentence.

That meant that when Fritzl reported his daughter missing to the authorities 24 years ago and routine background checks were carried out, there was no trace of his previous convictions.

That was also the case when Fritzl, who impregnated his daughter seven times, applied to legally adopt three of the children.

He claimed Elisabeth had run away to join a religious sect and deposited them on his doorstep asking him to look after them.

Sedlacek said chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser was expected to interview the suspect for the first time in the middle of next week.

"Even if he's still refusing to make any comment about the allegations, a meeting is necessary for the prosecution to get a picture of the accused," Sedlacek said.

Public horror and outrage at the Fritzl case has triggered widespread debate over whether Austria's sentencing for sex crimes is too lenient.

The revelations have triggered calls for tougher sentences for rapists and paedophiles. And there have also been widespread demands for sex convictions to be held on a person's criminal record for much longer.

Justice Minister Maria Berger, a Social Democrat, insists that current sentencing -- "of up to 15 or 20 years, or life if the victim dies" -- was draconian enough.

She pointed out that under new draft legislation recently drawn up to afford greater protection to victims of sex criminals, the maximum time before a conviction is expunged had been extended from 15 to 30 years.

But Interior Minister Guenther Platter, a member of the conservative OeVP party which is the junior partner in the ruling coalition, called for tougher sentences and for convictions of serious sex crimes never to be wiped.

"Any punishment that falls even a single day short of a life sentence, in reality, makes a mockery of the victims," said Harald Vilimsky, spokesman for public safety policy in the right-wing FPOe Freedom Party.

The only response was "a true life sentence without any chance of parole," he said.

A former tenant in the Fritzl house has meanwhile told of a string of suspicious occurrences that might have led to the discovery of the secret dungeon much earlier.

Sepp Leitner, who lived for four years in a ground floor flat above the cellar in the 1990s, believes he unwittingly paid for the utility costs for the underground prison.

In a newspaper interview, Leitner also told how his dog barked whenever it went past the cellar door. And he said that food mysteriously went missing from his and other tenants' kitchens, probably stolen by Fritzl to feed his captives.

source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hXlBWVrSigLrGBYZSIrcgBFQSzrA

[awakening2lite]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44614000/gif/_44614864_amstetten_house4_466.gif

The secret location was so well hidden that when the police searched the property they failed to find it until Mr Fritzl showed them where it was.

To get to the dungeon you have to pass through five different rooms in the cellar - including a room containing a furnace, a small office room and Mr Fritzl's workshop. Hidden behind a shelf in the workshop is a one metre-high reinforced concrete door.

The dungeon is entered via a narrow passageway leading into rooms that include a cooking area and shower facilities, with children's drawings on the walls. These rooms cover an area of approximately 60 sq m (650 sq ft).

Special code

ORF, Austria's public broadcaster, reports that the workshop and cellar area was strictly off limits to the Fritzl family members who lived upstairs.

Mr Fritzl sublet parts of the family house to tenants - who recall being forbidden to enter the cellar.

"Whoever enters it will be given immediate notice," one former tenant was told, according to the Austrian newspaper Kurier.

The secret door was electronically locked and could only be opened with a special code and a remote control - which Mr Fritzl is reported to have carried with him at all times.

The dungeon is divided into cells - some parts no more than 1.70m (5.6ft) high.

A narrow corridor, five metres long, leads to an area which includes cooking facilities and a small bathroom with a shower. The floor is uneven and bumpy. A tube provided ventilation.

Police said there were also two bedrooms - each containing two beds. At least part of the dungeon appeared to be padded and well sound-proofed.

Police have refused to circulate pictures of the victims' sleeping areas or possessions to the press, saying they wished to protect their privacy.

Lack of oxygen

The rooms are described as being neat and tidy. There are no windows. The three children who lived in the cellar, 19-year-old Kerstin and her two brothers aged 18 and five, had never seen daylight, and grew up with artificial light.

They had no fresh air and no room to exercise or run around. Hospital officials said the lack of oxygen may have contributed to Kerstin's illness. She remains in a critical condition. Police described the two boys as very pale, small and weak.

Children's paintings and posters were hung on the walls. Police say there was a television with a video player and a radio.

continued at source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7373172.stm

[Roamer]

Every single day this case gets more infuriating and disgusting.

[awakening2lite]

EXCERPT

Ernst Berger, the psychologist who worked with Natascha Kampusch - who was abducted at the age of 10 and held in a cellar in Austria for eight years until 2006 - said Elisabeth and her children could be suffering from a variety of traumas.

EXCERPT

"I attended a clinic in Mauer, and I talked with social workers there, I visited members of the family and during this visit I could see that the five-year old boy is in a better condition," he said.

"He even told me how happy he was and how fantastic it was to ride in a real car."

According to police, the mother taught the children to speak. It is also believed they had a television, although it is not known for how long.

Professor Jay Belsky, an expert in the field of child development and family studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the fact that the children were with their mother - a source of security - and with each other, could have mitigated the amount of trauma they suffered.

"Potentially, the children could have led tolerably rich social lives - there were four people there, at least three of them for a long period of time. This isn't a story about a child being locked in a closet all by himself," he told the BBC News website.

more at source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7370889.stm

[Roamer]

http://www.abc3340.com/news/stories/0508/516459.html

Josef Fritzl: a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant posted 4:28 pm Fri May 02, 2008 - AMSTETTEN,

Casual acquaintances knew Josef Fritzl as a jovial fellow who liked to drink beer and enjoyed a bawdy joke. But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant.


"At home, he was clearly the lord of the manor. Even at his campground, he was very strict and his rules had to be followed," said Anton Graf, who rented Fritzl land along Austria's Mondsee Lake.

"He was inflexible and had no sensitivity," Graf, 57, told The Associated Press. "You were sick, something happened, he didn't care ... There was a rule - and that was it."

Although authorities have clamped down on records, examples of Fritzl's double life are coming to light.

The 73-year-old retired electrician was both a hard worker respected by his peers, and a fiercely private man whose life revolved around the home he ruled with an iron fist.

The mosaic of Fritzl now taking shape also points to an astonishingly agile criminal mind: He allegedly forged letters, concocted an elaborate but consistent cover story that his daughter Elisabeth had joined a cult, and even impersonated her in a phone call to his wife.

Fritzl apparently complemented trickery with a heavy reliance on authoritarianism: To keep family and tenants from the windowless, soundproofed rooms where he confined Elisabeth for 24 years, along with three of the children, he menacingly banned them from the basement.

Former tenants said Fritzl told residents of the apartment house he owned that the cellar was off-limits and they were not allowed to take photos there. Anyone who broke that verbal agreement was threatened with eviction, they said.

"He was obviously a tyrant," said Sigrun Rossmanith, who works with Austria's court system. "If they heard over and over that the cellar was taboo, then they didn't dare to check on anything."

Police say Fritzl also threatened his daughter and the three children held captive with her that the cellar was rigged to release toxic gas in case they attempted to overpower him in a bid to escape.

Herbert Katzengrueber, Amstetten's mayor, said City Hall officials who dealt with Fritzl described a manipulative and controlling man.

"He was apparently very dominant within the family," Katzengrueber said. "He terrorized the family. The deplorable acts against the daughter were not the only violence. There was also permanent pressure put on the family over the years."

Fritzl was born in Amstetten on April 9, 1935, but little is known of his early life. Even his parents' names have been withheld by authorities, who say privacy laws prevent them from releasing birth, marriage and death certificates.

A class photo from a school trip in 1951 - obtained by AP - shows a 16-year-old Fritzl looking tall and handsome, with dark hair and a serious demeanor. A former classmate who gave his name only as Erich S. recalled Fritzl as a "slightly different" teenager and remembers his unfashionable haircut.

Johann Kreitler, director of the high school Fritzl attended from 1947-51, said Fritzl left school at 16 and later went to a vocational school.

Fritzl's employers and colleagues say he gained their respect and was a hard worker.

"He expected a lot from others, but he seemed to expect a lot from himself," said Graf. "Saturdays, Sundays, holidays - if work needed to be done, he did it."

Yet outside the workplace, there were warning signs.

Reports suggest Fritzl was arrested in the 1960s in Linz and may have served prison time. Police have declined to comment, saying records that old have been erased under Austrian law.

But the daughter of a former employer backed up the reports.

"He was hired even though he had a record," said Sigrid Reisinger, who heads the Amstetten construction material firm Zehetner, which employed Fritzl from 1969-71. She said the alleged crime was of a sexual nature but did not recall details.

Calls to Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, went unanswered Friday.

Fritzl then sold machines for a German company in Austria and was often on the road. He bought an inn and campground in Unterach, about 90 miles west of Amstetten, that his wife Rosemarie - who police say was unaware of the cellar dungeon - ran during summers from 1973 to 1996.

"One day he came to my door and told me that Elisabeth was not coming home any more, that she had left to join a cult," Graf said.

He said Fritzl was so believable that no one was suspicious. "He was so convincing of the sorrow he felt and the suffering of his family," Graf said. "Nobody had any clue."

Graf said Fritzl also told of discovering one of Elisabeth's children on his doorstep - and Graf said he never doubted the tale.

Two other children also turned up the same way - hand-picked to live upstairs, police say, because Fritzl decided they were "crybabies" who would raise a ruckus in the basement.

Local authorities say Fritzl was twice suspected of arson at the inn, in 1974 and 1982. But Gerhard Neuhuber, an Unterach police official, said Fritzl was cleared because of lack of evidence.

During the second investigation, Fritzl spent a short time in prison, Neuhuber told the AP.

After the latest allegations, police in Upper Austria have been examining whether Fritzl might be linked to an unsolved murder nearby.

Yet Fritzl remains little-known in Unterach, where those who dealt with him say they saw little in his character that seemed exceptional or suspicious.

Graf said he sometimes met Fritzl for business dealings, and the pair would share a beer. "He told jokes, not always the cleanest," Graf said. "He laughed loud, a real boom."

Germany's Bild newspaper interviewed a man it identified only as Paul H., who said he twice vacationed in Thailand with Fritzl, and obtained video showing Fritzl on the beach receiving a massage, eating supper and laughing.

"We sat out on the terrace and had a nice evening," it quoted the friend as saying.

There was no sign of the man investigators say confessed to tossing the body of one of his offspring in a furnace after the child died in infancy.

Social workers visited the house about 20 times to check on the three children Fritzl and his wife were raising upstairs, and "there was no reason to suspect that something was wrong," said Josef Schloegl, head of the Amstetten district court.

Much about Fritzl remains a mystery - even to police, who say he clammed up this week.

He wasn't active in community or church groups. Even his fishing club says he was something of a question mark.

Fritzl paid his dues, and "there was never a problem with him," said club treasurer Reinhard Kern.

"Whether he actually went fishing or not, how am I to know? Maybe it was an alibi."

[LiveLaughLuv]

The Children of the Cellar

Friday, May. 02, 2008 By BETHANY BELL/AMSTETTEN

The boys knew the world only through television and the little that their mother remembered. And so now, Stefan Fritzl, 18, and his little brother Felix, 5, are getting used to sunlight. After spending their entire lives imprisoned in a cramped, windowless cellar deep underground along with their mother, Elisabeth, they are now being cared for in a special wing of a clinic near Amstetten, Austria. Doctors say the boys and their mother are extremely pale. Their older sister Kerstin, 19, is in the hospital and very ill because of the terrible privations she suffered living in the dungeon created by Elisabeth's father. It was there that he fathered seven children with his own daughter.


Kerstin is fighting for her life. She has been sedated and is on a respirator and is undergoing dialysis. Doctors say she is in a critical but stable condition. Doctors have not specified what she is suffering from. Her admission to a hospital in Amstetten was the trigger that led to the unraveling of Josef Fritzl's double life. The fate of her family came to light after doctors, mystified by her ailment, publicly appealed for her mother to come forward because they needed her medical history. Josef and Elisabeth were then seized by police near the hospital.

Now, the children of the cellar have to learn to live in the light. They are also getting accustomed to having their own space. Dr. Berthold Kepplinger, who is leading the specialist team of doctors and therapists looking after Elizabeth Fritzl and her family, said they have all been given separate rooms and have their personal belongings and toys with them. "It is a question of restoring their spatial orientation step by step. We are convinced this will succeed in the next few weeks," he said.

Stefan and Felix are also getting to know the rest of their family. The clinic is caring for Elisabeth's three children who were taken to live upstairs when they were babies, Lisa, 15, Monica, 14, and Alexander, 12, as well her mother Rosemarie. The family had what officials described as "an astonishing reunion" at the clinic last Sunday. "They are talking to each other. They have so much to say to each other," Kepplinger said. He said he had the impression that they were feeling as well as possible given the circumstances. Beginning 24 years ago Josef Fritzl, after apparently reporting falsely that his daughter was a runaway, kept her imprisoned downstairs in the cellar for years of incestuous abuse, fathering seven children. One of the babies died in infancy and Josef Fritzl told the police that he disposed of the body by throwing it into the furnace he used to heat his house. For years, Josef and his wife Rosemarie told friends and neighbors they adopted the three "upstairs" children after Elisabeth left them as infants on their doorstep.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736947,00.html

[Sumanadevii]

The portrait of the family before she was imprisoned tells the story. Look at the faces of her siblings!!! Anger is written into their faces. She also is the sibling that most favors her mother. This man is so sick! I heard he will try the insanity plea....or was he abused as a child, too? It makes me sick sick sick the excuses!!!!! I can hear them already. I say make him responsible for the evil he has caused! He can stick the excuses where the sun don't shine!!!!!!:mad:

[rem16]

in the dungeon SHE helped to build.

Elisabeth Fritzl was forced to help build the dungeon where she was kept by her sadistic father Josef, it emerged yesterday.

For the first nine months of her 24 years in captivity, she was also tethered with a 5ft dog leash around her neck to prevent her escape.

Elisabeth, now 42, had been sexually abused by her father since the age of 11.
She ran away from home at the age of 16 but was dragged back by Fritzl and locked up when he suspected she was planning to leave again.

For the first nine years, he imprisoned her in a grim 15ft by 15ft box room which had a makeshift toilet in one corner.

She told police that Fritzl forced her to help drag a 600lb concrete and steel door into position to seal the dungeon.

It was only when it was in place that she discovered she had helped to build her own prison.

Fritzl finally agreed to expand the cellar - again with Elisabeth's help - after she had given birth to two of his children.

He forced her to dig out the chambers by hand, working for hours at a time. The process took nearly a decade.

One of the new rooms was used as a punishment area and Fritzl would take his daughter there and rape her.

He also used it to chastise the three of their children - Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and six-year- old Felix - who lived underground with her. Their siblings Lisa, 16, Monika, 14 and 12-year-old Alexander lived a 'normal' life upstairs.

Franz Polzer, who is leading the police investigation, said: "She said that there was only one single room at first between 1984 and 1993. The dungeon was expanded as the children were getting born.

"There are still areas we haven't found inside the dungeon and I expect it to take at least two weeks before we have answered all the questions we need to about how Fritzl controlled the areas and imprisoned the children.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=563912&in_page_id=1770

[LiveLaughLuv]

updated 1 hour, 18 minutes ago

Lawyer prepares insanity defense for incest captor

NEW: Lawyer of Austrian incest suspect says his client has a mental disorder

Fritzl imprisoned and raped daughter, also fathered her children, police say

Wife of Josef Fritzl was too scared to question him, her sister says

Fritzl's wife focused on keeping family healthy, according to her sister


AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- The Austrian who reportedly admitted holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering seven children with her will plead insanity, his lawyer said.


Josef Fritzl admitted to authorities he raped his daughter and fathered her children.

Attorney Rudolf Mayer said he believed 73-year-old Josef Fritzl had a mental disorder, The Associated Press reported. Mayer said someone who was mentally ill "didn't choose" to do what police allege he did.

Mayer said Fritzl would be confined to a psychiatric institution rather than a prison if he was certified as insane and convicted, AP reported.

Police said last week that Fritzl had confessed to imprisoning his daughter in a secret cellar dungeon in his home, fathering seven children with her and burning the body of one who died in infancy in a furnace.

Meanwhile, Fritzl's sister-in-law has said his wife did not know her daughter was held captive in their basement for decades because she had been trained not to ask questions under her husband's tyrannical rule of the household.

"He was such a tyrant," said the woman identified only as Christine R. in a Saturday interview conducted and translated by AP.

"He tolerated no dissent," Christine R. added.

"Listen, if I was scared myself -- I was scared of him at a family party and I did not feel confident to say anything in any form that could possibly offend him -- then you can imagine how it was for a woman who spent so many years with him."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/04/austria.incest/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[Roamer]

He's not insane. He's pure evil. :mad:

[LiveLaughLuv]

He's not insane. He's pure evil. :mad:

I agree Roamer.

Leave it to the defense, they will try anything to get their client off, even if guilty as sin.

I say let him be evaluated, when it shows he knew right from wrong, the insanity defense will go down the drain.

He knew what he was doing or he wouldn't have dreamed up that elaborate story he told his wife, or built that dungeon he kept his children prisoner of.

One thing bothers me. He took three children to live upstairs with him because they were "cry babies". Why haven't they said something to their grandmother, something is really rotten in Denmark! Children are innocent, so it's quite possible they told grandma something...

There are more twist and turns in this story and I'm sure more to come!

[Roamer]

You're right, it's very possible they told her something. But, didn't they take them in an tiny babies? Maybe they just don't remember.

Every time we think this story is as strange as it can get, we hear someting even stranger.

[wheezer]

I think the children from my understanding of everything that has been written about this, were taken upstairs at a very very early age. That leaves me to assume somewhere between infancy and maybe 3 years. No way they would have a memory of that. Even if let's say they were 2 or 3 and spoke of Mommy, the mother might just not think anything of it. Considering that her assumption was that the child was with the daughter until supposedly the daughter could care for the child no longer.
Now having said that, I still want this mother investigated. I mean I want her life details torn apart. I don't say that to be mean, but, I am still having such a hard time understanding how her daughter and grandchildren could be literally under her nose, and she not know.

[Cat]

I can understand it, wheezer. She was an abused woman (maybe not physically, but mentally). He was like Hitler, and she never questioned anything, because he did not allow her to. Even his tenants were told never to try to enter the basement or they would be evicted.

[Tempus Teapot]

I agree Roamer.

Leave it to the defense, they will try anything to get their client off, even if guilty as sin.

I say let him be evaluated, when it shows he knew right from wrong, the insanity defense will go down the drain.

He knew what he was doing or he wouldn't have dreamed up that elaborate story he told his wife, or built that dungeon he kept his children prisoner of.

One thing bothers me. He took three children to live upstairs with him because they were "cry babies". Why haven't they said something to their grandmother, something is really rotten in Denmark! Children are innocent, so it's quite possible they told grandma something...

There are more twist and turns in this story and I'm sure more to come!

He's most obviously a sociopath. Taking the crying babies out of the cellar because they were "cry babies" and could potentially ruin things for him. He wanted what he wanted and nobody else's feelings or well being ever even registered with him, imo.

I was watching CNN and someone suggested that he had a moment of "compassion" when he took the 19 year old to the hospital but another person pointed out that he just would have had trouble disposing the body, if the girl died in the cellar. That's more believable to me. That anyone could suggest that this creature had a moment of compassion in anything that he did is ridiculous to me. I've talked to people who seem to get sidetracked by the fact that he gave them beds or a tv or electricity or running water. They seem to forget for a moment that he kept them locked in dungeon and repeatedly raped his daughter because it suited him.

I'm not a believer in police cruelty, but I really hope this man is being treated horribly in his holding cell. I hope he doesn't have a moment's peace for the rest of his miserable life.

moo

[KittyMom]

He's not insane. He's pure evil. :mad:

absolutely!!!!!

[KittyMom]

I'd bet that sicko has been raping all of them for years.

[KittyMom]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=564159&in_page_id=1811

Pictured: The lucky Fritzl daughters allowed to go on holiday while sex slave Elisabeth was forced to stay at home with monstrous father

Photos of Elisabeth's family

[Tempus Teapot]

I'd bet that sicko has been raping all of them for years.

I wonder about that. I've read many times that the abuser will target only one child in the family (for sex abuse), so that if the child accuses the abuser (to authorities or within the family) other children in the family will say it's not true and not believe the child who is making the accusation.

It's also quite possible that he abused them all. The more I read about this the more it hurts.

[Details]

I wonder - where will he have the worse life? In a mental institution, or in a prison?

I don't believe he is insane - not as in, he did not know right from wrong - but if his life would be worse, and he'd never get out - I'd go for the mental institution.

He's a control freak - that's why he's shut up - it gives him some bit of control of his situation. He'll probably kill himself as soon as he has a chance.

[awakening2lite]

I'd like to know how he managed to get a 1 1/2 ton door into the cellar.

[KittyMom]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354286,00.html

Police are investigating claims that an Austrian man accused of imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children also raped one of his granddaughters, a U.K. newspaper reported Tuesday.

Cops believe Josef Fritzl, 73, may have kept his granddaughter Kerstin as a sex slave in the dungeon he built under his home in the village of Amstetten, the Daily Mail reported.

Police are waiting to interview the 19-year-old, who is in a medically induced coma after she emerged from the basement dungeon on April 19.

The news comes as a prosecutor announced plans to meet Fritzl on Wednesday, an official said.

• Click here to see photos of Josef Fritzl and the "House of Horrors."

The meeting between prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser and Fritzl is to take place in the prison in the Lower Austrian city of St. Poelten, where the man is being held, prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek said.

Sedlacek said it is unclear if Fritzl would agree to answer questions. Authorities say he confessed to locking up and raping his daughter Elisabeth and has since remained silent.

Fritzl has not been charged and remains in pretrial detention. His lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, has said he is preparing an insanity defense.

Chief investigator Franz Polzer said experts are continuing to sift through Fritzl's property for evidence, adding there may be more "hollow spaces" that need to be examined. It is unlikely investigators would find anything "dramatic" in such areas, he said.

Doctors, unable to find medical records for Kerstin, appealed on television for her mother to come forward. Fritzl then accompanied the mother, Elisabeth, to the hospital on April 26 and confessed to police.

[Faith]

May 6, 2008
Scared prostitutes 'shunned Josef Fritzl' at brothel

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00326/mrf_326519a.jpg
The Josef Fritzl case has provoked huge public soul-searching in Austria

Video: Fritzl planned cellar six years before abduction

A barman at a brothel frequented by Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his own daughter in a dungeon under his house, has told how some of the prostitutes were so frightened by his perversions that they refused to accept him as a client.

He listed various extreme demands made by the retired electrical engineer, who liked to inflict pain on the women and asked them to act like corpses.

Christoph F, 38, worked at the Villa Ostende in Linz for six years and said that Mr Fritzl, a regular customer, was notorious for being "domineering" towards the staff.

"Ninety-five per cent of the guests are entirely normal, 3 per cent are slightly ‘derailed’, but Fritzl belonged to the last 2 per cent of extreme perverts, who are surely mentally deranged," Mr F told the Oesterreich newspaper.

He said that some of the prostitutes would refuse to go upstairs with him – "which was extremely rare in this business" – because of demands including sadism and "demanding that a girl should pretend to be a corpse".

Prostitution is legal in Austria, and the Villa Ostende charges its customers €150 an hour. Most of the prostitutes come from Eastern Europe and change every few weeks.

The barman said that Mr Fritzl, who kept his daughter Elisabeth captive in the cellar of the family home for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, was a longstanding customer renowned for his meanness.

"I was working there for six years and Fritzl would come regularly. I will never forget his stinginess," he said. "If he would consume drinks for €97 and would pay with a €100 bill – he would demand the €3 back.

"At the bar he was domineering. If he liked a girl he would order champagne for her, but after a short while he would start behaving like a headmaster with pupils and say things like ‘Sit straight!’ or ‘Don’t speak nonsense!’. Such behaviour is unusual in sex clubs."

In the aftermath of the Fritzl case, the Austrian Parliament is to discuss the introduction of more severe punishments for sex offenders.

The Nationalrat will discuss the case tomorrow, when MPs will debate a motion on whether to change the law to introduce tougher penalties for rapists, as well as to allow criminal records to be kept for a longer period of time.

Despite the fact that Mr Fritzl had a previous conviction for rape he was allowed to adopt, or become the foster parent, of three of the children claiming he was their grandfather. This is because Austrian law sees files on convictions for sex offences removed from the records after ten to 15 years.

Mr Fritzl served 18 months in prison for raping a 24-year-old nurse in Linz in 1967, when he was 32, after he threatened to kill her and put a knife on her throat. The judge at the time allegedly pronounced what was considered a lenient sentence because Mr Fritzl had four children.

The proposals from politicians from across the political spectrum to be discussed tomorrow range from introducing chemical or physical castration as punishment for serial sex offenders – an idea coming from the far Right – to stepping up efforts to prevent sex crimes and providing psychological counselling for sex offenders.

A proposal of the far-Right party, Alliance for the Future of Austria, to introduce regular check-ups for children to determine whether they were sexually abused has been rejected as an "absurdity" by other parties.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3879488.ece


OMG this man is a sick -----------------

[LiveLaughLuv]

He's a sadistic POS.

"Ninety-five per cent of the guests are entirely normal, 3 per cent are slightly ‘derailed’, but Fritzl belonged to the last 2 per cent of extreme perverts, who are surely mentally deranged," Mr F told the Oesterreich newspaper.


I really hope he is not found insane, for he isn't. He knew exactly what he was doing, he's just a horrible man. For paid prostitutes to turn him away, he must have inflicted lots of pain on woman in that brothel, asking them to play dead!

This man needs to spend the rest of his sorry life in a 6X6' cell, if only he could be kept in a dark, no sunlit cell to let him feel what his daughter felt for 24 long years along with her children.

I'd like to know more about his upbringing, his parents/siblings to see where this all stemmed from.

[KittyMom]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/07/austria.meeting.ap/index.html

Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client had access to a television in jail and was closely watching coverage of his case, which has garnered worldwide attention.

Mayer said Fritzl was bothered by the fact that he was being made out to be a monster. He said Fritzl told him, "I'm only being portrayed as a monster and not as someone who committed monstrous acts."

Mayer made his comments when asked to confirm a report Wednesday by the newspaper Oesterreich that quoted Fritzl as saying he was not a monster and that without him, his 19-year-old daughter Kerstin would no longer be alive.

[LiveLaughLuv]

Mayer made his comments when asked to confirm a report Wednesday by the newspaper Oesterreich that quoted Fritzl as saying he was not a monster and that without him, his 19-year-old daughter Kerstin would no longer be alive.

So now he sees himself as a hero!

Newsflash, :attention: Fritzl, you are a monster.

[Roamer]

Seems his ego knows no bounds. :mad:

Newflash again: She's barely alive and wouldn't be in that condition if she wasn't locked in a basement.

[KittyMom]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354522,00.html

He said Fritzl told him: "I'm only being portrayed as a monster and not as someone who committed monstrous acts... I could have killed all of them — then nothing would have happened. No one would have ever known about it."


:mad:

[KittyMom]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/08/austria.fritzl.ap/index.html

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The man accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children with her says he knew his actions were not right and that he must have been crazy, according to a magazine article.

The magazine quotes Fritzl as saying that he tried as best he could to care for his secret family and would take flowers, books and stuffed toys down to the dungeon below his home in the town of Amstetten where he held them captive.

Fritzl, in other comments, says he grew up an only child in simple circumstances and that his mother, whom he admired very much, threw his father out of the house when he was four.




He's making these outrageous comments just so people will think he's crazy. He's just plain evil.

[Roamer]

He took such good care if them they had to walk stooped over. They could hardly speak. They'll be traumatized for life.

Evil, evil, evil personified. :mad:

[Tempus Teapot]

So now he sees himself as a hero!

Newsflash, :attention: Fritzl, you are a monster.

He's a regular spin doctor. He saved the daughter/granddaughter that he had imprisoned from the day of her birth (a daughter/granddaughter conceived after he had imprisoned and repeatedly raped his other daughter) so let's all just forget that he had her imprisoned since the day of her birth and that she is a product of rape and incest, right?

:rolleye0001:

moo

[awakening2lite]

EXCERPT

Charges have not yet been filed against him.

Fritzl said he started raping his daughter in 1985 when she was aged 19. Elisabeth has told police that Josef started sexually abusing her when she was 11.

'I knew I was hurting her'
"My drive to have sex with Elisabeth grew stronger and stronger," Fritzl was quoted as saying

"I knew Elisabeth didn't want me to do what I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her. ... It was like an addiction ... In reality, I wanted children with her."

Fritzl, who also has seven children with his wife Rosemarie, said he had locked up Elisabeth after she started to "break all the rules" following the onset of puberty.

She went to bars, drank alcohol and smoked, and ran away a couple of times, the 73-year-old said.

"I tried to get her out of that swamp, organized her an apprenticeship to become a waitress.

"I needed to take precautions, I needed to create a place in which I could at some point keep her away from the outside world, by force if necessary."

Nazi discipline
Fritzl said he found himself trapped in a inescapable cycle once he had locked up Elisabeth. He told his wife their daughter had joined a sect.

He referred to Elisabeth's underground world as his "empire" and described himself as a man who valued decency and good manners. He said the emphasis on discipline in Nazi times, when he grew up, might have influenced him.

"Nonetheless, I am not the beast the media depicts me as.

"When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favorite dish," he said.

"And then we all sat around the table and ate together."

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24520340


---------------------------

Typical abuser defense: Blame the victim

[LiveLaughLuv]

'I knew I was hurting her'
"My drive to have sex with Elisabeth grew stronger and stronger," Fritzl was quoted as saying

"I knew Elisabeth didn't want me to do what I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her. ... It was like an addiction ... In reality, I wanted children with her."

His statements prove he knew right from wrong so he is definately not insane. He may have a twisted mind, twisted thinking, but not insane.

I don't get why there are no charges filed as yet! They have his confession, they have his DNA proving the incest, so what are they waiting for?

"When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favorite dish," he said.

"And then we all sat around the table and ate together."

:rolleye0001:

Our favorite dish?

If that don't beat the hell out of me!

Sick and twisted! All the more reason to lock him up forever!

[LiveLaughLuv]

'I knew I was hurting her'
"My drive to have sex with Elisabeth grew stronger and stronger," Fritzl was quoted as saying

"I knew Elisabeth didn't want me to do what I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her. ... It was like an addiction ... In reality, I wanted children with her."

His statements prove he knew right from wrong so he is definately not insane. He may have a twisted mind, twisted thinking, but not insane.

I don't get why there are no charges filed as yet! They have his confession, they have his DNA proving the incest, so what are they waiting for?

"When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favorite dish," he said.

"And then we all sat around the table and ate together."

:rolleye0001:

Our favorite dish?

If that don't beat the hell out of me!

Sick and twisted! All the more reason to lock him up forever!

[Cat]

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/05/07/132946.php

[Details]

I think they're stymied on the charges, because there's nothing that really fits what he did sufficiently to provide an acceptable punishment. I suspect that's why he hasn't yet been charged. They want to get him on murder, maybe some kidnapping, torture, etc. - rape is the smallest part of what he did.

[wheezer]

I am only putting this here b/c the victim in this case wants to befriend the Austrian woman. This case is really sad. This victim has been forgotten.

PARIS (AP) - A French woman who was tortured and raped by her adoptive father for 28 years and has six children by him wants to be friends with an Austrian held captive for decades by her father.

Lydia Gouardo, 45, spoke out about her case Wednesday after the Austrian woman's plight became public this week with the arrest of her father.

"I would like her to be my friend. I (would) feel less alone," Gouardo said of Elisabeth Fritzl in an interview with the daily Le Parisien. "Maybe there are others like that, in villages, where people close their shutters."

Gouardo, who lives in a village 60 kilometers (40 miles) east of Paris, began her rebirth with the death of her adoptive father in 1999.

Raymond Gouardo was not the woman's biological father but her legal father since she was three years old, her lawyer said.

He began raping her when she was 10, according to her lawyer, Alain Mikowski. Her stepmother was aware and was convicted in a closed-door trial before an appeals court this month for non-denunciation of a crime and given a four-year suspended prison sentence, Mikowski said by telephone.

Mikowski said that there was a total breakdown of the judicial, police and social services systems.

Gouardo, who never attended school and is illiterate, says she was tortured by her father but not locked up. She says she fled the family home several times while she was a minor, but police kept bringing her back.

"I was afraid of contact with the outside. ... What my father did, I thought it was normal," she told Le Parisien. "I only ran away when he hit too hard."

Her children were born between 1982 and 1993. Gouardo continues to live in the family house and has a companion with whom she had two other children. It was her companion, she said, who encouraged her to file suit.

"It's a real scandal. If there had been no Austrian affair, no one would be talking," said Mikowski, the lawyer.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/french-woman-raped-for-28-years-by/n20080430132309990005

[KittyMom]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,358603,00.html

[London Lass]

If she has woken up, it is the only good thing that has happened to this tragic family because of that sick, sick man.

Her body may recover, but what about her mind? :girl_sad:

[LiveLaughLuv]

I am only putting this here b/c the victim in this case wants to befriend the Austrian woman. This case is really sad. This victim has been forgotten.

This victim should never be forgotten, hell, no victim should be forgotten!

I'm glad to see Elisabeth is reaching out to her. We can always relate to others who have gone through the same. Kudos to her. She has not become angry or uncaring....Bless her heart!

[KittyMom]

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/article.html?in_article_id=153200&in_page_id=64

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Josef Fritzl's three children who he raised with his wife above ground are set to return to school next term.

Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, have been with their mother Elisabeth and two brothers who were imprisoned in the dungeon.

Elisabeth was locked underground in Amstetten, Austria, for 24 years and had six children after Josef repeatedly raped her.

Kirsten, 19, remains in intensive care in hospital while Felix, 5, and Stefan, 18, are being introduced to the real world in a clinic.

Lisa, Monika and Alexander were brought upstairs to live with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, 69.

Now it has been reported that a source close to the family said the three wanted to see their school friends again.

It has not been decided whether they will go back to their old school or go elsewhere.

[Roamer]

I think they should change their names and start fresh somewhere else. People can be cruel, and although these kids did nothing wrong, some won't let them forget that their father is their grandfather.

[KittyMom]

I think they should change their names and start fresh somewhere else. People can be cruel, and although these kids did nothing wrong, some won't let them forget that their father is their grandfather.

Sadly, you are correct. Their lives have been turned upside down through no fault of their own. People, however, just don't seem to have much compassion anymore.

[awakening2lite]

Daughter of Austrian 'Horror Dad' Awakens From Induced Coma

6/10/08

VIENNA, Austria — A daughter of the Austrian incest victim kept for decades in a basement dungeon by her father awoke from her induced coma Tuesday, the hospital said.

continued at source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,364921,00.html

[London Lass]

Austrians question cellar captive

Legal authorities in Austria have begun questioning Elisabeth Fritzl, the woman who was held captive in a cellar for 24 years by her father, Josef.

The questioning involved a doctor to determine how one of the seven babies she had with her father died, said a spokesman for the state prosecutor.

Elisabeth was said to be in a relatively good state of health.

The authorities say they hope to have formal charges against Josef Fritzl ready within a few months.

That would allow a trial to start before the end of the year.

Possible murder charge

Mr Fritzl is being held in pre-trial detention in St Poelten, 80 km (50 miles) west of the capital, Vienna.

His alleged victims, including Elisabeth, 42, are undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors say Mr Fritzl has confessed to keeping his daughter captive in a cell at his home in Amstetten, where he says he had seven children with her.

Three of the children were confined to the cellar, three were raised above ground, and one died in infancy, officials say.

Mr Fritzl confessed to incinerating the body of the dead baby, and could face murder charges if he is found responsible for the death, officials say.

DNA tests have shown he is the father of Elisabeth's six surviving children.

The case first came to light after Kerstin, one of the children fathered by Mr Fritzl, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.

Unable to find any medical records, they appealed for the teenager's mother to come forward.

At that point Mr Fritzl released Elisabeth, who then explained the story to police.

Kerstin was finally reunited with her family after coming out of a coma earlier this month. She is expected to make a full recovery.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7501259.stm

[Details]

In other reports - the 'father' is unhappy in prison, finding being confined to his cell all day every day hard to take. He's got a roomate, and now is taking 30 minute walks, guarded by a guard, in the yard.

It's about an appropriate punishment - if they lower the ceiling a fair bit, remove the window, and don't let him outside. He's got a roomate - I hope he can't stand him. But I bet his worst punishment is knowing all of his captives, upstairs and downstairs, are now free without him.

[London Lass]

Fritzl returns to incest cellar

Josef Fritzl has been taken back to the house in Amstetten, west of Vienna, where he allegedly abused and jailed his daughter and her children.

Mr Fritzl was taken there under heavy police guard on Thursday to give investigators a tour of the cellar.

Officials say the visit is to help see if the cell can be opened from outside.

Mr Fritzl is accused of keeping his daughter for 24 years in a cellar he built, sexually abusing her and fathering seven children with her.

Lawyers for Mr Fritzl insist that an electronic timer would have unlocked the door in time for the occupants to free themselves if anything had happened to him, but investigators think the door could have been sealed off with metal bars.

Prosecutors say he has confessed to keeping his daughter Elisabeth captive in a cell at his home.

DNA tests have shown he is the father of six of Elisabeth's children - a seventh child is believed to have died shortly after birth - and authorities say that Mr Fritzl will go on trial by the end of the year.

Mr Fritzl has been in custody since April and is being held in pre-trial detention in St Poelten, 80km (50 miles) west of the capital Vienna since April.

Earlier this summer a court spokesman said preparations for the trial of Mr Fritzl, 73, were going at "full speed".

His alleged victims, including Elisabeth, 42, are undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital.

The case first came to light in April after 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children fathered by Mr Fritzl, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7637663.stm

[KittyMom]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,442925,00.html

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

VIENNA, Austria — Josef Fritzl, the Austrian builder who locked his daughter in a cellar and fathered seven children with her, sees himself as a born rapist, a victim of his own tyrannical mother.

According to the first leaked account of interviews with a forensic psychiatrist, which is due to appear in two Austrian newspapers today, Fritzl hatched his plan to incarcerate his daughter, Elisabeth, while he was in prison for rape.

“I have realized that I had a mean streak. For someone who was born to be a rapist, I have managed to contain myself for a relatively long period,” Fritzl is quoted as telling the psychiatrist in a 130-page report leaked to the tabloid newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Österreich.

Fritzl, 73, is awaiting trial for sexually abusing and incarcerating Elisabeth, 42, in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his house in the town of Amstetten. He fathered seven children by her, one of whom died shortly after birth and Fritzl burnt his body in an oven.

Three of the surviving children were allowed to live upstairs with him and wife, Rosemarie, 69, while their three siblings were condemned to a shadowy existence with their mother in the cellar. They never saw daylight until they were freed by police on April 26. It emerged that Fritzl had a previous criminal record for sexual offences.

In 1967 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for brutally raping a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home.

According to the report compiled by Dr. Adelheid Kastner, a prominent forensic psychiatrist who conducted in depth interviews with the builder, Fritzl found the “ideal solution” to his deranged fantasies after he was released from prison. It was then that he decided to lock up his daughter in the cellar so that he could “live out” his “evil side” while leading a seemingly normal life in the flat upstairs.

Fritzl told the psychiatrist that his relationship to women was shaped by his experience with his abusive mother, who allegedly beat him and isolated him from other children until he started school. He was an “alibi child,” Fritzl told the psychiatrist – his mother only had him to prove to her partner that she was not sterile.

Dr. Kastner came to the conclusion when she was dissecting the personality of Fritzl that the builder managed to distance himself from what he was doing by never looking his victim in the face when he raped her.

“He was not only incredibly able to lead a double life but also managed to maintain a triple life without any problems,” Dr. Kastner wrote, indicating that Fritzl played down the gravity of his crimes in his mind.

“Mr. Fritzl resembles a volcano; under the surface that appears almost banal there is an evil streak. He is torn apart by his desires that he cannot master,” Dr. Kastner wrote.

The report declared Fritzl clinically sane and fit for trial, but also diagnosed a “severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder”.

“It is to be expected that Mr. Fritzl would perpetrate deeds with severe consequences also in the future,” Dr. Kastner concluded.

On the basis of her report the prosecution has demanded from the court that Fritzl be tried and sentenced, then committed to an institution for the criminally insane, where he would receive psychiatric care and therapy including, if deemed necessary, medication.

The trial is expected to start early next year.

[wheezer]

In the two years I have been posting on message boards, following cases, etc.... I have never allowed myself to post anything "bad" happening to the perpetrator of a crime(only that they be prosecuted and held accountable for their crime). I just felt like doing that would cause myself to be lowered to that persons level. However this case has been my exception. I hope this man Rots in HELL!!!!! The woman in this case will never be able to live life normally. The older children will never be able to live life normally. The younger child might have a chance. The damage and pure torture this man inflicted on these innocent humans is beyond atrocious.

[KittyMom]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445090,00.html

Austrian Horror Dad: I Locked My Mom Up Until She Died

VIENNA, Austria — Cellar monster Josef Fritzl has admitted he kept his mom bricked up in a locked room “for years” until she died.

Incest dad Fritzl, 74, told a psychologist it was revenge for abuse he claims he received at her hands.

He said: “I never had any love from her. She used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. I never had a kiss. I was never cuddled.”

Local council files showed Fritzl inherited the home in Amstetten, Austria in 1959 “because his mother had died."

He locked her in an attic room where she is said to have died in 1980. No neighbors remember seeing her over the 21 years. Fritzl told Dr. Adelheid Kastner: “I bricked in the window so that she never again saw the light of day.”



:thud2:

[wheezer]

I want proof on this before I believe it. Is he capable? YES!!!!!!
But, I think he and his lawyer could also be setting up their case of insanity.
My God if this turns out to be true, I have no words.

[awakening2lite]

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/WORLD/europe/01/22/austria.fritzl/art.closejosef.gi.jpg

Austria braces for Fritzl incest trial



updated 10:12 a.m. EST, Thu January 22, 2009

(CNN) -- Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man accused of keeping his daughter in a cellar for decades and fathering her seven children, will go on trial March 16 on six charges including murder and incest.

The Austrian Press Agency reported Thursday the trial was expected to last about five days and be held behind closed doors. Further details about the case would be announced Friday, it said.
Fritzl, 73, was charged in November with incest and the repeated rape of his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years.
But he was also charged with the murder of one of the children he fathered with her, an infant who died soon after birth. State Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Michael Fritzl died from lack of medical care.
In all, Fritzl faces six charges at trial: murder, involvement in slave trade (slavery), rape, incest, assault, and deprivation of liberty, Sedlacek's office said. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

The case first came to light in April 2008 when Elisabeth's then-19-year-old daughter, Kerstin, became seriously ill with convulsions. Elisabeth persuaded her father to allow Kerstin to be taken to a hospital for treatment.
Hospital staff became suspicious of the case and alerted police, who discovered the family members in the cellar.
Fritzl confessed to police that he raped his daughter, kept her and their children in captivity, and burned the body of the dead infant in an oven in the house. Elisabeth told police the infant was one of twins who died a few days after birth.
When Elisabeth gained her freedom, she told police her father began sexually abusing her at age 11. On August 8, 1984, her father enticed her into the basement, where he drugged her, put her in handcuffs and locked her in a room, she told police.
Fritzl explained Elisabeth's disappearance in 1984 by saying the 18-year-old girl had run away from home. He backed up the story with letters he forced Elisabeth to write.
Elisabeth Fritzl and all but three of her children lived in the specially designed cellar beneath her father's home in Amstetten, Austria, west of Vienna. The other three children lived upstairs with Fritzl and his wife; Fritzl had left them on his own doorstep, pretending his "missing" daughter Elisabeth had dropped them off.
Under Austrian law, if Fritzl is convicted on several offenses, he will be given the sentence linked to the worst crime. In addition to murder, he will face the following charges:

Murder: The infant who died in 1996 died from a lack of medical care, the state prosecutor said. The charges he faces are:

Involvement in slave trade: From 1984 until 2008, Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a dungeon, abused her sexually and treated her as if she were his personal property -- in a situation similar to slavery. If convicted, the sentence could range from 10 to 20 years in prison.

Rape: Between August 30, 1984, and June 30, 1989, Fritzl "regularly sexually abused Elisabeth," according to the prosecutor. The sentence could be from five to 15 years in prison.

Incest: Parallel to the rape charge. It carries a sentence of up to one year.

Withdrawal of liberty: Three of the children Fritzl had with Elisabeth were illegally held captive in a dungeon with no daylight and fresh air. That charge carries a sentence of one to 10 years.

Assault: Between August 28, 1984, and April 26, 2006, Fritzl repeatedly threatened Elisabeth and their three children with gas and booby traps as warnings in case they tried to escape. The sentence would range from six months to five years.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/22/austria.fritzl/

[wheezer]

I'm curious if they will investigate his confession about killing his mother. I would think they would. My God, you can't just let something like that fall to the wayside. Maybe they want to get this part over, and then start looking into the other.

[sarahhod]

Fritzl girl's dungeon diary leaked

05:30 AEST Tue Mar 10 2009

By ninemsn staff


http://images.ninemsn.com.au/resizer.aspx?url=http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/2009/world/1003_fritzl_sp.jpg&width=310
Josef Fritzl is accused of holding his daughter captive and raping her over 24 years.


Incest father Joseph Fritzl is expected to tell court that he "loved his daughter in his own way" when his trial begins next week.
It has also emerged that diary entries by imprisoned daughter, Elisabeth — which details her life as her father's sex slave — will be a vital part of the case.
When his case comes to court next week, 74-year-old Fritzl, who has admitted keeping Elisabeth captive in a dungeon beneath his home in Austria for 24 years, will argue that he was trying to save her from a promiscuous teenage life filled with sex, smoking and drinking.
"He is not a monster. He loved his daughter in his own way," Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer said.
Fritzl is expected to describe how he brought gifts to the basement, including photos of their upstairs family, toys and books, in an attempt to win sympathy from the jury, the Times Online reports.
He also allegedly gave them a pet budgerigar to ensure the air quality was safe for humans.
Elisabeth's diary, which she kept on scraps of paper hidden around the cellar, has provided investigators with grim details of Fritzl's alleged crimes against her and her children during their 8642 days underground.
Elisabeth recorded the date and time of every threat or beating imposed on her and her children by her father.
She also described how she held her dying seventh child in her arms before he turned blue and died.
"At least he's in a better world now," she wrote, according to a reports in British newspapers.
Her accounts also tell how Fritzl separated the three children who would be raised upstairs.
One baby was crying too loud so he took it upstairs, fearing neighbours would hear its cries from the cellar.
But when his wife Rosemarie arrived home it was too late to take it back downstairs, so the child escaped a life underground.
Fritzl told his wife Elisabeth had dumped the baby and the returned to the cult where he had pretended she was living.
Meanwhile, Elisabeth's taped testimony describes how she fought "kicking and screaming" to try and stop him first raping her when she was just 11 years old, reports say.
She also reportedly told police that she "tried to please" her father in order to spare her basement-raised children from abuse.
The 11 hours of video is reportedly so harrowing that jurors will not be allowed to listen to more than two hours per day.
Fritzl allegedly staged his daughter's disappearance and locked her in a windowless warren of tunnels when she was just 18.
He fathered seven children with her, including three that were raised upstairs by him and his wife Rosemarie after he claimed runaway Elisabeth had left them on their doorstep.
Another three children were raised in darkness in the soundproof basement, while a seventh child died after childbirth.
Elisabeth, now 43, is living in Austria with her children under a false name.
Fritzl is facing charges including incest, enslavement and the murder by denying his deceased child medical care.
The trial begins next Monday.


http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/769204/fritzl-girls-dungeon-diary-leaked

[Roamer]

This monster never deserves another free breath of air.

[LiveLaughLuv]

In other reports - the 'father' is unhappy in prison, finding being confined to his cell all day every day hard to take. He's got a roomate, and now is taking 30 minute walks, guarded by a guard, in the yard.

It's about an appropriate punishment - if they lower the ceiling a fair bit, remove the window, and don't let him outside. He's got a roomate - I hope he can't stand him. But I bet his worst punishment is knowing all of his captives, upstairs and downstairs, are now free without him.

I call it KARMA!

The only difference is he can take that 30 minute walk, Elisabeth never saw the light of day. I'd say he needs to be put in a box in solitary confinement, making sure it's small enough for him to walk hunched over. He needs to feel what Elisabeth felt for 24 looooong years...

I do hope he does not get placed in a mental institution, he needs to serve whatever days he has left in a box...:madranting94dp:

[texanne]

I hope he lives the rest of his life in miserable conditions.

[sarahhod]

Fritzl women at war: Elisabeth is haunted by the realisation that her mother is the cause of her 24-year ordeal


By Allan Hall (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Allan+Hall)
Last updated at 9:02 AM on 11th March 2009


Nine days from now, Josef Fritzl should learn his fate.

Jurors will file back into a courtroom in the small Austrian town of St Poelten to deliver their verdict on the kind of monster usually created only in the minds of Hollywood scriptwriters.

They will have heard testimony so harrowing the judge ordered they listen to no more than two hours of it each day.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/10/article-0-03D2CD91000005DC-51_224x376.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/10/article-0-03D2CD91000005DC-399_224x376.jpg



Rift: Elisabeth before her ordeal (left) and her mother Rosemarie. Elisabeth's mother allowed Josef Fritzl back into their home even after he was jailed for rape

And over five days they will have discovered, in Fritzl’s own words and in the videotaped evidence of his victim-in-chief, how this seemingly ordinary man became the rapist, jailer, torturer and thief of his own daughter’s life.
In many ways what they decide is irrelevant. The man who decided to lock up his child, Elisabeth, for 24 years to use as his personal sex slave will certainly never be released.

Whether he lives out his days in a secure prison or a psychiatric hospital means little to a world captivated by his unique brand of evil.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/10/article-1161086-03D1D8E6000005DC-722_468x430.jpg Solitary figure: Fritzl paces the prison's exercise yard while awaiting his trial

This is a man so cunning, so controlled, so arrogant that he carved out a secret, fortified dungeon beneath his own home to incarcerate his own flesh and blood - a place where he could rape his daughter an estimated 3,000 times and father seven children with her in the dank, rat-infested darkness.
What Fritzl did is truly the stuff of horror films. In a book I wrote about him called, simply, Monster, I tried to gain an insight into the void where his soul should be, into those places where humanity, kindness, love and compassion ought to dwell. But while chronicling his crimes, I failed to get anywhere close to what made him truly tick.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-0142F13900000578-427_233x340.jpg Accused: Josef Fritzl

I was in good company, however. The battery of psychologists and psychiatrists sent to map the dark recesses of his twisted personality also failed to come up with the answer to the single question: why?

In the end, they believed only the truth of the simple five-word sentence he gave shortly after his arrest in April last year: ‘I was born to rape.’

Fritzl will shuffle from the dock of the court in St Poelten, stoic and unbowed, convinced, as he has been convinced throughout his life, of his innate superiority. The secure van will take him away, blue lights flashing and siren sounding, heralding his much-deserved appointment with a lonely cell.

Yet some 25 miles from St Poelten, in the village of Mitterkirchen, the nightmare goes on. In a house provided by the authorities, Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, lives with the six children she bore to her father who survived the ordeal.

Something gnaws at Elisabeth about her mother
Three of them were brought up shortly after birth by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in the house above ground, the other three never saw a speck of sky or a blade of grass from their dungeon until they were freed last year.

Now these two groups, joined by blood and little else, are trying to bond as a family unit as their Frankenstein creator is removed for good from their lives.

But nothing can ever erase the memory of what he did. Freedom has not brought the rest of the Fritzls inner peace. From interviews with carers and police sources who provided much of the material for my book, it is clear that therapy stretches on, with no end in sight.

The rift between Elisabeth and her mother Rosemarie has not healed. It started in the psychiatric clinic with Elisabeth’s constant complaining about three of her offspring referring to Rosemarie as ‘mother’.

In fact, the enmity between the two women predates the day in 1984 when Elisabeth was drugged with ether and dragged into the dungeon her engineer father had carved beneath the foundations of the family home in the town of Amstetten.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-0110C37300000578-544_468x689.jpg Dungeon: One of the rooms inside the cramped cellar where Elisabeth lived for 24 years

Its roots go back to 1967, when Elisabeth was barely two, and Josef Fritzl broke into the home of a sleeping nurse in nearby Linz and raped her at knifepoint, telling her he would kill her if she went to the police.


Daddy went away after that, to work abroad, Rosemarie told the children. In reality, he had gone to prison. Something gnaws at the very fabric of Elisabeth’s psyche about her mother - the knowledge that Rosemarie brought Fritzl back into their home, despite knowing he was a rapist.

By the time Elisabeth was 11, Fritzl was leaving pornographic magazines under her pillow and masturbating in front of her.

The question Elisabeth must ask is how could Rosemarie not know that Fritzl was abusing her; not know that he later engineered her disappearance?
It is this doubt which has caused a division that will probably never heal.
Rosemarie lives alone in Linz and is welcomed to Elisabeth’s house as a visitor but always leaves with a handshake and rarely a hug for the daughter her husband said had run off to join a sect.

‘Elisabeth could understand her mother swallowing her father’s line,’ one of her carers told me, ‘because she was as brutalised as anyone by his tyrannical rule.
‘But when Elisabeth was released from the cellar she learned his dark secret - that he was a convicted rapist - and she began to question how her mother could have stayed with him knowing that. With this in the background, things became ever more tense.’

The doctors hope the maternal bond will strengthen, but for now they are concentrating more on Elisabeth’s physical and mental wellbeing.

Elisabeth must ask, how could Rosemarie not know?
Physically, what Fritzl did to Elisabeth was medieval in its horror. He used over-sized sex toys on her for hours on end, causing terrible internal injuries.

If she was still a prisoner now, it is doubtful she could have borne him another child. Years of cheap, beyond-sell-by-date food Fritzl fed his clandestine family left her with vitamin deficiencies and weak bones and she lost many teeth.

But these are legacies that good diet and medicines will help overcome. Mentally, she suffers from the sort of post-traumatic stress disorder that soldiers in combat zones experience.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-03D20FC8000005DC-460_468x323.jpg Trial: Jurors will reveal the fate of incest monster Josef Fritzl in the court of St Poelten

The house always has the doors in all rooms open - Elisabeth, like her children brought up underground, has a phobia of being in a room where the door might never open again. In the cellar, she was the determined woman who saved others - and was saved - by the strongest love on earth: that of a mother for her young.
In the upstairs world she now inhabits, she is in many ways the teenager whose clock stopped on that summer day in 1984.

Slowly and painfully, the clock has to be reset. Treading carefully is paramount. No doctor can go to areas still mined with pain. Slowly, carefully, as with all victims of sexual abuse, she has to deal with the grotesque crimes committed against her. She must understand that she bears no guilt and must separate life before the cellar and after it. And she has to learn basic life skills - taking a trip to the supermarket, using a mobile phone, making small talk.

Berthold Kepplinger, the psychologist in charge of the mental health of the cellar tribe, said of Elisabeth: ‘She is nothing short of heroic. She persevered down there, only keeping going out of love for her children. The mothering instinct saved them all.’

Those who deal with her have their breath taken away by her courage, love, dignity and pride. In a world of instant fame and celebrity, it came as no surprise when in January this year she was approached by one of the world’s biggest media companies and offered £5 million for an exclusive deal spanning newspapers, magazines, talk shows, a movie and a book.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-0117638500000578-505_468x434.jpg Rosemarie Fritzl with Lisa, one of the seven children Josef fathered with his daughter Elisabeth

There was no hesitation from Elisabeth: ‘No thanks. Please leave us alone.’
When the secret of the family location was leaked, the landscape gardeners moved in as the trial of her father approached, to plant tall hedgerows in the back garden and erect fences.

Elisabeth wants nothing more than a sanctuary for the children she nurtured in the darkness and the ones snatched from her to live upstairs with her mother and father.

As to the cellar siblings, they have to learn to deal with the memories of seeing their mother raped before their eyes. They always knew when it was going to happen: Fritzl turned the lights down.

But they could see, and they could hear, and they felt the agony their mother endured time after heartbreaking time.

Fritzl stole their childhoods, their first dance and first kiss
Kerstin, now 20, whose illness in the subterranean gloom (she was suffering from multiple organ failure caused by poor food and lack of medication) triggered their eventual release, remains inordinately close to her brother Stefan, 18, with whom she shared her life underground.

They are tutored at home and rarely go out, spending their days watching television, listening to music and helping their mother. And like their mother, Kerstin and Stefan are encouraged to slowly talk about their feelings and to learn self-respect - something else Fritzl stole from them along with their childhoods, their first dance, their first kiss.

They have to learn how to ease themselves into a world they only ever viewed through the prism of the constantly-running television in the cellar that transmitted images of a distant place they had never experienced, and were told they would never experience.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-011184CF00000578-910_468x590.jpg Police investigators search the flat for evidence after the horrifying revelation that Fritzl had been imprisoning a second family in the cellar

Felix, now six, who needed special goggles to shield his eyes from the sunlight he had never seen, is best placed to cope.

He delights all who meet him. He spends his days stroking the trees in the garden, picking up grass, staring at the sky in wonderment. The doctors believe he is young enough to forget; besides, he never knew what Grandad was doing when he took his mother off to her sleeping quarters and the lights went dim.

Working through the conflicted feelings the family have for Fritzl is another, more complex matter.

While they hate what has occurred, residual feelings of affection - perhaps even a twisted sort of love - remain.

That is why neither Stefan nor Kerstin was asked to give evidence against him.
The last thing prosecutors wanted to hear is the kind of defence of Fritzl that the monster himself has put forward - he was a carer, provider and loving patriarch.

More complex still is the relationship between the erstwhile cellar dwellers and the children who were removed from confinement to have a life upstairs.

Monika, 15, Lisa, 16, and Alexander, 12 - whose twin brother Michael died in the cellar - all have the same mother and father but any similarity ends with their genes.

‘The cellar children couldn’t understand at first why the upstairs children found it difficult to call Elisabeth “Mum”,’ said a clinic worker.


http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/11/article-1161086-03D20417000005DC-650_468x270.jpg Elisabeth's prison: The house in Amstetten, Austria, where Fritzl imprisoned his daughter for 24 years

‘They are polite and kind to the siblings they never knew, but it is like the relationship of a child whose father returns after 20 years at sea; they are strangers.’

As another of their carers put it: ‘They had a life. They went to school. They had friends, they had crushes and they had music lessons, swimming and after-school activities. Then they wake up one day and not only find out their mother has returned, but that they have three other siblings.

‘They have been cut off from all they knew and they know that what they had is gone for ever. Moreover, they know their strict, but not unkind, grandfather still has to stand trial for what he did. They know this situation will last for years and it terrifies them.’

Removed from the school they attended they now go to separate schools to minimise the risk of identification. They have been given new identities and are under the constant watch of teachers aware of their situation.

All the children get on at a superficial level, but there is no telling where this experiment will end.

Happily, those close to the family say they all have a genuine love for, and sympathy with, Elisabeth. It is her aim, as head of this dysfunctional clan, to bind each to the other.

That is her quest. And ultimately, this is her triumph over Josef Fritzl and the degradations he heaped upon them all.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1161086/Fritzl-women-war-Elisabeth-haunted-realisation-mother-cause-24-year-ordeal.html

Just horrifying!!:madranting94dp:

[LiveLaughLuv]

This man is not insane.

The lengths he went to, making sure no one knew what was going on in the basement, shows he knows right from wrong. How well he kept this secret from his wife, one floor above. How could she not know about this torture chamber? I too question that!

Elisabeth and her children have such a long road ahead of them, it's devastating reading what they endured.

I also see how Elisabeth is questioning her mother for allowing him back in that home after his first rape conviction. After that it was full force with this mans torture. I am so glad this diabolic secret came to light. I truly hope he is doesn't go to a hosptial for the crimally insane and does the rest of whatever life he has left, in prison, where he rightfully belongs. :madranting94dp:

May God continue to bless Elisabeth and her children. :give_rose:

[luvmygirls]

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE52E24J20090315

From this link:

Q+A: Austria's Josef Fritzl on trial

[Faith]

Incest trial of Austrian father set to open

1 hour ago

SANKT POELTEN, Austria (AFP) — The trial for the most shocking incest case in recent history opens Monday as Austrian Josef Fritzl goes in the dock for imprisoning and raping his own daughter over 24 years.

The week-long trial was set to begin at 9:30 am (0830 GMT) in room 119 of the courthouse in Sankt Poelten, the regional capital some 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Amstetten, where Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth was held captive.

The media and public will be allowed in the courtroom while the charges are read out but the rest of the proceedings will be conducted behind closed doors, to protect the victims' identities.

Fritzl, 73, is expected to plead guilty to rape, incest, sequestration and grievous assault for holding his daughter Elisabeth captive in a cellar for almost a quarter of a century and fathering seven children with her.

If found guilty, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

However, his lawyer said he will contest a murder charge, which carries a life sentence, for failing to seek medical aid for a newborn who died. Fritzl says the baby was still-born and he burnt the body in a wood-fired boiler in the cellar.

Fritzl also rejects a charge of slavery, used here for the first time in Austria, for treating Elisabeth as "property".

Under Austrian law, sentences are not cumulative and only the highest one is handed out if a defendant is found guilty on several counts.

This will be the first time Fritzl appears in public since his arrest on April 26 last year.

The case broke when the eldest child born by Elisabeth, 19-year-old Kerstin, who had lived her entire life underground with two brothers and her mother, fell severely ill and had to be hospitalised.

The three other children had been brought to live with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie -- their "grandparents" -- at an early age and had no knowledge of their mother and siblings in the cellar.

Neither Elisabeth, 42, nor her children are expected to appear at the trial, which will be presided over by three judges. Their testimonies, 13 hours in total, have been videotaped.

Daily press briefings will be held in the afternoon with updates on the proceedings but no details are expected on the testimonies themselves.

The media will only be allowed back in court for the verdict, which will be decided by an eight-person jury and is expected on Friday.

The prosecution has also requested that Fritzl be placed in a psychiatric institution.

Fritzl, widely described as a tyrant who ruled his family with an iron fist, confessed shortly after his arrest to raping and holding his daughter for 24 years in a narrow cellar with no sunlight, fresh air, heating or hot water.

DNA tests later confirmed he was the father of Elisabeth's six surviving children.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hZ1pHx6Qz-lRcT_cEzF86K4z4pvw

[Roamer]

A psychiatric institution? For 15 years? NO!!! A small cell where he can't stand up, bread and water and no medical care. Give him exactly what he gave Elisabeth and her children for 24 years. :madranting94dp:

[LiveLaughLuv]

Fritzl also rejects a charge of slavery, used here for the first time in Austria, for treating Elisabeth as "property".

Under Austrian law, sentences are not cumulative and only the highest one is handed out if a defendant is found guilty on several counts.

This will be the first time Fritzl appears in public since his arrest on April 26 last year.

The case broke when the eldest child born by Elisabeth, 19-year-old Kerstin, who had lived her entire life underground with two brothers and her mother, fell severely ill and had to be hospitalised.

The three other children had been brought to live with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie -- their "grandparents" -- at an early age and had no knowledge of their mother and siblings in the cellar.

Neither Elisabeth, 42, nor her children are expected to appear at the trial, which will be presided over by three judges. Their testimonies, 13 hours in total, have been videotaped.

Daily press briefings will be held in the afternoon with updates on the proceedings but no details are expected on the testimonies themselves.

The media will only be allowed back in court for the verdict, which will be decided by an eight-person jury and is expected on Friday.

The prosecution has also requested that Fritzl be placed in a psychiatric institution.

Fritzl, widely described as a tyrant who ruled his family with an iron fist, confessed shortly after his arrest to raping and holding his daughter for 24 years in a narrow cellar with no sunlight, fresh air, heating or hot water.

Too bad what Fritzl doesn't agree with, he kept his child (and her children which are his children) as slaves while he commited rape and incest over and over again.

Another bad thing with Austria law they only take the highest sentence to hand down, too bad.

I don't understand why they prosectuition is asking for that psychiatric sentence, he'll be out in no time, unless he dies first! :thud2:

[LiveLaughLuv]

updated 45 minutes ago

Dungeon trial: Fritzl pleads guilty to all charges

NEW: Josef Fritzl changes plea to guilty on all charges in an Austrian court

Austrian accused of keeping daughter in cellar for decades, fathering her 7 children

Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth testified on an 11-hour videotape, played in court at the trial

Fritzl dropped his guard Tuesday, pictured without binder obscuring his face
Next Article in World »


Read VIDEO PHOTOS

ST. POELTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Josef Fritzl, the man accused of keeping his daughter in a cellar for decades and fathering her seven children, changed his plea to guilty to all the charges made against him Wednesday in an Austrian court.


Josef Fritzl is seen without his face covered and surrounded by security guards Tuesday.

1 of 2 more photos » Fritzl had already pleaded guilty to incest and other charges, but previously denied charges of murder and enslavement.

Fritzl told the court he had changed his mind after his daughter Elisabeth gave her video testimony earlier in the week.

Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth had testified on an 11-hour videotape, portions of which were played Monday, and about which Fritzl was asked. The remainder of the tape was played Tuesday, officials said. Watch second day of the Fritzl trial »

The murder charge related to an infant named Michael Fritzl who died soon after birth, allegedly from lack of medical care, State Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek says.

Fritzl told the court Wednesday that he in was in the dungeon when the child died. He said he had noticed the child was breathing heavily but did not realize he was dying.

Fritzl had also previously pleaded "partly guilty" -- an option in Austrian court -- to multiple charges of raping his daughter. A verdict had been expected on Thursday before Fritzl changed his plea.

A neo-natal expert gave evidence Tuesday in relation to the murder charge.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/18/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[LiveLaughLuv]

March 16, 2009
Fritzl trial: Horrific evidence hard to handle
Posted: 1845 GMT
ST. POELTEN, Austria — We knew almost a year ago that we’d be here now: part of a media scrum covering the trial of Josef Fritzl - the so-called “Monster of Amstetten” who allegedly imprisoned his own daughter for 24 years in a dungeon under his home, raped her repeatedly and fathered seven children by her.


Josef Fritzl arrives at court Monday, shielding his face with a blue binder.
One of those children died shortly after it was born and alongside a litany of other charges Fritzl is also accused of its murder. He said in court just now he is not guilty on that count. Not guilty on murder, not guilty on enslavement and only “partly guilty” on the charge of rape. We’re waiting to find out how his lawyer explains that plea.

Only one journalist per news outlet is allowed into the court and then only for select periods. As soon as any sexual details are revealed the journalists have to leave, so now we’re all loitering outside, waiting for the first of a daily series of news conferences that will explain what’s been said in court. And now it’s raining. Luckily through an elaborate collection of bin liners and umbrellas taped atop lampstands, our laptops, gear etc. are safe. But this is just day one. If we’re not allowed into the court again until the verdict, days two, three and four could definitely begin to drag.

There’s an extraordinary band of demonstrators who are keeping us journalists company in front of the courthouse. First it was the Austrian far right party, the NVP, who’d decided to turn up to show how keen they are on protecting children’s rights. Scattered around the pavement are numerous dolls in various states of undress. Some of them left by a “performance artist” who appeared this morning covered with fake blood with dozens of naked dolls attached to him. “Art should be left up to individual interpretation,” he said to me when I asked him what exactly his “performance” was trying to say. In the background boomed his special music mix — loud classical with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” mixed in. Strange indeed.

Perhaps it is better though to be out here. The eight jurors inside have to listen to 11 hours of taped video testimony by Fritzl’s daughter, Elizabeth. Testimony so horrific I for one am glad I don’t have to hear it.

Posted by: CNN Producer, Diana Magnay
Filed under: General
http://inthefield.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/16/fritzl-trial-horrific-evidence-hard-to-handle/

[LiveLaughLuv]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/18/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html?iref=mpstoryview#cnnSTCVideo

Fritzl's daughter testifies 2:09
The daughter of Josef Fritzl testifies against him by video at his trial. CNN's Frederik Pleitgen reports.

• Fritzl daughter testifies in incest case

[LiveLaughLuv]

In the above video, when Fritzl gets into the courtroom, he covers his face with a blue binder. When asked why, he stated he was ashamed.

So, if this man feels embarassed, he is not insane.

I am very glad that Elisabeth did not have to face her monster and the court heard tape recordings of her torture and torment she lived for 24 years...

God Bless Elisabeth and her children.

[Roamer]

I heard on ABC News this morning that he has now changed his plea to guilty.

http://www.abc3340.com/news/stories/0309/604815.html

Austrian incest father pleads guilty to all counts
posted 03/18/09 4:28 am




http://www.acc-tv.com/images/globalnews/joseffritzlaustria0430.jpg







ST. POELTEN, Austria - In a stunning turn of events, an Austrian on trial for imprisoning his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and fathering her seven children pleaded guilty Wednesday to all charges against him - including homicide for the death of one of the captive youngsters. Saying he had a change of heart, Josef Fritzl calmly acknowledged his guilt on the third day of a trial that has drawn media attention from around the world for its shocking allegations.

"I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment," Fritzl, 73, told a panel of judges, referring at one point to what he called "my sick behavior."

Fritzl faces up to life imprisonment on the homicide count, which he initially had contested along with an enslavement charge. Prosecutors also had charged him with rape, forced imprisonment and coercion.




Officials had said earlier that verdicts in the trial could come as early as Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether Fritzl's guilty pleas to all of the counts would speed up that process.

Wearing a mismatched suit and a blue shirt, Fritzl did not hide his face behind a binder as he had done for the last two days when led into the courtroom in St. Poelten, west of Vienna.

On Tuesday, jurors, Fritzl and the rest of the court had viewed videotaped testimony from his daughter Elisabeth, the key witness against Fritzl. Now 42, she was 18 when he allegedly imprisoned her in the cramped, windowless cell he built beneath the family's home in the town of Amstetten.

Fritzl had been charged with homicide in the death of an infant - a male twin born to Elisabeth in April 1996 - who prosecutors say might have survived with proper medical care had he and his mother not been locked in the basement.

Police say DNA tests prove Fritzl is the biological father of all six of Elisabeth's surviving children, three of whom never saw daylight until the crime came to light 11 months ago.

Three of the children grew up underground in Amstetten and the other three were brought upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently believed they had been abandoned.

Elisabeth and her six surviving children, who range in age from 6 to 20, have spent months recovering from their ordeal in a psychiatric clinic and at a secret location.

The Associated Press normally withholds the names of victims of sexual assault. In this case, the withholding of Elisabeth's name by the AP became impractical when her name and her father's were announced publicly by police and details about them became the subject of publicity both in their home country and around the world.

---

Associated Press Writer William J. Kole in Vienna contributed to this report.

Written By VERONIKA OLEKSYN

[LiveLaughLuv]

From the link Roamer provided:
"I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment," Fritzl, 73, told a panel of judges, referring at one point to what he called "my sick behavior."

Fritzl faces up to life imprisonment on the homicide count, which he initially had contested along with an enslavement charge. Prosecutors also had charged him with rape, forced imprisonment and coercion.

Glad this monster had a change of heart. Now that he pled guilty to the homicide charge, he can and will get life in prison...

[grammybears]

I am glad he changed his plea. Not one member in this family deserved to deal with what this monster created.
I also read on another site that Elizabeth had shown up for the trial. She slipped in a side door, sat in the back of the courtroom and slipped back out the side door.
Between the taped testimony and possibly seeing Elizabeth in court may have triggered his change in plea.
No matter what I hope he gets life in prison to never be free again.
My prayers and hopes go out to Elizabeth and her family.

jmoo

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I just heard on HLN, 30 minutes ago Fritzl was found guilty. He will spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric facility...looking for an article..

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updated 1 minute ago


Fritzl jailed for life in dungeon incest case

Josef Fritzl jailed for life after he was convicted of all charges including murder

Austrian kept daughter in cellar for decades, fathered her 7 children

Fritzl, 73, had pleaded guilty Wednesday to all six charges he faced

ST. POELTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Austrian Josef Fritzl was jailed for life Thursday after he was convicted of murder, incest, rape, enslavement and the false imprisonment of his daughter in an underground dungeon for 24 years.


Josef Fritzl arrives for sentencing at the courthouse in St. Poelten on Thursday.

Fritzl, dressed in a gray suit, blue shirt and dark tie, stared blankly ahead and showed no emotion as the eight jurors went through each of the six charges, juror by juror. Their verdict was unanimous.

Fritzl will serve his sentence at a prison for abnormal offenders, officials said.

The 73-year-old on Wednesday changed his plea on the charges of murder and enslavement to guilty.

Fritzl told the court at St. Poelten, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Amstetten, where he and his family lived, he was probably responsible for the death of one of the seven children he fathered with his daughter Elisabeth. He said he changed his mind after hearing Elisabeth's videotaped testimony.

Before sentencing on Thursday he apologized to the court in an emotional outburst, saying: "I am deeply sorry with all my heart for what I have done, but I cannot go back and change it."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/19/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

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The charges Fritzl faced were:

• Murder: The infant who died in 1996 died from a lack of medical care, the state prosecutor said.

• Involvement in slave trade: From 1984 until 2008, prosecutors allege, Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a dungeon, abused her sexually and treated her as if she were his personal property -- in a situation similar to slavery. If he is convicted, the sentence could range from 10 to 20 years in prison.

• Rape: Between August 30, 1984, and June 30, 1989, Fritzl "regularly sexually abused Elisabeth," according to the prosecutor. The sentence could be from five to 15 years in prison.

• Incest: Parallel to the rape charge. It carries a sentence of up to one year.


• Withdrawal of liberty: Three of the children Fritzl had with Elisabeth were illegally held captive in a dungeon with no daylight or fresh air, according to prosecutors. That charge carries a sentence of one to 10 years.

• Assault: Between August 28, 1984, and April 26, 2006, Fritzl repeatedly threatened Elisabeth and their three children with gas and booby traps as warnings in case they tried to escape, authorities allege. The sentence would range from six months to five years.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/19/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html?eref=rss_topstories