Dad confesses to holding daughter captive 24 years

AP ^ | 28-Apr-08 | VERONIKA OLEKSYN and WILLIAM J. KOLE

[Jay777]

AMSTETTEN, Austria - A man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children with her including three who "never saw sunlight," police said Monday.

Josef Fritzl, now 73, also told investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died shortly after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

"We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime," Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.

The daughter, who is now 42, had been missing since 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip. She and the children have been placed under psychiatric care in an undisclosed location.

Authorities on Monday released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping from the cell, which was made of solid reinforced concrete.

See Video Report and Blog Reactions Here.

[Dante3]

What a monster!

There have been a number of stories of people being kept captive for long periods of time. This must be a record.

[Brian S. Fitzgerald]

His genes should be checked for any commonality to Hitler.

[CarrotAndStick]

Austrian confesses to abusing daughter
28 Apr 2008, 1834 hrs IST,AFP

Print			Write to Editor

Josef Fritzl (AFP Photo)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMSTETTEN, AUSTRIA: An elderly Austrian, portrayed by media as a "monster", confessed on Monday to imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children, prosecutors said.

Josef Fritzl, 73, "has admitted building the dungeon and to holding his daughter and three children there," prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek said.

Fritzl also admitted incest "but insisted there was no force involved," said Sedlacek. One of the children died at an early age.

Fritzl was scheduled to be brought before an investigating magistrate on Monday evening and face several more days of questioning over the case which has shocked Austria.

Fourteen police meanwhile scoured the three cramped underground rooms in the family house in Amstetten, eastern Austria, where Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were held prisoner.

She has alleged she was drugged by her father in August 1984 and had been his prisoner ever since. All seven children were born in the "dungeon".

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

The rooms, measuring "50-60 square metres in all" and with a ceiling just 1.70 metres (5.5 feet) high were "furnished like a flat", Sedlacek said.

Lower Austria police chief, Franz Polzer, said there was "a wide range of questions that still need answering" such as how Fritzl supplied the woman and children with food, how the babies were born and cared for in such cramped conditions, and how he could have incarcerated his victims for so long without his wife knowing.

It is the latest in a series of horror abuse cases to have stunned Austrians and newspapers asked how authorities could again have failed to detect the woman.

The case came to light when one of the children, now 19, was admitted to hospital in critical condition.

Doctors looking for background information stepped up efforts to find the mother. The whole horrific story came to light when Fritzl allowed them to establish contact with his daughter.

The Oesterreich tabloid featured a six-page special report on what it termed as "the worst crime of all time." "How can this happen here?" asked Die Presse .

"Amstetten is in a state of shock," wrote mayor Herbert Katzengruber on the town's website. "Our thoughts and feelings are with the victims."

DNA tests are being carried out to establish if Fritzl is the father of the six surviving children. The seventh child, a twin, is believed to have died shortly after birth and the body subsequently burned, police said.

The Kronen-Zeitung tabloid portrayed Fritzl as a keen fisherman, popular among neighbours and locals, but a "monster, a brutal tyrant" in the cellar of his own home.

He legally adopted two of the boys and one girl, allegedly telling his wife, Rosemarie, and local authorities that three babies had been left by Elisabeth on their doorstep, in different years.

Each delivery was accompanied by a letter purportedly signed by Elisabeth Fritzl saying she could not support the child because she already had others to care for.

The trio went to school as normal, seemingly unaware that their mother and three other siblings (a girl of 19, and boys at 18 and five) were trapped underground.

Neither neighbours nor social services appear to have had any inkling, either.

"They had a swimming pool in the garden, we would hear them laughing the three of them," said one neighbour.

Another backed up the story of the babies on the doorstep, adding: "(Rosemarie) always looked after the kids so well, taking them to school. We said 'it's incredible what she manages to do at her age'."

Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her mother knew nothing about the sexual abuse she had endured since the age of 11, some seven years before she was locked away.

Austria's most notable prior case was that of Natascha Kampusch, locked up by a man in the basement of a house for eight years before she escaped.

Kampusch was 10 when Wolfgang Priklopil abducted her on her way to school in 1998. The 44-year-old kidnapper killed himself hours after she fled, throwing himself under a train.

Three young girls were also locked up for seven years by their mentally ill mother near Linz.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Austrian_admits_abusing_daughter/articleshow/2991777.cms

 

[ClearCase_guy]

Kaspar Hauser, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[Jeff Head]

This guy must have been one of Hitler’s close, younger cousins. How utterly sickening and disgusting.

[Charlespg]

Let me guess his first name is Adolf.
/s

[netmilsmom]

>>Sunday’s developments recalled another case that shocked Austrians in the summer of 2006, when a young woman escaped after being largely confined to a tiny underground dungeon in a quiet Vienna suburb for more than eight years.

Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train just hours after her dramatic escape.

Kampusch, now 20, issued a statement Monday saying she wanted to contact Elisabeth to offer emotional and financial help. <<

God Bless the both of them and the children.

[JamesP81]

WTF!?!

[knittnmom]

And her mother didn’t notice when she disappeared?? Very wierd.

[Politicalmom]

All those who were saying that she could have escaped and she must have been there of her own free will since she didn’t should be ASHAMED of themselves.

[Politicalmom]

The “father” produced a note saying she was leaving and not to look for her.

[kellynla]

Well Satan is certainly “alive & well.”

[WhatNot]

A true sick twisted freak, death by impaling would be a compassionate way to execute him..

[knittnmom]

Still wierd. If my daughter disappeared and left a note saying not to look for her, I’d be contacting the closest tracking school to start looking.

[Politicalmom]

What if your husband told you he had a search going?

I mean, I don’t think this creep would choose to marry someone with too much gumption.

[knittnmom]

I mean, I don’t think this creep would choose to marry someone with too much gumption.

You've got me on that one. I suppose it's possible he had her pretty well intimidated, as well.

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[top 2 toe red]

...and where in the heck did she think the three children came from that were living upstairs with them?!?!? Hmmmmm...

[Max7]

Beyond belief. Evil Evil EVIL. Lock him up FOREVER (if that’s the best they can do in Austria) and throw that key in the ocean, never to be found. EVIL.