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.

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[BillyBoy]

I was wondering why the heck he'd let three of his kids live a normal life at home and lock the other three in a cage forever. This news article says he decided on the basis of which infants were "crybabies". Wow. Words fail me. What a sick puppy. No amount of punishment will ever be enough to give this guy the suffering he inflicted on others.

I really wonder how all seven of his kids are doing. These articles say nothing except they are receiving "counciling" and "psychiatric care". Can you imagine what it must be like for them -- even for the ones with the "normal" lives to learn that they have a mother and three siblings they were never knew about and that their grandfather is also their father? Poor, poor kids.

:*-(

[knittnmom]

Yes, as you said earlier, these victims all need prayer. I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now.