The Fritzl case emerged in late April 2008 when a 42-year-old Austrian woman, Elisabeth Fritzl, stated to police that she had been sexually abused, raped, and physically assaulted by her father, Josef Fritzl, since 1977 and had been imprisoned by him for 24 years, since 1984.[1] Her father had held her captive in a small, soundproof and windowless cellar in the basement of the family home in the town of Amstetten in Lower Austria, claiming she had run away and joined a cult. During her captivity, she had given birth to a total of seven children, all of whom had been fathered by Josef. Three of them had been imprisoned along with their mother for the whole of their lives: daughter Kerstin, aged 19; and sons Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5. Of the other children, three had been raised by Josef and his wife Rosemarie in the upstairs home. He engineered the appearance of these children as foundlings discovered outside their house, giving the impression that their mother, Elisabeth, had abandoned them: Lisa at nine months in 1993, Monika at ten months in 1994, and Alexander at fifteen months in 1997. Alexander's twin, Michael, died three days after birth. When the eldest daughter, Kerstin, became seriously ill in spring 2008, her father allowed her to be taken to a hospital, which triggered a series of events that eventually led to discovery. The case is expected to go to trial in March 2009.
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Josef Fritzl was born on 9 April 1935 in Amstetten, Austria. In 1956, at the age of 21, he married Rosemarie, 17, with whom he had seven children: two sons and five daughters including Elisabeth, who was born in 1966.
Fritzl grew up as a single child without a father, who had left the family when Fritzl was four. He described his mother as “the best woman in the world” and “as strict as it was necessary”.[2]. Later Fritzl expressed a negative opinion of his mother. He said that "She used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It left me feeling totally humiliated and weak. My mother was a servant and she used to work hard all her life, I never had a kiss from her, I was never cuddled although I wanted it - I wanted that she would be good to me." In October 2008 Fritzl also claimed that he had locked his mother to her room without sunlight.[3]
After leaving an HTL technical college with a qualification in electrical engineering, he started work at a steel company in Linz. In 1967, he served a sentence for raping a woman. After prison, he obtained a job in a construction material firm in Amstetten where he worked from 1969-1971. Later, he became a technical equipment salesman, travelling throughout Austria. In 1972 he purchased a guesthouse and an adjacent campsite at Lake Mondsee, which he ran, together with his wife, until 1996. In addition to the apartment house in Amstetten, where he lived, he owned several other properties which he rented out. He was arrested in April 2008, aged 73, on suspicion of serious crimes against family members.[4][5][6][7]
In a recent report given by psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner, Fritzl's mother was described as unpredictable and abusive. Fritzl referred to himself as an "alibi" child, meaning that his mother only gave birth to him to prove that she was not barren and could produce children. Fritzl claims that his pathological behavior is innate. He admits that he planned to lock his daughter up during his prison stint for the earlier rape conviction so that he could contain and express his evil side. He said, "I was born to rape, and I held myself back for a relatively long time. I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter"[8].
Fritzl has been diagnosed as having severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder. His psychiatrist, Adelheid Kastner, recommended that Fritzl receive psychiatric care for the rest of his life.[9]
Fritzl was convicted for raping a 24-year old woman in the city of Linz in 1967 and sentenced to 18 months in jail. According to an annual report for 1967 and a press release of the same year, he was also named as a suspect in a case of attempted rape and known for indecent exposure. More than 25 years later, when he applied for the adoption of one child and foster care for two others, of children that his daughter Elisabeth had given birth to, his criminal record was not made available to local social service authorities since it had been expunged in accordance with Austrian law.[10]
Fritzl is suspected of having begun abusing his daughter Elisabeth in 1977 when she was 11 years old. At age 15, Elisabeth started a training course to become a waitress. In January 1983, she ran away from home and, together with a friend from work, went into hiding in Vienna. She was found by police within three weeks and returned to her parents. She rejoined her training course and, upon completion in summer 1984, was offered a job in the city of Linz.
On 24 August 1984, Fritzl allegedly lured her into the basement of the family home by asking her to help him carry a door.[11] According to Elisabeth's statement, he drugged her, handcuffed her, and kept her imprisoned in a hidden part of the basement until her release in 2008.
The day after Elisabeth's disappearance, her mother Rosemarie filed a missing person report. The following month, a letter in Elisabeth's handwriting appeared, postmarked in the town of Braunau. It stated that she was staying with a friend and was tired of living with her family, warning her parents not to look for her or she would leave the country.[11]
Over the course of the following 24 years, Fritzl apparently visited her in the hidden cellar on average once every three days to bring food and other supplies. At times in order to punish them, Fritzl shut off the lights to the basement or refused to deliver food for several days at a time [12]. After his arrest in 2008, he admitted that he repeatedly had sex with her and against her will. Elisabeth gave birth to seven children during her years in captivity, and did not once see daylight.[11] One child died shortly after birth, and three children - Lisa, Monika and Alexander - were removed from the cellar as infants to live with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie. They adopted Lisa and became Monika's and Alexander's foster carers, with the knowledge of local social services authorities. Officials said that Fritzl "very plausibly" explained how three of his infant grandchildren had appeared on his doorstep. The family received regular visits from social workers, who did not hear complaints or notice anything to arouse their suspicions.[5]
Following the birth of the fourth child in 1994, Fritzl enlarged the prison for Elisabeth and her children from 35 m² (380 sq ft) to 55 m² (600 sq ft). The captives had a television, radio, and video cassette player at their disposal. Food could be stored in a refrigerator and cooked or heated on hot plates. [13] Elisabeth taught the children to read and write.
Fritzl told Elisabeth and the three children Kerstin, Stefan and Felix who remained in the cellar that they would be gassed if they tried to escape; investigators have concluded that the threat was empty and was primarily designed to frighten the captives as no actual gas pipes were found leading into the basement.[14] Fritzl stated after his arrest, that it was sufficient to tell them not to meddle with the cellar door or otherwise they would receive an electrical shock and die.[2]
According to his sister-in-law Christine, Fritzl would go into the basement every morning at 9 a.m., apparently to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms. Often he stayed down there for the night — his wife was not even allowed to bring him coffee. A tenant, who rented a ground floor room in the Fritzl house for 12 years, said he heard noises coming from the basement but Fritzl passed it off as noise emanating from the gas heating system.[15]
On 19 April 2008, Kerstin, Elisabeth's eldest daughter, fell unconscious, and Fritzl agreed to seek medical attention. Elisabeth helped Fritzl carry Kerstin out of the dungeon and saw the outside world for the first time in 24 years. She was then made to return to the dungeon where she would remain for a final week.[11] Kerstin was taken by ambulance to a local hospital (Landesklinikum Amstetten) and admitted in serious condition with life-threatening kidney failure. Fritzl later arrived at the hospital claiming to have found a note written by Kerstin's mother. He discussed Kerstin's condition and the note with Dr. Albert Reiter.[16] Medical staff found aspects of the story to be puzzling and alerted the police on 21 April, who then broadcast an appeal via public media for the missing mother to come forward and provide additional information about Kerstin's medical history.[17][18] The police then reopened the case file on a missing Elisabeth. Fritzl repeated his story about Elisabeth being in a cult, and presented what, he claimed, was the "most recent letter" from her, dated January 2008. It was posted from the city of Kematen, in order to create a false lead.[11]
The police contacted Manfred Wohlfahrt, a church officer responsible for collecting information on religious cults. Wohlfahrt raised doubts about the existence of the cult. He noted that Elisabeth's letters seemed dictated and oddly written. The news covered some of these issues and Elisabeth watched the story, as it progressed, on the television in the cellar.[11] She pleaded with her father to be taken to the hospital. On 26 April, Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs. Fritzl told his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come back after a 24 year absence.[17] Governor Lenze told ORF that Fritzl had telephoned him and thanked him and the social services for looking after his family during his granddaughter Kerstin's illness.[5] Fritzl and his daughter Elisabeth went to the hospital where Kerstin was being treated on 26 April 2008. Following a confidential tipoff by Dr. Albert Reiter reporting that the two were at the hospital, the police detained Elisabeth and her father on the hospital grounds and took them to a police station for further interrogation.
Elisabeth did not provide police with more details until they were able to reassure her that she would be safe from her father and her children would be looked after. In the space of two hours, she told the story of her 24 years in captivity.[11] Shortly after midnight, police officers completed the three pages of minutes of the interrogation. Fritzl was arrested on suspicion of serious crimes against family members, facing possible charges of false imprisonment, rape, manslaughter by negligence, and incest. During the night of 26-27 April, Elisabeth, her five children and her mother Rosemarie were taken into care.
Fritzl confessed on 28 April to having imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and having fathered her seven children. Police said Fritzl had told investigators how to enter the basement prison through a small hidden door, opened by a secret keyless entry code. Fritzl's wife, Rosemarie, had, apparently, been unaware of what had been happening to Elisabeth. It is believed she assumed, due to the letters in her handwriting, that her daughter had run away from home to join a religious cult.[17][19]
On 29 April, it was announced that DNA evidence had confirmed that Fritzl is indeed the biological father of all of his daughter's children.[20]
Fritzl's defence lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said that, although the DNA test proved incest, evidence was still needed for the other allegations: "The allegations of rape and enslaving people have not been proved. We need to reassess the confessions made so far."[21]
In their daily press conference, Austrian police said on 1 May that Fritzl had forced Elisabeth to write a letter the previous year indicating that he may have been planning to release her and the children. In it, she wrote that she wanted to come home but "it's not possible yet".[22] Police believe Fritzl intended to pretend he had rescued his daughter from her fictional cult.[23] In the same press conference, police spokesman Franz Polzer said the investigation would probably last a few months, as police plan on interviewing at least 100 people who had lived as tenants in the Fritzl apartment building in the previous 24 years.[24]
Investigators have only been allowed to work in the cellar for an hour at any given time, due to the lack of oxygen.[25]
The Fritzl property in Amstetten consists of a building dating from around 1890 and a newer building, which was added after 1978, when Fritzl applied for a building permit for an "extension with basement". In 1983, building inspectors visited the site and verified that the new extension had been built according to the dimensions specified on the building permit. Unknown to them, however, Fritzl had illegally created additional room by excavating space for a much larger basement and concealed it by erecting walls. Around 1981 or 1982, according to his statement[2], he started to turn this hidden cellar into a prison cell and installed a washbasin, a toilet, a bed, a hot plate and a refrigerator. In 1993, he added more space by creating a passageway to a pre-existing basement area under the old part of the property, which nobody knew of apart from him.
The concealed cellar was soundproofed and consisted of a 5 m (5.5 yd) long corridor, a storage area, and three small open cells, connected by narrow passageways: a basic cooking area and bathroom facilities, followed by two sleeping areas, which were equipped with two beds each. It covered an area of approximately 55 m² (600 sq ft). The ceilings were no more than 1.70 m (5.6 ft) high.
The hidden cellar had two access points: a hinged door that weighed 500 kg (1,100 lb) which is thought to have become unusable over the years because of its weight, and a metal door, reinforced with concrete and on steel rails that weighed 300 kg (650 lb) and measured 1 m (3.3 ft) high and 60 cm (2 ft) wide. It was located behind a shelf in Fritzl's basement workshop, protected by an electronic code known only to Fritzl, which he entered using a remote control unit. In order to reach this door, five locking basement rooms had to be crossed. To get to the area where Elisabeth and her children were held, eight doors in total would need to be unlocked, of which two doors were additionally secured by electronic locking devices.[26][4][27]
The sequence of key events in this case is as follows:[11][28][17]
| Date | Key event |
|---|---|
| 28 August 1984 | Fritzl lured his 18 year old daughter, Elisabeth, into the basement and imprisoned her. |
| 1989 | The first child, Kerstin, was born, who was to live in the cellar until 2008. |
| 1990 | Stefan was born. He, too, was to stay in the cellar until 2008. |
| 1992 | Lisa was born. In May 1993, when she was nine months old, she was discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be cared for. |
| December 1994 | The fourth child, ten-month-old Monika, was found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call was made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asked Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl was able to use a recording of Elisabeth's voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew of their new and unlisted phone number. |
| May 1996 | Elisabeth gave birth to twins. One died after three days and Fritzl is alleged to have removed his body from the cellar and cremated it. The surviving twin, Alexander, was taken upstairs when he was 15 months old. He was "discovered" in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters. |
| December 2002 | Felix was born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife was not able to look after another child. |
| 19 April 2008 | Fritzl arranged for the critically ill 19 year old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital. |
| 26 April 2008 | During the evening, Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs, informing his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come home after a 24-year absence. Later that evening, after an anonymous tipoff during a visit to the hospital, Fritzl and Elisabeth were taken into police custody where she revealed her decades-long imprisonment during questioning. |
| 13 November 2008 | Austrian authorities decide that Fritzl will stand trial for the murder of Michael, Alex's twin who died shortly after birth. |
| 14 November 2008 | It emerged from the leaked murder investigation that Josef Fritzl fathered an eighth child with his captive daughter Elisabeth, who in November 1986 miscarried in the 10th week of pregnancy.[29] |
After being taken into care, Elisabeth, five of her children and her mother were housed in a local clinic where they were shielded from the outside environment and received medical and psychological treatment. A local government official speculated on the need to give members of the Fritzl family new identities but emphasised that it was a choice for the family to make.[24]
Owing to their lack of exposure to sunlight, the former captives are extremely pale and cannot endure natural light. They are reported to have vitamin D deficiencies and are anaemic. They are likely to have underdeveloped immune systems, although it is yet to be determined whether their immune systems have suffered permanent damage.
Two weeks after the start of the treatment, the clinic head, Berthold Kepplinger, said that the family members needed to stay at the clinic for several more months, and that Elisabeth and the two children held captive in the cellar required further therapy to help them adjust to the light after years in semi-darkness. They also needed treatment to help them cope with all the extra space that they now had in which to move about.[30]
On May 14 2008, a handmade poster created by Elisabeth, her children and her mother at the therapy facility was displayed in the Amstetten town center. The message thanked local people for their support. "We, the whole family, would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for sympathy at our fate," they wrote in their message. "Your compassion is helping us greatly to overcome these difficult times, and it shows us there also are good and honest people here who really care for us. We hope that soon there will be a time where we can find our way back into a normal life."[30]
Kerstin was reunited with her family on June 8 2008, having been woken from her artificially induced coma at another hospital. Doctors say she will make a full recovery.[31]
On August 21 2008, it was revealed that Elisabeth and her children were more traumatized than previously thought. Kerstin would tear at her hair in clumps, and was reported to have shredded her dresses before stuffing them in the toilet. Stefan is unable to walk properly, due to his height of 172.7 cm, forced to stoop in the 167.6 cm-high cellar. It has also been revealed that normal everyday occurences, such as the dimming of lights or the closing of doors, plunges Kerstin into anxiety and panic attacks. The other three of Elisabeth's children who were raised with their father-grandfather are being treated for anger and resentment at the events.[32]
When initially arrested, Fritzl claimed that his behavior toward his daughter did not constitute rape but was consensual.
Defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer forwarded extracts from the minutes of his talks with his client Josef Fritzl to the Austrian weekly News for publication.[33] According to these statements, Fritzl said that he "always knew during the whole 24 years that what I was doing was not right, that I must have been crazy to do such a thing", yet "it became a normal occurrence to lead a second life in the basement of my house".[2] Regarding his treatment of the family he had with his wife, he stated "I am not the beast the media make me to be". Regarding his treatment of Elisabeth and her children in the cellar, he explained that he brought flowers for Elisabeth and books and cuddly toys for the children into the "bunker", as he called it, and often watched videos with the children and ate meals with Elisabeth and the children. Fritzl decided to imprison Elisabeth after she "did not adhere to any rules any more" when she became a teenager. "That is why I had to do something; I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world". He suggested that the emphasis on discipline in the Nazi era, during which he grew up, might have influenced his views about decency and good behaviour. The chief editors of News Magazin noted in their editorial that they expected Fritzl's statement to form the basis of the defence strategy of his "top lawyer" Mayer. Critics have said his statement may be a ploy to prepare an insanity defence.[34]
Recent reports have brought to light Fritzl's premeditated plan to lock his daughter up not for discipline but for his own gratification [35].
Elisabeth Fritzl gave a videotaped testimony before Austrian prosecutors and investigators on July 11, 2008. Christine Burkheiser, a state prosecutor, and Josef’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, in an adjoining room took part in the process. The accused, Josef Fritzl, was not present but remained in St. Poelten jail. The testimony, which was not made public, will be presented at Josef Fritzl's trial which is expected to take place in March 2009.[36]
Judge Andrea Humer, who will preside over the trial, stated medical experts reported Elisabeth Fritzl and her children in "relatively good health". Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Josef Fritzl, 73, may be charged with murder or manslaughter, rape and kidnapping (false imprisonment).
Lawyer Christoph Herbst who represents Elisabeth Fritzl and family, said "fortunately, everything is going very well," as they spend time to answer the hundreds of letters sent worldwide. Felix, 5, brought up underground, has been learning to swim. One of Elisabeth's daughters, aged 15, attended a 4-day summer camp organized by firefighters with 4,000 other young campers. Other family members made day trips, including swimming outings, on which care was taken to keep them out of reach of the paparazzi and to protect their privacy.[37]
On November 13, 2008, authorities in Austria released an indictment against Josef Fritzl. He will stand trial for the murder of the infant Michael, who died shortly after birth.[38], and faces between 10 years and life imprisonment. He has also been charged with rape, incest, kidnap, false imprisonment and slavery, which carry a maximum 20-year term. [1]
Describing the "abominable events" as linked to one individual case, Austria's Chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, said he planned to launch an image campaign to restore the country's reputation abroad.[39]