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The Fritzl case emerged in April 2008 when a 42-year-old woman, Elisabeth Fritzl (born April 6, 1966), stated to police in the town of Amstetten, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years in a concealed corridor part of the basement area of the large family house by her father, Josef Fritzl (born April 9, 1935), and that Fritzl had physically assaulted, sexually abused, and raped her numerous times during her imprisonment. The abuse by her father resulted in the birth of seven children and one miscarriage.

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Elisabeth Fritzl's confinement

Three of the children were imprisoned along with their mother Elisabeth for the whole of their lives: daughter Kerstin, aged 19, and sons Stefan, 18, and Felix, 5. One child, Michael, died of respiratory problems three days after birth, having been deprived of all medical help; his body was incinerated by Josef Fritzl on his property. The three other children were raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in the upstairs home. Fritzl presented the appearance of these children as foundlings discovered outside his house: Lisa at nine months in 1993, Monika at ten months in 1994, and Alexander at 15 months in 1997. When the eldest daughter, Kerstin, became seriously ill, Josef acceded to Elisabeth's pleas to take her to a hospital, triggering a series of events that eventually led to their discovery.

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Case history

Josef Fritzl was born on April 9, 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. He reportedly began abusing Elisabeth in 1977 when she was 11 years old.

After completing compulsory education 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 mid-1984, was offered a job in the nearby city of Linz.

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After Elisabeth's disappearance, her mother filed a missing persons report. Almost a month later, her father handed over a letter to the police, the first of several that Elisabeth was forced to write while in captivity. The letter was postmarked 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. Her father told police that she had most likely joined a religious sect.

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Over the course of the following 24 years, Fritzl visited her in the hidden cellar every three days on average, to bring food and other supplies. After his arrest, he admitted that he repeatedly had sexual intercourse with his daughter and had done so against her will.

Elisabeth gave birth to seven children during her captivity. One child died shortly after birth, and three – Lisa, Monika and Alexander – were removed from the cellar as infants to live with Fritzl and his wife. The Fritzls became the three children's foster parents 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.

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Fritzl told Elisabeth and the three children (Kerstin, Stefan, and Felix) who remained in the cellar they would be gassed if they tried to escape. Investigators concluded this was an empty threat to frighten the captives, as there was no gas supply to the basement. Fritzl stated after his arrest that it was sufficient to tell them they would receive an electric shock and die if they meddled with the cellar door.

According to his sister-in-law Christine, Fritzl went into the basement every morning at 9 o'clock, ostensibly to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms. Often he stayed down there for the night - his wife was not allowed to bring him coffee. A tenant, who rented a ground floor room in the house for 12 years, said he heard noises from the basement but Fritzl said it was the gas heating system.

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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 on the cellar television. She pleaded with her father to be taken to the hospital. On April 26, 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. 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. Fritzl and Elisabeth went to the hospital where Kerstin was being treated on April 26, 2008. Following a tip-off from Dr. Albert Reiter, that Fritzl and Elisabeth were at the hospital, the police detained them on the hospital grounds and took them to a police station for questioning.

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Josef Fritzl confessed on April 28, 2008 to having imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and having fathered her seven children. Police said Fritzl 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 been unaware of what had been happening to Elisabeth.

On April 29, 2008, it was announced that DNA evidence confirmed Fritzl as the biological father of his daughter's children.

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 proven. We need to reassess the confessions made so far."

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Dungeon

The Fritzl property in Amstetten is 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. Fritzl had illegally enlarged the room by excavating space for a much larger basement, concealed by walls. Around 1981 or 1982, according to his statement, 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 1983, he added more space by creating a passageway to a pre-existing basement area under the old part of the property, of which only he knew.

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Key events

The key events, in this case, are as follows:

Date   Key event

1977   Fritzl begins sexually abusing his 11-year-old daughter, Elisabeth.

1981 to 1982   Fritzl begins to turn the hidden cellar into a prison cell.

August 29, 1984   Fritzl lures Elisabeth, now 18 years old, into the basement and imprisons her.

November 1986   Elisabeth has a miscarriage in the 10th week of pregnancy.

1989   The first child, Kerstin, is born, and lives in the cellar until 2008.

1990   Stefan is born. He, too, stays in the cellar until 2008.

1992   Lisa is born. In May 1993, when she is nine months old, she is discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be looked after.

February 1994   The fourth child, Monika, is born.

1994   After repeated requests by Elisabeth, Fritzl allows the enlargement of the prison. Elisabeth and her children were put to work for years digging out soil with their hands. The prison was enlarged from 35 m² (380 sq ft) to 55 m² (600 sq ft).

December 1994   Ten-month-old Monika is found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call is made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asks Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl used a recording of Elisabeth's voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew their new and unlisted phone number.

May 1996   Elisabeth gives birth to twin boys. One dies after three days; Fritzl removes his body from the cellar and cremates him. The surviving twin, Alexander, is taken upstairs when he is 15 months old. He is "discovered" in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters.

December 2002   Felix is born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife could not look after another child.

April 19, 2008   Fritzl arranges for the critically ill 19-year-old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital.

April 26, 2008   During the evening, Fritzl releases 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 are taken into police custody where she reveals her decades-long imprisonment during questioning.

March 14, 2009   After a 4 day trial in the town of St. Pölten, Fritzl pleads guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son/grandson, Michael, as well as the enslavement, incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment of his daughter, Elisabeth, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

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In May 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."

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In late July 2008, it emerged that Elisabeth Fritzl ordered her mother Rosemarie out of the villa they have been sharing in a secret location set up for them by a psychiatric clinic.

Elisabeth Fritzl was upset about "the huge issue of Rosemarie's passiveness during Elisabeth's upbringing — a tortured time when, she says, her father Josef began abusing her when she was just 11 years old."

In March 2009, Elisabeth and her children were forced to move out of the family's hide-away home and returned to the psychiatric clinic where medical staff had started trying to heal the family and unite the upstairs and downstairs siblings during the previous year. She was reported to be distraught and close to a breakdown after a British paparazzo had burst into her kitchen and started taking photographs.

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Josef

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After completing his education at an HTL Technical College with a qualification in electrical engineering, he obtained a job at Voestalpine in Linz. In 1956, at the age of 21, he married Rosemarie, 17, with whom he had two sons and five daughters.

In 1967, he broke into the home of a nurse while her husband was away and raped her while holding a knife to her throat, threatening to kill her if she screamed. He also attempted to rape a 21-year-old woman that same year, but she managed to escape. Fritzl was arrested and served an eighteen-month prison sentence. After his release, he obtained a job in a construction material firm in Amstetten where he worked from 1969–1971. Later, he became a technical equipment salesman, traveling throughout Austria.

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Criminal record

Josef 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 to whom his daughter Elisabeth had given birth, his criminal record was not made available to local social service authorities since it had been expunged in accordance with Austrian law.

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Self-portrayal and psychiatric assessment

After his arrest, Josef Fritzl claimed that his behaviour toward his daughter did not constitute rape but was consensual. His defense lawyer Rudolf Mayer forwarded extracts from the minutes of his talks with his client to the Austrian weekly News for publication. 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."

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Reflecting on his childhood, Fritzl initially described his mother as "the best woman in the world" and "as strict as it was necessary". Later, he expressed a negative opinion of his mother and claimed 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 her to be good to me." He also claimed that she called him "a Satan, a criminal, a no-good", that he "had a horrible fear of her". In 1959, after Fritzl had married and bought his house, his mother moved in with them. Over time, their roles reversed, and his mother came to fear him. Eventually, he also admitted he had later locked his mother in the attic and bricked up her window after telling neighbors that she died, and kept her locked up until her death in 1980. It is unknown how long Fritzl kept his mother locked up in his attic, but newspapers have speculated that it may have been up to 20 years.

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this is way, way worse than the monster castro of cleveland.  kaluod.

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Anyway, let's continue with our revisitation...

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