Austrian Man Locks Daughter In Basement

[Oh_My_Goth]

WOW!!!!!

This is some messed up stuff.....

Check Out This Shit

[Azeuron]

that is seriously effed up!!!!

[Rev.Reverence]

He could get UPTO 15 years...that's it?

...holly shit...

[Lillylu29]

wow ......them poor kids

[TygerLili]

What a sicko!

And another article I saw on this says his wife claims she didn't know anything about it? How's that now?

[tanuki1985]

I don't understand why some children were allowed into the real world while others were kept in the cellar. The girl was already 18 when she was taken into the cellar, so why didn't she try to escape since she had knowledge of the "outside world?" Where did they shit? He brought food down to them every day or something? The wife never saw them -- she didn't go into the cellar for 24 frickin' years?

I'm not saying that I do't believe this horrifying story, I'm just saying that some details don't make a whole lotta sense. :(

[Jadis]

I read this story this morning and was disgusted. That's just horrible. I sometimes wonder how people like this live with themselves??? And out of the 6 living children ... why did 3 of them have to stay in the basement?? ... I agree that doesn't make any sense ... but the entire story is sick and twisted.

[wingdazrael]

Yeah, this is really messed up. The story right now has alot of holes in it. I'm sure more details are going to come out in the next few days and weeks.

[Onyx]

I don't understand why some children were allowed into the real world while others were kept in the cellar. The girl was already 18 when she was taken into the cellar, so why didn't she try to escape since she had knowledge of the "outside world?" Where did they shit? He brought food down to them every day or something? The wife never saw them -- she didn't go into the cellar for 24 frickin' years?

I'm not saying that I do't believe this horrifying story, I'm just saying that some details don't make a whole lotta sense. :(

This is really the most screwed up mess I have ever read about. Man. He really planned this thing out to the last detail.

He was an electrician so he wired the thing up with an electronic door, told her it was set to explode if she tried to escape and only he knew the code. This man planned the whole thing out apparently for a long while and prepared the prison she was to be kept in, put in a bathroom and kitchen and had it ready when he drugged and handcuffed her and put her down there.

There's now an article with pictures of where they were kept and more info. I was wondering how nobody heard and it says he even made it soundproof. He forced her to write letters to her mom so it would be in her handwriting, how she had joined a cult and not to look for her.

The poor girl really seems to have cared for those children the best she could and tried to give them hope and the best life she could, even with the torture he made her endure with the beatings and abuse. She did teach her children to talk and read and educate them the best she could. The littlest boy (he's 5) had said he was so excited when they were found because he gets to ride in a real car. I guess they had a tv so it must have seemed like the world outside was like a fantasy or a movie.

[Onyx]

I read this story this morning and was disgusted. That's just horrible. I sometimes wonder how people like this live with themselves??? And out of the 6 living children ... why did 3 of them have to stay in the basement?? ... I agree that doesn't make any sense ... but the entire story is sick and twisted.

Unfortunately in cases of abuse that's pretty common that some of the children will be well cared for and some abused beyond belief (maybe to ward off suspicion).

Impossible to understand it seems.

[Oh_My_Goth]

This is definitely the most messed up situation I have heard about in a long time!!!!!

[tanuki1985]

This is really the most screwed up mess I have ever read about. Man. He really planned this thing out to the last detail.

He was an electrician so he wired the thing up with an electronic door, told her it was set to explode if she tried to escape and only he knew the code. This man planned the whole thing out apparently for a long while and prepared the prison she was to be kept in, put in a bathroom and kitchen and had it ready when he drugged and handcuffed her and put her down there.

There's now an article with pictures of where they were kept and more info. I was wondering how nobody heard and it says he even made it soundproof. He forced her to write letters to her mom so it would be in her handwriting, how she had joined a cult and not to look for her.

The poor girl really seems to have cared for those children the best she could and tried to give them hope and the best life she could, even with the torture he made her endure with the beatings and abuse. She did teach her children to talk and read and educate them the best she could. The littlest boy (he's 5) had said he was so excited when they were found because he gets to ride in a real car. I guess they had a tv so it must have seemed like the world outside was like a fantasy or a movie.

I didn't hear that part yet. Thanks for letting us know about that bit of info.

I did, however, find a picture of the man that someone posted on another forum. He looks pretty, uhhh, creepy to say the least.

[Angel of Death]

Wow...It sickens me to know that mankind is this twisted...How did NOONE know this was goin on for 24 frickin years....and WTF is up with him only getting 15-20yrs he held her for 24 and those children since they were conceived...He should have to serve 24 for holding his daughter and another 25-50 for holding the children!!!

[Homicidalheathen]

wow

I wonder how much of this went on before widespread news casts and a tight knit society.....I am sure a lot but it was never heard about.

[xbittergracex]

I've read a lot of crime stories based on captivity like this....its horrible. I would rather someone just kill me than lock me up in some twisted sex dungeon for years. This story in particular is even worse :(

[Stymie]

They should drag him out...

Bleed him on the streets...

Throw bleach on him now and then...

Then burn his sick ass....

And just before death...

Throw water on him and feed him to the the crocs.....

[DarkChylde]

This is one of the reasons why I dont bother watching/reading the news these days. Always too depressing and fucked up.

All I can say is, if I ruled the world all of the countries would be united into one and there will be such thing as "public death sentences" specailly for worthless scum like him.

These days the law systems just give them little slap on the wrist for the horrid shit they've done.

[Onyx]

They should drag him out...

Bleed him on the streets...

Throw bleach on him now and then...

Then burn his sick ass....

And just before death...

Throw water on him and feed him to the the crocs.....

Yep.

or how about an eye for an eye?

Lock him in that same cellar for the rest of his life and give the only key to someone who will rape him repeatedly.

He should suffer for years for what he's done.

Ugh. What an inhuman monster. This case has really gotten to me.

Sad though, all the revenge in the world won't give that girl and her children their lives back. At least now they are out of that horrible prison and protected from him.

[tanuki1985]

This article gives some updated information.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=455507

"As more sadistic details of Elisabeth Fritzl's imprisonment at the hands of her father come to light, it's been revealed lodgers and friends of the family knew she had been abused but told no one.

Elisabeth, now 42, spent 24 years locked inside a stifling, windowless cellar beneath her family home in Amstetten, Austria.

She was repeatedly raped and beaten her by her father Josef — whom she bore seven children — while her mother and six siblings lived a normal life upstairs, apparently unaware at the horrors unfolding below.

Neighbours expressed shock and bewilderment that something so sinister could go unnoticed in their small, close-knit community for so long.

But it seems revelations Josef Fritzl was a sexually violent man were less of a surprise.

A former lodger with the family and a school friend of Elisabeth's have told a London newspaper they knew, as others in the community did, that Josef had abused his daughter before she disappeared.

Joseph Leitner, who lived with the Fritzls between 1990 and 1994, was a close friend of someone who went to school with Elisabeth.

"[My friend] told me what a monster Josef was — and what he had done to Elisabeth," he said to the Telegraph.

"But I decided I did not want to get involved. I did not want to get kicked out of the flat, I did not want to lose it. I kept myself to myself."

Mr Leitner said Elisabeth and his friend ran away to Vienna in 1984 but Josef found her and dragged her home again.

That year, Elisabeth was imprisoned in the dungeon under her home because she threatened to run away again, according to the Daily Mail. Her friends assumed she was missing because she had finally escaped her family.

"We thought she had run off again," Elisabeth's former school friend Alfred Dubanovsky, 42, said to the Telegraph.

"She had told someone in our group that she had had enough, couldn't stand it any more at home and that her father had beat her, and had hurt her.

"She said she was scared of him."

Three of the children Josef fathered with Elisabeth were kept below ground with their mother. Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, did not see sunlight until they were freed with their mother just over a week ago.

Three more of Elisabeth's children were brought upstairs and were formally adopted by Elisabeth’s parents. Her seventh child died shortly after birth. Josef tossed its remains in an incinerator.

Austrian authorities have since said Amstetten officials followed correct procedures in allowing Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who had seven grown-up children of their own, to care for three of the children he had with his daughter, ostensibly after she abandoned them on their doorstep.

Chained up like a dog

The first months of Elisabeth's imprisonment were particularly cruel.

She was chained to the wall of the cellar by a 1.5m dog leash for the first nine months and was only let off to go to the toilet. She screamed herself hoarse in those first few days, but gave up when she realised no one could hear her, The Daily Mail reported.

She also gave up arguing with her father and, in return, he would beat her less.

The four-room cellar that became her home was only built in 1993. Until then, Elisabeth and two of her children shared a room that measured 4.5m by 4.5m.

Elisabeth was forced to dig out by hand the other rooms in her dungeon and investigators say there are signs Josef intended to extend the complex even more.

Detectives working in the bunker now are able to work for only an hour at a time because of the foul air.

"Areas of the dungeon appear to have been under construction and it is possible Fritzl may have been planning to expand it even further," Detective Franz Polzer told the Sunday Mirror.

"The man is evil beyond words. The misery he has inflicted on his family is unimaginable," he said.

Meanwhile, Josef Fritzl is said to be "emotionally a broken man". He watches developments in his case on a television in his cell and reportedly receives four bags of hate mail each day.

His lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said it would be hard for his client to get a fair trial in front of a jury because of the massive publicity generated by the case.

Mayer said Fritzl should have psychiatric tests to evaluate whether he was fit to stand trial.

"There must be some (psychiatric) disturbance otherwise no one would commit such acts. So is this disturbance so great that he is not of sound mind, not responsible for the acts he has committed?" Mayer said.

The case has generated headlines worldwide and prompted questions about how the abuse in the small town of Amstetten went undetected for so long.

Mayer said this could influence jurors.

"The problem is that lay jurors, naturally, do not bring the objectivity and lack of prejudice to the trial that professional judges always bring."

Mayer acknowledged reports that his client had a rape conviction from the 1960s, around the time Elisabeth, who is 42, was born.

"Such a conviction is not in the files at present but ... it is true that it has been found in the archives."

The newspaper Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten has reproduced what it said was a 1967 court record from state archives in the city of Linz, in which a Josef F was accused of breaking into the apartment of a 24-year-old nurse and raping her.

Josef Fritzl's sister-in-law, identified as Christine R, told the daily Oesterreich that he had gone to jail for the offence. "I was 16 when he was locked up for rape," she said.

In a video interview aired by a number of news channels, she said she believed Fritzl had spent a year and a half in jail, and that his wife Rosemarie, despite her shock, had tried to hold the family together.

Austrian officials will say only that, if Fritzl had such a rape conviction, it would have been purged from the records after 15 years at the latest. "

[pomba gira]

There is no way the mom didn't know something was up. THREE children are "left on the doorstep" at different times and no one thought there was anything odd about that? And these "friends" knew that the girl had been abused by her dad, but were ready to believe that she would bring three helpless children to leave in his care? Really, now.

This sounds like one of those cases where the mother turns a blind eye to the father's abuse of the daughter, because it keeps him from abusing her. Happens all too often.

I hope anyone who knows of or suspects an abusive situation in their own community, but "doesn't want to get involved", will think really, really hard about this story and do the right thing.

[tanuki1985]

Very good post, pomba gira. It's too often that we hear about neglected abuse. I hope all the people who knew about this abuse feel nothing but guilt for the rest of their lives.

[wingdazrael]

The stuff that has come out lately is soo messed up.

I agree with pomba gira, people need to step up and do the right thing if people notice abuse in thier community.

[TygerLili]

Their story is still full of holes. There's no way that someone who supposedly "ran away from home" because of abuse would have left her children to be cared for by the same allegedly abusive parents.

If you click on OMG's original link there is a story about him possibly being a suspect in a murder that happened 2 years after all this started. I wouldn't be surprised, but how would he have had the time to murder someone? It sounds like he was too busy covering his own ass.

[tanuki1985]

Wikipedia is often full of lies, but the Wikipedia page on this has a lot of information, most of which is backed up with links to articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_incest_case

I don't understand how Social Services supposedly visited the family regularly, but no one ever looked in the basement. (Look under "Case History" for that info.)