There is no way this guy did what he did without his wife knowing about it all along.
And in this case, since the family is Jewish, they don't even have the excuse that somehow their religion allows what they are doing, as is the case with the Mormon group down in Texas
Mike Rivero 5/5/2008
The question of evil Josef Fritzl's faith is increasingly intriguing because
of the deafening silence in the Press over the matter! His religion is not
important - the reasons why it is not mentioned are. At this stage it seems
self-evident that he is a Jew. after all non-Jews do not have stars of David in
their home and Josef IS a prime Jewish name as are the names of all his
children. He is more than likely of the Jewish faith. What is sad is that fellow
Jews now feel the need to hide the fact of his faith. Surely this kind of
paranoia is unnecessary and demeaning to more level headed Jews?
Sadly, also, the press seem to be keeping a lid on his Jewish faith - maybe
because some Jewish people may be scared of consequences? The same thing
happened with the worst mass murderer of Britain: - Harold Shipman whose Jewish
faith was kept hidden by the press for no real reason. And YES if he was a
church going Christian this would be remarked on- and, my goodness, if Josef
Fritzl was a Muslim the same Press would exult in the fact. So hiding his Jewish
background is sinister and wrong.
He was running a Hostel they interviewed people in it, All were from Israel plus a few neighbours interviewed had Jewish names. I seen it on Sky news a bit strange is it not.
Bojan Pancevski in Amstetten
Austrian police are investigating whether
Josef
Fritzl
was involved in another unresolved murder from the 1960s when a teenager was
killed in what was suspected to be a sexually-motivated crime.
Officers are now looking into a possible connection between Fritzl, 73, and the
murder of Anna
Neumayr,
a 17-year-old girl who was found dead in a cornfield near her home in
Pfaffstaett
bei
Mattinghofen
in Lower Austria in 1966, according to reports.
Ms Neumayr was killed with a captive bolt pistol used to slaughter live stock
and police at the time suspected a sexual motive.
A police spokesman said: “We will investigate whether there is anything to
indicate that Josef Fritzl was near the scene at the time.”
Less than a year after the murder, in 1967,
Mr
Fritzl,
then 32, was convicted for a rape and an attempted rape and served 18 months in
prison. He was also arrested for indecent exposure in public.
Mr Fritzl has already confessed to having fathered seven children by his
daughter, Elisabeth, now 42, after locking her in a home-made dungeon under the
family home in Amstetten in 1984.
He is also facing manslaughter charges as one of the children produced from the
sexual assaults on his daughter died shortly after birth, and Mr Fritzl hurled
his body into a heating oven.
This is the second possible murder link
that Mr
Fritzl
is being investigated for, after officers revealed today that they were
searching for a possible connection between him and the murder of Martina
Posch,
17, who was found near the shore of a lake in western Austria two years later.
Ms Posch
disappeared from her home on November 12, 1986, and her tied-up body was found
ten days later on the Mond
Lake, near the spot where Rosemarie
Fritzl,
68, Josef's wife, had a campsite and guesthouse.
This is while prosecutors say that he is likely to face charges of manslaughter,
as well as rape and unlawful imprisonment, and for not providing proper care for
Michael, the baby who died in the cellar in 1996.
Fritzl incinerated the corpse in the
basement furnace.
Guesthouse and restaurant "Seestern" in Unterach by the Mondsee lake that was owned by Josef Fritzl from 1973 to 1996. A fire in 1982 damaged the house badly, and Fritzl was suspected for setting the fire in order to fraud his insurance company, but he was not convicted despite investigators believing firmly it was a case of arson. CEN / Photonews
Fritzl 'was a regular at brothel and prostitutes feared him'
« Previous « PreviousNext » Next »View GalleryPublished Date: 07 May 2008
By ALLAN HALL
IN BERLIN
A FORMER brothel barman has revealed how
the father in the cellar incest case, Josef
Fritzl,
was a regular customer who instilled fear in his club's working girls because of
his dominant and violent tendencies.
Christoph Flugel worked for six years as a waiter and barman at the bordello
Villa Ostende in Linz, 40 miles from Amstetten where Fritzl, 73, built the
underground lair in which he raped his daughter over 24 years.
"He was a regular," said Mr
FluADVERTISEMENTgel. "On the first look, there was nothing wrong with him. He
was neatly dressed and courteous. But as soon as one of the girls he wanted to
go upstairs approached him, his mood changed."
He said that in conversations at the bar, he was a man who was clearly more into
dominance than the pleasure of sex itself – and therefore was feared when he did
go to the first floor where the girls had their room.
He went on: "Ninety-five per cent of customers are totally normal; 3 per cent
are a bit weird. Fritzl belongs to the remaining 2 per cent that are definitely
mentally ill.
"None of the girls wanted to spend time in a room with him. Two of them even
strictly refused to and did without the earnings."
But Fritzl went there again and again as the brothel changed its prostitutes
every ten weeks.
Flugel went on: "I recognised Fritzl on the pictures in the papers and on TV. I
will never forget his tight-fistedness, too. When he had to pay 97 once, he
demanded I return the three euros in change from a 100 note. Working as a
barman, you never forget such behaviour, especially when working in a nightclub.
"And upstairs, in a room, he got
completely out of the track." Asked what he meant,
Mr
Flugel
replied: "Perverse. I heard about that when talking to the girls. Two of them
said, 'Never again with that guy!'. Such a thing is very rare in this business."
Earlier this week, it emerged that building records showed that Fritzel planned
his underground lair well before Elisabeth was entombed in it.
Police chief Franz Polzer said: "He started, six years before Elisabeth was
incarcerated underground, with extending the cellar, most of the details of
which he kept secret from planning authorities."
Fritzel expanded the 35sq m cellar into 55sq m, but the extra space was sealed
off.
On 28 August, 1984, Elisabeth's incarceration began behind a 500kg concrete
door, and after the birth of her daughter Monika, now 14, he opened up the extra
space.
Mr Polzer added: "Long before the act, he clearly was possessed with the idea of
locking his daughter away. All the cavities under the house were already in
place."
Altogether, the dungeon had eight doors to the outside with intricate locks.
Meanwhile, the enormity of his crime is weighing heavily on Fritzl.
His lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said that, after he was first arrested, Fritzl watched
television and ate meals with other convicts at his remand prison. Now he
refuses to leave his cell for fear of being attacked by fellow prisoners, who
traditionally loathe child-sex criminals.
Mr Mayer said he was in a "very bad condition" – and constantly fretting about
how his children were doing.
QUESTIONING DUE TO START
PROSECUTORS in Austria will today interview Josef Fritzl for the first time.
The meeting between Fritzl and prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser will take place
in the prison in the Lower Austrian city of St Poelten, where the 73-year-old is
being held, said prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek.
Mr Sedlacek said it was unclear if Fritzl would agree to answer questions.
Authorities say he initially confessed to locking up and raping his daughter but
has since remained silent and may claim to be insane.
Chief investigator Franz Polzer said experts were continuing to sift through
Fritzl's property for evidence, adding there may be more "hollow spaces" that
need to be examined. It was unlikely investigators would find anything
"dramatic" , he said.
Cellar Dad's Family Facing £1.5m Debt
Greg Milam
In Amstetten, Austria Updated:22:03, Tuesday May 06, 2008
The man accused of keeping his daughter prisoner as a sex slave for 24 years has
left her and the children he fathered with her facing financial ruin, Sky News
has learned.
Two of Fritzl's childrenJosef
Fritzl
is reported to have had debts
totalling £1.5m when he
was arrested following the discovery of the horrific incest he perpetrated on
his daughter, Elisabeth.
While locked in a dungeon beneath his home in the town of Amstetten, Austria,
Elisabeth had seven children by him.
Three of the infants were forced to grow up in the windowless network of rooms
he installed in the cellar.
Sky News has learned that the 73-year-old former electrical engineer had
attempted to become a property tycoon
- but failed.
One bank is said to be demanding
repayment of more than £700,000.
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Now the town of Amstetten, which has been blighted by Fritzl's crimes, has
promised to help the family by donating money.
Hermann Gruber, spokesman for the Amstetten mayor's office, told Sky News: "We
will have an account so that people can give money to the family. The city will
also look for this money.
"We can't help the family at the moment but we can help them afterwards when
they come out of hospital and we will do our best."
Natascha Kampusch, who escaped from her own ordeal in an Austrian cellar less
than two years ago, has already made a donation. Victim support charities in the
country are also promising to help.
Elisabeth Fritzl as a young girlAnd local authorities in Amstetten are drawing
up plans to re-house the family.
Mr Gruber said: "We can't believe they will want to stay in this building so we
will have to find new room for them.
"We will help in any way we can."
Prosecutors are expecting to interview Fritzl again later this week.
Police say they do not know for sure if he ever had any help committing his
crimes.
They say it is also too early to know whether he abused any of his other
children.
Politicians are under pressure to review the system which sees
criminal records for sexual offences
erased after 15 years.
It was that which meant Fritzl's convictions dating from the 1960s never showed
up during social services' checks.
Austria Cellar Dad's Rape Conviction
Updated:16:04, Sunday May 04, 2008
A man who imprisoned his daughter in a
cellar for 24 years and fathered her seven children spent 18 months in jail for
a 1967 rape conviction, his sister-in-law says.
Josef FritzlShe also claims Josef Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth had run away from
home as a 17-year-old.
This was six months before police say she was taken captive in the underground
dungeon below the family home in Amstetten.
The woman, named only as Christine R, said Fritzl's wife Rosemarie never
believed her husband was involved in their daughter's disappearance.
He told her Elisabeth had run away from home to join a cult.
She described Fritzl, 73, as a "tyrant" who instilled a culture of fear at home,
which helped him get away with his cover story as no-one would dare question
him.
"When he said it was black, it was black, even when it was 10 times white,"
Christine said.
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"He tolerated no dissent. Listen, if I myself was scared of him at a family
party, and I did not feel confident to say anything in any form that could
possibly offend him, then you can imagine how it must have been for a woman that
spent so many years with him."
If Rosemarie, 67, had challenged Fritzl, "we don't know what he would have done
to her", she said.
"Maybe he would have slapped her. In any case, he was a tyrant. What he said was
good and the others had to shut up."
Three of Elisabeth's children were kept in the sealed, windowless cellar with
their mother while another three were raised by Fritzl and Rosemarie.
He said they had been abandoned on the doorstep by their daughter. The seventh
died shortly after birth.
Probe Deepens Into 'House Of Horrors'
Updated:09:36, Saturday May 03, 2008
Police are using sonar equipment to
probe deeper into the dungeon of Austrian "House of Horrors" rapist Josef
Fritzl.
Josef FritzlAs forensic teams examined the windowless basement of the Amstetten
house where he held his daughter captive for 24 years, more questions are being
raised as to why he was not caught sooner.
According to Austrian police a lack of oxygen in the dungeon, which was
protected by two electronically-locked steel doors, has hampered efforts to
unearth DNA evidence.
Sky News Europe correspondent Greg Milam said forensic investigators still had
several days' work to do.
"Police here continue to insist that Fritzl alone is responsible for this
country's worst ever crime."
He went on: "Police are now using sonar equipment to probe deeper into the
cellar.
"They're also talking to more than 100
people who have connections with the house."
Meanwhile, reports have emerged suggesting
Fritzl,
73, was arrested in the 1960s in
Linz and may have served prison
time.
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"There are still questions as to why details of Fritzl's 40-year-old conviction
for sex offences were not passed from one region to another," Milam said.
This comes as detectives were preparing to quiz his wife to test claims she was
unaware her daughter Elisabeth was held captive.
Rosemarie Fritzl, 67, who says she did not know what was going on, has been
undergoing medical care and officers insist she is not a suspect.
But Milam said: "More and more people are saying it does seem incredible she
didn't know anything in all that time.
"There are many questions being posed by local people and eventually police will
have to put similar questions to Rosemarie."
Her husband has admitted raping Elisabeth, keeping her captive in the cellar and
fathering seven children with her.
Three of them were kept underground with their mother while three others were
"adopted" by Fritzl and Rosemarie. One died just after birth.
Rosemarie FritzlHe told his wife that the youngsters had been abandoned on their
doorstep by their supposedly missing daughter, who he said had run off to join a
cult.
A man who lived above the basement has told of a string of clues which pointed
to the existence of the dungeon.
Former tenant Sepp
Leitner
said he came close to discovering the windowless prison a decade ago.
He said he could never understand why his electricity bill was so high,
considering he was frequently absent.
Mr Leitner told Die Presse newspaper that he and the other tenants noticed that
food - milk, pasta or bread - mysteriously disappeared from their kitchens.
Fritzl also barred his tenants from using the house's spacious garden or going
anywhere near the cellar.
Mr Leitner said: "If I'd been a bit more persistent and not let it go until the
mystery of the high electricity consumption had been resolved, perhaps we'd have
found out about the dungeon earlier."
Fritzl was remanded in custody on Tuesday and is being kept in isolation for his
own protection.
Cellar Abuse: Latest Developments
Updated:16:37, Monday April 28, 2008
Officials are giving a news conference after an Austrian man allegedly confessed
to holding his daughter captive in a secret, windowless cellar for 24 years and
fathering her seven children.
Officials at news
conferenceElisabeth
Fritzl,
42, told police her father, Josef
Fritzl,
73, lured her into the basement of their block in 1984 and drugged and
handcuffed her before imprisoning her.
Three of her children, aged 19, 18 and
5, had been locked up in the cellar with her since birth and had never
seen sunlight, police said.
Here are the key points so far. Refresh for latest here.
:: Josef Fritzl's wife never knew what was going on in the cellar because he was
very authoritarian and whatever he said was adhered to. Everybody abided by
that.
:: Police do not think there are any more cellars.
:: Fritzl managed to keep up with web of lies to his other children. Nobody
dared to go against the father's word.
:: None of the children in the cellar would have tried to overcome their captor.
:: The case came to light after the eldest of the children, 19-year-old Kerstin,
was admitted to hospital this month with serious health problems.
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:: Doctors looking for background information stepped up efforts to find the
mother and the whole horrific story came to light when Fritzl allowed them to
establish contact with his daughter.
:: It came as a complete surprise to the 19-year-old daughter when the
possibility to escape arose.
:: She recognised it was impossible to flee before. People would have not heard
her scream in the cellar. Door only opened by security code.
:: Police appeal for people who have any information about the case to come
forward.
:: Fritzl brought in food under cover of darkness for Kerstin, Stefan, now 18,
and Felix who is five.
:: Those three, who were among seven born in the cellar, never saw daylight:
:: The other three children were brought up by their grandmother, Fritzl's wife,
when they were just one-year-old.
:: Fritzl also confessed to burning the body of one baby which died at birth. He
disposed of it in the furnace of his building.
:: Josef Fritzl has lived at the property for 73 years.
The secret cellar:: Store room particularly well protected and difficult to
access.
:: The accused has not given his motives yet.
:: The cellar was meant to fulfill just their basic bodily needs. A TV was also
made available.
:: There were rooms with beds where children who born who had to spend their
time there.
:: It is a very private area and police
do not want to make photographs available of these rooms out of personal respect
to the victims.
:: These rooms were so small and only left just enough room to live.
:: This terrible case knows no comparisons. Police are under a lot pressure to
clear up this case.
:: Fritzl seems like very dynamic character who has managed to conceal all of
this from all his other family members.
:: Nobody realised what was going on.
:: Fritzl admitted being the father of the seven children and said he did not
tell anyone else about it.
:: DNA tests have proved he was the father.
Accused: Josef Fritzl:: It is clear the main accused did not grow his own food
and must have got it from somewhere to feed the children. Where did her go for
it?
:: What this man has done will only slowly come to light.
:: Josef Fritzl can be held by police for 14 days and then they will have to
apply for extention.
:: He led a double life for 24 years.
:: Police found out about this by coincidence.
:: Patients were unconscious and needed intensive care. They were taken to the
A&E department.
:: People in the cellar are in a bad condition.
:: Elisabeth has a serious health condition.
:: Case is tragic as one of Elisabeth's children died.
:: Eldest daughter has big problems mentally and physically.
:: Five years have passed since last child was born.
:: Fritzl managed to conceal this from everybody and he cheated everybody.
:: He pressured her to keep her there and sexually abused her over many years.
:: Fritzl will be sent to court for what he has done.
:: Daughter now has serious condition, her health has deteriorated.
:: This man has shown himself to be willing to co-operate with authorities and
police have been questioning him about why he locked his daughter in the cellar.
:: Facts are hair-raising.
:: Case is mostly cleared up.
:: First time something of this size has happened.
Sepp Leitner, who lived for four years in a ground floor flat above the cellar in the 1990s, believes he unwittingly paid for the utility costs for the underground prison.
In a newspaper interview, Leitner also told
Fritzl blames Nazis and speaks of mother love
Email Printer friendly version Normal font Large font Andreas Sam, Vienna
May 10, 2008
JOSEF Fritzl, the Austrian father who kept his daughter locked in a dungeon for
24 years, has for the first time described what motivated him to commit such
horrific crimes and how he managed to keep them secret.
His explanations, including bizarre
claims that the Nazis were responsible for fostering his twisted morality, have
been detailed by his lawyer after
Fritzl
wrote notes from his cell.
The 73-year-old said Hitler's Germany had instilled control and the respect of
authority in him, which pushed him to imprison his daughter Elisabeth under his
family home in Amstetten, west of Vienna, and father her seven children, one of
whom died.
Fritzl said he had never intended to rape Elisabeth, now
42, but felt an overpowering desire to taste the forbidden. He added that
he raped her while thinking of his own lonely childhood and said he wanted his
children to always have playmates.
After complaining that he had been unfairly portrayed as a monster, he was asked
how he would describe someone who had committed such horrific acts. Probably as
a monster, he replied, but he insisted he did not have sex with Elisabeth until
she was older than 12, which is when she claims he first abused her. "I am not a
man that has sex with little children."
He said his daughter, then 19, had cried. "I knew that Elisabeth did not want
it, what I did with her. The pressure to do the forbidden thing was just too big
to withstand."
Fritzl would visit Elisabeth every few days, delivering food and repeatedly
raping her. "It was an obsession with me," he said, adding that Elisabeth had
first fallen pregnant in 1988, giving birth to Kerstin. A year later she had
Stefan. "Elisabeth was of course very worried about (giving birth), but I bought
her medical books in the cellar, so that she would know when the day came what
she had to do, and I arranged … disinfectants and nappies."
He went on: "I was delighted about the children. It was great for me to have a
second proper family in the cellar, with a wife and a few children."
In 1992, Lisa was born, but she was ill and Fritzl decided to remove her from
the cellar, arranging for Elisabeth, whom he described as a superb housewife and
mother, to write a letter claiming she had abandoned her daughter on the Fritzls'
doorstep. The same occurred with Monika in 1994 and Alexander in 1996.
Their last child, Felix, was born in 2002.
Fritzl also described the amazing planning and secrecy behind his crime,
admitting he had thought about it for years. Fritzl claimed he had kidnapped the
teenage Elisabeth to "rescue" her from alcohol and bad company.
Asked how it was possible for people not to know that something strange was
occurring under his house, he said perhaps people did notice but they did not
care, because it was "my kingdom".
He said he got into a "vicious circle": "My situation just got more crazy. I was
scared of being arrested, and that my family and everybody that knew me would
know my crime … I always knew over 24 years what I did was not correct, and that
I must be mad."
In a bizarre admission,
Fritzl
said he had incestuous feelings for his mother, whom he described as the
greatest woman in the world. "She taught me discipline."
His lawyer claims that the notes reveal the extent of Fritzl's insanity.
Fritzl children observed rape of mother
Malaysia Sun
Monday 5th May, 2008
Policemen probing into Joseph Fritzl's shocking incestuous assault on his own
daughter Elisabeth
Fritzl
say that her first two children should have witnessed her being raped repeatedly
by her father, from the day they were born until they were toddlers.
The police say Elisabeth was held in only one room in the bunker for the first
nine years after Joseph dragged her into his cellar, and that it was in 1993
that the room was connected with other underground chambers in the complex.
Fritzl and Elisabeth's first child Kerstin was born in 1989, and second child
Stefan in 1990.
Since the two children spent their whole lives inside the cellar, say the
police, they would have had no choice but to witness their mother being
repeatedly abused.
The police have also revealed that Fritzl adopted Elisabeth's third child Lisa,
born in 1992, because there was insufficient room in the cellar.
According to them, Fritzl allowed the girl to live with his so-called normal
family in his house upstairs.
The dungeon father later extended his underground bunker complex to provide a
separate room for his prisoner children, add the police.
Meanwhile, Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer, who claims to have received several
death threats for agreeing to defend his client, has said he would fight to keep
Fritzl out of jail.
"In my opinion Josef Fritzl is psychologically disturbed. He does not belong in
prison but in a closed psychiatric unit," the Independent quoted him as saying.
By STAFF REPORTERS
Published: 06 May 2008
A PROSECUTOR is due to meet with dungeon dad Josef Fritzl for the first time
tomorrow.
The meeting between Christiane Burkheiser and Fritzl, will take place in the
prison in the Lower Austrian city of St Poelten, where the 73-year-old is being
held.
It is unclear if Fritzl will agree to answer questions.
Authorities say he initially confessed to locking up and raping his daughter but
has since remained silent.
Fritzl has not yet been charged and remains in pretrial detention.
His lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, has said he is preparing an insanity defence.
Chief investigator Franz Polzer said experts were continuing to sift through
Fritzl’s property for evidence.
He added there may be more ?hollow spaces" that needed to be examined but said
it was unlikely investigators would find anything ?dramatic" he said.
Raped his granddaughter
Earlier it was revealed depraved
Fritzl
may have had a SECOND sex slave in his cellar dungeon — granddaughter Kerstin.
Police fear the monster targeted his eldest child by caged daughter Elisabeth
after losing interest in her grey-haired mother.
But they have been unable to quiz the 19-year-old because she is in a coma,
fighting for her life in hospital with organ failure.
It is believed Fritzl, 73, was fed up with 42-year-old Elisabeth — whose looks
had been ravaged by 24 dark and brutal years locked up under his home in
Amstetten, Austria.
So brave ... Elisabeth
Police also revealed yesterday that Elisabeth and her children were locked
inside a 35-metre square inner dungeon — which could only be reached through
EIGHT locked doors.
The first — made of concrete and steel — weighed a staggering half a ton and had
an electronic keycode
known only to Fritzl.
Once inside, seven more doors barred entrance to a labyrinth of tunnels and
storage rooms before leading to the spot where his secret family were held
captive.
Police chief Polzer said officers also found a
SECOND entrance to the underground lair, hidden in the garden of the monster’s
home, which he probably never used.
Grave
Last night Albert Reiter, the doctor in charge of Kerstin’s care, said she
remained critically ill, but had improved slightly.
He added: "She is in a grave condition and it’s impossible to interview her
because she is unconscious.
Supportive ... locals view
banner messages
"We have to wait for a later time to make such investigations."
He gave a hint of hope by saying: "Her condition has improved in the last few
days."
Yesterday it emerged that Elisabeth and her underground children were improving
before the eyes of experts, at the psychiatric clinic where they are being cared
for.
Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, have met their three siblings who lived in the
house above ground — after "father" Fritzl took them away from mother Elisabeth.
They have made heartening progress and bond well with Lisa, 16, Monika, 15,
Alexander, 12 — whose newborn twin died.
Dr Bernard Kepplinger said: "In the last few days we’ve tried to equip them with
objects from their life. The children have their toys and the family is forming
again at this moment.
"They are playing and my impression is that the family is growing and getting
together.
Prison . . . boss Moerwald is holding Fritzl
"The family is organising every day, with the breakfast and dinner being
prepared by the son and mother. The beds are made by the children themselves and
there are a large number of conversations between the persons."
Dr Kepplinger said Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix were gradually adapting to the
outside world.
He said: "They have suffered and it is important the rooms are not darkened all
the time. The mother and the smallest child have shown an increased sensitivity
and have been given dark glasses to help this. There are now signs that the
group’s skin colour is changing.
"Time must have passed very slowly in the dungeon. This slow-moving time is
something we want to maintain in the clinic."
Safe ... Elisabeth Fritzl and kids are staying at this Amstetten hospital
CEN
But he added: "The children who lived upstairs are used to a different speed of
life and we have offered them more to do.
"The mother needs to have rest every now and then — she has a nap in the
afternoon."
It emerged that devoted Elisabeth had begged her twisted dad to give her vitamin
D supplements and a ultraviolet light to prevent her kids becoming deformed
because of the lack of natural light.
Fritzl is believed to have started work on the dungeon in 1978, when Elisabeth
was just 12 — a year after he started sexually abusing her. He finally drugged
her and locked her inside the cellar in August 1984.
Police say they aim to interview Fritzl on Friday. He has vowed not to talk to
them.
Mr Polzer told a press conference that detectives reckon Fritzl had carried out
a string of sex attacks on women since the early 1960s.
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He added: "We assume he made some sexual
assaults previous to 1984 but then his interest was directed to his daughter."
Mr
Polzer
said they found no trace of the remains of Elisabeth’s dead baby. The child died
of neglect before he could be named.
Fritzl
burned the body in a furnace in the cellar.
Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek also yesterday confirmed that Fritzl had forced
Elisabeth and her children to work on enlarging their own dungeon.
He said: "The extra construction was aided by the people living in the cellar
moving earth." Retired engineer Fritzl, who had seven children with wife
Rosemarie, 68, is being held in the nearby jail at St Poelten.
Prison director Guenther Moerwald said he was refusing to leave his shared cell
to take exercise and spends most of his day watching TV.
Yesterday locals at a shopping centre in Amstetten signed a huge banner with
messages of support for the family.
Officers arrested
Fritzl
and his daughter as they were walking from the hospital. (ANI)
© 2007 ANI
Josef Fritzl lusted after his mother
Friday, May 09, 2008
London, May 9 (ANI): In one of his confessions, sex beast Josef Fritzl revealed
that he wanted to have sex with his own mother.
The 73-year-old made the confession to his lawyer as he tried to explain his
appalling crimes against his children.
He admitted the "strong woman" was a key influence in shaping his twisted psyche
- as was growing up in Nazi Austria during World War II.
Fritzl
told how as a youngster he developed a fixation on his mother Rosa
because she was "the best woman in the world" - and said he had to fight his
urge to have a sexual relationship with her.
"My father was somebody who was a waster, he never took responsibility and was
just a loser who always cheated on my mother," The Sun quoted him, as saying.
"When I was four she quite rightly threw him out the house. After that my mother
and I had no contact with this man, he did not interest us.
Suddenly there were only us two.
"My mother was a strong woman, she taught me discipline and control and the
values of hard work.
"She sent me to a good school so I could learn a good trade and she worked
really hard, and took a very difficult job to keep our heads above water," he
said.
Describing his relationship with his mum, Fritzl added: "When I say she was hard
on me, she was only as hard as was necessary.
"She was the best woman in the world. I suppose you could describe me as her
man, sort of. She was the boss at home and I was the only man in the house.
"It's complete rubbish to say my mother sexually abused me. My mother was
respectable, extremely respectable. I loved her across all boundaries. I was
completely and totally in awe of her. That did not mean there was anything else
between us, though. There never was and there never would have been."
The jew may have bedded his
mother
 |
|
| “She was the greatest woman in the world. She was in charge at home, but I was the only man in the house. In a way, I was like a husband to her,” he said. “I loved her across all boundaries. I was totally in awe of her. Completely and totally in awe. “That did not mean there was anything else between us though, there never was and there never would have been.
|
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Austria: Police questions as Josef Fritzl clues suggest accomplice
Fritzl, right, in Pataya, Thailand
Roger Boyes in Amstetten
World of fairytales | Could it happen here? | Great evil | Physical scars |
Psychological damage | Health implications | Graphic: house of horrors |
Factfile: 10 other kidnaps
Pressure mounted on the Austrian authorities yesterday amid claims that bungling
by police and local officials may have prolonged the agony of Elisabeth Fritzl,
who was held in a dungeon and sexually abused by her father for almost a quarter
of a century.
The investigation - though it has resulted in a confession and detention of the
father, Josef Fritzl - is increasingly being questioned by Austrians who have
been shocked by the case.
Franz
Polzer,
the police chief of Lower Austria, stonewalled as he was bombarded with
questions from the media about the conduct of the case. He
emphasised
that Mr
Fritzl,
the father of seven children from an incestuous relationship, had acted alone in
imprisoning his family in a cramped cellar beneath his home for 24 years.
Graphic: inside the house of horrors
“We are not conducting an investigation into a crime involving accomplices,” he
said. But Colonel Polzer also announced that the unravelling of the case was due
to an anonymous tip-off.
Elisabeth, the 42-year-old victim, was detained in the grounds of the clinic
where her critically ill daughter, 19 - one of her seven children - was being
treated. The police seized Elisabeth, suspecting her of child neglect until she
told the full story of her existence. Their action raises the question of who
tipped off the police if not an accomplice? “Knowing about a crime is not the
same as being an accomplice,” said Colonel Polzer. “The informant asked
anonymity and we will respect that.” The police seem determined to rule out any
possibility of someone being in league with Mr Fritzl.
Other Jews Involved
Yet more clues point to third-party
involvement. The door to the dungeon - which had received building permission as
a nuclear fallout shelter - weighed 300kg (660lb) and could only have been
hinged into position with the help of someone else.
Mr
Fritzl,
moreover, went on several holidays, including at least one three-week stay in
Thailand, leaving Elisabeth and her children in the cellar.
Even if the small pantry was full of cans it is unlikely that there would have
been enough food to feed them. And there are
still questions about how the imprisoned
relatives disposed of their rubbish. Colonel Polzer blocked questions on
the issue and seemed even to deny knowledge of Mr Fritzl's holidays and
absences.
“If there is a home video from this Thailand trip then we would like the media
to give it to us and we will then think about it.” The video, shown widely on
television, shows Mr Fritzl and a friend from Munich riding on an elephant
(off-camera commentary: “Hey,
Sepp
[Mr
Fritzl's
nickname] you had better show this to your wife to convince her that we're on
safari, not hunting for humans”).
This has been ruled by the police as irrelevant. So far, the case is based on
only two hours of testimony from Elisabeth, a partial confession from her father
and DNA results, which confirm that he had an incestuous relationship. All
further questioning of Mr Fritzl has been delayed until next week.
The key question so far has been why Mr Fritzl's sexual history was not taken
into account. Although he was convicted of rape in the late 1960s, this record
was expunged under an Austrian law that seeks to rehabilitate offenders after
their sentence. “The essential lesson from this case is that previous
convictions for sex crimes should be taken into account in the case of
adoption,” said the Die Presse newspaper yesterday.
It is a call that has been echoed across Austria as outrage grows about the
crime. Colonel Polzer emphasised that the investigation would continue for
months and that “in the interests of ensuring that such a crime is never
repeated” will seek to reconstruct in detail the last 25 years of Josef Fritzl's
life. To that end, the police have been searching other properties owned across
Austria by Mr Fritzl, 73.
But many basic elements of the
investigation have not even been started. Rosemarie, his 68-year-old wife, has
yet to be questioned. Police merely asked her whether she knew what was
going on and found her denial credible.
No attempt has been made to track down
all the tenants who have rented rooms in the house since 1984. One, Sabine
Kirschbichler,
lived for two years in the house recently and told the magazine Brigitte
that she frequently saw Mr Fritzl carrying heavy bags of shopping into the
cellar after dark. “Now, I realise why we weren't allowed to rent cellar space,”
she said.
The local authorities have tried to fend off criticism that they ignored
suspicious signs from the house.
“Elisabeth ran away from that house as a girl, police searched for her, brought
her back and delivered her back into the violent embrace of her father,” says
Hedwig Woelfl, the director of a child protection centre in Austria. “Running
away from home was a clear sign of unhappiness ... but nobody apparently showed
any interest in the fate of this girl.”
The chief executive of the region, Hans Heinz Lenze, showed reporters documents
proving that his council's go-ahead for the adoption of three of Ms Fritzl's
children was legal: no trace of a sex crime could be found. Social welfare teams
visited the house 21 times, but never looked around. Yet the building had in the
space of a decade registered one missing person and made the claim that three
babies had been dumped on the doorstep.
The
Fritzl
home, in a busy street, was constantly visited by bureaucrats. Building
inspectors checked out the underground bunker - before it was used as a prison -
and fire safety inspectors checked the incinerator that was used to burn a
baby's body and was metres
away from the dungeon. The inspection team pronounced the ventilation shaft
safe, gave Mr
Fritzl
the appropriate stamp and left.
The years of abuse
1976 Josef Fritzl begins to sexually abuse his daughter Elisabeth, 11
1984 On August 28 Elisabeth is drugged and handcuffed by Mr Fritzl soon after
her 19th birthday. She is incarcerated in the basement of their three-storey
home in Amstetten
1986 Martina Posch is sexually abused and murdered.
The wife of
Mr
Fritzl
had a campsite and guest house near to where the body of Ms
Posch
was found
1988-89 The first of Elisabeth’s children, a girl and a boy, who were fathered
by Mr Fritzl, are born and held underground
1993-97 Elisabeth gives birth to two more girls and a boy. They appear on the
doorstep and are taken in by Rosemarie, Mr Fritzl’s wife. The boy's twin dies
soon after birth and is incinerated
2003 Elisabeth gives birth to another boy, who is also raised in the cellar
2008 Thge oldest daughter held underground becomes ill and is taken to hospital
by Mr Fritzl on April 19. Doctors appeal for her mother to come forward
2008 Elisabeth and her father are picked up by the police on April 26
2008 Mr Fritzl admits on April 28 to sealing his daughter in the cellar and
fathering her seven children
Source: Times archives
In addition to his electrical
engineering business, Mr
Fritzl
also dabbled in property management. He is known to have owned at least one
other house in Amstetten,
where he spent weekends with his wife and the three adopted children.
Mr Fritzl had planned to tear down the house and erect a block of flats
and offices with an underground garage, but his neighbours had taken legal
action to prevent the project.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said today
that it was "more than unlikely" that Mr Fritzl maintained other secret prisons,
but police had to check as a precaution. "We believe he was so busy with his
crime that he wouldn’t have time for anything else," Mr Polzer said.
Authorities have been asking how events in the main family house, in a busy
street in the small industrial town of Amstetten, 130 km (80 miles) west of
Vienna, passed unnoticed for so long.