Teen feels sorry for captor

A TEENAGER who escaped after being held for more than eight years in a dingy cell said she considered her captor a “poor soul” and once cynically told him she would dance on his grave some day.

Natascha Kampusch was 10 when she was kidnapped in Vienna, Austria, on her way to school in March 1998.

She spent the next eight-and-a-half years at the mercy of her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, who largely confined her to a tiny underground dungeon in his home in a quiet Vienna suburb.

Mr Priklopil committed suicide within hours of Ms Kampusch’s dramatic escape on August 23 last year, which marked the end of one of Austria’s greatest criminal mysteries.

“All I can say is that, bit by bit, I feel more sorry for him,” Ms Kampusch, now 19, said in a documentary shown on Austrian television last night to mark her first year of freedom.

Looking healthy and calm, Ms Kampusch referred to Mr Priklopil as a “poor soul — lost and misguided”.

Ms Kampusch also acknowledged that she said goodbye to Mr Priklopil as he lay in a coffin.

“I meant this cynically but I said to him that one day I’d dance on his grave — that was not the case of course,” she said, adding that she did feel a certain “gratification and victory”.

But she also said that she wished people would be more sensitive by asking her permission before taking photographs and not seeking autographs.

“I don’t give autographs — I’m not a superstar,” she said.