Fritzl sentenced to life in secure psychiatric unit

JOSEF FRITZL has been sentenced to life in a secure mental unit for locking up and raping his daughter in a cellar over 24 years, fathering seven children with her and causing the death of his own infant son.

“I accept the verdict,” the 73-year-old Austrian told the court after yesterday’s unanimous decision by the jury in a court west of Vienna.

The prosecution also approved it, meaning the outcome cannot be appealed.

Earlier, Fritzl had made a pathetic plea for mercy. In a weak and shaky voice, he said: “I regret it with all my heart... I can’t make it right anymore.”

Fritzl, who kept Elisabeth and three of their children in the cellar below his home, would stay in St Poelten jail pending transfer to a unit for mentally ill offenders within a prison where he will receive psychotherapy, officials said.

He had pleaded guilty in the four-day trial to incest, rape, enslavement, coercion and murder, by neglect, for confining his daughter, now 42, in a purpose-built, windowless cellar under his home for almost a quarter century.

The lurid details of how Fritzl violated Elisabeth and kept her and several children in a domestic dungeon horrified people worldwide who followed the case that emerged when he took one of the incarcerated children, Kerstin, then 19, who was gravely ill, to hospital last April.

Fritzl will be closely monitored in case he tries to commit suicide, which the case’s psychiatrist called a serious risk.

His condition will be re-evaluated in 15 years and, in theory, if he were deemed cured, he could be released, they said. But Fritzl and his lawyer have said they expected he would have to spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

The prosecution had asked for Fritzl to be confined indefinitely to a secure psychiatric institution.

“I cannot do anything more about (what happened) ... I regret this from the bottom of my heart,” Fritzl said in his closing statement.

He looked straight ahead as the eight-person jury, who had deliberated for three hours, convicted him of every charge. Earlier in the trial, he had used a blue file folder to hide his face from public view.

He had initially denied the murder and slavery counts but reversed his plea after being shaken by 11 hours of videotaped testimony from daughter Elisabeth screened in court on Tuesday.

The retired electrical engineer was convicted of murder, the most serious charge, because the jury found he did nothing over a three-day period to seek medical help despite knowing the boy was in danger of dying from breathing problems.

Defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer confirmed reports Elisabeth had attended the trial on Tuesday and said Fritzl was “devastated” when he spotted her in the gallery as the video was screened.

Mayer said he had nothing to do with the plea change.

In her closing argument, chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said Fritzl had degraded Elisabeth to “a condition of total dependence and treated her like his property”.

She said Fritzl committed murder because he had 66 hours to seek medical care for the infant son, whose breathing problems were caused in part by his umbilical cord getting tangled around his neck, but did nothing and consciously let the boy die.

“He not only saw but listened to the death struggle of the infant — for 66 hours,” she said.

Burkheiser also said Fritzl had demonstrated “unbelievable manipulation skills”, for example by luring his daughter into the cellar in 1984 by pretending he needed help carrying a door.

“Do not let yourselves be deceived as Elisabeth was 24 years ago,” the prosecutor told the jury.

Eva Plaz, Elisabeth’s lawyer, said Fritzl’s guilty plea should not be taken as a sign of remorse.

“Nobody knows the accused as well as my client (Elisabeth). I can say what you heard yesterday was no confession. Why did he only yesterday change his mind?”

His expression grim, Fritzl entered the final court session yesterday ringed by a dozen policemen.

He was wearing the same rumpled grey suit with a blue shirt and tie.

“He was under no illusions before the verdict,” Mayer told reporters after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said the children held captive had never seen daylight and had to watch Fritzl repeatedly rape their mother.

“The basic need was for power. It is about domination, about power, about control,” psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner testified.

Elisabeth and her six children, aged 5 to 19 at their discovery, and three of whom were incarcerated from birth, are now living in an undisclosed location under new identities.

Three of the children were raised above ground by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie after he told people that Elisabeth had abandoned them and joined a sect.