Fritzl house to be razed

THE house under which Austrian Josef Fritzl imprisoned and abused his daughter and the children he fathered with her should be reduced to rubble, a provincial judge has said.

Judge Markus Sonnleitner, who is handling the jailed Fritzl’s insolvency, said the grey concrete building in the northern Austrian town of Amstetten was unlikely to fetch a buyer because of its dark history.

“This house should be knocked down. There is a lot of interest in seeing it vanish completely,” he told daily Kurier.

He said local authorities were looking at how to proceed, but that the cellar Fritzl built beneath the building should be immediately demolished.

The head of Amstetten’s municipal construction department told Kurier the demolition plan could go ahead in theory because no other tenants were living in the house, which is divided into apartments.