Friend tried to calm Kampusch kidnapper before suicide

The man who held a girl captive for more than eight years in Austria spent some of his last hours in a panicked state, driving around Vienna with a friend, before he committed suicide, a friend said today.

Police asked Ernst Holzapfel later that day to identify a photograph of Wolfgang Priklopil, who had thrown himself beneath a commuter train after his hostage, Natascha Kampusch, escaped on August 23.