Austria kidnap case: 'How were we deceived?' town asks

Horrified residents in the Austrian town where a 73-year-old man imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter for 24 years are questioning how he deceived police, neighbours and social workers for so long.

Retired electrician Josef Fritzl confessed yesterday to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth and fathering seven children with her in a windowless cell sealed by an electronic keyless-entry system.

One of the children died in infancy and was tossed into the furnace of what stunned residents in Amstetten have dubbed a “house of horrors”, officials said.

Fritzl owned the grey stone apartment building, lived there with his family, and rented the other units to relatives.

Austria is still scandalised by a 2006 case involving a girl who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years, and residents of Amstetten, a working-class town west of the capital Vienna are asking how the latest instance could go undetected for so long.

“How is it possible that no one knew anything for 24 years?” said Anita Fabian, a teacher. “This was not possible without accomplices.”

Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street from Fritzl and his wife, said the couple would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.

“They appeared normal, just like any other family,” he said. “I’m totally shocked. This was next door. It’s terrible.”

Fritzl was placed in pre-trial detention and faces up to 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offences under Austrian law.

Police released Fritzl’s full name and photograph at a news conference yesterday, after his identity was widely reported by media in Austria and elsewhere in Europe.

The case unfolded after the eldest of the secret children, a 19-year-old, was found unconscious and gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to hospital. Authorities publicly appealed for her mother to come forward to help diagnose her condition.

After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday near the hospital. Fritzl freed the captive children that same day, Mr Polzer said.

Fritzl was born in 1935 and was a young child when the Nazis annexed Austria before the Second World War.

Elisabeth, now 42, was 18 when she was imprisoned in the cell constructed deep beneath the family’s flat in the building, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

“He admitted that he locked his daughter ... in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children,” Mr Polzer said.

According to police, Elisabeth said she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later.

Police say the surviving children are three boys and three girls, the youngest of whom is five. The oldest child is 19. DNA tests were expected to determine whether Fritzl is the father of the children, as he claims.

Investigators said they were trying to determine how the victims could have been hidden away for so long from other families in the building and everyone else in the town of 23,000 people.

Fritzl “managed to deceive everyone”, including his wife, Rosemarie, who was apparently unaware of the existence of the children in the cellar, Mr Polzer said.

Fritzl had seven other children with Rosemarie, police said.

Officials said three of the secret children – aged 19, 18 and five – “never saw sunlight” until they were freed a few days ago.

Mr Polzer said Fritzl was an authoritarian who took care never to allow anyone near the cellar. Hans-Heinz Lenze, a senior local official, said experts were trying to find out if anything could have been heard beyond the cell’s padded, reinforced concrete walls.

Mr Polzer said investigators believe Fritzl acted alone, but appealed to the public to come forward with information.

Elisabeth had been missing since 1984 and authorities said her father had concocted a cover story that she had joined a cult and disappeared. She was found by police in Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip-off.

Police released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a gaily-decorated small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said the keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping.

Three of the children lived with the grandparents. Fritzl and his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.

Authorities said the victims and Fritzl’s wife were under psychiatric care in an undisclosed location.

The shocking discoveries recalled the case from summer 2006, when Natascha Kampusch escaped after being largely confined to a tiny underground dungeon in a Vienna suburb for more than eight years.

She was 10 when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in 1998. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train hours after her escape.

Miss Kampusch, now 20, issued a statement yesterday saying she wanted to contact Elisabeth to offer emotional and financial help.