Josef Fritzl 10 years on: the ‘ordinary’ pensioner and the dark secret of the daughter he held captive for 24 years | The Independent | The Independent
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Please enter a valid email address
Please enter a valid email address
I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice
Thanks for signing up to the
Breaking News email
{{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}
On Saturday 26 April 2008, an anxious father and his daughter arrived to visit their critically ill relative in Mostviertel-Amstetten State Hospital, lower Austria.
Doctors were shocked by the daughter’s appearance. Her skin was the colour of ash, her few remaining teeth rotten beyond repair.
She looked aged enough to be the wife, not the daughter of her 73-year-old father.
Already suspicious about the signs of neglect detected in Kerstin, the sick 19-year-old relative, the doctors called the police.
At first the daughter, Elisabeth, was reluctant to talk. Only when the police officers promised her she would never have to see her father again did she open up.
And then a story tumbled out of her that was so incredible she had to preface it with the words: “No one will believe me.”
Elisabeth Fritzl had been imprisoned by her father in the basement of the family home at number 40, Ybbsstrasse, Amstetten, for 24 years, from the ages of 18 to 42.
He had deprived her of daylight for 8,516 days, and raped her 3,000 times. Kerstin, the relative in hospital, was Elisabeth’s daughter, by her father – one of seven children born of incestuous, subterranean rape.
It took Elisabeth two hours to give the officers the basic details of what she had suffered.
This Thursday, it is 10 years to the day since the world came to know the crimes of Josef Fritzl.
Fritzl kept his daughter in a basement dungeon for 24 years, raping her 3,000 times (Reuters)
(REUTERS/Ho New)
There were cases of children being imprisoned in basement dungeons before; there have been others since.
In America, David and Louise Turpin are currently awaiting trial after their 13 emaciated children were found living in squalor, some of them manacled and in chains, in an outwardly respectable Californian home.
But it is the Fritzl case that remains the most seared into public memory.
Today it finds its echo in recent fiction honouring a woman’s ability to endure, escape and overcome male abuse: the BBC miniseries Thirteeni about a woman who was imprisoned aged 13 and held captive in a cellar for 13 years; the 2010 novel Room, about a woman imprisoned aged 17 who has a child by her captor, before she too succeeds in escaping; and more lightheartedly, the US sitcom The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
The Fritzl case, though, could also been seen as tapping into male fantasies of predatory sexual power: a voyeuristic chance for men to enjoy the rape and imprisonment, while retaining their sense of virtue.
The same female unbreakability that appealed to the women authors of Thirteen, Room and Kimmy Schmidt, might also have appealed, more darkly, to men, to Fritzl himself.
Consider the reasons offered for why he picked on Elisabeth, out of the five daughters he fathered with his wife Rosemarie.
“She was as stubborn and strong as he was,” said Dr Heidi Kastner, the forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Fritzl for the prosecution. “If you want to exercise power and break somebody’s will, it is more gratifying to break a strong person’s will.”
Above all, the Fritzl case speaks of our enduring atavistic fascination with evil, and its banality.
To his friends and neighbours, even to Dr Kastner, who interviewed him six times, Josef Fritzl was “very ordinary”. The house on Ybbsstrasse, too, looked ordinary.
But inside, Fritzl had been abusing his daughter since she was 11 years old.
“I knew that Elisabeth did not want the things I did to her,” he would say later. “I knew that I was hurting her. But the urge to finally be able to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong.”
In January 1983, aged 16, Elisabeth tried to run away. But after three weeks, the police found her and took her home to her father.
This, in a way, was what sealed her fate. Fritzl now had the perfect back story for presenting his daughter as a troubled runaway, the kind of girl who might be expected disappear without too many questions being asked.
The house at number 40 Ybbsstrasse: under the seemingly ordinary exterior, extraordinary evil lurked (AP)
(AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)
On 28 August 1984, she was 18. It seemed Elisabeth now had the chance of getting a job that would take her away forever, to the north Austrian city of Linz.
And so Josef Fritzl asked his daughter to help him carry a wooden door down to the cellar.
To Elisabeth, it looked like Dad was just doing a harmless upgrade on the basement. She held the door in place to allow Fritzl to fit it to the frame.
And as she did so, he held a chloroform-soaked cloth to her face until she passed out.
Elisabeth awoke to find her hands tied behind her back with a chain. The cellar had been prepared for her. A bed, washbasin and electric stove were already in place. The door had been the last piece needed to seal her in her dungeon.
“I had to do something,” Fritzl would later “explain”, in an interview given to his lawyer because he wanted to prove that “I am no monster”.
“I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world,” he said. “She did not adhere to any rules any more. She would spend whole nights in dingy bars, drinking alcohol and smoking. I only tried to pull her out of that misery.”
Elisabeth told it rather differently. For the first few weeks, she said, her father kept her locked underground in the dark, visiting her only to rape her or feed her.
For four years, she lived alone in the cellar dungeon, seeing only one other human being: Fritzl, her rapist, jailer father.
Then, in August 1988, Kerstin arrived.
Aged 18 when her father imprisoned her, Elisabeth Fritzl had seven children by him
With no medical assistance, in an underground prison, Elisabeth eventually gave birth to seven of her father’s children.
One son, Michael, a twin, died after a matter of days. Fritzl secretly cremated the tiny body in a wood-burning stove.
But he took Michael’s twin brother Alexander upstairs to live openly with him and his wife Rosemarie.
As if he was some sort of warped god, Fritzl decided on different fates for each child.
Three – Alexander, Lisa and Monika – were chosen to become the “upstairs family”, enjoying a normal life with Fritzl and his wife.
Three – Kerstin, Stefan and Felix – became the “cellar children”, condemned to spend their entire existence in an underground prison.
Fritzl used Elisabeth’s record as a runaway to explain both her disappearance, and the appearance of the upstairs children.
He told his wife that Elisabeth had run away from home to join a religious cult.
The cult, he claimed, had “no room for children”, so Elisabeth had resorted to dumping her babies at the family home.
This explained why Lisa “appeared” aged nine months, in a cardboard box on the doorstep in 1992, with Monika following in December 1994 and Alexander in 1997.
Rosemarie believed him. Perhaps more incredibly, so did Austrian social services.
Fritzl had served a prison sentence for raping a woman in 1967. But it seems that social services did not take this into account when considering Elisabeth’s disappearance, and when allowing Fritzl to adopt the three “foundlings”.
Meanwhile, underground and undetected, Elisabeth and the cellar children survived in a subterranean chamber offering no more than 60 square metres (650 square feet) of space.
Inside the tiny subterranean dungeon, where Elisabeth and three of her children were imprisoned (Getty)
(Getty Images)
Fritzl’s dungeon was hidden behind the shelving of his cellar workshop.
Once inside, a narrow, five-metre-long corridor led to a small cooking and bathroom area, with a shower. There was running water and electric lighting, but the floor was uneven and bumpy.
The dungeon was divided into cells, some no more than 1.70m (5.6ft) high.The only ventilation was provided by a tube. The captives never saw sunlight.
Fritzl, a former electrical engineer, sealed them in behind a heavy concrete and steel door. It was opened electronically using a remote-control combination lock.
Only he knew the combination. He told his captives that if they fiddled with the dungeon door, they would receive an electric shock and die.
In this damp, fetid prison, three children born into captivity and weakened by lack of oxygen, who had never seen daylight, were assured by their mother: “Heaven is up there.”
When finally he was rescued and brought “up there” aged five, little Felix would spend hours just stroking the grass in the garden of his new home.
“When the sunbeams struck his face,” said the police officer who took him out of the dungeon, “he squealed loudly.”
He clapped his hands with joy when he saw a cow in a field, was fascinated by the sun and the moon.
It was the same for all the cellar children. “For them,” said Berthold Kepplinger, the chief physician of the clinic where they were taken upon release, “a passing cloud is a phenomenon.”
And yet Fritzl seems to have convinced himself that what he was doing to these children was normal – even wholesome.
“It was a beautiful idea for me,” he said, in the interview that was supposed to show he wasn’t a monster, “To have a proper family, also down in the cellar, with a good wife and children.”
“We celebrated birthdays and Christmas down there,” he said. “I even smuggled a Christmas tree into the cellar with cakes and presents.
“Whenever I went to the bunker, I would bring my daughter flowers and cuddly toys as well as books for the children. I would watch an adventure film on video with them while Elisabeth would prepare our favourite food, and then we would all sit at the kitchen table and eat together.”
But the other videos he took into the cellar were pornographic ones. Elisabeth said he would force her to re-enact his favourite scenes as he raped her.
It was reported that the attacks happened in one of the thoroughly soundproofed, padded rooms, after the cellar children had been locked in other areas of the dungeon.
World news in pictures
Show all 50
1
/50
World news in pictures
World news in pictures
30 September 2020
Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
29 September 2020
A girl’s silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
28 September 2020
A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1st
Getty
World news in pictures
27 September 2020
The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes
Getty
World news in pictures
26 September 2020
A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
25 September 2020
The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
24 September 2020
An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand’s parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
23 September 2020
A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors
The Mercury/AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
22 September 2020
State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
21 September 2020
A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic
AP
World news in pictures
20 September 2020
A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California
EPA
World news in pictures
19 September 2020
Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand’s royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
18 September 2020
Supporters of Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq
Reuters
World news in pictures
17 September 2020
A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at ‘the Place de la Nation’ as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France
EPA
World news in pictures
16 September 2020
A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day
EPA
World news in pictures
15 September 2020
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin’s Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month
Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP
World news in pictures
14 September 2020
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership election in Tokyo
Reuters
World news in pictures
13 September 2020
A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
12 September 2020
Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president’s resignation are now in their second month
AP
World news in pictures
11 September 2020
Members of ‘Omnium Cultural’ celebrate the 20th ‘Festa per la llibertat’ (‘Fiesta for the freedom’) to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia
EPA
World news in pictures
10 September 2020
The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece’s biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
9 September 2020
Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
8 September 2020
A home is engulfed in flames during the “Creek Fire” in the Tollhouse area of California
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
7 September 2020
A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
6 September 2020
Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open
USA Today Sports/Reuters
World news in pictures
5 September 2020
Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
4 September 2020
A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
3 September 2020
A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador
EPA
World news in pictures
2 September 2020
A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
Reuters
World news in pictures
1 September 2020
Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk
TUT.BY/AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
31 August 2020
The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
30 August 2020
Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus
Reuters
World news in pictures
29 August 2020
A woman holding a placard reading “Stop Censorship – Yes to the Freedom of Expression” shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
28 August 2020
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world’s third-largest economy
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
27 August 2020
Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
26 August 2020
People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
25 August 2020
An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel
Reuters
World news in pictures
24 August 2020
Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
23 August 2020
People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India
Reuters
World news in pictures
22 August 2020
Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California
AP
World news in pictures
21 August 2020
Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel’s plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
20 August 2020
A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
19 August 2020
A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
18 August 2020
Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
17 August 2020
Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
16 August 2020
Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland
AP
World news in pictures
15 August 2020
Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
14 August 2020
AlphaTauri’s driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
13 August 2020
Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio
AFP via Getty
World news in pictures
12 August 2020
Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya
AFP via Getty
Escape came when Kerstin fell desperately ill, from what was later believed to have been kidney failure. Now at last Elisabeth was able to persuade Fritzl to let one of her children see a doctor.
Perhaps he had a flicker of genuine compassion. Perhaps, though, Josef Fritzl figured the body of a fully grown 19-year-old would be harder to dispose of than that of a new-born baby.
In the early hours of the morning of April 19 2008, he let Elisabeth help him carry Kirsten out of the dungeon. He called an ambulance.
Initially, Fritzl claimed that he had found Kirsten leaning against the wall of his house, clutching a note from her cult member mother Elisabeth.
But the doctors, puzzled as to what was wrong with Kerstin, said they needed more information from Elisabeth. Unluckily for Fritzl, Austrian TV picked up on the case, portraying him as a man in despair as he tried to find Kerstin’s mother in time to get the information needed to save the 19-year-old’s life.
As his lies collapsed in on him, it seems Fritzl felt he had no choice but to take the enormous gamble of arriving at the hospital with Elisabeth. After the police had examined her, it was the turn of the doctors. They marvelled at how she had withstood her ordeal without losing her sanity.
A year later, at the trial, the unbreakable Elisabeth Fritzl comprehensively defeated her jailer.
Fritzl initially pleaded guilty to rape, incest, coercion and deprivation of liberty. He still, however, denied the charges of enslaving his daughter and murdering Michael by denying him professional medical assistance. But then he watched Elisabeth’s video testimony, and was “devastated” to spot her in court, in person, as it was being played.
The next day, Fritzl for the first time made no attempt to hide his face from the photographers. When the judge asked him how he felt after watching his daughter’s testimony, he quietly answered: “I plead guilty.” He was sentenced to life in a psychiatric institution.
Elisabeth went on to forge a new, better life for herself. Given a new identity, relocated to a tiny hamlet known only as Village X whose residents proved fiercely protective of her, she was able to form a happy, long-term relationship with one of the security guards assigned to protect her.
The cellar children too were said to have embarked upon surprisingly normal-sounding lives. In 2010 it was reported that Felix, the boy who had gazed in wonderment at grass, was now enjoying games on his PlayStation.
By 2013, he was reported to have almost forgotten his time in the dungeon, and was said to be attending a school where his classmates knew nothing of what he had endured.
At the same time, it was reported that Kerstin, who recovered from her illness, had got a boyfriend. Stefan, who first saw daylight aged 18, was now said to have ambitions of seeing the world as a merchant ship captain.
But away from Village X, the Fritzl case had provoked agonised soul-searching. It wasn’t just social services who had failed to notice what was happening at number 40 Ybbsstrasse.
Planning inspectors had examined the cellar in 1983, a year before Fritzl first used it as a dungeon, and had seen nothing more untoward than an extension that might have exceeded the original plans.
More incredibly, for much of the time that he was hiding a secret family in the basement, Fritzl accepted paying lodgers into his house.
One, Alfred Dubanovsky, had rented a ground floor room for 12 years. Like all the tenants, he was told he would be evicted if he went down to the cellar. He heard noises coming from below, but Fritzl assured him it was just the gas heating system.
A neighbour told him of often seeing Fritzl taking food down to the basement. They concluded that he was using the cellar as a storeroom.
“Who would ever believe something so terrible was going on right under my feet?” said Mr Dubanovsky, when the truth was revealed.
Some, especially the British press, couldn’t help drawing parallels with what was portrayed as Austria’s ambivalent, if not unrepentant, attitude towards its Nazi past, and the alleged tendency of its citizens to claim that no one knew about the atrocities.
By unhappy coincidence, for a month in 1945, Amstetten had been the location of a sub-camp of Mauthausen concentration camp.
And Austria already had one world-famous basement captive. Schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch was held prisoner by kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil for eight years, before escaping in 2006.
Natascha Kampusch was abducted aged 10, and held in a windowless cellar of only five square metres (Getty)
(Getty Images)
Was the Fritzl case, coming just two years later, evidence of a seemingly infinite Austrian ability to avoid asking questions, the better to be able to claim ignorance?
And wasn’t this the country that had allowed far-right leader Jörg Haider into a coalition government in 2000? “Is something rotten in the state of Austria?” one British reporter asked.
Austrian journalists preferred a more nuanced approach, one that was probably all the more devastating for being shorn of British nostalgia for wartime victories.
In the Die Presse newspaper, Sibylle Hamman suggested that Fritzl was an extreme example of the patriarch tyrant at the head of many Austrian families, his authority reinforced by a powerful, reactionary Catholic church.
“Virtually everybody knows this type of family,” Hamman wrote. “He comes home, uses the family like a toy and then goes again.”
And indeed, in his interview with his lawyer, Fritzl had claimed he didn’t need to use violence to keep his captives in line. “Elisabeth and the children fully accepted me as the supreme head of the family,” he said. “They would have never dared to attack me.”
As for the neighbours and lodgers, “The cellar of my house belonged to me and to me alone,” said Fritzl. “It was my kingdom to which only I had access. Everyone who lived there knew that. My wife, my children, my lodgers. And no one would have dared to enter my realm or even to ask me what I was doing there.”
You could, if you wanted, interpret this as the kind of Austrian authoritarianism that gave Fritzl the confidence to join friends on holiday in Thailand for three weeks in 1994, without really worrying that someone might find his daughter and children in the basement dungeon.
It might, however, be more honest to recognise that in nearly every country, neighbours prefer not to pry, and murderers, serial killers and kidnappers take advantage.
That appeared to be the conclusion of Dr Kastner, the psychiatrist who had actually examined Fritzl. She seemed firmly of the view that you couldn’t simply dismiss the Fritzl case as something that could only happen in Austria.
“It’s not an Austrian specific to lock someone up, to rape your daughter,” she told the Guardian. “It happens all over the world.”
In a way, that was the most chilling conclusion of them all.
The “ordinary” Mr Fritzl remains in a special prison unit for the criminally insane, now aged 83 and preferring to go by his changed surname of Mayrhoff.
According to one account, he sits alone in his cell, staring at the TV shopping channels, interrupted only when another inmate walks past and hurls insults at the locked door. According to another report, which emerged last year, he still hopes of enjoying life on the outside, of maybe one day going fishing again.
Forced to endure his own imprisonment, Josef Fritzl would like to be released.