Austrian incest suspect confesses
The 'monster': The man suspected of keeping his daughter prisoner and abusing her for 24 years in the basement of a house in the small Austrian village of Amstetten.Picture: Reuters
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
AN ELDERLY Austrian, portrayed by media as a "monster", confessed yesterday to imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children, prosecutors said.
Josef Fritzl, 73, "has admitted building the dungeon and to holding his daughter and three children there," said prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek.
Fritzl also admitted incest "but insisted there was no force involved", said Sedlacek. One of the children died at an early age.
Fritzl was scheduled to be brought before an investigating magistrate yesterday evening and face several more days of questioning over the case which has shocked Austria.
Fourteen police meanwhile scoured the three cramped underground rooms in the family house in Amstetten, eastern Austria, where Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were held prisoners.
She has alleged she was drugged by her father in August 1984 and had been his prisoner ever since. All seven children were born in the "dungeon".
The six surviving children are three boys and three girls aged between five and 20.
The rooms, measuring "50-60 square metres in all" and with a ceiling just 1.70 metres high were "furnished like a flat", Sedlacek said.
Lower Austria police chief, Franz Polzer, said there was "a wide range of questions that still need answering" such as how Fritzl supplied the woman and children with food, how the babies were born and cared for in such cramped conditions, and how he could have incarcerated his victims for so long without his wife knowing.
It is the latest in a series of horror abuse cases to have stunned Austrians and newspapers asked how authorities could again have failed to detect the woman.
The case came to light when one of the children, now 19, was admitted to hospital in critical condition.
Doctors looking for background information stepped up efforts to find the mother. The whole horrific story came to light when Fritzl allowed them to establish contact with his daughter.
The Oesterreich tabloid featured a six-page special report on what it termed as "the worst crime of all time".
"How can this happen here?" asked Die Presse.
"Amstetten is in a state of shock," wrote mayor Herbert Katzengruber on the town's website. AFP
Josef Fritzl, 73, "has admitted building the dungeon and to holding his daughter and three children there," said prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek.
Fritzl also admitted incest "but insisted there was no force involved", said Sedlacek. One of the children died at an early age.
Fritzl was scheduled to be brought before an investigating magistrate yesterday evening and face several more days of questioning over the case which has shocked Austria.
Fourteen police meanwhile scoured the three cramped underground rooms in the family house in Amstetten, eastern Austria, where Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were held prisoners.
She has alleged she was drugged by her father in August 1984 and had been his prisoner ever since. All seven children were born in the "dungeon".
The six surviving children are three boys and three girls aged between five and 20.
The rooms, measuring "50-60 square metres in all" and with a ceiling just 1.70 metres high were "furnished like a flat", Sedlacek said.
Lower Austria police chief, Franz Polzer, said there was "a wide range of questions that still need answering" such as how Fritzl supplied the woman and children with food, how the babies were born and cared for in such cramped conditions, and how he could have incarcerated his victims for so long without his wife knowing.
It is the latest in a series of horror abuse cases to have stunned Austrians and newspapers asked how authorities could again have failed to detect the woman.
The case came to light when one of the children, now 19, was admitted to hospital in critical condition.
Doctors looking for background information stepped up efforts to find the mother. The whole horrific story came to light when Fritzl allowed them to establish contact with his daughter.
The Oesterreich tabloid featured a six-page special report on what it termed as "the worst crime of all time".
"How can this happen here?" asked Die Presse.
"Amstetten is in a state of shock," wrote mayor Herbert Katzengruber on the town's website. AFP
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