View Full Version : Incest case in Austria
This is just awful, being raped and kept locked up in a small cellar without windows for natural light and giving birth to 7 children, who are also forced to live in total isolation, I can't get my head around this yet. I hope that the poor woman and her children get all the help they need, and they will need lots and lots, unfortunately, whatever happens to the brute of a father will never be able to make up for this heinous crime. :crying:
I agree - it's just too awful to comprehend isn't it.
Those poor children - the 3 who were released from the cellar yesterday had never seen daylight before and two of them were aged 14 and 15.
And the poor mum too, I just can't get my head round it at all.
StarsOfCCTV
28-04-2008, 18:44
I read about this in the paper. How someone can do that to a fellow human being - let alone his own daughter, and for so long is appalling.
In the paper it did say 3 of her children lived with the grandparents and went to school, so at least not all of the children were in isolation. But still, for the ones which were and the woman, they will probably never recover fully.
Pinkbanana
28-04-2008, 18:46
Yeah, I can't believe someone would be sooooo darn right sick in the head to do this, especially to their own daughter!!! :eek: Its beyond evil.
sindydoll
28-04-2008, 20:29
omg i dont think ive heard of anything so tragic has this..its terrible and has for burning the dead baby...this man is seriously ill... its just blinking shocking
This sounds so horrible and awful. I havent read the article though, anyone know where I can read it?
StarsOfCCTV
28-04-2008, 22:08
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7371043.stm - quite a long article though!
Twenty years without natural sunlight must have had a dramatic effect on her circadian system.
His wife, Rosemarie, with whom he had seven of their own children, appears to have been unaware of the alleged crimes.
How could she not know for 24 years? How did this guy explain baby items going into the celler or reciepts for food that they didn't eat? She had to have known something was up.
DaVeyWaVey
28-04-2008, 22:38
This is just beyond sick! Evil, completely evil! . Those poor woman and children! :(
sindydoll
28-04-2008, 22:41
how the hell would you get your life normal after this has happened to you! poor woman
and the rest of the neighbourhood who just thought she had ran away from home.
I was more shocked at the what this evil evil man said yesterday after they found the cellar "Yes, I am the father of the kids and now I would like to be left alone".... As if it was a normal thing to do!!!
3 of those kids have never seen the light of day... she had twins but one died and the father burned the body.. How on earth did the Mother not know??? how can you live with a man for that long who has a key code cellar and not ask what is down there.. what are you up too.. I don't believe it.
Evil is not enough to describe this man.. :angry::angry::angry:
sindydoll
29-04-2008, 11:42
i still don't understand how he managed to keep all those babies in a cellar for that length of time without anyone noticing
Hollie-x
29-04-2008, 16:03
Is it true he has only got 15 years? If it is then what has the world come to?! I mean I don't believe in the death penalty (it's an easy way out if you ask me!) but to have taken so many years of his daughter's life to only recieve to be honest such a short sentence - it really does beggar belief. I know no amount of time can replace what she has been through but still!
Is it true he has only got 15 years?
Its not even gone to trial yet. If found guilty he can expect a maximum sentence of fifteen years on charges of rape and sequestration.
Hollie-x
29-04-2008, 16:19
It's disgusting. People who do less get a bigger sentence. There's no justice anymore.
Is it true he has only got 15 years?
Its not even gone to trial yet. If found guilty he can expect a maximum sentence of fifteen years on charges of rape and sequestration.
15 years is outragous.. he should get mimimum 24 for the years he took from his daughter and then more time for the kids lives...
sindydoll
29-04-2008, 16:47
i should imagine he will get longer than 15 years
i should imagine he will get longer than 15 years
The law states that 15 years is the maximum. A judge can't exceed that during sentencing, even if he feels the sentence should be harsher.
Personally, I think a judge should have the right to exceed the law if he feels it appropriate to the case.
i should imagine he will get longer than 15 years
The law states that 15 years is the maximum. A judge can't exceed that during sentencing, even if he feels the sentence should be harsher.
Personally, I think a judge should have the right to exceed the law if he feels it appropriate to the case.
100% agree with that..
Hollie-x
29-04-2008, 17:26
Absolutely. What's the point in even having a judge if that's all he can give him?! I mean it's pretty obvious he's guilty so why don't they just lock him up now & throw away the key..
Everybody is entitled to a fair trial, no matter what crime they have comitted. If he's admitted all the charges it'll be an open and shut case. The woman and children won't need to testify so the trial shouldn't last too long.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the media often sensationalise stories and blow them out of proportion. What we read in the paper and see on the news about this case could have been distorted or made to look like its something its not. I'm not saying that this case has been blown out of proportion but we don't know the full facts, we can only go on the information provided to us by organisations that will do anything to get viewers, readers and make money.
Hollie-x
29-04-2008, 17:48
True. And to be honest (<-- I have a real habbit of saying that at the moment..) I think it's quite sick when the media do put a twist on stuff and end up making money out of something as horrific as this.
DaVeyWaVey
29-04-2008, 20:08
15 years is just a disgrace. He should spend the rest of his life and rot in jail. His daughter didn't see daylight and was locked up for 24 years, along with those poor kids when they were born, and he's going to be locked up for less of that time! It's just wrong, totally totally wrong!
StarsOfCCTV
29-04-2008, 21:19
This will probably mean he will face a longer time in prison. No amount of time in prison will ever make up for what he's done though.
'They are also considering charges of "murder through failure to act" in connection with the death of one of the seven children he fathered. Police said on Monday that Mr Fritzl had admitted burning the infant's body shortly after it died.'
Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7373689.stm
Chloe O'brien
01-05-2008, 12:00
Whatever sentance he recieved for thes horrific crimes, if he does live long enough to stand trial won't compansate for the life that his poor daughter and her children have had to suffer. I like many others can't understand how his wife never knew their daughter was locked in the cellar, didn't she ever question all the locks on the doors and what about the three kids they raised how did he convince her to bring them up.
It has been said before, but if someone excavates rooms under their house then huge amounts of earth would have to be removed. How could he have done this without the knowledge of other people in the house.
It has been described how he took food there in a wheel barrow.
I would suggest that the wife would have to have known. There are none so blind as those who don't want to see.
It has been said before, but if someone excavates rooms under their house then huge amounts of earth would have to be removed. How could he have done this without the knowledge of other people in the house.
Trinity..the sick ******* applied for planning permission to turn it into a shelter.. so it wasn't un-noticed, it was nice and legal
.:SpIcYsPy:.
01-05-2008, 15:45
why don't they just lock him up now & throw away the key..
I would give him the flipping death penalty!:angry:
Hollie-x
01-05-2008, 19:19
And to cap it all off he even threatened to gas them all!...
Josef Fritzl, 73, an electrical engineer, allegedly told his prisoners he had installed a device that could pump out a poisonous substance and they would be left entombed in their windowless dungeon.
Fritzl locked up his daughter Elisabeth, 42, in the cellar under his home in Amstetten for 24 years.
Three children he fathered by her - Kirsten, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five – lived their whole lives underground until they were released earlier this week.
Full Article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1918124/Austria-Josef-Fritzl-'told-children-he-could-gas-them'.html
SEX beast Josef Fritzl’s wife was under suspicion last night over what she knew about their daughter Elisabeth’s 24-year dungeon hell.
As this first picture emerged of the couple together, it was claimed Rosemarie Fritzl, 67, took FOOD supplies to the cellar and may have received SHOPPING ordered in Elisabeth’s name.
Today investigators said they plan to use sonar technology at the house to ensure that no more underground dungeons exist.
Leopold Etz, chief of homicide investigations for Lower Austria province, said investigators are also questioning more than 100 people who lived in Fritzl’s house over the years.
Fritzl held his daughter Elisabeth prisoner in a secret dungeon for 24 years, fathering seven of her children.
Other people who have come forward saying they knew 73-year-old Fritzl are also being questioned, police said.
"We’re casting a wide net. It’s a lot of work," Etz said.
Officers are combing the entire property, including photographing, filming and mapping it.
Police also plan to use sonar to determine if there are any more secret underground spaces on the property, Etz said.
Fritzl has insisted that his wife had no idea he had imprisoned Elisabeth beneath their home in Amstetten, Austria.
But it has raised the question: "How could she not know?"
She was said to have been told by engineer Fritzl he spent night after night in the cellar “drawing up blueprints for machines”.
But a source close to the inquiry said: “The questions over how much Rosemarie knew are mounting up.” Investigators said it “defied logic” that she could not have been suspicious of deliveries of clothes and other goods addressed to “missing” Elisabeth, now 42.
The revelation that Elisabeth was able to shop came after a Sun probe which found she had a history of credit transactions.
Records suggest she browsed catalogues, although it is unclear if she placed the orders or whether her father did it for her.
Meanwhile, a former tenant of the flats above the dungeon implicated Rosemarie.
Petrol pump attendant Alfred Dubanovsky, 42, told how he saw her husband taking wheelbarrow loads of food to the cellar – with her help.
He said: “Almost nobody else was allowed access to this cellar and now I know why.
“But what has come back to me is the enormous quantity of food he took there in that wheelbarrow. It was far too much for five people.
“If I noticed it there is no way his wife could have missed it. And now I have thought about it I am convinced she used to help him put the food in the cellar.”
Astonishingly it emerged yesterday that Fritzl had apparently fooled his wife by FAKING his daughter’s voice in a phone call to her in 1994.
The monster pretended to be Elisabeth to ask her to look after one of her babies who had been left on the doorstep.
The child, Monica, now 14, was “adopted” by Fritzl to live with him and his wife above ground, along with Lisa, 16, and 12-year-old Alexander.
She's either very naive not to have realised something was wrong or she's lying about what she knows. I'm pretty sure its not the former.
Cellar girl Kerstin Fritzl was lying in bed “almost dancing” listening to Robbie Williams after being woken from her coma, it was revealed today.
Doctors said that despite having a tube down her throat to help her breathe, Kerstin was overjoyed on hearing Robbie's music.
They described how the 19-year-old, who was in a medically induced coma for weeks, was woken by doctors on Sunday and her first word was “hello”.
Dr Albert Reiter said that Kerstin, who is now undergoing therapy to build her physical and emotional strength, would make a full recovery and have no lasting damage.
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Dr Reiter said: “We smiled at her and she opened her eyes and smiled back at us. Kerstin said ‘hello’ to me as she woke from her coma.”
Hours after being woken Kerstin, the eldest of seven children fathered by Josef Fritzl, 73, and his daughter Elisabeth, who was imprisoned in a dungeon underneath the family home in Amstetten for 24 years, took her first steps in the intensive care unit before having her breathing tube removed and sitting up in bed.
Dr Reiter said that Kerstin, who had been kept sedated since Mid-April after suffering multiple organ failure, "wants to go and see Robbie Williams in concert and go for a boat ride”.
The plan is now to continue to integrate Kerstin as “quickly as possible” into family life which started when she was reunited with her mother Elisabeth at the weekend as the Mirror exclusively revealed.
“It was a very special moment as her mother was able to walk with Kerstin and the two of them literally stepped forward into a new life,” said Dr Reiter.
Doctors have created a special flat for Kerstin and her family to recover away from prying eyes. They have round the clock security and are being kept on a strict diet with special vitamins and minerals to help boost their immune systems.
The family’s lawyer Christoph Herbst added it was a “miracle” Kerstin was able to be with her family.
He said: “They will spend the next weeks focusing on being together and living together.”
Good news, hope they are able to deal with the horrors of the last quarter of century
Chloe O'brien
13-06-2008, 15:28
It was reported that they will be given new identites once Kirsten is able to leave hospital, but they will never recover from this terrible tragedy.
Cellar monster Josef Fritzl laid bare his soul to a woman psychiatrist, just like the movie Silence of the Lambs — and chillingly confessed: “I was born to rape.”
Incest dad Fritzl, who caged daughter Elisabeth underground for 24 years and raped her, opened up to Dr Adelheid Kastner in intense one-on-one sessions.
He calmly answered her questions during a series of cat-and-mouse chats reminiscent of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 Hannibal Lecter thriller.
Dr Kastner, 46, was called in by an Austrian court to unravel Fritzl’s twisted mind.
She questioned the 73-year-old for hours — and her report concludes he is too dangerous ever to be freed.
Dr Kastner believes Fritzl’s childhood with a dominant, sadistic mother who raised him without love and the lack of a father figure helped turn him into a twisted control freak.
He had early psychological problems and as a teenager attacked a girl in a park.
He told the psychiatrist: “I was born to be a rapist. I simply have an evil streak.”
In her report, Dr Kastner writes: “Mr Fritzl was born a disadvantaged child, which will have consequences for his entire life.
“He had to suffer a mother who demotivated him, denigrated him and was prone to violence.
“It was a childhood that left him emotionally crippled.”
Fritzl described being taken into bunkers by neighbours during World War Two bombing raids because his mother refused to go.
He was terrified that he would emerge to find her dead.
Dr Kastner concludes he cannot empathise with others — and has a need to dominate women.
He developed a craving to “own a person”.
Sickeningly, he chose his own daughter Elisabeth as his sex slave victim, forcing her to have his children.
Fritzl locked her behind a steel door beneath their home in Amstetten.
She brought up three of their children there, while he took three others to raise with wife Rosemarie, telling her Elisabeth had run away and abandoned them.
Children Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, never saw daylight until they were rescued in April.
A seventh baby died and was incinerated by Fritzl.
Incredibly, he boasted that he could have done much worse to his daughter — but held back because part of him was GOOD.
He told the psychiatrist he locked Elisabeth up to protect her from drug abuse and really believed that she and her children had a good life in the cellar.
Fritzl said: “I gave them school equipment to study with. I gave them toys and I even gave them pets to play with.”
He remains convinced he will be freed.
Dr Kastner, who has grilled more than 500 killers and sex offenders, insisted no one else was present when she met Fritzl.
She said: “I don’t believe a person can be evil from scratch.”
But she concludes Fritzl knew he was doing wrong and is sane enough to be tried.
Her report will go before a trial judge in St Poelten, Austria, at the end of the year.
From The Sun
Joseph Fritzl has complained that his mother called him Satan and told him he was 'good for nothing', his psychologist's report says.
Fritzl, who kept his daughter locked in his cellar for 24 years - and had seven children with her, said his mother had abused him over many years.
Details of the report were published yesterday in an Austrian newspaper.
He told psychologist Adelheid Kastner that he had tried very hard to love his mother but as he grew older that love had turned to hatred and he had extracted revenge.
He said: 'She raised me unknown but I never had any love from her. She used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It left me feeling totally humiliated and weak.'
Fritzl added: 'My mother was a servant and she used to work hard all her life, I never had a kiss from her, I was never cuddled although I wanted it - I wanted that she would be good to me. But the only thing she ever did with me was to go to the church.'
He also revealed: 'She didn't just used to beat me, she swore at me all the time and called me Satan and criminal. She told me that she only got pregnant to prove to my dad that she wasn't infertile and that she had never wanted me. She said I was good for nothing.'
He then admitted that years later he had taken revenge for the injustices he had suffered when he had locked his mother up.
He said: 'I locked her up in a room at the top of the house. I then bricked in the window so that she never again saw the light of day.'
She died in 1980.
Asked if that had given him the idea for locking up Elisabeth he said: 'To be honest I just didn't think about it, about her being my daughter, I saw her as my wife and as my partner.'
He added that he had been in Ghana for 18 months from 1963 - four years after his first conviction for exposing himself in a local park and three years before he carried out a rape in his hometown for which he was later jailed.
He said: 'I had various short flings with women in Ghana, nothing serious. I paid either money or gave presents, but I was really cautious because I was worried about sexually transmitted diseases. I always chose nice girls - no prostitutes - for that reason.'
He also rejected claims that he had physically abused any members of his family either with beatings or other acts of violence. He said: 'They are all saying that now because they have been manipulated. The fact is I was a very loving father and husband.'
The home in Amstetten, Austria, where Fritzl kept first his mother and then his daughter prisoner
To prove he was a loving father he told a psychiatrist that he had even taken Easter eggs into the cellar and hidden them around the dungeon for the children to find in a twisted version of the traditional Easter egg hunt.
He said he bought them an aquarium and also a budgie at some stage, but that the bird had sickened and died quickly in the cellar where the family had to constantly battle against stale air and mould on the walls.
Fritzl had seven children with his wife Rosemarie and seven children with Elisabeth during the 24 years she was imprisoned under ground - one of whom died and was burned by Fritzl in an incinerator.
The court in St. Poelten, Austria, which will be handling the case commissioned Dr Kastner, 46, of the Wagner-Jauregg mental asylum in Linz to provide a psychiatric examination of Josef Fritzl.
She told how she patiently tried to win the trust of Fritzl said he would open up to her and how afterwards she had had to listen to classical music to purge herself of the terrible things he told her.
And in a 130-page report compiled during six interview sessions each lasting several hours she attempted to answer the key question of how one man could lock up his own daughter for 24 years together with the children he forced her to have following repeated rapes.
Among the things he told a psychiatrist was: 'I was born to be a rapist' and also 'I simply have an evil streak'.
At the end of the report Kastner recommends that Fritzl is never again allowed to be free. She says he will remain a danger to the public and there is a considerable risk that whatever age he is he will reoffend.
But she said he was not insane and was fully aware that what he was doing was wrong and was answerable for his actions.
From Daily Mail
The sensational case of Josef Fritzl, who locked up his daughter in a secret dungeon to rape and father an incest family with her, begins tomorrow amid warnings of it turning into a farce.
One legal expert believes the 73-year-old could be free in just six-and-a-half years if found guilty of most of his crimes at the trial, which the media is banned from attending.
Dr. Raoul Wagner, an eminent Viennese lawyer, warned that the charges have 'little chance of working to keep Fritzl in jail for life'.
Fritzl faces a plethora of counts that include rape, incest, false imprisonment, slavery, coercion, deprivation of liberty and one of murder.
That relates to a baby born in the cellar in 1996. One of twins, baby Michael survived just three days. Fritzl picked up the tiny baby’s shrivelled body and burned it in the heating stove of the house.
Prosecutors say that by depriving the child of urgent medical care he was, in fact, its murderer.
Fritzl denies that charge but admits in principle to most of the others.
But Wagner says: 'I am convinced that after six-and-a-half-years he will be free again. The murder charge has no chance as the body was allegedly burnt and the ashes scattered in the garden.
'There is nobody and only Elisabeth's word over the details.
'The slavery charge has never been used since it was put on the books, and it does not really affect what happened here. He did not buy or sell his daugher in the slave trade, and the charges do not apply.
'At the most the incest and rape charge apply, and as sentences run concurrently, the most he would face would be rape - which means seven-and-a-half years with good behaviour, which with the year already spent inside means in six-and-a-half years he could be released.
'In a case like this the Austrian legal system is a nonsense. In America for 3,000 rapes a person would face 30,000 years in jail.'
In addition the decision to ban the media and public from most of the trial is also risky, as it means there could be allegations that the trial was not properly conducted.
Constitutional expert Heinz Mayer warned: 'If anyone were to raise an objection against the exclusion of the public then the whole proceedings might need to happen again.'
Over the course of this week jurors will hear a tale of unparalleled horror; of 3,000 rapes, solitary childbirth in the darkness of a rat-infested cellar, beatings, humiliation and near-starvation endured by Elisabeth Fritzl.
Elisabeth was 18 in 1984 when her sexually obsessed, convicted rapist father Josef drugged her with ether and walled her up in the clandestine grotto he created beneath the family home in Amstetten, Austria.
The court will hear how for the first six to nine months – Elisabeth is unsure because there was no way to measure time except in her head – she was kept chained to four poles with an iron girdle device around her middle.
Fritzl only removed it in the end because it interfered with his sex sessions.
Jurors have been promised psychiatric counselling if the evidence becomes too much for them to bear.
She will tell via videoed testimony – she never wants to set eyes on her tormentor again – how he began abusing her when she was just 11, leaving pornographic magazines in her room and masturbating in front of her.
This was the precursor to the hell of the cellar where he would rape her for hours on end, often in front of the children she bore him.
Other evidence includes the findings of psychiatrists about Fritzl’s state of mind, the health of the six cellar children, from police, from buildings experts speaking about the cellar’s construction and from paediatricians.
Also during the course of the trial Austrian bureaucracy will have to give its version of events: why a convicted sex offender got away with his crimes for so long.
Fritzl removed three of the cellar babies to live upstairs with him and his wife Rosemarie.
His charade included 'dumping' them on the doorstep with notes Elisabeth wrote under duress claiming she had joined a cult and couldn’t cope with bringing the babies up.
Social workers will have to answer why they entered his home – a house of fear, by all accounts, where his family dreaded his presence – 21 times and were never suspicious about him.
Still haunted by their failures, the public administration of Amstetten – the mayor and senior civil servants – have all gone on vacation during the trial to avoid the world’s media that has once again descended on Austria.
Fritzl will be led the 300 yards from his jail cell at 8.30 am UK time tomorrow into the wood-panelled courtroom in St Poelten for the start of proceedings.
He will seek to mitigate his horror by saying he incarcerated his daughter to save her from a life of drink, drugs and debauchery, that he loved her in his own way and was 'merciful' to the children.
But his own children by his marriage to Rosemarie have turned against him too. His son Harald is expected to testify that all feared him and endured beatings and abuse throughout their upbringing.
Elisabeth, who has fallen out with her mother because she took her father back after he served a sentence for raping a woman in 1967, has moved back into a psychiatric clinic with her six children for the duration of the trial.
She fears an invasion of reporters to the home where she now lives in the village of Mitterkirchen.
6 and half years :eek: that is utterly disgrace full.. he robbed his daughter of life and her children... he should get life!! :angry::angry:
di marco
16-03-2009, 13:27
i cant believe that he will only get 6 and half years, thats disgusting!
He [B]might[B] only get 6 1/2 years, but I have read somewhere that Josef Fritzl expects to die in prison. Lets hope there is no longevity in his family, although no prison sentence he gets will make up for what he did to his daughter :angry:
How the hell are they going to find an impartial jury that haven't seen the case in the papers already?
Not verybody reads papers on a regular basis, I suppose. But these days most people will have heard about this case from the tv and radio coverage, so they will have their work cut out to find an impartial jury. Perhaps they can get people from remote villages rather than the town he lives in.
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering seven children with her, has changed his pleas to guilty on all charges.
Fritzl said video testimony from his daughter, played in court on Tuesday, made him change his mind.
Josef Fritzl locked up his daughter for 24 years. The charges include rape, incest, murder and enslavement.
A court doctor has recommended that the 73-year-old be sent to a psychiatric facility for treatment.
At the start of his trial on Monday, Fritzl denied the charges of enslavement and murdering one of the children soon after its birth.
His surprise turnabout also altered his plea from "partial" to guilty on the charge of rape.
Fritzl's lawyer said watching his daughter's testimony had profoundly affected him, "destroying" his emotions.
Proceedings have ended for the day. A verdict and sentencing is expected on Thursday.
Wearing a grey suit and a blue shirt, Fritzl did not hide his face on Wednesday, as he had done for the past two days, when he was led into the courtroom in St Poelten, west of Vienna.
As proceedings began, the judge asked Fritzl how he felt after watching the videotaped testimony of his daughter.
FRITZL'S CRIMES
Murder
Enslavement
Deprivation of liberty
Rape
Incest
Coercion
In a low voice he said: "I plead guilty."
"Your daughter told you the baby was suffering from breathing problems," the judge said. "You had time to get first aid."
Fritzl said: "I was hoping the little one would survive but I should have done something. I don't know why I didn't help. I just lost sight [of the issue]."
He then said he was "sorry".
Speaking later outside court, Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer said his daughter's testimony had allowed him to see for the first time the impact of his actions.
Describing his client, Mr Mayer said Fritzl was "a person who had only one idea - 'I must always be full of power'".
Mr Mayer said he was "very, very surprised" by Fritzl's plea reversal, but that Fritzl hoped his change of plea would help his victims.
The court later heard psychiatrist Dr Adelheid Kastner say there was a danger Fritzl would repeat his behaviour if he was left untreated.
She recommended that he be sent to a psychiatric facility.
She said Fritzl had an overwhelming need to dominate and control, which she said stemmed from his childhood.
She said he was an unwanted, unloved child, intelligent, who had grown up determined to have somebody who belonged to him alone.
He was emotionally deficient but that he knew what he was doing was wrong, she added.
The court viewed the testimony from Fritzl's daughter on Tuesday.
Austrian media reports said his daughter Elisabeth was in a private viewing chamber in the courthouse at the time. However, officials refused to confirm this, saying only that a number of unnamed people had been there.
Fritzl lured his 18-year-old daughter into a cellar with windowless, soundproofed chambers beneath their house in Amstetten in 1984.
He imprisoned her there and raped her repeatedly over a number of years.
The daughter and three of the children fathered by Fritzl were kept captive in the cellar until the case came to light in April last year, when one of the children became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.
He was accused of murdering one of newborn twin boys his daughter gave birth to in 1996, having failed to arrange medical care for the ailing infant.
I know that he must have mental health problems to have done what he did but it does not seem fair to give him treatment at his age, he should be jailed for life and never be paroled. No expensive psychiatric treatment required for him, that could be better used for somebody who stands a chance of being re-introduced into society. Just my opinion.
Chloe O'brien
18-03-2009, 22:23
He should have his conkers chopped off without pain relief, the sick beasty b******
I hope he lives to a ripe old age and spent the rest of his days locked up like he locked up his daughter.. and do what Kath said too.. he is an evil evil man
Fritzl Gets Life Sentence
1:28pm UK, Thursday March 19, 2009
Incest killer Josef Fritzl has been given a life sentence for locking his daughter in a cellar for decades and letting their baby son die.
Fritzl has been sent death threats by outraged people in Austria
The 73-year-old fathered seven children with Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, after luring her into a purpose-built bunker under their home in Amstetten, Austria, when she was just 18.
Fritzl raped his daughter more than 3,000 times in the stuffy, cramped cellar - eventually with their frightened offspring nearby.
A baby twin called Michael died soon after Rosemarie gave birth underground when her father refused to get him medical help.
The retired electrical engineer now will spend at least 20 years in a psychiatric hospital after admitting incest, rape, false imprisonment, slavery and homicide by negligence.
di marco
19-03-2009, 13:47
im glad, hopefully itll mean he will spend the rest of his life in there
Josef Fritzl apparently is on suicide watch after being sentenced to life in prison. I say, stop watching him and let him get on with it. No amount of time in jail will make up for his daughter's and her children's suffering. :angry:
Chloe O'brien
20-03-2009, 00:29
Don't let him take the easy way out, I hope he lives another 25 years and dies a slow and agonising death.
Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a psychiatric prison yesterday.
The 73-year-old, who raped his daughter and imprisoned her and their seven incest children in a cellar, is almost certain to die behind bars.
Austrian authorities will reassess Fritzl's condition in 15 years and could free him if he were deemed cured. He and his lawyers accept this will not happen.
His new surroundings however will be much more comfortable than those he inflicted on daughter Elisabeth and their children.
His cellar family had to endure damp and cramped conditions with little food, light or ventilation.
One child even died underground - leading to the murder charge that Fritzl belatedly admitted.
He will be sent to the secure hospital unit of Mittersteig prison in Vienna where he will have his own TV, music centre, computer and, if he likes, a pet for company.
He will have access to newspapers and magazines and can use the prison's garden for exercise.
He will be sharing a 16ft by 12ft cell - a fraction smaller than the space Elisabeth endured for the first nine years of her captivity.
Mittersteig is known as a ' boutique' jail with only 90 inmates, two thirds of whom are sex offenders.
Part of Fritzl's incarceration will involve therapy sessions with psychiatric experts and with Dr Patrick Fortier, his personal specialist who has been caring for him in jail.
Fritzl will share a sitting room, kitchen and tea-making area that all inmates can use between the hours of 9am and 6pm.
He will also be able to learn skills - such as basket making and ceramics - and have the chance to pick up a foreign language.
Rudolf Mayer, his lawyer, said: 'He doesn't mind where he goes. It's not like it's a hotel but he would like a prison close to home because it may be that relatives will go to see him.'
The prison is a two-hour drive from the home in Amstetten that was the scene of his crimes.
It is likely he will eventually be sent to Gollersdorrf prison for the criminally insane in the town of that name in southern Austria.
Among those being held there is Robert Ackermann, who killed and then ate a man's body parts.
In recent days at the St Poelten jail where Fritzl has been held for his trial, inmates have begun tormenting him with the chant: 'Fritzl, you're a schnitzel when Ackermann gets to you'.
Many Austrians feel Fritzl should have been sent to a regular jail.
Dorothea Schoettker, a housewife in St Poelten, said: 'It seems he will now be able to knit and learn a foreign language when I think he should be in a cell with no daylight - just like his victims.'
In court yesterday, Fritzl looked straight ahead as the jury, who had deliberated for three hours, convicted him, as a formality, of all the charges.
Sexually obsessed, he began abusing his daughter Elisabeth when she was just 11. The court heard how his compulsion to 'own' a person grew over the years.
In August 1984 he tricked Elisabeth, then 18, into the cellar saying he needed help installing a door.
She was drugged with ether and sealed in with an elaborate security system. It was the start of a nightmare that involved 3,000 rapes, beatings, starvation, humiliation and the birth of seven children through incest.
Mittersteig prison in Vienna, where Josef Fritzl will start his incarceration.
At the start of his trial on Monday, Fritzl had denied the murder through neglect of the newborn twin called Michael.
But as he sat through his daughter's gruelling videotaped evidence on Tuesday, and then caught her eye as she made a shock appearance in the public gallery, he cracked.
He returned to jail that evening and told a psychiatrist he wanted to change his plea to guilty on all charges - murder, rape, incest, deprivation of liberty, enslavement and 'massive coercion'.
The last charge related to the repeated threats he made to kill the cellar family if they tried to escape.
Fritzl's crimes came to light a year ago when Elisabeth forced him to seek hospital treatment for Kerstin, their daughter who was close to death from organ failure.
Because doctors asked to see the 19-year-old's mother, he was forced to release Elisabeth from the cellar to accompany him to hospital.
Suspicious medics and police soon uncovered Fritzl's crimes.
Fritzl, who is now said to be in an extremely fragile mental state and under suicide watch, finally apologised yesterday but said he could not make amends: 'I can only try to find opportunities to try to limit the damage that I have done.'
In debt to the tune of £3million, the electrical engineer was declared bankrupt before the trial began.
His wife Rosemarie is divorcing him and his seven children from their marriage have disowned him.
di marco
20-03-2009, 11:20
Josef Fritzl apparently is on suicide watch after being sentenced to life in prison. I say, stop watching him and let him get on with it. No amount of time in jail will make up for his daughter's and her children's suffering. :angry:
Don't let him take the easy way out, I hope he lives another 25 years and dies a slow and agonising death.
i agree, he should be left to suffer, although his sentence will never make up for what he did, dying is the easy way out
He is not suffering much if he is in a cosy cell with tv, stereo, computer and even a pet. If he becomes ill, he gets immediate treatment, not like millions of people in UK having to wait weeks and months for their appointments. I say stop watching him and leave plenty of sheets for his bed in his cell.
di marco
25-03-2009, 19:36
i have never understood how it is fair that people who commit crimes get to have luxuries in prison. prison should be a punishment, therefore all they should have is food, a bed and basic bathroom facilities
:eek: he gets a pet?! they are allowing him to look after something living?
So basically his daughter was locked up for 20 odd years in a horrible basement and forced to have children and yet when he is caught and imprisoned he gets better treatment. Why should he be given all this freedom to do what he wants. He should be locked in a small cell 24/7 given basic nourishment and thats it. Just a bed and a toilet, thats all he needs.
Chloe O'brien
29-03-2009, 01:32
I have said it before on other post on here prisoners who comit murder, rape and child abuse should live in a cupboard 5 ft 4 ft with just a pot to wee in but there will always be a do-gooder tree hugging activist who will appeal for their human rights. What about their victims human rights. These low-life scumbags gave up their human rights the day they committed their crime.
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