I do not hope this man dies a fast death. I hope he's forced down into windowless cave, where his only access to the outside world is a plate of food shoved under his door, and that he lives like that for at least the 24 years he tortured these people.
I read in one news report that Fritzl is claiming that he had some kind of timer on the prison's door that would've opened it if he disappeared for a while (maybe it used the door's keyless entry pad as a kind of sensor; if the entry code wasn't punched in for a while, the door would open). However, police haven't yet found any evidence that this is true, just like they found no evidence that he had the cellar rigged to fill with gas if Elisabeth or children disobeyed him (this is a threat he dangled over Elisabeth's head).
My guess is that if something would've happened to Fritzl, all the dungeon occupants would have slowly starved to death. There's no way they would've been discovered otherwise; the BBC is reporting that "The secret location was so well hidden that when the police searched the property they failed to find it until Mr Fritzl showed them where it was. To get to the dungeon you have to pass through five different rooms in the cellar - including a room containing a furnace, a small office room and Mr Fritzl's workshop. Hidden behind a shelf in the workshop is a one metre-high reinforced concrete door."
Although his aboveground family knew about the cellar and knew they were forbidden to go down there, they didn't know just how much he had expanded it. It turns out the town's authorities authorized the construction of an addition with a basement in 1978; in 1983 they inspected it and "nothing looked suspicious.” The rest of the additions were done in secret. In fact, Elisabeth had to spend her first nine years of imprisonment in a single room; it was only in 1993 that Fritzl expanded the dungeon to its current size.
Statements given to police by Elisabeth say he lured her to the cellar by pretending he needed help to carry a door down there for storage, and once there he drugged her with ether and dragged her into a small chamber where she was handcuffed to a pole for two days. Fritzl later put her on a leash made from an electric cable, which enabled her to reach a toilet. She said that at the start she had fought against the imprisonment, banging on the walls and screaming until she could no longer speak. She said she had eventually stopped arguing with her father who in turn had stopped beating her as frequently.
For the first nine years of her ordeal, Elisabeth was held prisoner in the same cell. She was raped by her father every three days on average and gave birth to three of their seven children in the same room. Eventually she had become pregnant with Kerstin and she had informed her father - fearing that he would be furious because he would now have to release her to go to the hospital. He reportedly replied: "Do not think you are getting away from me so easily."
Fritzl extended the complex in 1993 by constructing a corridor to other rooms, one of which contained a double bed and a television. Until that point the children had to watch while their mother was raped on "numerous occasions" - and even later when other rooms were added they still had to listen - as none of the rooms had doors.
On the bright side (as bright a side as this case can have, that is), Berthold Kepplinger (the head of the clinic where Elisabeth and her children are living) has said the victims are slowly learning how to live as a family. "Both sides of the family are slowly growing together," Kepplinger said. "What is nice is to see how the family is starting to organize daily life. Mother and grandmother are preparing breakfast and dinner together. The children are making their beds themselves."
Stefan, 18, has been given an aquarium with goldfish after doctors discovered that Fritzl had put in a fish tank for him while living in the cellar dungeon.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been pouring into a special fund set up for Elisabeth and her children, and the government has also agreed to pay a minimum of $94,000 in back-dated child maintenance payments owed to Elisabeth.
Money won't give her back her stolen life, but at least when she's ready to leave the clinic and establish an independent life, she'll have money to get her started. Considering she has virtually nothing to her name, that's pretty significant.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7390806.stm
Fritzl confesses to 'addiction'
Rudolf Mayer says his client should have psychiatric tests
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who has admitted holding his daughter captive for 24 years, has said he was driven by an addiction that "got out of control".
He also said that he locked his daughter Elisabeth in a cellar dungeon to protect her from the outside world.
Mr Fritzl made the statement to his lawyer Rudolf Mayer, which was passed on to the Austrian magazine News.
He fathered seven children with his daughter - one of whom died when very young, three of whom were kept imprisoned in his cellar, and three others who went on to live with Mr Fritzl as his adopted or fostered children.
Elisabeth has told police that her father started sexually abusing her when she was 11.
In conversations with his lawyer Mr Fritzl admitted repeatedly raping Elisabeth, now 42, on visits to the cellar. "I knew Elisabeth didn't want me to do what I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her. It was like an addiction... In reality, I wanted children with her."
I brought... books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favourite dish
Josef Fritzl, via his lawyer
"I knew the whole time that what I was doing was not right, that I must be mad for doing such a thing. But despite this, at the same time it became completely matter-of-fact for me that I had a second life, which I led in the cellar of my house."
He insisted he still loved his wife, Rosemarie, with whom he has seven children.
"Since I can remember, it was my innermost wish to have lots of children - and I considered Rosemarie to be the suitable mother," he said. "The fact is I loved her and I still love her."
He said that he had locked up his daughter in 1984 as a way of controlling her behaviour after "she broke all the rules" following the onset of puberty.
"I needed to create a place in which I could at some point keep her away from the outside world, by force if necessary," he said.
Earlier the Oesterreich newspaper also reported that Mr Fritzl had sought to defend his actions, in comments relayed by his lawyer.
Mr Fritzl reportedly criticised media coverage of his case as "totally one-sided", and added that he was "not a monster".
"When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favourite dish," News magazine quoted him as saying.
"And then we all sat around the table and ate together."
He also repeated his claim that he had installed a timer-device on the doors of the dungeon so that if anything happened to him, they would open after a certain length of time.
"Had I died, Elisabeth and the children would have been set free," he said.
Elisabeth and five of her children are now in care with the Austrian authorities, who are protecting their privacy at a psychiatric clinic.
He is pleading insane one moment, then an addiction, then he was stated as saying "well i didn't kill them".
This guy is a joke, Does he really think he can talk his way out of it? Sounds pretty much pre planned and well hidden for so many years, hardly the actions of an insane person?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7727332.stm
Cellar father faces murder charge
Fritzl has been in custody since the case came to light in April
The Austrian father who allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years has been charged with murdering one of their seven children.
Austrian prosecutors say the charges against Joseph Fritzl carry a prison sentence of 10 years to life.
Mr Fritzl is also charged with slavery and rape. If found guilty, he faces 20 years in jail on those charges.
He has been in custody since the case came to light in April and a trial is expected to begin early next year.
Mr Fritzl fathered seven children with his daughter Elisabeth, now aged 42, in a cellar at his home in Amstetten, west of Vienna.
Three of them grew up in the cellar - without ever seeing daylight - while three others were brought up by Mr Fritzl's wife.
Now prosecutors have levelled charges at him over the death of the seventh child, a baby born in the underground chamber.
Allegedly 'humiliated' by mother, leaving deep psychological scars ,Convicted of rape in 1967; criminal record cleared after 15 years
Has said he locked up Elisabeth to protect her, and was unhappy with her social life
Began constructing cellar in 1981 or 1982
Mr Fritzl is alleged to have refused to call for medical help after the baby was born, despite knowing the child could die.
"Despite recognising the baby's life-threatening situation, he deliberately decided not to intervene," prosecutors said in the charge sheet against Mr Fritzl.
He has told police that he took the body of the child and incinerated it in a furnace.
Under Austrian law the act of not seeking medical attention for the newborn child is classified as murder.
Mr Fritzl, 73, was declared mentally fit to stand trial last month. His lawyer has refused to comment on the charges against his client.
'Born to rape'
Elisabeth Fritzl disappeared in August 1984, when, police say, her father lured her downstairs, drugged her and handcuffed her before locking her up. Between 1993 and 1997 three children were found outside the Fritzl's home in Amstetten, west of Vienna.
All three were taken in and either adopted or fostered by Rosemarie Fritzl, who believed her daughter was living elsewhere but was unable to care for her young children.
Mr Fritzl had told his wife - and social services - that Elisabeth had run away to join a sect. Local authorities have said they found no discrepancies in his explanations for how the three children came to be with the Fritzls.
The truth of the case first came to light in April after 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children fathered by Mr Fritzl, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.
DNA tests have shown Mr Fritzl - who has allegedly told a psychiatrist he was "born to rape" - is the father of Elisabeth's surviving children.
Elisabeth, her children and her mother have been undergoing psychiatric treatment and are thought to be at a secret location learning to resume a normal existence
Mr Fritzl is also charged with slavery and rape. If found guilty, he faces 20 years in jail on those charges.
:x :x :x
This makes me mad. They should stick this guy in a dark hole for every year he kept his daughter and her children captive.
Elisabeth, her children and her mother have been undergoing psychiatric treatment and are thought to be at a secret location learning to resume a normal existence
RESUME? Three of those kids had never been out of the cellar! They can't resume what they never had.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_re_eu/eu_austria_captive_daughter
You're entitled to your own opinions. You're not entitled to your own facts.- D. Moynihan
Originally Posted by aquatwins
I WILL STICK MY DICK IN YOUR HEAD
He has eyebrows like a lynx.
Elisabeth and most of her children have been released from the psychiatric hospital:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...cellar-austria
I think this is definitely some good news, because it obviously means that she's making progress in adjusting her life. Of course, I'm sure she'll probably remain an outpatient, but I have high hopes for this woman and only wish her the best.
The news story also says that she kept a diary while in the cellar. It's going to be used as a timeline of events in the case against her father.
[quote author=kara! link=topic=13948.msg1133726#msg1133726 date=1230669906]
Elisabeth and most of her children have been released from the psychiatric hospital:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...cellar-austria
I think this is definitely some good news, because it obviously means that she's making progress in adjusting her life. Of course, I'm sure she'll probably remain an outpatient, but I have high hopes for this woman and only wish her the best.
The news story also says that she kept a diary while in the cellar. It's going to be used as a timeline of events in the case against her father.
[/quote]
And best selling book deal, with movie rights. I say that with enthusiasm. Thanks to the media frenzy around this the past 24 years of these people's lives may have been hell, but hopefully they can use the exposure to make sure the rest of their lives are as comfortable as possible.
[quote author=bowieluva link=topic=13948.msg1133779#msg1133779 date=1230672681]
And best selling book deal, with movie rights. I say that with enthusiasm. Thanks to the media frenzy around this the past 24 years of these people's lives may have been hell, but hopefully they can use the exposure to make sure the rest of their lives are as comfortable as possible.
[/quote]Yes. If anyone deserves to profit from a hideous situation like this... she does.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7947508.stm
The trial of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man charged with crimes against the children he kept and abused for years in a cellar, has resumed in St Poelten.
For a second day, the 73-year-old entered court with his face obscured from view behind a blue folder.
The court is to hear more videotaped evidence from his daughter, who was allegedly locked up for 24 years.
Mr Fritzl has pleaded guilty to incest and "partially" guilty to rape but not guilty to enslavement or murder.
The trial is being held behind closed doors because of the sensitivity of the testimony.
A verdict is expected as early as Thursday, says the BBC's Bethany Bell in St Poelten.
Mr Fritzl is alleged in 1984 to have lured his daughter into a cellar with windowless soundproofed chambers beneath their house, to have imprisoned her there and raped her repeatedly over a number of years.
Defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer argued his client was "a human being not a monster" and he appealed to jurors to be objective.
He added that his client was hiding his face from the media because he was embarrassed.
Hard to prove?
On the trial's opening day, the court began viewing 11 hours of video, with the rest of the material to be shown in segments during the week.
Josef Fritzl used his daughter like his property
Christiane Burkheiser
State Prosecutor
The daughter and three of her seven children fathered by Mr 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.
Mr Fritzl is accused of murdering one of the newborn twin boys his daughter gave birth to in 1996, having failed to arrange medical care for the ailing infant.
Some legal experts have said it may be hard to prove the murder charge but the charge of enslavement carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, and some of the other charges carry a sentence of up to 15 years.
'Normal behaviour'
Court spokesman Franz Cutka said the first day's proceedings had included "an interrogation of the accused", and the video recording by Mr Fritzl's daughter, about which he was then questioned. FRITZL CHARGES AND PLEAS
Murder - not guilty plea
Enslavement - not guilty plea
Deprivation of liberty - guilty plea
Rape - partially guilty plea*
Incest - guilty plea
Coercion - guilty plea
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Understood to mean he is contesting the wording of the charges
In pictures: Josef Fritzl trial
Timeline: Austrian cellar case
Profile: Josef Fritzl
But he stressed that due to the sensitivity of the trial, no details of the proceedings could be released.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said Mr Fritzl had shown "no sign of regret or any consciousness of wrongdoing".
She alleged that he had not spoken to his daughter for the first years of her captivity, descending to the cellar only to rape her before returning upstairs.
Mr Fritzl, said the prosecutor, treated his daughter like his own property, sometimes raping her in front of their children in the cellar.
The defendant himself, his voice almost inaudible, talked to the judge about his childhood, saying he had been beaten by his mother.
Asked if he had any friends, he simply replied "No".
"partially" guilty to rape yeah right
ugh. this man makes me so sick. Those poor children and Elisabeth.
From The Times
March 17, 2009
Court enters dark and depraved world of man who allegedly raped his own daughter
“Light off: rape.” To make the point, the Austrian prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser threw the switch in the courtroom. “Light on. Josef Fritzl leaves the cellar.”
The trial of Fritzl – on charges of imprisoning and raping his daughter for almost a quarter of a century and murdering one of the seven children he fathered with her – was never going to be routine. It was indeed billed as Austria’s Trial of the Century.
But no one had reckoned with the concentrated drama that was packed into the first day of hearings – from the moment Fritzl appeared with his head buried in a blue folder to shield him from the cameras, to the prosecution’s attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the dungeon, to the claims by his defence that he was no monster but a caring family man.
Ms Burkheiser’s task was to make the jurors feel like temporary prisoners of Fritzl. First, she had the height of the adapted cellar – he had told the authorities he was building a nuclear bunker – marked on the doorpost of the courtroom in St Pölten: 1.78 metres (6ft). Then, she passed to the jury objects retrieved from the cellar where Elisabeth gave birth to her children. “Smell!” said the prosecutor. And the jurors retched at the sheer pungency of 24-year-old mould.
“They had to crawl on their knees in order to get around the dungeon,” she told the court. “It was damp and mouldy. The dampness crept into their backs and into their bones.”
To drive home her point, the prosecutor threaded the phrase “light on, light off” throughout her speech. Fritzl, she made clear, wanted absolute control over his downstairs family.
Was Ms Burkheiser’s performance enough to transport the eight jurors underground? Or to discomfit Fritzl? The 73-year-old building engineer had entered the courtroom hiding his face behind the folder, his hands quivering, besieged by questions from the waiting media.
“How do you explain yourself? How can you abuse your daughter for 24 years?” asked Austrian television reporters, thrusting their microphones into the dock. He did not answer. Fritzl did eventually speak, after the cameras were excluded from the courtroom. Only then was the face exposed.
The voice, confirming his identity and marital status, was reedy, had none of the deep timbre that had been associated with the man who fathered 13 children, seven of them in an incestuous relationship with his imprisoned daughter. And the face – so tanned when he abandoned his entombed family for a month to take a holiday in Thailand – was parchment yellow, a prison complexion.
He had pleaded guilty or, as he said, partially guilty to rape – the prosecutor calculated that he raped his daughter 3,000 times – to coercion, to forced imprisonment, to incest. Not guilty to murdering one of his daughter’s babies – neglected so badly that he died, blue in the face, two days after birth – and not guilty to enslavement.
The pleas had been widely expected as had the essence of his defence, that he was no monster but rather a frustrated, violent father who cared for his so-called second family. “The exceptional aspect of this case is that my client did not behave like a monster,” said Rupert Mayer, his defence lawyer. “The special point is that he chose his daughter for this role, that he created children together with her and looked after them . . . he bought them schoolbooks, celebrated Christmas and birthdays with them.” He appealed to the jury to be objective. “If you just want to have sex, you don’t have children,” Mr Mayer said. “As a monster, I’d kill all of them downstairs.”
For his part, Fritzl told the three judges and eight jurors that he, too, had suffered abuse as a child. “I had a very difficult childhood,” he said in a trembling voice. “My mother didn’t want me. She was 42 when she had me – she simply didn’t want a child and she treated me correspondingly. I was beaten.” At the age of 12, he said, he had made it clear to his mother that he would not tolerate being beaten any longer and would defend himself. “From that point on, I was Satan personified for her,” he said. She never showed him any affection and his father appeared only “rarely and sporadically”.
The defence team strategy is plain: if they can get their client off the hook on the murder charge (a possible 15-year jail term) and enslavement (up to 20 years), then the maximum time that Fritzl would have to serve would be for the rape charge.
Under Austrian law that is ten years’ imprisonment. With good behaviour and counting the year spent in pretrial arrest, Fritzl could hope to be free by the Christmas of 2016 – a triumph of sorts for Mr Mayer, who ranks as one of the most effective defence lawyers in the country.
The judge could avoid this politically embarrassing outcome – Austrian tabloids are already demanding a lifetime behind bars – if Fritzl were sent to a guarded psychiatric clinic for an indefinite period of observation before starting his jail sentence.
But the prosecutor, Ms Burkheiser, 33, seemed determined yesterday to secure the longest possible jail term. First she had to dismantle the myth of Fritzl as a caring man. There were, she emphasised, no mitigating circumstances. So the narrative underpinning the prosecution case became a horror story, the tale of a vicious man who abused his daughter for years before he threw her into his extraordinary dungeon at the age of 18.
The first part of the video testimony of Elisabeth, now 43, was shown to the jurors and to Fritzl in the darkened courtroom. Little notes – scribbled on the back of shopping bills left behind in the cellar by her father – constituted a kind of secret diary by Elisabeth, a chronicle of abuse.
The genre of the horror story has two conventions, and the prosecutor made use of both. The first is the mythic power of the locked door. The horror story seeks to stir the reader’s imagination about what lies beyond the door. For the imprisoned Fritzl family, the door became a potent symbol. “The accused repeatedly threatened the family with death if they should attempt to escape and he claimed to have an automatic switch which would cause a massive electric shock and a release of gas if the outer doors to the cellar were touched,” Ms Burkheiser said. “The effect would be death within a few minutes. There were no attempts to flee.”
Once he was beyond the door to the cellar, Fritzl let himself loose, behaved in an animalistic way. No details of his sex practices were made public yesterday and a court spokesman explained that they were one of the reasons why proceedings had to be held in camera.
The other horror story convention is the existential fear, the sense that one can wake up in an ordinary way one morning and by the end of that day be plunged into a living hell. That, said the prosecutor, is what happened to Elisabeth Fritzl on August 28, 1984. Drugged with ether and entombed in a soundproofed chamber behind eight locked doors for the next quarter of a century, Elisabeth lived a sub-human existence. There she gave birth – Fritzl provided a pair of rusty scissors to cut the umbilical cord.
It is not on the charge sheet, but Fritzl stole his daughter’s life. She and her downstairs children lived without sunlight, without human contact. On a whim Fritzl would cut off electricity for several days.
At lunchtime the drama ended abruptly – the one carried out in the public’s view, at any rate. Austria’s strict laws on privacy and the protection of victims does not merely restrict reporters in what they can say or write; if the judge so requires, it keeps them out of the courtroom altogether. Even the court spokesman, delegated with briefing the media at 4pm, would barely divulge anything, saying it was all confidential.
None of Fritzl’s alleged victims was present in court for the opening of the trial. They are spending the week in a psychiatric clinic to escape the publicity surrounding the trial. Journalists and the public are expected to remain excluded from the proceedings. They will be readmitted for the verdict, which is expected by Friday.
The horror story has one gentler variant: the tale where the protagonist, after undergoing numerous tortures, wakes up and realises he has merely survived an unpleasant nightmare. This, the prosecutor made plain, was sadly not the case of the Fritzl family. They are out in the sunlight at last, but their nightmare continues.
Chief prosecutor takes her first big case
Christiane Burkheiser, 33, is the star of the trial. She is conducting her first important case since being made chief prosecutor – she was on duty when the Fritzl family were released from the bunker in April. She has brought a new style to the courtroom: to evoke the dank atmosphere of the Fritzl dungeon she gave foetid pieces of material to the jury and ordered them to smell the evidence. Her office is only 20 metres away from Fritzl’s cell
Rupert Mayer, 61, Fritzl’s defence lawyer, is one of the most flamboyant figures in the Austrian legal profession. He has defended neo-Nazis, contract killers and, in one case, the parents of a girl held prisoner in a wooden cage. Mr Mayer makes a point of defending causes for which he has no sympathy: despite having a severe dog hair allergy he tried to enter the Vienna regional parliament as president of the newly established Party of Austrian Dog Friends
Judge Andrea Humer, 48, is an expert in trials from which the press and public are excluded. She has applied some of this experience, arguing that Fritzl’s daughter needs protection. Her most prominent case so far has been a gay sex scandal in the theological seminary in St Pölten. It is unusual for both the prosecutor and the judge to be women, but this case demands sensitive questioning of the main victim, Elisabeth Fritzl
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5920729.ece?token=null&offset=12&pa ge=2
also - I didn't see it posted anywhere, Krestin awoke from the coma. I don't know if she is out of the hospital yet though.
I think its brilliant how the goverment seems to be looking after this family. I don't think i have seen a single photo of her or the children since they got out of there. And i don't think she would of even given evidence in the same room as this monster. They have stopped them becoming the media storm, keeping the eye on him and the horrificness of his crimes.
The really scary thing is he seems fine with the incest and rape but the murder claim, he seems to be mortified that people might see him as a murder. Blaming the fact his mother never wanted him, boo hoo.
They think this case will take 5 days max, i think they have pretty much made up their minds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7947508.stm more at link
The face of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian charged with crimes against children he kept and abused in a cellar, has been caught on camera at his trial.
The accused, whose lawyer said he had been "ashamed" to show his face, had been covering himself with a folder since the trial began on Monday.
I wonder what kind of items the jury is being made to smell.
This whole case is full of
What chance to any of them have of living a normal life?
[quote author=aquatwins link=topic=13948.msg1217607#msg1217607 date=1237329280]
[/quote]
lolerz
Boringgggggggggggggggg.
this dude deserves prison, not a psych hospital. He knew what he was doing was wrong the entire time he did it.
From Times Online
March 18, 2009[size=14pt]
Josef Fritzl's change of heart: remorse or calculation?
[/size]
Josef Fritzl has capitulated in the face of the mass of evidence presented against him and confessed to murdering one of his children, fathered in an incestuous relationship with his daughter.
The admission stunned the Austrian court. The 73-year-old building engineer had confessed earlier this week to raping his daughter Elisabeth, imprisoning and beating her, and committing incest. But he had denied murdering the baby, born as a twin in 1996, and the charge of enslavement.
"What made you change your mind so suddenly?" asked the judge, Andrea Hummer.
"The video testimony of my daughter Elisabeth," Fritzl replied in a gruff voice. "I accept my guilt in all the charges presented."
Yesterday the court had heard almost all of the 11 hours of pre-recorded testimony made by Elisabeth soon after her release last year from the dungeon where she was kept for a quarter of a century.
Elisabeth chronicled the abuse and humiliations that she suffered during those years: the rapes – about 3,000, by some calculations – the birth of seven children with nothing but a pair of rusty scissors to cut the umblical cord, the damp, the deliberate power cuts, and the hunger. Fritzl may have concluded that his daughter – whom, according to the court psychiatrist, Adelheid Kastner, he considered his one true friend – actually hated him.
It was not just the family in the cellar that feared him. Elisabeth's brother, four years her senior, also testified by video tape yesterday that even the relatively privileged children upstairs could not stand their father, who regularly beat them into silence.
Intriguingly, one newspaper, Kurier, claims that Elisabeth was in the courtroom during the showing of the video testimony. She reportedly sat silently at the back watching her father and then left through a side door. If this is true – a court spokesman would not confirm or deny the story – it may have tipped the balance for Fritzl, offering proof that he had lost his family.
Until this morning Fritzl's defence strategy seemed clear. He would contest the most serious charges, and if convicted on the lesser charge of rape could expect, with good behaviour, to be free in seven and a half years, sooner if time on remand was taken into consideration.
But that would make sense only if he had a family to return to after his release.
Since his arrest after the dungeon was discovered in April last year, Fritzl has been much concerned with his finances. He owns seven properties, including the "House of Horrors" in Amstetten, which at current values could fetch about € 2.4 million (£1.7 million).
If found guilty he will have to pay all the therapy and treatment costs for his family, the 24 years of lost earnings for his daughter and legal fees. That comes to more than € 3.5 million. He and his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, had hoped that he could plug the gap by selling his life story, but there appear to be legal problems with this too.
So, last night, Mr Fritzl's world collapsed. An early release would project him into the world as a bankrupt pariah shunned by his family.
Better, he may have calculated, to cut his losses and hope that the court refers him to a psychiatric clinic for the rest of his days – a gentle retirement for an un-gentle man.
The court was therefore treated to the theatre of regret. Symbolically, Mr Fritzl no longer hid his face while entering the courtroom. He came ready to apologise for his deeds, hoping against hope that it would make a difference.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5930774.ece
I'm sure not, but has anyone ever come across pictures of the woman or their children since the release?
[quote author=Peavey link=topic=13948.msg1217997#msg1217997 date=1237383265]
I'm sure not, but has anyone ever come across pictures of the woman or their children since the release?
[/quote]
No. They released a picture of the mom from when she was young, but they're working hard to protect the family's identity. I can only hope that gives these people some chance at a normal life.
[quote author=Peavey link=topic=13948.msg1217997#msg1217997 date=1237383265]
I'm sure not, but has anyone ever come across pictures of the woman or their children since the release?
[/quote]
No. I am mad about this. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to see a picture of Elisabeth.
Boringgggggggggggggggg.
its breaking news so i am sure more about trial will be coming out
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7952275.stm
Austrian Fritzl sentenced to life
Austrian Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter in a cellar and fathered her seven children, has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Fritzl, 73, was found guilty of all charges against him, including rape, incest, murder and enslavement.
Earlier, he told the court that he regretted "from the bottom of my heart what I've done to my family".
A court doctor has recommended that he should be sent to a secure psychiatric facility.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7927039.stm
Live coverage of verdicts and sentencing
His daughter gave 11 hours of video evidence to the court, bet no one had a camera phone lol
i dont think photos will ever come out unless she sells her story. there was a "drawn efit" from a discription of her but the police said it wasnt correct.
WTF? Wonder how many more daughters will come forward? Hopefully this case gives others courage.
[size=14pt] Indian businessman arrested for suspected Fritzl-like incest crime[/size]
NEW DELHI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- In a suspected incest crime similar to that of Joseph Fritzl in Austria, a 60-year-old Indian businessman was arrested Wednesday in Mumbai for allegedly raping his daughter for nine years, reported local TV network Times Now Thursday.
The 21-year-old elder daughter of the man finally mustered enough courage to declare shocking crime committed by her father, after the latter began assaulting her 15-year-old sister, said the report.
The mother of the sisters has also been arrested for trying to hide the crime. The man owns a manufacturing unit of radium plates and automobiles in Mumbai, according to the report.
The case is highly similar to that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man who confined his daughter to a cellar for 24 years while repeatedly raping her and making her to give birth for him seven children.
The report said the couple were told by a yoga master that the family would prosper if the father were to have a sexual relationship with his daughter.
The yoga master has also been arrested by police and all three arrested would be brought to a judge later on Thursday, said the report.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/19/content_11036659.htm
[quote author=FemmeFatality link=topic=13948.msg1219119#msg1219119 date=1237470916]
WTF? Wonder how many more daughters will come forward? Hopefully this case gives others courage.
[size=14pt] Indian businessman arrested for suspected Fritzl-like incest crime[/size]
NEW DELHI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- In a suspected incest crime similar to that of Joseph Fritzl in Austria, a 60-year-old Indian businessman was arrested Wednesday in Mumbai for allegedly raping his daughter for nine years, reported local TV network Times Now Thursday.
The 21-year-old elder daughter of the man finally mustered enough courage to declare shocking crime committed by her father, after the latter began assaulting her 15-year-old sister, said the report.
The mother of the sisters has also been arrested for trying to hide the crime. The man owns a manufacturing unit of radium plates and automobiles in Mumbai, according to the report.
The case is highly similar to that of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man who confined his daughter to a cellar for 24 years while repeatedly raping her and making her to give birth for him seven children.
The report said the couple were told by a yoga master that the family would prosper if the father were to have a sexual relationship with his daughter.
The yoga master has also been arrested by police and all three arrested would be brought to a judge later on Thursday, said the report.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/19/content_11036659.htm
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