AUSTRIAN MAN PLANNED DAUGHTER’S IMPRISONMENT FOR 6 YEARS Posted on May 6th
AUSTRIAN MAN PLANNED DAUGHTER’S IMPRISONMENT FOR 6 YEARS
FORCED DAUGHTER TO HELP BUILD PRISON
Loading new images…
May 5, 2008 —
AMSTETTEN, Austria — Police say the Austrian man accused of holding his daughter captive for 24 years planned to build his secret cell as early as 1978, when she was just 12 years old.
Investigators also say a total of eight doors secured the underground warren of windowless rooms where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter at 18 and fathered seven children with her.
Prosecutors told reporters Monday in the town of Amstetten, west of Vienna, that they will have their first meeting with Fritzl this Wednesday or Thursday.
The 73-year-old suspect has not yet been charged, but his lawyer has said he is preparing an insanity defense.
In an exclusive television interview with The Associated Press, a woman who identified herself as Fritzl’s sister-in-law provided intimate details of the oppression inside the Fritzl home, describing him as a “tyrant.”
The woman, who has pictures of herself with the family, asked only to be identified as Christine R. to avoid public attention and throngs of journalists seeking interviews.
Christine R. painted the most complete picture to date of her sister. She also said her niece Elisabeth ran away from home as a 17-year-old, about six months before police say she was locked into the windowless cellar. This previous attempt to flee may have made her father’s story that the girl joined a cult more believable.
“We spoke about it often when we met,” the woman said of her 68-year-old sister. “And I would say, ‘Rosemarie, where can Elisabeth be?’ I even told her myself, she is definitely in a cult where you can only have a certain amount of children, or they don’t want sick children.”
The sister, 12 years Rosemarie’s junior, recalled searching for Elisabeth in train stations and where homeless people hang out. “We really did detective work all around as to where the cult could be,” Christine R. said.
But why was the cult story so easily accepted? Such questions have puzzled Austrians, who have grappled with whether Rosemarie might have had knowledge of the crime.
