Secrets in the Cellar (14 page)

All their therapists and doctors agreed it would be a long road to their recovery.

Forensic psychiatrist Keith Ablow, M.D., believes that Elisabeth and her children can heal their deep wounds with the right treatment.

“The key is going to be healing professionals to form bonds with each of these individuals,” he said. “That’s true whether they be psychiatrists, psychologists, pastoral counselors or psychiatric social workers. The goal is for each of them to feel free to slowly build up trust, telling his or her story with all of its darkness. There is tremendous power in human empathy, and when two people connect in a meeting of heart and soul, it can do wonders for the mind.”

Josef Fritzl’s upstairs and downstairs families were worlds apart, presenting doctors with many complicated problems in treatment.

“In the dungeon, time must have passed very slowly,” explained Dr. Kepplinger. “This slow-moving time is something we want to maintain in the clinic.”

While Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix had a naturally slow rhythm of life, Lisa, Monika and Alexander desperately wanted to return to school and see their friends again. But the media interest in the family was so intense, none of the children could leave.

“It’s a very frustrating situation,” said Klaus Schwertner, a Mauer clinic spokesman. “They will probably be here for months.”

Their classmates and teachers also missed them, while attempting to come to terms with what had happened.

“How could a father do such a thing?” asked Alexander’s 12-year-old school friend Jelena Krsic, describing him as a “A” student in Mathematics, English and German.

Jelena said everyone at the school was devastated, especially the teachers, several of whom wept when they learned what had happened.

“[Alexander] has a lot of feeling for others,” said Jelena, “and whenever someone cried, he helped them. Without him, recess is really boring.”

“The Devil Himself”

On Thursday, May 1, a local Linz newspaper printed a dramatic interview with the nurse Josef Fritzl had been convicted of raping at knifepoint forty-one years earlier. Identified only as Frau M., the woman, now 65, had seen a news report, recognizing him instantly after so many years.

“I saw his photograph on television and I knew it was him by his eyes,” she said. “I could hardly sleep.”

She described in vivid detail how the then–father-of-four had crawled into her ground-floor bedroom through a window, while her husband was out working. She had woken up to find him holding a kitchen knife to her neck, threatening to kill her if she screamed.

Frau M., who was a young mother at the time, said that Fritzl, then working for a Linz steel company, was a well-known Peeping Tom, who used to bicycle around the streets late at night, spying on women.

Later that day, a local Austrian newspaper announced it had unearthed old 1967 police records proving that Josef Fritzl was a known sex offender. The files, gathering dust in a basement for nearly four decades, contained his conviction for Frau M.’s rape, for which he’d served 18 months in jail, as well as an earlier one for attempted rape and an arrest for indecent exposure.

A few days later, long-retired Linz Police Chief Gerhard Marwan, 77, told reporters how he had caught Fritzl after the vicious rape.

“We traced him by a print from his palm at the scene,” said Marwan. “And he was identified by the victim, a nurse, as well as by a twenty-one-year-old woman, who was attacked in Ebelsbergerwald woods, but managed to escape. As early as 1959, we recorded Fritzl as an exhibitionist.”

Red-faced Amstetten police, who had earlier claimed Fritzl did not have a criminal past, confirmed that Linz police had unearthed his rape files, which would be studied at the earliest opportunity.

“We must examine them carefully,” said a spokesman for the St. Polten prosecutor’s office. “They obviously have great relevance for the case.”

On the heels of this shocking revelation, Austrian police announced they now wanted to question Josef Fritzl about the November 1986 unsolved sex murder of 17-year-old Martina Posch, whose naked body had been found close to the boarding house at Lake Mondsee, which Fritzl owned at the time.

Calling it a “routine measure,” Police Chief Alois Lissl said that Martina, who had been savagely raped, bore a striking resemblance to Elisabeth, who’d already been down in the cellar two years at the time of the murder.

Now investigators planned to search Ybbsstrasse 40, looking for Martina’s clothes and personal possessions, including a pair of black leather boots, a blue jacket and a gray purse that were missing.

“The perpetrator could have kept these items as a kind of trophy,” said Chief Lissl. “What really stands out is that Martina looks similar to Elisabeth.”

The police chief ultimately admitted that there was no sign of a “concrete link” to Fritzl, who would nevertheless be asked to account for his movements around the time of the murder.

Over the next few weeks, Austrian police would take a further look at more than 700 unsolved sexual assault and missing persons cases, to see if Josef Fritzl had been involved.

But his defense attorney, Rudolf Mayer, had now instructed his new client to exercise his rights and keep quiet.

“From now on he is not speaking to the police,” Mayer told reporters. “He will not say a single word.”

He said that as Fritzl faced a possible 15-year sentence for rape, as well as 20 years for the “murder through neglect” of Michael, he might use an insanity defense.

“This case requires a thorough psychiatric and psychological examination,” said Mayer. “We need to establish if he can be considered responsible for his actions.”

On Friday morning, Amstetten hospital doctors announced that Kerstin’s condition had deteriorated, and she was not expected to survive.

“She is suffering from multiple organ failure,” said a hospital spokesman. “That means her chances of survival are very low.”

St. Polten prosecutors said they would examine the possibility of charging Josef Fritz with murder if his daughter died through his negligence.

The same morning a story appeared in the Austrian Press that Fritzl had left Elisabeth alone for three days, after giving birth to her twins Alexander and Michael. It was only after the baby had died that he had come into the cellar and coldly thrown the body into the incinerator.

“We thought we were dealing with a monster,” a police officer told
The Sun.
“But this man is the devil himself. We think he went off sex with Elisabeth when she was heavily pregnant, and left her to have her babies underground. The more we learn about him, the more his actions defy belief. He is morally sub-human.”

In another shocking revelation that day, the German magazine
Der Spiegel
claimed it had received information that Fritzl had repeatedly raped Elisabeth in front of Kerstin and Stefan. Elisabeth had told investigators she had spent the first nine years of her incarceration in the one-room dungeon, until the cellar had been enlarged. Therefore, her children must have witnessed their father committing incestuous rape on numerous occasions.

Defender Rudolf Mayer said his client was most upset about the allegations being made against him. He was especially angry that police had accused him of murdering baby Michael by neglect, and for that reason, had stopped cooperating with the investigation.

Mayer accused prosecutors of trying to put his client behind bars for the rest of his life, even though 15 years was the maximum term for murder in Austria.

“My client has admitted Elisabeth had the twins on her own in the cellar,” said Mayer. “And that he did not see her until three days after the birth. He told me that when he found one of the babies was dead, he put its body in the furnace.”

Mayer said his client was “emotionally destroyed,” and had no regrets about anything he had done.

“He thought he was protecting his family,” said the lawyer, “and said that was his job as the patriarch.”

The following day, Mayer told the
Austrian Times
that he had received several death threats and sack-loads of hate mail since becoming Fritzl’s defense attorney. One letter threatened to come to his office and execute him during Euro 2008.

But he said he would not be intimidated, having received similar threats when he defended “Black Widow” Elfriede Blauensteiner.

“I am getting letters saying that I should be locked up with Fritzl,” he complained. “But I am not representing a monster; I am representing a human being.”

Mayer had no plans to hire a bodyguard, saying he was “an enthusiastic” amateur boxer, who could look after himself.

“I will not be swayed by a lynch justice mentality,” he declared. “Every accused person has the right to a defense. I see the good in my clients and I want to understand them. Perhaps that’s why some people hate me.”

Over the next few days, several of Josef Fritzl’s acquaintances revealed that there had been clues about what was happening in the cellar, now regretting having never spoken up at the time.

Alfred Dubanovsky, who had lived above the dungeon for twelve years, broke down in tears during a television interview, recalling how Fritzl had once told him the house would go down in history.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” sobbed the 42-year--old gas-pump attendant. “There were so many clues. The noises at night, the amount of food he used to load into a wheelbarrow and push to the cellar. His wife must have noticed that.”

Dubanovsky revealed that he had once seen another man go into the cellar, saying he believed it was a plumber helping Fritzl install a toilet.

“I met a common friend of mine and Elisabeth,” said former tenant Josef Leitner, who gave several television interviews, “and told her I was living at Fritzl’s house. She said, ‘Don’t you know who he is?’ I said I got along with him and she said, ‘He raped Sissy, his daughter.’ ”

Leitner said he thought the police knew about it, otherwise he would have reported it. He also recalled another tenant telling him about the 1967 rape and suspected arson, showing him newspaper cuttings to prove it.

In hindsight, said the Amstetten waiter, there were many strange goings-on in the house that should have raised suspicions. Every month he would receive huge electricity bills, although he was working construction at the time and was seldom there. Then there was the food, mysteriously disappearing from his and other tenants’ refrigerators. Finally, his pet Labrador/husky Sam, would bark and start pulling him toward the cellar whenever they were near it.

“If I had been a bit more fussy,” he said, “and put more effort into finding out what was behind all that, maybe the dungeon would have been discovered much earlier.”

On Friday, May 2, investigators began scanning the entire area around Josef Fritzl’s house with sonar, looking for more underground dungeons. Bloodhounds were brought in to see if there were any bodies buried in the garden.

Police had by now discounted Fritzl’s threats of laying deadly gas pipes into the cellar, and after installing new ventilation shafts to increase the oxygen, forensic technicians were busy filming, photographing and mapping every inch of it.

They had also determined that the area where Elisabeth and her three children were held captive only accounted for a third of the massive underground extensions Fritzl had excavated.

“The other two-thirds were constructed, but were bricked up,” revealed Chief Inspector Polzer. “This area is now being examined with a sonar probe. We have ruled out other dungeons or prisoners. However, we want to carry out a full investigation, so we are opening up the entire basement.”

Polzer also said that Fritzl had meticulously kept paperwork for everything. Investigators had uncovered design plans for his dungeon, as well as many years of receipts documenting purchases of food, furniture, appliances and clothing for his cellar family.

With the possibility of an insanity plea, prosecutors were now looking for evidence to prove otherwise.

“We can say that Fritzl is an unbelievably enterprising and effective man,” said lead investigator Polzer, “who has many skills and is highly intelligent. His conduct during these twenty-four years does not indicate a person with diminished capacities. On the contrary—everything up to now would conflict with the idea of a person who is not all there.”

Under Siege

In the week since Josef Fritzl’s arrest, his so-called “House of Horrors” had become one of the biggest international news stories in years. There was huge media interest, with each new daily development making front pages in newspapers as far away as China, India and Russia.

Consequently, the Fritzl family was now under siege at the Amstetten-Mauer clinic, as scores of photographers and news crews encamped outside. Reportedly there was a $1.5 million bounty for the first picture of Elisabeth, currently portrayed in an artist’s rather gruesome impression of how she might have aged into a white-haired old woman.

After several incidents of photographers attempting to sneak through the clinic gates commando-style to snap photographs, the elite Austrian anti-terrorism Cobra Force had been drafted in, equipped with thermal-imaging night cameras and guard dogs. Over the next few days, seventeen photographers would be arrested trying to capture that elusive photograph that every news organization in the world was clamoring for.

One freelance photographer even donned an Austrian police officer’s uniform, and brazenly attempted to walk into the clinic, before being apprehended. Another one put on camouflage gear and climbed a tree for a long-range shot of the Fritzl family before he was discovered.

On Saturday, clinic officials pleaded with journalists to back off, saying that publishing a photograph of Elisabeth could result in “secondary trauma,” setting back her recovery for months.

“We’re under siege from the press,” said Mauer clinic spokesman Klaus Schwertner. “The original plan was to let them walk outside in the grounds, a tranquil and secluded place. But they cannot go outside. They’re climbing trees to try and see in. They’re literally storming the clinic.”

Five miles across Amstetten, there were still more journalists and television crews stationed on a side street behind Ybbsstrasse 40, where they’d been for more than a week. Several neighbors across the street had rented out balconies to camera crews for exorbitant rates.

The entire area around the “Incest House” had become a ghoulish three-ring circus, as thousands of “catastrophe tourists” took a detour off the main A1 motorway to gawk at the house.

“I find this shocking,” said Amstetten Deputy Mayor Ursula Puchebner. “I do not understand their motivation. It shows no respect for the victims.”

But incredibly, with all the intense police activity around Ybbsstrasse, Rosemarie Fritzl’s gray hatchback car remained parked just across from the family home, apparently still unnoticed by investigators. Visible in the back seat was a large color photograph of her granddaughter Lisa by an address book, just as she had left it more than a week ago.

When a local reporter asked police why it had not been examined, he was politely told to mind his own business.

It would be another few days before police towed it into headquarters for a forensic examination.

On Sunday, May 4, Amstetten Catholic church held a special Mass to pray for Elisabeth Fritzl and her children. It was a moving service, and afterwards the congregation signed a banner hung outside the church, showing support for the Fritzl family.

Forty-five miles away in St. Polten prison, Josef Fritzl was in solitary confinement, after his cellmate had threatened to murder him, reportedly having gone berserk after Fritzl calmly admitted imprisoning his own daughter as a sex slave.

“From experience,” said prison governor Gunther Morwald, “we know that with sexual crimes where children are the victims, there is an increased need of protection for the prisoner.”

The governor then described his notorious inmate as “unproblematic . . . calm, collected and alert.”

That was in sharp contrast to Rudolf Mayer calling his client “a broken man,” and telling reporters that Fritzl had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic by a prison psychiatrist who had interviewed him.

“My client is psychologically ill,” said Mayer, who had visited him over the weekend, “and as a result is not responsible for his actions.”

He confirmed that Fritzl remained under a twenty-four-hour suicide watch, describing him as “distraught” and “depressed.”

“It is certainly hard for him in jail,” said the attorney. “He is also very worried about all the threats. Locking him up in jail is not the right thing to do. He needs proper psychological care.”

It was also reported that Fritzl had begged his wife Rosemarie to visit him, so he could explain himself, but she had refused. Police had also announced their intention to re-interview her in the near future, to see if she had known anything about the cellar.

“We think Fritzl acted alone,” said Chief Inspector Polzer, “but cannot exclude the possibility that someone else was aware of what was going on downstairs.”

That day, Josef Fritzl was cleared of any involvement in the murder of Martina Posch, after furnishing an alibi. But now Lower Austrian police announced that he would be questioned about the August 1966 sex murder of 17-year-old Anna Neumayr, whose body was found in a cornfield in Pfaffstaett bei Mattinghofen, a few miles away from where he’d worked at the time.

Anna’s brutal murder—with a captive bolt pistol—had occurred around the time that Fritzl had been suspected of attempted rape in Linz, and now detectives wanted to use DNA and other evidence to see if he was responsible.

Police said a photograph showing Fritzl in the area at the time of the killing had recently surfaced, and he was believed to have visited there every year, as he owned land there.

“We will investigate whether there is anything to indicate that Josef Fritzl was near the scene at the time,” said a police spokesman.

That evening, Christoph Herbst, the Fritzl family’s newly appointed attorney to handle their affairs, appeared on ORF Austrian television in a special program about the case.

“Elisabeth is to be admired,” he said. “She’s a very strong woman.”

Herbst said real progress had been made, and it was “quite gratifying” to see how members of the family were now helping each other recover.

“It is good to see how Elisabeth and her children are getting on together,” he said. “And the children are really getting on well together too. The effort of getting back to normal is visible.”

But the Vienna-based psychologist Brigitte Lueger-Schuster, an expert in posttraumatic stress disorder, appeared on the same program, warning that recovery would be a long and painful process.

“There is a honeymoon phase after the event,” she explained. “But the real test is to come. They will have to tackle piece by piece what they have had to go through, and come to terms with it.”

Dr. Keith Ablow agreed that the healing process would not be easy.

“I think the road can be tremendously difficult,” he said, “and it may not be possible to navigate it for each of these individuals. But think back to the Holocaust. There were kids raised in prison camps who went on to be free, to marry, to have careers and experience the joy in life. And so it’s quite possible and always worth the effort.”

Doctors were now slowing down the cellar family’s medical treatment, after Elisabeth and Felix suffered a relapse. The staff had been opening the curtains of the family’s wing a little more every day, to gradually get them used to sunlight, but it had proved too strong for their weak eyes to cope with.

“They have had a bit of a setback,” explained Mauer clinic director Dr. Berthold Kepplinger. “We have now given them back their protective glasses.”

That night in a radio interview broadcast, Rudolf Mayer confirmed that he was working on an insanity defense for his client. He said Josef Fritzl was suffering from a serious mental disorder and “didn’t choose” to do what he did.

“I believe that the trigger was a mental disorder,” said Mayer. “Because I can’t imagine that someone has sex with his own daughter without having a mental disorder. Therefore he is not responsible for his actions.”

The defender said psychiatric experts would now have to examine Fritzl, to decide if he was certifiably insane. That would mean that if he were to be convicted, he would serve out his time in the comparative comfort of a psychiatric institution instead of a tough prison.

“My client does not belong in a prison,” said Mayer, “but rather in a closed psychiatric ward.”

And he warned that if the St. Polten court–appointed forensic psychiatrist, scheduled to examine Fritzl the next morning, ruled him mentally competent, Mayer would immediately challenge the finding. For under Austrian law, the defense is entitled to a second psychiatric opinion.

“If I feel that the expert opinion does not correctly portray the personality of my client,” said Mayer, “I will order another expert examination.”

On Monday morning, as Kerstin Fritzl’s condition showed a slight improvement, there were reports that police now feared she also might have been raped by Josef Fritzl. London’s
Daily Telegraph
claimed investigators believed that after he tired of her mother, Fritzl may have turned his daughter/granddaughter into his sex slave.

But Dr. Albert Reiter said it was impossible to examine her for signs of sexual abuse while she remained in a coma.

“Thank God she is slightly better,” he said. “Her condition has stabilized and it is no longer life-threatening. We [are] slowly reducing the amount of drugs she is being given.”

Asked whether Kerstin may have been another sexual victim, Chief Inspector Franz Polzer refused to answer directly, saying police now believed they had discovered what had driven Josef Fritzl to commit his terrible crimes.

“His motive was to re-create once again the situation he had with his first family, the legal family,” explained Polzer. “But this time with a good-looking younger daughter.”

But after more than twenty years imprisoned underground, the once-beautiful Elisabeth had prematurely aged, resembling her mother. So, had the 73-year-old sexual predator turned to the next generation of his family to satisfy his twisted lust?

At a press conference that afternoon, Chief Polzer revealed that Fritzl had spent at least six years obsessively planning and constructing his dungeon before taking Elisabeth prisoner. He had started by applying for planning permission to convert his cellar into a nuclear shelter soon after he had begun raping her.

“He planned her incarceration and prison in minute detail,” Polzer explained. “He was obsessed and went to elaborate lengths . . . with the objective of keeping his daughter captive for a long time. This goes some way toward explaining how he was able to conceal his actions from the rest of the world for so long.”

The next morning, the
Osterreich
newspaper revealed that Josef Fritzl had regularly patronized the Villa Ostende brothel in Linz since the 1970s, gaining a reputation as “an extreme pervert.” A barman, identified only as Christioph R., said that many of the girls there would refuse him their services, as he was just too weird.

“He was bossy with everyone,” said Christioph, who had worked there for more than six years. “People go there to relax and have fun.”

District Governor Hans-Heinz Lenze confirmed the reports.

“All the prostitutes from Amstetten to St. Polten knew him,” said Lenze. “And they told us he asked them to do terrible things.”