
It was assumed Elisabeth had left voluntarily when her parents received a letter from her saying they should not search for her. The daily Der Standard wrote: "The whole country must ask itself just what is really, fundamentally going wrong."įritzl's wife Rosemarie had been unaware of what happened to her daughter when she 'disappeared' in 1984.

"Obviously it was more convenient to look away from the neglected house then questioning its fabulous inhabitant of what he was doing behind his walls," it added. The neighbours are very thoroughly looking away," the Oesterreich newspaper wrote in an editorial. "The community of Amstetten, including its population, should drown in shame. The case was the more shocking because it was reminiscent of that of Austrian Natascha Kampusch who spent eight years locked up in a windowless cell before escaping in August 2006. Newspaper headlines called the case the "crime of a monster" and the "worst crime of all times" and stories questioned authorities and residents of Amstetten, 130km west of Vienna, for failing to notice "the martyrdom in the horror house" under their feet. "The two boys saw daylight for the first time in their lives." Polzer described how Elizabeth Fritzl emerged with two of her children, both boys, from the house on Sunday after they were tracked down by police. "We know that she herself has been kept imprisoned by her own father for 24 years in the basement and furthermore she obviously was also subjected to sexual abuse." "This is not a mother abandoning her child which then had to be admitted to hospital in a serious condition," Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, told broadcaster ORF. The daughter tipped off police.įritzl then brought Elisabeth and her remaining two children out of the basement, telling his wife that their "missing" daughter had chosen to return home. Doctors appealed for the girl's mother, who was believed to have disappeared, to come forward to provide more details about her medical history. The 19-year-old girl - the oldest of the three - became seriously ill and was said to have been dropped off at the hospital late last week. Josef Fritzl's elaborate web appears to have come unstuck when one of the children in the basement became seriously ill and he allowed her to have treatment. "The fewer pictures you have in your head the better." "There are things that you just don't want to see," a policeman at the house told the Guardian. Their only window to the world was a television set. Some of the narrow rooms were no more than 1.70m-high. "There was a shelf with plenty of cans and containers, and behind the shelf was a door made of reinforced concrete, secured electronically and running on steel rails, and only the suspect knew the code," said local official Heinz Lenze.
#Elisabeth fritzl now 2014 how to
They were lit by lightbulbs.Īfter Elisabeth Fritzl and her children emerged, Josef Fritzl, an electrical engineering technician by training, told investigators how to enter their basement prison through a hidden door operated by secret code. The basement was a network of windowless chambers with facilities for sleeping, cooking and washing and one was described as a padded cell. "She appeared greatly disturbed," said the spokesman. They said 42-year-old Elisabeth Fritzl told them her father lured her into the basement of the block where they lived in the town of Amstetten in 1984, and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.Įlisabeth Fritzl agreed to make a "comprehensive statement" detailing her ordeal to the police after being assured she would have no further contact with her father, who she said abused her from the age of 11. Police arrested 73-year-old Fritzl on suspicion of incest and abduction. One child died and three were removed by Josef Fritzl while the other three lived with their mother Elisabeth in the basement, never seeing the light of day.Ī police spokesman said the woman's nightmarish version of events was "completely believable". Last night Austrians were struggling to come to terms with revelations of a house of horrors and a monster in their midst.įorensic scientists were pouring over the cellar prison in which police say a man kept his daughter for 24 years, sexually abusing her and forcing her to give birth there to seven children.

#Elisabeth fritzl now 2014 code
The door could only be opened by a secret code.Īnd the only person who knew the code was the occupant's jailer.

AMSTETTEN - It was a modern-day, windowless dungeon, reached by a small, hidden door.
