I find all of this absurd conjecture extremely humiliating. My time in captivity is made ridiculous, and my behaviour and that of my family is subject to cynical judgment. With their statements, both Adamovich and Rzeszut manage to distract from their actual mandates, transforming me from a victim to a potential accomplice, or at least casting me as liar.
2 January 2010: The news magazine Profil writes that I had successfully escaped twice, but returned to Priklopil of my own free will.
8 January 2010: Police and public prosecutors hold a press conference where they announce that Wolfgang Priklopil had acted alone. The case is to be closed again, and the special task force formed in October 2008 to be disbanded.
In June 2010 Franz Kröll, the operational head of the task force, is found dead. All indications point to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, which is quickly subject to doubt, giving rise to various theories.
Several months later Johann Rzeszut makes a statement in connection with the investigator’s death, saying that it was necessary to continue investigating. He owed it to Kröll; otherwise he wouldn’t be able “to look at himself in the mirror anymore”.39 The investigations to date were “considerably and sustainably impeded”, and important materials had even been withheld. Kröll had been subject to “unjustifiable pressure”, in that he had been “unmistakably” told that the investigation was to be closed. This had happened although “just prior to that there had been an additional, heightened need for clarification in the case”. “Only job-related reasons could be considered as the cause of his death.”40
The competent authorities in Graz characterize the accusations as “completely out of thin air”.
8 September 2010: My autobiography 3,096 Days is published. In May Constantin Film had announced that Bernd Eichinger wanted to film the story. After his death Sherry Hormann takes over production, and filming is to begin in 2012.
2 November 2010: It is announced that the Innsbruck public prosecutor’s office is to investigate five public prosecutors from Vienna on suspicion of abuse of office. The basis for the investigation is a so-called memorandum stating the facts of the case sent to Parliament by Johann Rzeszut, claiming that the accused had “consistently and persistently neglected to consider decisive police investigation results”.
3 May 2011: The Republic of Austria rejects a compensatory payment for my time in captivity, as there had been no grounds for suspecting the kidnapper prior to my escape.
24 November 2011: After a ten-month investigation a 600-page report issued by the Innsbruck public prosecutor’s office exculpates the five Viennese public prosecutors accused of abuse of office. The case is closed. There is no indication that any steps in the investigation had been knowingly omitted, the report said. In addition, nobody precipitously determined that Priklopil had acted alone; there was simply no indication of any accomplices.
The report offers former Constitutional Court judge Adamovich no cause to change his assessment of his accomplice theory. The far right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) comes to his aid and resurrects – as already mentioned – the story of my supposed “baby”. “Strong indications point to this fact,” they said, although the medical records issued by the Vienna General Hospital show that a pregnancy had been definitively ruled out. Dr. Friedrich had informed the public prosecutor‘s office of this back in October 2009, and it was indicated in all of the documents made available to various commissions and committees.
In February 2012 the alleged pregnancy would prompt a police detective, disguised as a lecturer on road safety, to arrive at a school in Laxenburg in order to get a hold of suitable genetic material belonging to a young girl. At least in this scenario, I hadn’t murdered the baby, but given it to Ernst H.’s sister to raise. A minor consolation.
Once again, people were becoming involved in the matter, pushed into the public spotlight, who were completely innocent. All of this was due to the fantasies of a number of gentlemen who appeared to have lost any shred of decency, morals or sense of moderation, and primarily any relationship to the facts.
Possible connections between the police detective and former Supreme Court judge Rzeszut are debated in court in early summer 2015. The detective had stated that he was commissioned by Rzeszut, which Rzeszut successfully refuted. However, telephone records for the periods just prior and subsequent to the incident in Laxenburg demonstrate frequent contacts between the two gentlemen. Rzeszut is acquitted of giving false testimony. The court extended to him the benefit of the doubt, determining that the former president of the Supreme Court had simply forgotten to mention his contacts with the detective during his questioning.
December 2011: Yet another parliamentary fact-finding committee is formed. As with the first, the committee members are sworn to maintain confidentiality, particularly with regard to the details that could violate my right to privacy.
May 2012: Documents from the fact-finding committee are leaked to the media. The leak could not be correctly identified, but it is apparently there. There is talk of a “violation of parliamentary secrecy”. Although this constitutes “an enormous breach of trust,” says the chairman of the committee, as no documents from a secret committee are to be made public, he was unable to rescind the immunity of the committee members41
June 2012: It is decided to completely reopen the case once again and to obtain the assistance of outside specialists. Cold case experts from the FBI and Germany’s BKA. The press calls the move a “declaration of bankruptcy” on the part of Austria.
15 April 2013: These experts as well confirm that it was highly likely that Priklopil acted alone, that he had no connections to ominous pornography rings and that he had in fact killed himself. When asked for a statement on the outcome, I said, “I am happy that international cold case specialists from the FBI and Germany’s BKA have determined that there is no evidence for any third-party involvement, in other words no evidence for the theory of accomplices. I hope that this report can put an end to the Natascha Kampusch criminal case.”
Even today it is incomprehensible to me how many detours were taken, how much time, energy and money were wasted only to arrive at the same exact result. Time and again additional twists and turns were added, such as the suspicion that Priklopil had been laid on the train tracks already dead. Who killed him? Who put him there?
And even if the autopsy report, the statement given by the suburban train engineer and those reports by outside and internal experts stated that there was no justification for doubting his suicide.
Spring 2016: This hypothesis is resurrected once again. The brother of the late head of the Vienna Kampusch special task force files a criminal complaint against an unknown person. There was even speculation of murder concerning Franz Kröll’s suicide. Johann Rzeszut tells German news magazine Der Spiegel, “The fact that a criminal case with at least one relevant murder suspicion is considered closed, even before all of the key investigative leads have been exhausted, is not something that should go uncontested.”42
It is simply one continuous loop without end.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my family who never forgot me.
I would like to thank all those people who believed in me both during my captivity and after my escape.
I would like to thank all of those who have shown compassion for my situation.
And I would like to thank all of those people who have supported me either personally or professionally and have made so much possible for me.
* * *
01 A town in Lower Austria, north-east of Vienna.
02 In this instance it was the former president of the Austrian Supreme Court (OGH); “Irritierende Aussagen von Ex-OGH-Präsident”, see: wiev1.orf.at/stories/476169 (Version: August 2016), German only
03 Small round pastries made with yeast dough and with poppy seeds, cream cheese and/or plum jam filling.
04 Johann
Frühstück was the chief investigator at the time.
05 Ernst H - friend of Wolfgang Priklopil‘s, who gave the kidnapper a ride in his car shortly before his suicide and later was caught in the crosshairs of the investigation.
06 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/betreuung-von-natascha-kampusch-schwieriger-auftrag-1.859314 (Version: August 2016, German only)
07 A young man from Germany (1812?-1833) who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
08 Party at the biggest, most famous area on Mallorca
09 Abridged text; In the original by Ruth Thomson: “The Story of Tinchenbienchen. My Book of Bees “, Readers Digest, Zurich 1988
10 Kronenzeitung, 4 August 2009
11 http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article704105/Die-Koenigin-aus-dem-Kellerverlies.html (Version: August 2016)
12 Georg Danzer (1946-2007) was an Austrian singer-songwriter.
13 Internet reaction to the publication of my book 3,096 Days
14 Broadcast in 2010 as 3096 Tage Gefangenschaft (3,096 Days of Captivity)
15 See also: Katja Eichinger, BE, dtv, 2014, p. 562.
16 http://www.br.de/br-fernsehen/sendungen/kino-kino/3096-tage-kampusch-entfuehrung-film-filmkritik-100.html (Version: August 2016)
17 http://derstandard.at/1361241090000/Annaeherung-an-ein-Langzeitverbrechen (Version:August 2016)
18 http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/3096-tage-kinofilm-ueber-entfuehrung-von-natascha-kampusch-a-885573.html (Version:August 2016)
19 http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/kino/natascha-kampusch/regisseurin-sherry-hormann-ueber-sex-szenen-in-3096-tage-29250422.bild.html (Version: August 2016)
20 Kronenzeitung, 16. Oktober 2011, http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/Kampusch_Ich_wollte_schon_immer_anderen_helfen-Einsatz_in_Sri_Lanka-Story-299552 (Version: August 2016)
21 Die Welt, 21 December 2006
22 See also the Chronology of Events in the Appendix
23 Profil, 29th edition, 13 July 2009
24 Österreich, 10 August 2009
25 See also: Kommission agiert “unverantwortlich”, Der Standard, 10 August 2009
26 Profil, 3 January 2010
27 www.bz-berlin.de/artikel-archiv/natascha-kampusch-kind-mit-dem-entführer (Version: August 2016)
28 Profil, 29th edition, 13 July 2009
29 Rzeszut in an interview with News, 5 March 2012
30 A town in Lower Austria just south of Vienna.
31 Kronenzeitung, 27 February 2015
32 Dagmar Belakowitsch-Jenewein in the news broadcast ZIB, 15 April 2013
33 Excerpt from the lyrics for What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes, which came out in 1992 on their debut album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!”
34 “You don’t own me”, originally sung by Lesley Gore; however, there is also a version sung by Bette Midler
35 Marlene Streeruwitz: „Umstellt von Erziehern“, Der Freitag, 15 September 2006
36 http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/fall-kampusch-innenministerium-soll-fahndungspannen-vertuscht-haben-a-533764.html (Version: August 2016)
37 Der Standard, 23 December 2010
38 Kronenzeitung, 24 December 2009
39 Der Standard, 4 November 2010
40 http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/Chefermittler_der_SOKO_Kampusch_in_den_Tod_getrieben-Ex-Richter_klagt_an-Story-225467 (Version: August 2016)
41 derstandard.at/1336696770984/Fall-Kampusch-Parlamentarischer-Geheimnisverrat-bleibt-ohne-Sanktionen (Version: August 2016)
42 http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/natascha-kampusch-zweifel-an-suizid-des-entfuehrers-wolfgang-priklopil-a-1087957.html (Version: August 2016)
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