House of Horrors

by Nigel Cawthorne

  It was clear that she was not developing along the lines of other girls. There was no chance that she could get close to a boy, or even develop a crush. ‘She was so pretty she could have had boyfriends, but she never did,’ said Christa. ‘She just sat quietly and no one noticed her. When I think about it, I wonder why the teachers never realised something was wrong.’

  Though it was widely known at school that Fritzl was violent towards his daughter, not even Elisabeth’s best friend Christa knew about the sexual abuse at the time. ‘The abuse at 11?’ said Christa, after it eventually came out. ‘I have thought about it a lot recently, whether I noticed anything when we were back at school. Now it is easier to understand why she didn’t talk about boys or about sex. Now, with hindsight, I understand why she didn’t talk about certain things or why she was distant and quiet, but we didn’t realise it back then. You just think, oh, you’re having a bad day.’

  In 1978, when Elisabeth was just 12, Josef Fritzl applied for planning permission to turn his basement into a nuclear shelter. This was not unusual during the Cold War years. Austria was on the front line in the confrontation between the Soviet Bloc and the West. At the end of the Second World War, much of the country was in Russian hands and the Red Army stayed on as an occupying force in the Soviet zone for ten years. When they withdrew in 1955, eastern Austria was left surrounded on three sides by the Iron Curtain with Communist Czechoslovakia to the north, Hungary to the east and Yugoslavia to the south. Amstetten was barely 30 miles from the heavily guarded border that divided East from West. Both sides of the frontier bristled with nuclear weapons. The situation remained that way until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

  Fritzl worked single-handedly on building the shelter over the next five years. However, in due course, he would need help to install the steel-and-concrete door which weighed nearly a third of a ton.

  He was anything but discreet about the building work. On one occasion, he fixed an industrial winch to the roof of the house. The heavy-duty lifting device was installed directly above the entrance to the cellar. Fritzl brought it in to raise massive concrete blocks as he turned the bunker into an unbreachable fortress. It may have also been used to help shift the dungeon’s heavy concrete-filled steel door that could only be opened by an electric motor operated by a remote control.

  In 1983, local officials came to inspect his handiwork and gave their approval. Building inspectors checked out the underground bunker and fire safety officers checked the incinerator that was later used to burn his child’s body, metres away from the hidden dungeon. The inspection team pronounced the ventilation shaft safe, gave Fritzl the appropriate stamp and left. They even advanced him State funds towards the construction shelter and later gave him permission to extend the basement and put in running water. In the eyes of the authorities, he was simply a good family man, trying to protect his wife and children in the event of a nuclear attack. This now looks like paranoia, but fear was running high at the time. Given the chilly political climate, nobody gave it a second thought. It is now apparent that Fritzl was actually building a prison where he had planned all along to incarcerate Elisabeth.

  Elisabeth left school at 15 and, while her older siblings escaped by marrying, she remained under her father’s constant gaze and was put to work full time at his lakeside guesthouse and campsite.

  At the age of 16, Elisabeth ran away. She found work as a waitress at a motorway truck stop and lived in a hostel, but Fritzl caught up with her and brought her back. Elisabeth’s attempts to escape her father were common knowledge, according to Alfred Dubanovsky, who knew her when she was at school. ‘After she vanished, we all talked about it,’ he said. ‘We knew she had run away before and thought she had done it again because she had told someone in our group that she had had enough, couldn’t stand it any more at home and that her father had beat her, and had hurt her. She said she was scared of him.’

  Even before her captivity, Elisabeth had spent most of her time indoors, he said, as her father did not let her out. However, as she got older, she began to come out of herself, even though her father tried to prevent it. ‘She was a great girl, but very shy and pretty nervous,’ said Dubanovsky. ‘You needed to know her before she would trust you, but we got on really well. We used to spend a lot of time together, we were in the same class and we were friends. We had even danced together a couple of times. We all used to go the Belami disco at the bottom of her road, but she was rarely allowed out to see us.’

  Joseph Leitner, now a waiter who lives in Neustadt near Amstetten, had also heard about the abuse. He attended the Amstetten Institute of Technology with a friend of Elisabeth’s who knew her by the nickname ‘Sissi’. Later, he became a lodger who rented a room from Fritzl, even though he had been warned by a friend about his behaviour before he moved in.

  ‘I knew Sissi was being raped by her father before she disappeared,’ he said. ‘I had a good friend from school who was really close to Elisabeth. I would say they were best friends; they spent a lot of time together. She confided in me, and she told me what a monster Josef was – and what he had done to Sissi.’

  Elisabeth made another attempt to escape, this time with their mutual friend. ‘They came up with a plan to run away together,’ said Leitner. ‘It was in 1983. Elisabeth packed her bags and left the house. She and my friend were 17, and the two went to Linz but also spent some time in Vienna. Josef was furious and eventually found Elisabeth and dragged her home. Sissi was banned from having anything to do with my friend again. Her mother also made sure of that. She banned Elisabeth from seeing her – and watched her carefully to make sure they were kept apart.’

  Leitner also knew of Elisabeth’s earlier attempt to flee when she was 16. ‘She could not take it living at home any more and tried to escape,’ he said.

  There were also indications around this time that Elisabeth was suicidal. However, the authorities unaccountably took no notice of her plight and aided Fritzl in getting her back. ‘She had taken sleeping pills and went to Vienna,’ said Leitner. ‘But the police found her and they, or her father, brought her back home.’

  Again, Leitner and his friend were not surprised when Sissi disappeared for a third time, nor was Leitner surprised that her friend kept quiet about what she knew. ‘When Elisabeth vanished again just a year later, my friend thought she had run off again,’ he said. ‘She never said anything because she was scared. It wasn’t only Elisabeth that was terrified of Fritzl, my friends were, too. They never went to the police because they were too scared of what Fritzl would do. That was why my friend kept quiet for so long.’

  Leitner himself was also frightened of Fritzl, but now regrets taking no action. ‘I feared he would take revenge,’ he admitted. ‘I have been tormented by nightmares ever since.’

  Others knew of Elisabeth’s distress and her plans to flee the family home. Classmate Susanne Parb, now into her forties, said, ‘Elisabeth used to say, “It would be great if only I could escape. I can’t wait for the day when I’ll be free of him.” When she was 16, she ran away to Vienna but he tracked her down. I wish he had never found her because all this may never have happened. She then got a job in a motorway restaurant and was saving money. Her plan was to leave when she was 18 because then he couldn’t force her to come back home. She had her bag packed and was bracing herself to say goodbye to her mother when she vanished. It made sense that she had run off to a cult because everyone knew she lived in fear of her father.’

  The reason she wanted to leave was clear enough. ‘Before she vanished, Elisabeth told me she was beaten very badly at home,’ said Susanne. ‘Her father was clever, though, to make sure he didn’t hit her where anyone could see the bruises and that’s why the teachers didn’t know. But Elisabeth never spoke about the rape. I think she must have been very ashamed.’

  There was no love lost between Fritzl and Elisabeth’s friend Susanne. ‘I went to her house a few times to play but never when the father was there,’ she said. ‘He
didn’t like me because I asked questions about why Elisabeth could not leave and come to mine for dinner. Soon, he banned me from meeting her. Elisabeth didn’t seem sad at school but was just very quiet. She had a good relationship with her brother Harald and her younger sister Doris.’

  Susanne also knew that Elisabeth was not the only one in the family who suffered abuse. ‘After Elisabeth disappeared, I spoke to Harald a few times and when he had been drinking he told me how his father beat him,’ she recalled. ‘He used to say, “I’m very afraid that one day he will kill me.”’

  In 1982, Elisabeth spent three weeks in hiding in Brigittenau, Vienna’s 20th district. The police picked her up and returned her to her parents. By making repeated attempts to escape and failing, Elisabeth unwittingly helped to provide her father with the cover story he would later use when he took her down to his basement and kept her imprisoned there. When he said that she had run off again, people naturally believed him; she had a track record. After all, she was a proven runaway, a rascal, a troublesome child. She was just the sort of delinquent who would end up in the hands of some strange sect. In the eyes of the good people of Amstetten, she had finally gone completely off the rails, leaving her parents distraught. She was an ungrateful child. Consequently, no one really cared where she had gone or what had happened to her.

  It seems only natural that a teenager who was suffering extreme physical and sexual abuse at home would want to run away, but Fritzl still claims Elisabeth was in the throes of ‘teenage rebellion’ that had to be curbed at all costs. ‘Ever since she entered puberty, Elisabeth stopped doing what she was told; she just did not follow any of my rules any more,’ he said. ‘She would go out all night in local bars, and come back stinking of alcohol and smoke. I tried to rescue her from the swamp and I organised her a trainee job as a waitress.’

  He also accused her of ‘promiscuity’. ‘I have always had high regard for decency and uprightness,’ he said. ‘I was growing up in Nazi times, when hard discipline was a very important thing. I belong to an old school of thinking that just does not exist today.’

  After Elisabeth was returned from Vienna, her father didn’t touch her during the first few weeks, but then, she says, it started all over again. She decided to stick it out until she was 19. At that age, the Austrian police would have no further jurisdiction over her; youngsters of 19 upwards could leave home and go where they pleased, and the police would have no authority to pursue them. In the meantime, she had entered a training programme as a waitress at the Rosenberger highway rest stop near Strengberg on the A1 autobahn that ran from Linz to Vienna. She and other girls in the programme slept in a dormitory below the kitchen. After the years of abuse, it must have felt liberating to get away. For the first time, she felt safe from her father. However, Strengberg was little more than ten miles from Amstetten, so he could still keep an eye on her.

  Later, she was sent to a catering college, where she lodged. The sexes were strictly segregated there, but she managed to meet an apprentice chef named Andreas Kruzik. The 18-year-old trainee was struck by Elisabeth, whom he described as a ‘pretty, but serious and withdrawn girl’. Twenty-four years later, the 42-year-old divorced father-of-one recalled, ‘My heart jumped into my mouth when we first met and I saw how beautiful she was. I struck up a conversation with her, talking about school and exams and trying to make her laugh. I knew then that I had fallen in love with her.’

  It seems that his feelings were reciprocated. ‘I noticed that she was slowly opening up and started to show interest in me,’ he said. ‘It was not so simple to be intimate because such things were not allowed in the school and there were only few opportunities to make out. The girls’ dormitory was a strict taboo and any boy caught there would have been expelled from the school.’

  During their busy two months at catering college, they used to go for long walks in the woods and spend time together. ‘We became inseparable,’ said Andreas.

  It is plain that Elisabeth had found a soul-mate, someone she could unburden herself to – up to a point, at least. ‘She really confided in me,’ said Andreas. ‘I knew that she was under pressure from her parents and that she ran away from home when she was 14 or 15 and that she was closer to some of her other siblings. There was a trusted sister whom she stayed with often.’

  Although they were physically intimate, the couple never had full sex because Elisabeth ‘would suddenly pull back’, Andreas said. ‘She told me that she couldn’t have sex with me. At the time, I thought it was because she didn’t feel ready, but I know now that she must have been traumatised by what her father had done to her.’

  By then, she had already been sexually abused by Fritzl for over seven years, according to what she told police, but she was reticent about her home life. ‘She spoke of her parents and her home only once, and said that she had a very strict father,’ Andreas said. ‘She said he got her a waitress apprenticeship at a tank station, but that she would have preferred to become a cosmetician.’ They even talked of running away together and getting married, although Andreas now fears that Fritzl may have learnt of their plans.

  The couple finally decided to sleep together at his house but, before they had the chance, Fritzl turned up at the college gates, forced Elisabeth into his car and took her home. ‘That night, she said she wanted to sleep with me and planned to stay at mine, but her father arrived to take her home,’ Andreas said. While Fritzl waited outside, they snatched a passionate farewell. ‘I kissed her goodbye and said I would be down at Amstetten to visit her, but she was worried about her dad. He was waiting in the car and she feared that if he found out about me she would be punished. She was very depressed and worried. She had failed part of the exam – the theory part – but I was cracking jokes and trying to cheer her up. I said, “Don’t worry, you can repeat the exams.” But it seemed like there was something else bothering her.’

  Before she left, Elisabeth made Andreas promise to keep their love secret. Under the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable precaution. He knew that her father was a strict disciplinarian, but it would have been impossible for Andreas or anyone else to appreciate the lengths this tyrannical, self-centred beast would go to in order to dominate his own child. ‘She told me her dad was strict but I had no idea he would do anything like this. Who would? We were madly in love and said we would write,’ he said.

  Andreas was not allowed to say goodbye to Elisabeth as she climbed into her father’s grey Mercedes because she was banned from talking to boys. He remembers their hurried, secret farewell. ‘As we kissed goodbye, we promised each other to write as often as possible,’ he said. But when he received no reply, he thought she had lost interest in him. ‘Now I realise she was no longer able to answer my letters.’

  Elisabeth plainly did not get his letters, as she would have replied. Before she disappeared underground, she was already in correspondence with another male friend who lived Wiener Neustadt, a small town south of Vienna, 70 miles from Amstetten. During her last month of freedom, she wrote three letters to him. The first was dated ‘9 May 1984’ and the recipient was named only as ‘E’. Her letter was clearly a reply to another from him as she said that she was very happy to receive a ‘nice long’ message from him. ‘Basically, I’m doing pretty fine,’ she wrote. ‘Sometimes, I still feel some pain and feel sick. I’m still in contact with …’ When the letter was released to the press, the name had been blanked out, but this was plainly Andreas. ‘He went into the next hospitality class for cooks and waiters. I’ve been dating him since the course. Sometimes there are problems because he is from Enzesfeld-Lindabrunn [just a few miles north of Wiener Neustadt]. This is very far from my place and this is why I’m very sad.’

  She confided her plans to leave home. ‘After the exams … I’m moving in with my sister and her boyfriend,’ she wrote. ‘As soon as I’ve moved, I will send you my new address. You could come and visit me with your friends if you want to.’

  She also talked about applying for a
job in a nearby town and told E, ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me.’

  Her letter was also full of delightful, girlish trivia. ‘I had my hair cut – layered on the sides and on the fringe,’ she wrote. ‘At the back, I want to let it grow long.’ Then she asked, ‘Do you have parties when your parents are at home, too? You are a crazy guy.’

  E was plainly living a family life completely alien to Elisabeth. He seemed to be a normal, everyday teenager, whose parents tolerated a certain amount of youthful high spirits and disorder – out of love for their children. The idea that such a life was possible must have been a comfort. In E, Elisabeth had clearly found someone she could depend on for friendship and support, someone she did not want to lose contact with.

  ‘I have a sensitive question I want to ask,’ she wrote. ‘I’d like to know if we’re going to stay friends when you have a girlfriend? Most of the time friendships break up because of that. And it is very important to me. If you can believe it, I deal with boys much better than girls.’

  She then explained why it was much easier to unburden herself to him than to her girlfriends at school. ‘Girls are not as trustworthy as boys,’ she wrote. ‘Probably that’s because I was around my brother from when I was a little child. I’m very proud of my brother who is now 21 years old. I know his problems and he knows mine, and I wouldn’t say anything bad about him.’ And she signed off the letter by saying, ‘I hope we see each other soon. Best regards.’

  Elisabeth sent the letter with Polaroid snap of herself attached. It shows her wearing a checked blouse, sitting on the steps of her parent’s roof-terrace swimming pool on a balmy summer’s evening in 1984. The sun has caught her bobbed red hair and a smile is starting to emerge on her lips. She wrote at the bottom of the letter, ‘PS: the picture is a little bit dark but I will send you better ones soon, OK?’ And on the back of the picture, she scrawled, ‘Think of me!!! Sissy.’