House of Horrors

by Nigel Cawthorne

  But why had records of such serious offences, including sexual assault and arson, not been kept, he was asked. ‘I am only a civil servant and not a law-maker,’ was his reply.

  However, after Fritzl was arrested, it took journalists only a short time to find reports of his rape conviction among the cuttings. Knowing that such an offence would be expunged from the official records under Austria’s statute of limitations, it would not have been difficult for someone from the social services to have checked in newspaper archives.

  In bringing Lisa above ground, Fritzl had taken unnecessary risks. And it didn’t suit his overall plan, either. What he wanted was a second family underground – one that he could dominate completely. And as he was not about to stop having unprotected sex with his abused daughter, there were bound to be more children, so something would have to be done.

  In 1993, Fritzl began extending the dungeon with extra rooms to give his growing subterranean family proper living quarters. By then, Elisabeth had been entombed in that single padded cell for nine torturous years.

  As her presence in the basement was a secret, there was only one person he could call on to help dig out the dungeon – Elisabeth herself. Together, they dug out an estimated 116 cubic metres of earth – some 200 tons of it – by hand. Over the years, Fritzl managed to smuggle the equivalent of 17 lorry-loads of earth and rubble out of the cellar without his tenants, the neighbours or his family noticing. At the same time, he managed to smuggle tiles, bricks, wooden wall panels, a washing machine, a kitchen sink, beds and pipework into the underground cellar without anybody being any the wiser. He excavated a dungeon seven times the size of the nuclear bunker he had permission to construct. On top of everything else, he was violating all manner of building codes, but the authorities knew nothing of it. In any other circumstances, undertaking such a Herculean task successfully would have been an astonishing – and admirable – achievement. ‘Fritzl did it all,’ said a police source. ‘It’s phenomenal by anyone’s standards.’

  Although Fritzl was a talented engineer and electrician, it seems that plumbing was beyond him. Upstairs tenant Alfred Dubanovsky said he saw another man going down into the cellar. Fritzl introduced him as a plumber who had come to help him install a toilet. ‘He didn’t get many visitors,’ said Dubanovsky, ‘but only he alone was allowed in the cellar, which I thought was a bit strange.’

  The police do not think this man was an accomplice; they believe Fritzl acted alone. Somehow, this man had entered the cellar, installed the lavatory and gone away again without noticing Fritzl’s imprisoned daughter and the children. As there was no door between the room in the dungeon, Elisabeth, Kerstin and Stefan must have been hidden away out of sight, probably bound and gagged, when the plumber visited.

  Another major risk Fritzl took in securing expert assistance was the fact that a professional plumber would surely have noticed that the now-extended underground bunker violated the building code. Yet he did not report it to the authorities, and neither has he come forward since. Who he was and how he was involved in the imprisonment of Elisabeth and her children remains one of the unanswered questions of the investigation.

  Although the cellar was getting bigger, there was no chance of improving the ventilation system. This would have necessitated breaching the walls or ceiling of the dungeon, allowing sound – possibly a cry – out. While Fritzl later gave his cellar family vitamin D tablets and installed a UV light in an attempt to stop them developing health problems due to lack of sunlight, these provisions were no match for daylight and fresh air.

  Household waste from the dungeon family was put into the underground furnace so as not to attract attention. The bathroom, kitchen and toilet were plumbed into the main house’s waste disposal system. To further allay suspicion, Fritzl kept a room full of building materials, which could then be brought out when repairs needed to be made to the house or other buildings he owned. No one would note that more went in than ever came out. As his workshop was also down there, it was only natural that he would be seen taking material in. This subterfuge worked. Fritzl’s son-in-law, Juergen Helm, now in his late thirties, said, ‘I have lived in the house for three years and have been in the cellar at least once. It was scattered with junk and I had no idea this family was living a few metres away. It’s incredible.’

  Neighbour Erika Manharter spotted nothing amiss either, though he had known Fritzl from childhood. ‘I grew up with Josef and he always appeared friendly, though he never seemed to want close contact with anyone,’ Manharter said. ‘It certainly seemed as if they were a perfect family unit, but it just goes to show you cannot really see what is happening behind closed doors. I am truly shocked.’

  Another distinctly un-nosy neighbour was Gabrielle Heiner. ‘Everyone used to chat about what might have happened to Elisabeth,’ said Heiner. ‘My brother was with her in secondary school, then she suddenly vanished. I must admit I always thought the grandfather was a perfect head of the family – someone who cared about his children.’

  He cared so much about his children – escaping – that he sprayed the steel door of their dungeon with concrete until it weighed 660lb. There was no chance that Elisabeth and the children could shift it. Without the electric motor running, it eventually took four firemen to push it open.

  Despite the extensive evacuations, the labyrinthine complex was no more than 1.7 metres – 5 feet 6 inches – high. In some places, it was a good deal lower. Elisabeth and the children – as they grew – had to stoop. Living with such low ceilings was, by its very nature, oppressive. Added to the sense of confinement were the narrow passageways leading from the original padded cell into the living area and on to the bedrooms beyond.

  6

  A FAMILY TORN APART

  Rosemarie seems to have taken to the role of foster mother to her granddaughter, now that her own children had flown the coop – or so she thought. Photographs taken on a day trip show a frumpy-looking frau in a crimson dress, tending to her ‘vanished’ daughter’s third child, Lisa, then aged two.

  When the long-suffering Elisabeth gave birth to Monika on 26 February 1994 – the day Fred West was first charged with killing his daughter Heather – the extension of the dungeon was far from complete and there was still no room for her. It has been reported that, like Lisa, Monika suffered from a heart condition from an early age, again possibly caused by her incestuous heritage, which required surgery. Fritzl took the child upstairs again. He went through the same charade as before, pretending to his wife that he had found the infant on the doorstep.

  Nine-month-old Monika supposedly arrived in Ybbsstrasse shortly after midnight on 16 December 1994 – the day Myra Hindley was to hear that she would never be let out of prison. This time, the new baby was not left at the door in a cardboard box; she was found in Lisa’s stroller parked in the vestibule of the Fritzl house. The telephone rang a few minutes later and, when Rosemarie Fritzl answered, she was convinced, once again, that it was her daughter Elisabeth on the other line.

  ‘I just left her at your door,’ the caller said. Again, she asked Rosemarie to look after the child.

  Rosemarie was in shock, and not simply because her daughter seemed to have contacted her once more after her long absence. The Fritzls had just been given an unlisted number, so how could Elisabeth have found that out? Rosemarie even told the authorities in Amstetten about this. Her comment – that it was ‘completely inexplicable’ – was noted in the record. Of course there was a simple explanation – Josef Fritzl knew the number. This time, apparently, he used a recording of Elisabeth’s voice to make the call, but even this did not ring the alarm bells with Rosemarie. After all, she could hardly have engaged a recording in the sort of conversation she might have expected with her daughter – or, indeed, any conversation at all.

  The letter that came with the second child read, ‘I am really sorry that I have to turn to you again. I hope Lisa is doing well. She must have grown a bit by now. Monika is now 9½ months old.
She was breast-fed for 7½ months. She now eats almost anything. But she still likes the bottle best. The hole in the teat has to be a little bigger for her.’

  Once again, the long-suffering Rosemarie accepted that her daughter was either unable or unwilling to rear the child – and that it was her job to do it for her. This time, the Fritzls did not adopt the child. Rather, they fostered Monika because, that way, they would receive a higher state benefit amounting to €400 a month.

  The new arrival did not go unnoticed; it even made the local papers. Journalist Mark Perry reported the story at length just after Christmas: ‘What sort of a mother must she be?’ he wrote. ‘That is the second time she put the baby in front of the door of the grandparents. How bad must she be?’

  He even got an interview with the secretive Herr Fritzl, whom he quoted as saying, ‘Since 1984, we think she is in the hands of some religious group.’

  No one who knew the Fritzls expressed the slightest suspicion. At this point, not even Rosemarie’s sister Christine, who hated Fritzl, voiced her doubts. ‘We spoke about it often when we met,’ she said. ‘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.’

  Once again, social services bought Fritzl’s story. And, again, District Governor Hans-Heinz Lenze saw no cause for suspicion. ‘If, as people assumed, and her father kept claiming, Elisabeth was living with a sect,’ he said, ‘it would not have been difficult at all for a member of the sect to give Elisabeth a lift at night and for Elisabeth to leave the baby on the doorstep at a time when she would not have been seen.’

  The neighbours also believed him. ‘People said that it was irresponsible: “What a bad mother Elisabeth was just to leave the children on the doorstep,”’ said Regina Penz, who lived three doors away. ‘Frau Fritzl had already had seven children. Now she had to bring up grandchildren as well. It was terrible.’

  Two years later, Elisabeth was pregnant again, this time with twins. Again, Fritzl left her to give birth alone. With no scan, Elisabeth may well have been unaware that she was having twins. This would have been all the more frightening for her as the birth pangs continued after she had already delivered one child. Patrick O’Brien of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that the risk to Elisabeth’s life would also have been greatly increased during a delivery of twins.

  One of the children was sickly and, when Fritzl returned to the cellar three days later, it had died. The infant had not been named, but has now been called Michael. Fritzl took the tiny body and burnt it in the basement furnace along with the other household waste.

  According to Fritzl’s own lawyer Rudolf Mayer, ‘He has admitted Elisabeth had the twins on her own in the cellar 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 into his furnace. Elisabeth says her baby developed breathing difficulties and Fritzl failed to get medical attention that could have saved its life. Police now say he is guilty of first-degree murder because he did not allow the child to be treated and it died as a direct result.’

  Fritzl stopped talking to police after they accused him of murdering the child by neglect – which would bring a charge of murder in the first degree under Austrian law. It is not known whether the life of her seventh child, a twin baby who died shortly after birth, could have been saved if medical care had been at hand.

  The surviving twin, Alexander, was taken upstairs and passed off as a foundling as before. Rosemarie was now used to her daughter’s ‘abandoned’ children turning up on her doorstep and no further questions were asked.

  ‘Why this man took these middle children upstairs, we will probably never get a final, clear answer,’ said Chief Investigator Franz Polzer. ‘You can imagine that it was getting a bit crowded. And you must not forget, the more prisoners in the cellar, the more complicated it became to look after them.’

  At the time, the police saw no reason to dig deeper and social services raised no objections. So Fritzl and his wife were named foster parents, entitling them to more state benefits. While officials were happy to hand the children over to the Fritzls, they still took an interest. Following standard procedures, they regularly checked up on them.

  Over the years, social workers made at least 21 visits to the Fritzls’ house and reported nothing unusual about the family. The Fritzls took pains to ‘encourage the children in many ways’, the local social welfare agency said in its regular report. They were exposed to ‘children’s gymnastics, and books and cassettes from the city library,’ one social worker wrote, concluding that ‘Herr and Frau Fritzl are really loving and warm with their children’.

  Fritzl was undoubtedly strict with the children, but this was judged not to be a problem, perhaps because it was his wife Rosemarie who did the day-to-day caring. Almost every day, she would drive her grandchildren to their music lessons, where Lisa learned to play the flute and Monika and Alexander mastered the trumpet.

  ‘Everyone was amazed at how strong she was,’ said one of the children’s music teachers. Only in one conversation did her voice break and tears come to her eyes, the teacher continued. She was telling him about Elisabeth, about how she had run away to join a sect and how much she missed her daughter.

  Austria’s justice minister, Maria Berger, now acknowledges that officials made mistakes. ‘Looking at everything that we know now, I can see a certain gullibility, especially when it comes to that tale that she had joined a sect,’ she said. ‘Today, we would surely go about it differently and conduct a detailed investigation.’

  One person who does not seem to have been taken in was Elisabeth’s school friend, Susanne Parb. ‘When the babies started arriving, I knew it wasn’t right,’ she said. ‘Elisabeth hated her father – she would never have left her own children with him.’

  This was not a factor that seems to have occurred to the social services.

  Fritzl’s sister-in-law Christine also grew suspicious. ‘When Elisabeth’s third child was laid at the door, we asked Sepp if maybe he shouldn’t try to find out about this sect,’ she said. ‘His answer was, “No point.” His word was the law.’

  His curt answer echoed the letters that he had forced his daughter to write in the cellar. One began, ‘Do not search for me, it would be pointless and would only increase my and my children’s suffering.’ It went on to explain the strictures of the sect’s commune. ‘Too many children and an education are not wanted there,’ it said.

  This convenient piece of fiction mirrored her all-too-real plight. Even without the benefits of hindsight, it is odd that Elisabeth’s mother and her grown-up sisters or brother never once seem to have mounted any effort to find the author of this distressing note. Their father had drummed into them the importance of education and Elisabeth, as a mother, would not have abandoned that.

  Neighbours described Lisa, Monika and Alexander as happy, polite and well-adjusted, and praised their musical ability. They recalled that often they would hear the kids laughing as they played in the swimming pool. Rosemarie was devoted to the three new children she had taken on, they said. Maria, a neighbour of the Fritzls, said that she was a ‘wonderful woman’ who saved her pennies to buy musical instruments for the children.

  Another neighbour stated, ‘My children went to the same school together with the Fritzl kids … there was never anything odd about them.’

  At school, the children were regarded as responsible and well-behaved, and appeared happy and popular among their peers. However, some classmates later recalled something odd about them. ‘The Fritzl girls and the boy always kept a bit apart in school,’ a school friend later revealed. ‘They kept away from the others and seemed to lead separate lives.’

  A friend of the family said, ‘Rosemarie was desperate to give the children a normal start in life, with a proper mum and dad. She was deeply hurt and embarrassed about Elis
abeth supposedly running off.’

  Brought up by their strict, but seemingly benevolent grandfather and the motherly Rosemarie, the children led a well-ordered life of sports days, karate training, music lessons and school discos. Lisa called the Fritzls ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ when she started school, but teachers told Rosemarie that she ought to come clean or the children would have problems when they discovered the truth years later. So in the summer of 2000, Rosemarie explained the strange circumstances of their adoption.

  The family friend said, ‘She hired a counsellor to sit them down and talk about it. Then she threw a party to make them feel positive about the new family set-up. From then on, she and Fritzl were “Omi” and “Opi” – “Grandma” and “Grandad”.’

  However, others reported that the children continued to call the Fritzls ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ – unaware that Fritzl really was their father.

  Rosemarie’s sensitive handling of the situation and the family party provided little comfort for the children, though. Unaware of the real circumstances of his birth, Alexander became petrified that his mother would return from her madcap ‘sect’ to kidnap him. He had visions of her creeping into the house in the middle of the night and snatching him from his bed. ‘He was so frightened he almost stopped speaking,’ said a family friend.

  Despite the social workers’ assessment that Josef and Rosemarie were ‘really loving and warm with their children’, Fritzl continued his tyrannical ways.

  ‘Alexander and Lisa were constantly tense due to Fritzl’s bullying,’ the friend said. ‘Their eyes had a look of sheer terror even when he wasn’t there. Rosemarie said he was incredibly domineering.’