House of Horrors

by Nigel Cawthorne

  ‘Rosemarie was away when Kerstin was taken outside and to hospital,’ said family lawyer Christoph Herbst. ‘Every year, she takes a week away in Italy.’

  It seems that Fritzl deliberately waited until his wife was away before he brought Kerstin above ground, even though the child’s condition was deteriorating rapidly. Her absence was confirmed when a postcard from Italy arrived at the Fritzl home in Amstetten after the cellar nightmare had been exposed. It carried a picture of an island in the idyllic setting of a lake in northern Italy and was addressed to the ‘Family Fritzl’.

  Rosemarie wrote, ‘Dear family, my holiday has been lovely. Although I’m really busy every day, I fall into bed dead tired, but I’ll soon be home. Love Mama.’

  As usual, Rosemarie had travelled alone, leaving the children to the tender mercies of their father. She was blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding at home. However, she could not be kept out of the loop for long.

  ‘She returned as soon as she heard about Kerstin,’ said attorney Herbst.

  Ironically, the picture on the postcard is a photograph of Isola Bella, a small rocky island in Lake Maggiore, where a palace was built by a local aristocrat in the 17th century. Local legend has it that the ladies of his household asked him to build the new palazzo on the island, away from his castle on the mainland, so that they would not have to hear the prisoners screaming in his dungeons.

  Fritzl took advantage of his wife’s absence to remove the critically-ill Kerstin from the bunker and it is thought that he was trying to get her treated in hospital and back into the house – and the cellar – before Rosemarie returned, but the publicity generated by Dr Reiter’s TV appeal wrecked this plan.

  Word of the incredible developments in the life of the Fritzl family soon reached Rosemarie in Italy and she raced home. It is now feared that, had Fritzl acted sooner and not waited until his wife went away, Kerstin might not have suffered multiple organ failure, risking her life. When Kerstin arrived at the hospital, she was in a critical condition. She did not react well to treatment and the prognosis was not good. ‘The young woman is suffering from multiple organ failure,’ a spokesman for Mostviertel hospital said. ‘That means her chances for survival are very low indeed.’

  Prosecutors said they would press for murder charges to be brought against 73-year-old Fritzl if Kerstin did not recover. ‘If the young woman dies, we will look at bringing charges against the accused for murder through negligence,’ said a spokesman for the authorities.

  While Kerstin remained in the care of Dr Reiter at the hospital in Amstetten, Elisabeth and her two other cellar-children, Stefan and Felix, were taken to the Amstetten Mauer Landesklinikum psychiatric clinic where, they were cared for by Dr Berthold Kepplinger, head of neuropsychiatry there. Along the way, DNA samples were taken. Tests soon confirmed Elisabeth’s story – and Fritzl’s admission – that the children had indeed been sired by her own father.

  Reports from the clinic said that Elisabeth remained surprisingly robust. According to psychologists, she is one of those ‘unbreakable’ people who can be exposed to unthinkable horrors and, miraculously, come away seemingly unharmed. The phenomenon is well known to psychologists. It seems there are some people whose lives are not destroyed by post-traumatic stress disorder. They appear to have the capacity to separate themselves from the horrors that were inflicted on them, as if they had been spectators to their own suffering. In the dungeon, Elisabeth had no support in her ordeal. Now she has teams of professional carers and interested onlookers on her side. ‘Perhaps Elisabeth Fritzl will be strong enough to save her own family,’ wrote Der Spiegel, ‘and to bring together the two halves that her father had separated into two worlds, even to cope with the suspicion that her mother, Rosemarie, or perhaps someone else in the family, might have known something after all. Who, if not Elisabeth, could rise above this abyss?’

  Stefan and Felix found the outside world alien. Initially, they were terrified of rustling leaves, traffic and the blue colour of the sky. They had never seen anything like it. They remained fascinated by the moon, gazing ‘open-mouthed with awe’ at it. However, Chief Inspector Etz soon noted a change in five-year-old Felix as he got used to the daylight. ‘The sun fascinates him even more than the moon,’ said Etz. Felix would put his hand in front of his eyes and then take it away again, as if he was not able to believe what he saw. Afterwards, he kept covering his face with his hand once he realised that he could not look at the sun directly.

  Initially, Elisabeth and the boys had to wear dark glasses and were plastered with sunscreen as their skin had almost no tolerance to sunlight – something the boys’ skin had never seen. ‘When the sunbeams struck Felix’s face, he squealed loudly,’ Etz said.

  Doctors said that trying to tackle the health effects of the incest, the isolation and the lack of medical care in the bunker family was a huge and unprecedented task. After spending their entire lives locked in the twilight of a dungeon, it is thought that the family face years of intensive therapy before they can hope to live even a relatively normal existence. Their life underground left them so traumatised that doctors reportedly built them a windowless chamber similar to the dungeon where they were raised so the children could retreat to its safety whenever the strange new world around them became too overwhelming.

  Light levels were kept low throughout the clinic so that the boys could gradually get accustomed to normal light. Even though Elisabeth was once used to the sunlight, after 24 years in the dark, she could no longer handle it and doctors had to cover windows, fearing light could damage the family’s fragile health.

  ‘They have to develop a tolerance for daylight and also to develop a sense of spatial awareness,’ said Dr Kepplinger.

  Until they came above ground, Stefan and Felix had never seen an object at any distance. It was something that took some adjusting to. The children also had to learn about everyday objects – everything from telephones and cars to computers, trees and fresh air. Felix, it was said, continued to be confused by various mobile phone ring tones.

  There were other things to get used to as well. Although the children knew they had siblings upstairs, it is not clear what this meant to them. Locked away in a cellar for their whole life, they could not easily grasp the concept that there was an ‘upstairs’ – or any world outside their windowless dungeon. Their mother had never told them the truth about their terrible plight. Instead, she invented a fantasy world for them by filling their heads with wondrous adventure stories featuring princes and princesses. The children’s only exposure to anything approaching real life was through storylines of daytime soap operas.

  ‘It seems they may have created their own illusory world,’ said Professor Rotraud Perner, a psychiatry professor from the Danube University at Krems who examined them.

  Now, gradually, they would have to get used to the real world – a world of sunlight and space, a world where they had brothers and sisters, a world full of strangers and new possibilities. But however much opportunity this new world holds for them, the sad truth is that both of them may have suffered permanent damage, emotionally and mentally, as a direct result of their isolation.

  ‘Psychologically, a lot depends on what their mother has told them over the years, whether she has explained the reason for their imprisonment or whether they have come to accept it as a normal condition,’ said Professor Perner.

  After it was confirmed that the ‘foundling’ children were also the offspring of incest, they, too, were subjected to detailed medical scrutiny. They were found to be relatively healthy, though there is some suspicion that they suffer from heart problems, but their condition could hardly be compared to that of their siblings who lived below ground.

  ‘There is a vast difference between those who had a normal life and those who lived up to 24 years in this dungeon,’ Dr Kepplinger said. But Lisa, Monika and Alexander also had a lot to come to terms with. Alexander, particularly, had already been unsettled when he was told that the people
that he thought were his parents were, in fact, his grandparents and that his mother had run off to join a sect. Then he was scared that she might come back and get him.

  Now they had a new and much more terrible story to deal with. Their mother had not abandoned them at all, but had been incarcerated and abused only metres beneath their feet – and they had never known that she was there. The strict patriarch in their household, who they loved after a fashion, was in fact, an evil and sadistic monster, the stuff of nightmares. They had three siblings they knew nothing about and Alexander had had a twin who was now long dead. Every emotional certainty in their lives had been destroyed. The full horror of what had happened in their own home would take years to sink in.

  ‘Each child will need individual therapy and we should be careful not to overdo it,’ said Dr Kepplinger. However, for the moment, the cellar-children had to be the priority. They had suffered even more trauma.

  ‘The children took some items from the cellar with them … for example, toys,’ said Dr Kepplinger. ‘Physically, they are in quite good condition. And they love the clinic food.’

  The children raved about the first dinner they were served by the hospital staff. At last, they could taste what fresh food was like. Elisabeth had striven to give her offspring the best she could under the circumstances, but she had neither the ingredients nor the facilities to produce anything more than just palatable. Fritzl bought cheap food in bulk, with only an eye for storage. Even when there was no holiday in the offing, he did not want to make too many late-night trips to outlying stores, with the attendant risk and the suspicions his nocturnal deliveries engendered. Elisabeth had to make do with what she was given. If her father did not care about the state of the air she and the children breathed, he was hardly going to worry about the standard of nutrition he provided.

  While the boys soon got used to their new-found freedom, there were reminders of the terrible conditions they had endured. Both boys panicked when faced with confined spaces, particularly the hospital lifts, fearing they would get trapped inside. Felix particularly was terrified.

  ‘Felix was scared of the elevators,’ said Chief Inspector Etz. ‘When using one, he didn’t stop clinging on to his mother as the floor moved.’

  The boys had a rudimentary grounding in German and could make themselves understood, but they could not speak ‘normally’ and their ability with words was not well developed. They were particularly inarticulate when compared to their brother and sisters who had been reared upstairs. ‘The children who grew up in the cellar are as you’d expect them to be, considering what they’ve been through,’ said Dr Kepplinger. ‘They can speak and make themselves understood, but they’re far from being in a normal state.’

  Despite Elisabeth’s heroic efforts to make life as normal as possible for them, she had problems of her own and they had to conserve both energy and air. ‘They did not speak much in the bunker,’ said Kepplinger. ‘Most of the speech they heard came from a television that was on in the cellar almost nonstop day and night. The result is that there are massive gaps in their knowledge.’

  Chief Inspector Etz had been the first to speak to the boys after they were released from the cellar and he went out of his way to correct any misapprehension. ‘When the media write that the children speak, then this is just half true,’ he said. ‘Among each other, they communicate with noises that are a mixture of growling and cooing. If they want to say something so others understand them as well, they have to focus and really concentrate, which seems to be extremely exhausting for them.’

  Dr Kepplinger concurred, ‘They communicate among each other, but this is far from a “normal way” of expressing yourself.’

  However, with the aid of doctors, they could construct proper sentences, but the effort left them exhausted and they quickly reverted to their secret, animal-like language when talking among themselves.

  Etz also noted Felix’s infantile behaviour. ‘The boy prefers to crawl but he can walk upright if he wants,’ he said. ‘He mostly uses a mixture of the two – half-walking, half-crawling.’

  Felix also found comfort in clutching the teddy bear his father had given him, while Stefan was soothed by the sight of tropical fish. ‘Felix spends hours clutching the bear and it’s like a comfort blanket to him,’ said a hospital source. ‘Josef gave them goldfish while they were down there and Stefan has been given an aquarium to help him. You would think the children would want to forget their time in the cellar, but it’s all they’ve ever known.’

  In time, the doctors hope that substituting the so-called ‘luxuries’ provided by Fritzl during their time in the cellar will help the pair adjust to their new life of freedom. Doctors believe it will take years for the family to recover completely – though it is thought that the 18-year-old Stefan will never lose the stoop that his years underground have given him. A source at the clinic spoke of the pitiful sight of 5 foot 7 inch Stefan unable to stand up straight. ‘His head is constantly bowed because he never got out of his cell … It was only 1.7 metres [5 feet 6 inches] high, and, if Stefan could stand up straight, he would be 1.72 metres [5 feet 7 inches]. It is impossible to say if this operable.’

  Elisabeth, too, is hunched like an old woman as, for the last 24 years, she has never been able to extend herself to her full height. This adds to the impression that she is 20 years older than her actual age. A police artist who sketched her said, ‘Her complexion belongs to someone much older – she could be 65. Her hair is grey, turning white. There’s no spark left.’

  But that spark does not seem to have been extinguished completely. ‘The one thing she wants more than anything,’ said a member of the family, ‘is to feel drops of rain on her skin.’

  Although they might be restored to physical health, it is feared that Stefan and Felix may never lead a normal life. ‘Felix is younger so he has more of a chance to start again,’ said a spokesman. ‘It is not so easy for his elder brother.’

  Their care will also cost millions. Medical bills at the Amstetten-Mauer clinic alone are expected to top €1 million. Austrian celebrities have donated thousands of euros to the fund for the Fritzls, and former kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch alone donated £20,000 to the Fritzl family to launch the fund-raising appeal.

  The day after Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix were released, doctors arranged a reunion with their above-ground family. After 24 years, Elisabeth was to be reunited with her mother; she would also see Lisa, Monika and Alexander, from whom she had been separated soon after birth. And the separated siblings would meet for the first time. Some psychologists expressed fears that such a reunion, so soon after Elisabeth and the boys had been freed, might prove traumatic, but it did not turn out that way.

  ‘It was astonishing how well the reunion went,’ Dr Kepplinger said.

  There were also fears that the upstairs and downstairs children would shun each other. ‘But it was not like that,’ Kepplinger continued. ‘It was amazing how easy and natural this first encounter was.’

  Rosemarie broke down in tears at the sight of her daughter, whose ordeal had aged her out of all recognition. Reunited again, mother and daughter hugged for a long time.

  ‘They cried and didn’t want to let each other go,’ said an observer. As Rosemarie embraced her long-lost, prematurely white-haired and now toothless daughter, she offered a simple apology. ‘I had no idea,’ she said.

  As if realising her long ordeal was finally over, 42-year-old Elisabeth broke down in tears in her mother’s arms and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m free – is it really you?’ The tears came in floods. ‘I can’t believe I’m out,’ sobbed Elisabeth. ‘I didn’t think I would ever see you again; it’s all too much for me.’ And as for her father, she added, ‘I don’t ever want to see him again.’

  Mother and daughter hugged each other for a while, and the two women sobbed uncontrollably. It became clear to observers that Rosemarie was innocent of any complicity – conscious or unwitting – in the horrendous incarceration of E
lisabeth.

  ‘The wife of the accused man clearly had no knowledge of the terrible fate of her daughter,’ said Dr Kepplinger. ‘The two women fell into each other’s arms and just wept bitterly. They held each other and did not want to let go. They said they loved each other and pledged never to be separated again, with the mother repeating, “I am so sorry – I had no idea.”’

  Dr Kepplinger’s assessment confirmed Frank Polzer’s assertion that Rosemarie knew nothing of what had gone on in the cellar. According to Polzer, she collapsed emotionally when she was told what had happened to Elisabeth. ‘When she found out her daughter was in the cellar, she had a nervous breakdown,’ said the investigator.

  Rosemarie’s younger sister Christine was also concerned about her emotional state. ‘My sister is apparently doing very badly,’ she said. ‘I know my sister and when something is wrong with her children the world collapses … For sure, the world has collapsed for her.’

  As well as meeting her mother, Elisabeth was reunited with three of her children, who had been taken from her as babies. When she saw them, she said, ‘My babies … you are so beautiful.’ She held them close and stroked their faces.

  Stefan and Felix were greeted warmly by their upstairs brother and sisters, Alexander, Lisa and Monika, who, before then, they had only seen on video.

  ‘It was a genuinely happy occasion, not forced, as was the very moving meeting between Rosemarie and Elisabeth,’ Dr Kepplinger said. He told journalists that the family members interacted very naturally, even though the three children who lived above ground had never known of their siblings in the dungeon. The children, he said, were doing ‘relatively well’.

  ‘It was a very touching moment – very dramatic and emotional for all of them,’ a police source said. ‘There were tears and the ones who had been in the cellar were afraid. It was very hard for them.’