Secrets in the Cellar

by John Glatt

  As the course came to an end, they discussed running away together and starting a new life.

  “We talked about the future and getting married,” he explained. “We were madly in love.”

  On the final night, they attended a student party, celebrating the end of exams. Elisabeth had just learned she had failed an important one, and was inconsolable. She feared it might jeopardize the Linz job, and her dreams of escaping Amstetten forever.

  “Sissy had too much wine to drink and became all hyper,” Andreas recalled. “She was very depressed and worried. She had failed part of an 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.’ ”

  “That night she said she wanted to sleep with me after the party,” he said, “and planned to stay at [my place],” after the students went home the next day.

  But early the next morning, Josef and Rosemarie arrived unexpectedly, to bring their daughter back to Amstetten. Elisabeth sadly told her boyfriend she would have to go with them, promising to stay in touch through letters, until they could be together again.

  “I wasn’t allowed to see her out,” he said, “because her father was not supposed to see me, and she would have been in trouble if he did. I kissed her good-bye and said I would be down to Amstetten to visit her. But she was worried about her dad. He was outside waiting in the car, and she feared that if he found out about me, she would be punished.”

  Then Andreas sadly watched from a dormitory window, as Elisabeth climbed into Josef Fritzl’s gleaming gray Mercedes-Benz and disappeared down the drive. It would be the last time he would ever see her.

  A week later, on August 3, Elisabeth wrote her final letter to her friend Ernst, while watching the 1971 Steven Spielberg movie thriller Duel on television. She informed him she would soon be moving in with her elder sister Ulrike, but was completely stressed out by exams, writing:

  Cross your fingers for me. When you get this letter, it will all be over. I’ll give you my new address as soon as I’ve moved.

  She also told of going to a local fair with workmates, saying, “that was something.”

  Now I’m very tired because it’s very late. And also the evening movie is so exciting. I can’t write while watching this.

  Bye, see you soon,

  S.

  Write back soon and don’t get drunk for no reason.

  She attached a new color Polaroid of herself, sitting on the steps of her parents’ rooftop pool, wearing a flowery blouse and jeans, and sporting a smart new bobbed haircut.

  On the back she wrote:

  PS, the picture is a bit dark, but I will send you better ones soon, OK?

  Think of me,

  Sissy.

  After their emotional parting, Andreas Kruzik wrote Elisabeth two passionate love letters, mailing them to her family home at Ybbsstrasse 40. He mentioned their plans to elope and settle down together, telling her he was more in love with her than ever. He also wrote of their future life together after they married and had children.

  But Elisabeth never read them, as her father got there first. After reading them, he became incandescent with rage, and jealous of their love affair.

  He had already noticed that since returning from the course, she seemed to have a new sense of independence. Now he knew why. He was furious at the thought of another man touching her body—his flesh and blood. He realized he was finally losing control over her, something he could never allow to happen.

  Now the time had come to initiate his plan, and lure his daughter into the dungeon, so she could be his forever.

  By mid-August, Elisabeth was worried when she had heard nothing from Andreas, although he had promised to write. Since her return to Amstetten, her father had been more brutal than ever, viciously beating her on several occasions.

  He now refused to allow her to leave the house, apart from working her shifts at the Rosenberger restaurant, and he no longer let her go to the Belami disco for her regular evening out with friends.

  She had made up her mind to run away again.

  “[Sissy] had told someone in our group that she had had enough,” said her old Amstetten school friend Alfred Dubanovsky, “and couldn’t stand it anymore at home, and that her father had beat her, and had hurt her. She said she was scared of him.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Taken

  Tuesday, August 28, 1984, was a beautiful late summer day in Amstetten. Golden rays of sun streamed into Elisabeth Fritzl’s bedroom that morning, as she prepared for her shift at the Rosenberger restaurant.

  A little before 9:00 a.m., her father walked into her room, asking if she would help him move a heavy steel door downstairs into the basement. She agreed.

  She dutifully followed him down three flights of stairs to his workroom, which led to the cellar. When they reached the entrance, he asked her to help him drag the 600-pound steel-and-concrete door into position to seal it off.

  Then suddenly, without warning, he pushed her into the cellar, grabbing the back of her head with one hand, and using his other to smother her face with an ether-soaked handkerchief.

  Elisabeth desperately tried to fight him off, but she was no match for her powerful father. When she lost consciousness and dropped to the floor, he handcuffed her. He then dragged her through a long corridor with seven doors, and into his dungeon, throwing her onto a bed in the middle of the floor.

  “He pushed me into this little room,” she later told police. “Tied me up and somehow kept me quiet.”

  Like an animal he raped her again and again, until he was spent. Then he turned off the electric light, leaving her dazed in the pitch-black darkness, and left, carefully locking the eight heavy doors connecting the dungeon to the outside world.

  Ironically, that day marked the forty-sixth anniversary of the opening of the Mauthausen concentration camps in Austria. It would be another 8,516 days before Elisabeth Fritzl would see daylight again.

  Later, Elisabeth would remember waking up alone in the dark, finding herself handcuffed to a metal pole. As she slowly came out of her drugged state, the terrible truth dawned that she had been imprisoned by her father.

  Time meant little in the dungeon. She had no way of knowing how long it was before she heard the door open, and her father appeared. He turned on the light and threw her back on the bed, repeatedly raping her like a wild animal. The terrified girl screamed as loudly as she could, but no one could hear.

  “What followed was unimaginable brutality and sadism,” said a detective, who later interviewed Elisabeth. “He raped, drugged and tortured his daughter, before leaving her manacled to the wall.”

  After he had gone, leaving her a bowl of food, she screamed until she was hoarse, banging on the walls as hard as she could. But he had soundproofed the dungeon so well, no one upstairs heard her desperate cries for help.

  Two days later, he returned with more food and to rape her again. Once again she tried to fight him off, but he beat her mercilessly with his fists, until she gave up and stopped resisting.

  Then after satisfying his twisted hunger, he tied an electric cable leash around her waist. It was just two yards long, allowing her to reach a small makeshift toilet he’d installed in one corner of her 15'9 × 15' prison. He attached another chain around her stomach.

  “The only thing I could do was go to the toilet,” she told police.

  Over the next nine months he would slowly wear down Elisabeth until she gave up, resigning herself to her terrible fate of being his sex slave.

  The first night Elisabeth didn’t come home, her mother became very worried. Josef Fritzl seemed unusually sympathetic, staying up with Rosemarie and trying to console her, saying the girl had probably run away again.

  And the next day, when their daughter had still not appeared, Josef and Rosemarie Fritzl went to Amstetten police station to report her missing. Her anxious father told police how she had run away in the past, and had probably done so again.

>   “From one day to the next she just vanished,” a police report at the time quoted Rosemarie as saying.

  Over the next few days Josef Fritzl went through the motions of searching for his daughter. He and Rosemarie turned up at the Rosenberger restaurant, concerned for Elisabeth’s safety. Fritzl told her boss, Franz Perner, that she had run away, asking if any of the other waitresses might know where she had gone. No one did.

  Over the next few days, Josef Fritzl continued his elaborate charade, fooling everyone. He and Rosemarie searched train stations, homeless shelters and bars, as he repeatedly berated their ungrateful daughter for causing them so much worry.

  Rosemarie Fritzl was so heartbroken, she even consulted a fortune-teller, who shed little light on Elisabeth’s disappearance.

  For the first few terrifying weeks of her captivity, Josef Fritzl kept Elisabeth in the dark, humid dungeon with its low ceiling. His crudely designed ventilation system provided barely enough oxygen, making her tired and lethargic.

  Several times a day he would come to rape her, before giving her scraps of food. Later she would tell police that she had no choice but to submit to his violent sexual attacks or starve to death.

  Her thoughts during those interminable hours of waiting for his next visit, while tethered to the pole in the dark, only she will ever know. Day and night no longer existed in this hell, and she could not even chalk off the hours, days and weeks, like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

  Later she would tell police how she “quaked with fear” each time she heard the sound of the electronic sliding door opening, knowing her tormentor had arrived to satisfy his twisted sexual hunger.

  At first she tried to fight back, but he beat her black and blue if she dared struggle. Then, after he’d left, she’d spend hours screaming and banging on the wall as hard as she could, but no one would ever come and rescue her.

  It was all about control for Josef Fritzl, and this was the most enjoyable part of his game. It was a challenge to break his daughter’s spirit with rape, torture and force—just like breaking in a wild horse and putting on a saddle.

  When Andreas Kruzik didn’t receive any reply to his letters from Elisabeth, he became more and more frustrated. He had thought they were a couple, and he could not fathom why she had suddenly broken off all contact.

  He finally telephoned her Amstetten home. Her father answered, saying Elisabeth was unavailable and not to call back.

  “I was palmed off,” Andreas recalled. “It was over and I didn’t hear from her again. I thought she had lost interest in me.”

  By mid-September, Elisabeth Fritzl had stopped fighting back, resigning herself to captivity, much in the way that Nazi death camp prisoners had once done. At this point Fritzl stopped beating her, although still forcing her to have sex with him.

  One day her father came into the dungeon, and, after satisfying himself, produced a pen and paper to dictate a letter for her to write.

  Dated September 21, 1984, the letter to her parents explained that she had gone off with a friend to join a religious cult, saying she didn’t want to live at home any longer.

  “Don’t look for me,” it said, asking them to respect her decision to live her own life, otherwise she would leave Austria forever. Then Fritzl made her address an envelope to him at Ybbsstrasse 40, Amstetten.

  It must have been agonizing for Elisabeth to know that the letter would now cut off any possible chance of her being found.

  Later that day, Josef Fritzl drove one hundred miles west to Braunau am Inn—where Adolf Hitler had been born almost a century earlier—and mailed it from a post office, so it bore a postmark from there. It would be the first of many cunning red herrings he would employ over the years to convince the world that Elisabeth had joined a mysterious cult.

  Several days later, when the letter arrived at Ybbsstrasse 40, Rosemarie Fritzl read it with her husband. She was relieved that her daughter had been in touch, thinking that at least she was safe.

  Josef Fritzl then brought the letter to Amstetten police, saying he had been right all along, and Elisabeth had run away. He then filled out an official missing persons report for his daughter.

  Now confident that he had fooled everyone, he walked into the offices of a local newspaper, asking the editor to run a story about his daughter’s disappearance, even supplying her photo for publication.

  After an initial investigation, Amstetten police forwarded Elisabeth Fritzl’s missing persons report to the Austrian Interior Ministry. Copies were also sent to the state financial authority and state education authorities. Interpol was also briefly brought in, but after questioning a number of religious sects, it came up with nothing.

  Cunning Josef Fritzl’s letter had paid off, and there never was a major police search, as he had so successfully cast Elisabeth in the role of a selfish runaway.

  Police never stopped to consider what could possibly make a girl with good prospects, who was looking forward to a new job, run away, not once, but several times.

  Now armed with the letter, Josef Fritzl began telling friends and neighbors that his wayward daughter had left home to join a sect.

  “One day he came to my door and told me Elisabeth was not coming home anymore,” remembered Anton Graf, who had rented him land at Mondsee Lake. “That she had left to join a cult.”

  Graf found Fritzl so convincing, he felt terrible for all the “suffering” Elisabeth had caused her family.

  “He told us that a letter had arrived [which] said it was pointless to search for her, because she was deeply involved with the sect. She was happy there and she was definitely not coming home.”

  When he told his neighbor Regina Penz, she was not surprised.

  “Elisabeth had already caused trouble before,” she later told an English documentary team. “She had disappeared once before and then turned up again.”

  Regina said that if you had seven children, like the Fritzls, one of them was bound to be troublesome.

  “You just accept [that] these things happen,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong as a parent.”

  Another friend, Leopold Styetz, deputy mayor of the Upper Austrian town of Lasberg, vacationed with the Fritzls during that period. He liked Josef, respecting him as “an intelligent and successful businessman.”

  “He always liked to talk about his perfect family,” Styetz recalled in 2008, “but he was very hard on his children. Whenever we asked him about Liesel, he used to say Interpol was looking for her. He said he was so worried that he even went to a fortune-teller, to try and learn what had happened to her.”

  When Elisabeth Fritzl’s friends heard she had run away and joined a religious cult, they had mixed feelings. Alfred Dubanovsky was not suspicious, knowing she had recently discussed leaving home.

  “After she vanished, we were talking about it,” he remembered. “We knew she had run off before and we thought she had run off again, because she had told someone in our group she had had enough.”

  Another friend, Josef Leitner, wondered why police had never questioned any of her friends to find out why she might have run away.

  “She ran away on more than one occasion,” he said. “I’m surprised authorities didn’t investigate more intensely. Why didn’t they try and find out why Elisabeth wanted to run away again and again?”

  Leitner now claims that many friends Elisabeth had confided in about her father’s abuse were too scared of him to go to the police.

  The waitress Elisabeth had earlier run away to Vienna with believed she had now gone to Amsterdam and become involved in drugs and prostitution.

  Elisabeth’s old school friend Christa Goetzinger says that although there was much gossip among their friends about Elisabeth joining a cult, she had never believed it.

  “She was just not that type,” she said. “Not Sissy.”

  CHAPTER 9

  His Second Wife

  In the weeks following Elisabeth’s disappearance, Josef Fritzl pains
takingly created what investigators would later describe as “a perfectly constructed framework of lies.” He made numerous visits to Amstetten police station, angrily complaining that investigators were not doing enough to track down his runaway daughter. Over the next few years, he and his wife would give countless emotional interviews on television and in newspapers, as the devastated parents of a missing teenage girl.

  “We spoke about it often when we met,” remembered Christine. “And I would say, ‘Rosemarie, where can Elisabeth be?’ I even told myself she is definitely in a cult.”

  The two sisters even did their own investigation into which cult she had joined.

  “We really did detective work,” said Christine, “as to where the cult could be. But where can you find out where these cults are?”

  Rosemarie Fritzl and her other children resumed their lives at Ybbsstrasse 40, unaware that three floors below, Elisabeth was living like a caged animal in the dank, airless dungeon. Her torturous existence was only punctuated by her father’s visits for sex every two or three days.

  Slowly she was forced to accept the bizarre new role he had planned for so long—his second wife, and the mother of a new subterranean family.

  On April 16, 1985, Elisabeth turned 19 and the official search for her was called off, as, under Austrian law, she was no longer a minor and could go wherever she wanted. To celebrate, her father removed the cable leash from her waist, so she could walk around the tiny dungeon. Over the next few months, Elisabeth’s relationship to her captor changed as her survival instincts kicked in.