Secrets in the Cellar

by John Glatt

  “He had a very high sex drive and libido,” explained Polzer, adding that this in itself was not enough to explain his depravity. “He was driven somehow to this behavior, but we don’t know why or how. He hasn’t given a motive.”

  The inspector emphasized that the investigation was still in its infancy, and there was much work to do.

  “We have been working on this case for about fifty hours now,” he said. “We now have to unravel what happened in the past twenty-four years. We have to find out what life was like in this dungeon, in this prison. We have to find how the births came about. Are there people that helped out, perhaps? Are there situations which will be important later on when the judge comes to decide how long this accused man should go to prison?”

  Just hours after police denied knowledge of Josef Fritzl’s rape conviction, his sister-in-law, Christine R., confirmed it in a BBC interview. Refusing to disclose her last name, she said that after he’d served 18 months’ jail time, her sister had only decided to stay with him to keep her family of four children together.

  “I think it changed their relationship,” she said. “A woman in such a situation would have been utterly broken and shocked when something like this happened.”

  She attacked the Austrian legal system, for purging criminal offenses from the record books after fifteen years, allowing him to get away with his crimes.

  “Sexual offenses should never be deleted from criminal records,” she declared. “If they had known, perhaps then the authorities would have kept a better eye on him.”

  Her older sister, she said, had known nothing about Elisabeth’s imprisonment. Josef had often spent “whole nights” down in the cellar, working on technical plans for an unspecified machine, and could never be disturbed.

  “I always hated him,” Christine declared. “If Josef was still free, I would never have dared to give this interview.”

  She said Rosemarie was “dominated and constantly belittled in public” by Fritzl, and not even allowed to bring him a cup of coffee while he was down there.

  For the first time, Christine revealed Fritzl’s violent childhood under the Nazi Third Reich. She said that to instill discipline, his mother had used her fists to beat him “black and blue” every day, something he would later replicate with his children.

  He was a ruthless tyrant, she said, treating his children as army privates, constantly punishing them for the smallest infringement of his rules.

  “The only chance the children had to escape this atmosphere was by marrying,” she said. “And all of them did that as soon as they were old enough.”

  She said her sister was “shattered” when she learned what Josef had done.

  “I can say with one hundred percent certainty that she knew nothing,” said Christine. “Otherwise she would have spoken with our siblings about it. She was so shocked and never believed him capable of it.”

  And although she had not spoken to Rosemarie since the discovery of the cellar, Christine claimed to have been kept up-to-date with the family’s progress in the Amstetten-Mauer clinic.

  “The children are in half-decent shape physically,” she said. “But my sister is doing very badly and Elisabeth is not in the best shape. I know my sister, and when something is wrong with her children, the world collapses. For sure the world has collapsed for her.”

  On Tuesday evening, staff at the Amstetten-Mauer clinic threw a party to celebrate Alexander Fritzl’s twelfth birthday. He received presents of a Lego set and stuffed animals, as well as a birthday cake with twelve candles, blowing them out to the rousing cheers of his brothers and sisters.

  Then a prayer was said for Kerstin, lying in a coma a few miles across Amstetten, while undergoing dialysis and on a respirator.

  It was the first real family occasion for the newly reunited Fritzl family, marking an important landmark in their long road to recovery.

  “The family is doing well under the circumstances,” said clinic director Dr. Kepplinger. “They are talking a lot with each other.”

  He said the family now resided in a closed-off section of the clinic. The windows had been darkened to help Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix adapt to the light, as well as preventing any photographs being taken of them from the outside.

  Doctors had also installed a cargo container, replicating a smaller version of the dungeon, where the family could retreat, if the outside world became too much. Stefan had been given a goldfish aquarium, like the one Fritzl had installed inside the dungeon. Some of their treasured personal items had been brought to the clinic, to help the former captives feel more comfortable.

  Dr. Kepplinger said that Elisabeth was now getting along “very well” with Rosemarie, and both sets of children were getting to know each other. But Felix, who would celebrate his sixth birthday with his own cake two days later, was still too scared to leave his mother’s side, refusing to let go of his favorite teddy bear, which his father had once given him as a present.

  “We are pleased with their progress,” said Dr. Kepplinger. “The family seems to feel okay here, and that is vital before any attempt is made to slowly ease them back into normal life. What the family really need[s] right now is time.”

  As the Fritzl family celebrated Alexander’s birthday, more than four hundred people gathered for a candlelight vigil for them in Amstetten town square.

  “We want to show that this is not a town of criminals,” Mayor Herbert Katzengruber told the crowd, “and to counteract the impression of Amstetten which has arisen. These have been awful and sad days. I’m appalled and saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown.”

  The event had been organized by a newly founded Amstetten citizens’ initiative group, showing solidarity for Elisabeth and the children.

  After the vigil, there was a procession to Ybbsstrasse 40, where supporters solemnly laid flowers outside the Fritzl house.

  “We have been surrounded by shock, sadness, anger, perhaps even hate in the last few days,” said Amstetten priest Peter Bosendorfer. “We were forced to recognize that there is something in our town that we cannot comprehend.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “Hey, Satan, Come Out and Play!”

  On Wednesday, April 30, Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer announced a major public relations campaign to restore Austria’s good image in the wake of the Josef Fritzl scandal. He wanted to send out a global message that Austria was not the “land of the dungeons,” and Fritzl was not representative of its people.

  “We won’t allow a whole country to be held hostage by one man,” he declared. “It is not Austria that is the perpetrator. This is an unfathomable criminal case, but also an isolated one.”

  With just a month before Austria and Switzerland would jointly host Euro 2008, the government hired an international public relations company, specializing in crisis management, to use “all technical and professional means” to “rectify” Austria’s tarnished image. Chancellor Gusenbauer pledged that during the two-week soccer tournament, when the eyes of the world would be on Austria, the country would be presented in its true light: a nation of the highest social standards and quality of life.

  But the public relations strategy was not well received by many, who felt it insensitive and insulting to Elisabeth Fritzl and her children.

  “It would make sense to start looking for answers, many of which are slumbering within ourselves,” cautioned an editorial in the Kurier newspaper, “instead of reacting in a patriotic knee-jerk way.”

  That night, Natascha Kampusch appeared on the British current affairs show Newsnight, describing the Fritzl tragedy as a direct result of the Third Reich sexism.

  “At the time of National Socialism,” she said, “the suppression of women was propagated, and authoritarian education was very important. It’s a ramification of the Second World War.”

  She said she had been closely following the Fritzl story, fully identifying with it after her own eight-year hostage ordeal. She announced a $37,000 donat
ion to the family, calling for others to follow her example.

  “Little by little, I realized there were parallels to my own fate,” she explained. “So then the whole story affected me even more. [I wish] the family the best of luck and hope that they will pull through, and I think that at least the youngest one will succeed.”

  Soon afterwards a special fund was set up to raise money for the Fritzl family—for it now appeared that Josef Fritzl was almost $3 million in debt, and there would be no money to cover the family’s medical and psychological care and education, expected to cost at least $1.4 million and take up to eight years.

  Many Austrian newspapers, television stations and celebrities appealed for funds to help the family.

  “We know that there will be no compensation coming from Josef Fritzl, whose property speculation has left him almost bankrupt,” wrote the Osterreich in an editorial. “It is not enough to have vague promises from politicians. We need to act.”

  While Austria still reverberated from the shock waves of his depravity, Josef Fritzl appeared strangely unaffected by it all. He was now sharing a tiny cell at St. Polten prison with a 36-year-old inmate accused of attempted murder, spending much of his time reading about himself in newspapers and watching the non-stop television coverage.

  “He wants to see every word written about him and watch every TV report,” said a prison source. “It’s like a game to him.”

  Ironically, his ten-foot-high prison cell was a palace compared to the dungeon where he had imprisoned Elisabeth and the children. It had a television, radio and stereo system, with a constant supply of newspapers and magazines. There was a comfortable bed with clean sheets, a bedside lamp, a table with two chairs and even a potted plant by the large window.

  He ate three square meals a day, designed by prison nutritionists, with fresh fruit and vegetables.

  All of his fellow inmates knew about the case, and he now feared for his life, as sexual offenders were hated on the inside. On arrival, he had taken full advantage of the daily one-hour exercise period to walk around the sunny yard, but he soon stopped after receiving threats from other inmates. Every night they would bang on his cell wall and taunt him, screaming, “Hey, Satan, come on out and play—we are going to get you!”

  “Fritzl is terrified someone will kill him,” said a prison warden. “The other prisoners call him ‘Satan,’ and the only reason he’s sharing a cell is so his roommate can report on him and check that he doesn’t try to commit suicide.”

  The word soon spread through the jail grapevine that Fritzl was “the worst kind of scum that needed to be dealt with.” There was a price on his head, to go to the first inmate to attack or kill him.

  Josef Fritzl had always enjoyed watching true crime documentaries on television, and now that he needed the services of a lawyer, he knew exactly where to go.

  “He selected me,” said the 60-year-old high-profile Vienna attorney Rudolf Mayer, who had defended some of Austria’s most notorious criminals. “He had seen me on television, and of course I agreed right away.”

  The one-time ballet dancer, whose Vienna law office is a few blocks away from where Sigmund Freud once lived, views himself as a therapist/lawyer. One of his most infamous previous cases had been the Austrian Black Widow Elfriede Blauensteiner, believed to have murdered at least seven elderly men, including her second husband, Rudolf. The glamorous grandmother in her sixties patronized the casinos of Vienna, dressing in expensive fur coats and dazzling jewelry.

  She preyed on lonely, rich old men, placing advertisements in lonely-hearts columns, describing herself as a “homely housewife and nurse,” seeking love and romance.

  After persuading her unfortunate victims to alter their wills in her favor, she slowly poisoned them with the diabetic drug Euglucon. Then, to celebrate, she would hit the casinos, gambling away her inheritances on the roulette tables.

  After successfully killing four men in this manner, Blauensteiner slipped up trying to poison an elderly man named Alois Pichler, to inherit his million-dollar home. When he refused to change his will, she forged one. Then she left him naked in an ice bath in a locked room with the windows open in the dead of winter, until he froze to death.

  A relative later became suspicious, and called the police. When she was arrested in January 1996, Blauensteiner eventually confessed to four murders. In 1997, the 64-year-old grandmother was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and fraud. In 2001, Mayer unsuccessfully represented her in a second trial, after two more of her suspected victims were exhumed, testing positive for Euglucon.

  In November 2003, at the age of 72, she died in prison of a brain tumor, while writing her memoirs.

  Making himself immediately available to the press, Mayer said he was not shocked by what Josef Fritzl had done, although agreeing that his defense would be a tremendous challenge. But first he would have to alter the present highly negative public perception of his client.

  “Josef Fritzl is being portrayed as a horrific monster and sexual tyrant,” he explained. “My job is to show him as a human being.”

  Later he would describe their first jailhouse meeting as a bonding experience, saying his client had absolutely no “negative aura,” like other car thieves and criminals he’d represented.

  After three decades at the bar, he had learned to go by his “gut instincts.”

  “The first thirty seconds of a meeting is crucial for establishing psychological contact,” explained Mayer. “I believe . . . I succeeded in bonding with Mr. Fritzl. As I first saw him, the Latin term ‘paterfamilias’ came to mind. It was used to describe the absolute head of the family—caring, but strict . . . a family man with good intentions.”

  “I am sure of one thing—that there is an explanation for every deed, every criminal act,” he said.

  At their next meeting, which lasted two hours, Mayer encouraged his new client to discuss his life, giving his version of events.

  “[I wanted to know:] Who is Josef Fritzl?” he said. “Why is he the way he is? I just let him talk, and I listened to him,” said the defender.

  At the end of the meeting, he advised his client not to cooperate any further with investigators.

  “He needs a rest,” said Mayer. “We will see if he speaks later.”

  On Wednesday morning, police appealed to every tenant who had ever lived at Ybbsstrasse 40 to come forward and be interviewed.

  “In the past twenty-four years, around one hundred people have lived in the house,” said Chief Inspector Polzer. “We want to talk to all of them—possibly one of them observed something that at the time didn’t seem so important, but could be of relevance, knowing what we do today.”

  There were now more than thirty detectives and three hundred uniformed officers working around the clock on the Fritzl case, from every conceivable angle. Four-man teams of forensic experts were combing through the house and the cellar. But it was so damp and badly ventilated, they could only work down there for an hour at a time, leading to speculation that Elisabeth and the children must have spent almost all their time either sitting or lying down.

  “[It’s] overwhelming and oppressive for investigators,” said Chief Inspector Polzer. “There is just not enough air to breathe. The investigators keep having to take breaks. We’re trying to get as much done as possible, but are having to work out how to do something about air circulation. It is very difficult.”

  It had been four days since investigators, many of whom would later receive trauma counseling, first entered the cellar, but they were still baffled at its complexity, and much of it was still unmapped.

  “There are still areas that we haven’t found inside the dungeon,” explained Polzer. “I expect it to be at least two weeks before we have answered all the questions we need to know.”

  Polzer said some parts of the dungeon appeared to be still under construction, leading him to suspect that Fritzl may have been planning further expansions.

  “Nobody except Fritzl knew a
bout these spaces,” he said. “And we cannot rule out that there are more doors that we have yet to discover. But we simply don’t know what his intentions were,” said Polzer. “He is no longer cooperating with us, which makes it hard.”

  Police technicians were also investigating Fritzl’s threats of running pipelines into the cellar, to release deadly gas if his captives ever tried to escape.

  “He has said during his questioning,” said a police spokesman, “that he threatened the children held in the cellar with gas, if anything ever happened. We are checking to see if it is true, or it was simply a threat.”

  Every night, under cover of darkness, an ambulance drove out of the gates of the stately Amstetten-Mauer psychiatric clinic, past the scores of reporters camped outside. Inside was Elisabeth Fritzl in a nurse’s uniform, now well enough to make secret daily visits to the bedside of her daughter Kerstin in the Amstetten hospital.

  The 19-year-old girl was still in a deep coma, while doctors fought to keep her alive, as her kidneys and other organs started shutting down.

  “She [is] in a coma between life and death,” said Father Franz Halbartschlager, who’d performed the last rites on her soon after she was admitted. “I prayed for her.”

  Dr. Albert Reiter, who had been treating Kerstin for the last two weeks, said she was in critical condition on life support, and would be kept in a coma indefinitely.

  “Our patient is in a severely life-threatening condition, which resulted from a lack of oxygen,” he explained. “In addition to twenty years underground, twenty years with no sunlight, twenty years of psychological stress, come other factors like infection.”

  The rest of Elisabeth’s children and her mother Rosemarie were all undergoing intense psychiatric treatment at the Mauer clinic, while getting to know each other with role-playing and other techniques.