Against Their Will

by Nigel Cawthorne

  “To my recollection, hardly a month went by during my primary school years that the media didn’t report yet another abducted, raped, or murdered girl,” she said.

  At school, teachers warned their pupils about the dangers. They were shown films in which girls were molested by their older brothers or boys were abused by their fathers. The world was not safe and people were not to be trusted. Both at school and at home, the message was clear—never accept sweets from a stranger, never get into a car with a stranger.

  In her book 3,096 Days, Natascha Kampusch listed thirteen incidents that she heard about where young girls were molested or killed in those years. She watched the news reports and even heard a psychologist advise victims not to resist their attackers and risk being killed. Natascha comforted herself that she was not the fragile blonde that child molesters seemed to prefer.

  When she was ten, she spent the weekend with her father in a vacation house he had bought just over the border in Hungary. He brought Natascha home to her mother’s apartment late and allowed her to cross the dark courtyard in front of her home on her own. Once inside the apartment, Natascha found that her mother had gone to the movies, so the child went to wait in a neighbor’s apartment. When her mother came to get her, she was furious and said that Natascha was not to see her father again. This upset the girl. Fed up with her parents’ arguments, Natascha couldn’t wait to turn eighteen, so she could be self-reliant and move out. She already relished her independence, having recently persuaded her mother to allow her to walk to school on her own. Not that she wasn’t afraid, but she wanted to prove to herself and her mother that she was no longer a little child.

  On her first day of going to school on her own, her courage deserted her and she began to cry. Nevertheless, she continued on her way. In a quiet back street, she saw a slim young man standing by a white delivery van. Immediately, the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. All the rapes and murders she had seen on TV came flooding back. As she neared him, he looked her straight in the eye and her fear vanished. His blue eyes were strangely empty, as if he needed protection. But it was Natascha that needed to be protected. As she walked past him, he grabbed her by the waist and threw her into the van.

  Later, she could not remember whether she had screamed. All she could remember was one of those silent screams you have in dreams where you open your mouth and nothing comes out. She cannot remember fighting back either. But she must have. The following day, she had a black eye and thought that she must have been stunned by a blow. She also remembered thinking that this could not really be happening to her.

  Her captor was Wolfgang Priklopil, a thirty-six-year-old communications technician who still lived with his mother. He ordered her to sit down on the floor in the back of the van and not move. Otherwise, he said, she would be in for a nasty surprise.

  Natascha thought at first that she was being kidnapped for ransom and wondered who was going to pay it. Neither of her parents had money. Then she thought that it would be a good idea to strike up a conversation with her abductor. She decided to use the du form of address, one used with family and friends, and the first thing she asked him was his shoe size. She remembered that on Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst, a German-language TV program similar to America’s Most Wanted, the importance of an exact description of the criminal was always stressed. Priklopil told her to shut up.

  By that point, Natascha was convinced that she was going to die and felt she had nothing to lose, so she asked him whether he was going to molest her. He said he would never do that; she was too young. But then he said he was going to take her out to the forest where he was going to hand her over to the other men who wanted her. Then he would never see her again. This was much scarier. She concluded that she had fallen into the hands of a pedophile ring who were going to do unspeakable things to her and she fell silent.

  Priklopil repeatedly tried to make calls from his cell phone, but got no reply. They came to a halt in a pine forest outside Vienna, where he tried to make another call. Then he cursed. The men he expected to meet were not there and would not be coming.

  She wondered whether he had locked the door, but she knew that she could not run very fast. If she tried to escape, he would catch her and might kill her.

  After a while, he drove back toward the Gänserndorf where her grandmother lived and where, until recently, her mother had a shop. Natascha asked him where they were going. He said Strasshof, a small town nearby. Eventually, they came to a halt in a garage. Priklopil wrapped Natascha in a blanket and carried her into the adjoining house. She asked him to let her go to the toilet. He stopped and ushered her into a guest bathroom.

  On the way, she took the opportunity to peer into another room. It seemed to be well-appointed. This made sense. The criminals’ houses she had seen on the TV were large and expensive.

  The lock on the bathroom door was insubstantial and afforded no protection, so she could not stay in the bathroom. When she emerged, he wrapped her in the blanket again and carried her downstairs, where he lay her on the floor and left her. When he returned, he screwed a light bulb into a fixture in the wall. She could now see a pallet bed, fixed to a wall by hooks, a stainless steel sink, and a toilet without a lid. The small room had walls covered with oak paneling. It reminded her of a sauna, the sort of place a pedophile would lure young victims to molest them, she thought. In fact, this small dungeon had been built as an air-raid shelter by Priklopil’s father and grandfather during the Cold War.

  Natascha remained remarkably composed. She begged him to release her, saying she would say nothing. If he did not keep her overnight, she said, nothing would happen to him. She would say that she had run away. She appealed to both his sympathy and his reason. It did no good. He began making up the bed, and it became clear that he was going to keep her overnight. But the panic she had felt earlier had subsided. There was nothing to be done but to accept the situation and make herself at home.

  He asked her whether there was anything she needed. She reeled off a list—a toothbrush, toothpaste, cup, hair bush. He then explained that he was going to have to go to Vienna to get a mattress from his apartment and he left her locked in the cellar.

  She thought of the lessons she was missing at school, and her parents. But she would not let herself cry. After all, the ordeal would be over the next day she told herself. Her parents would remember how much they missed her and loved her, and they would be nicer to her in the future. And her school friends would think she was a hero. But first she was going to have to escape by overpowering her captor or killing him.

  Priklopil returned with the mattress and all the things she had asked for. He also brought some of her favorite chocolate cookies. He then searched her school bag in case, he said, there was a radio transmitter hidden in there. He said that she was trying to trick him by playing innocent. She was cleverer than she made out. Natascha found this confusing. One minute he was doing everything to make her feel comfortable; the next he was treating her as an enemy.

  Whenever he left her, she felt that the small room was closing in on her. So when he returned, she asked him to read a bedtime story and give her a kiss good-night. She wanted to make everything seem as normal as possible. He did what she asked, but when he left, the illusion was shattered.

  When he returned the next morning she listened carefully while he unlocked the door. It took some time, so she figured that it was not going to be easy to escape. She then bombarded him with questions. Why was he keeping her there? What was he going to do with her? How long did he intend to keep her? Then she tried to threaten him. The police were looking for her, she said. If he did not let her go, he would go to jail. He was unresponsive, though he said he would let her go soon.

  Left alone again, she studied her cell and found that not a single chink of light entered the room from outside. Nor was there any sound except for the fan that ventilated the cellar that kept whirring twenty-four hours a day. She tried hammering a water bottle against the wall. No
one came. The light was on twenty-four hours a day too. This was unbearable but, she figured, it was better than the total darkness that came when he unscrewed the bulb.

  She began pacing her cell. It was six paces long and four paces wide—eight-foot-ten by seven-foot-ten. It was also about seven feet ten inches high and contained some four hundred cubic feet of musty air. Soon, she was in total despair.

  When Natascha did not come home from school, her mother called the police. They searched the area with dogs and helicopters, but the search yielded no clues and was called off after three days. Posters of the missing girl were put up in schools, and reports of sightings flooded in. Only one pointed in the right direction. A twelve-year-old girl said she had seen Natascha being pulled into a white van. The police did not take her seriously. One man even demanded a ransom of $1 million Austrian shillings; he was the first of many con artists.

  Natascha was anguished over what she knew her mother was going through. She tried to think of ways she could communicate to tell her that she was still alive. It was impossible. Every moment she thought that someone might burst in and rescue her. Then hope faded as she realized that Priklopil had been planning her imprisonment for some time.

  Indeed, that was the case. Although the cell itself had been built some time earlier, Priklopil had recently sought advice on soundproofing from his colleague Ernst Holzapfel. However, what puzzled Natascha was that Priklopil did not act like a man whose wish to kidnap a child had suddenly been fulfilled, but rather, like a distant relative who had suddenly had a child thrust upon him.

  In some ways, he was quite a caring individual. He made her open her mouth to check that she had cleaned her teeth properly and cut her finger nails for her. Chewing gum was banned in case she choked on it. Oranges were peeled and fed to her segment by segment. But Natascha objected to being treated like a small child. On the other hand, he did bring her the foodstuffs she requested. Eventually, he brought her a hot plate and a small electric oven, along with canned food, so she could cook for herself.

  Natascha heard that to avoid being raped by Russian soldiers at the end of World War II, Austrian woman stuck thin slices of lemon peel to their skin to make it look like they had some terrible disease. She tried this and begged Priklopil to take her to the doctor. He was not fooled and pulled the lemon rind off. As a punishment, he turned the light off.

  She found the loneliness of being in the cellar unbearable, so would do anything to keep him in there with her. They played games together—Nine Men’s Morris, Chinese checkers, Parcheesi. Priklopil then brought her a computer—a Commodore 64—with games on it. However, he muttered darkly about other men who would come and photograph her and do “other things” to her. This made it difficult for her to sleep at night. She did not want to be caught unawares. What would they do to her? Would they do it to her there? Or would they take her elsewhere?

  He gave her fresh clothing and burned the shoes her mother had given her for her birthday. The sweaters he gave her were left over from his military conscription. They kept her warm, but she always liked to wear at least one item of clothing of her own. It was cold in the cellar, so he brought her an electric heater. He also gave her a chaise longue and returned her school things to her, after burning the school bag.

  She tried to get him to send a letter to her parents. They had to know that she was alive, she said. It was loaded with clues as to where she might be. He refused, but she persisted and he finally give in—or said he did. The following day, he appeared with an injured finger. The letter had been grabbed out of his hand. The people that had ordered him to kidnap her would not allow him to send it.

  He let her record a message for her mother that he promised to play over the phone for her on her birthday. In the end, he did not do that. Instead he changed his story. He now told Natascha that she had been kidnapped for ransom but her parents would not pay up. They did not love her and did not want her back.

  Natascha did not really believe this and set about collecting any evidence she could concerning her kidnapping. She asked her kidnapper his age. He even told her his name, then thought better of it and gave the name of his best friend instead.

  She wanted to know why he had singled her out. Once he said that he had seen her school picture. Usually he maintained that she had come to him like a stray cat. You were allowed to keep strays, he said. Only toward the end of her captivity did he say that he wanted her as a slave.

  Natascha Kampusch said that she learned to adapt herself to her kidnapper in a way she would not have been able to do as an adult. She is proud that she could do this. As a child, she was still used to being told what to do. This, she believed, saved her life.

  After a few weeks, Priklopil brought a table and chairs down into the cellar so that they could eat together. Natascha encouraged this. Anything was preferable to hours of loneliness.

  The plumbing was primitive, but Priklopil would bring warm water down so that Natascha could bathe. She would have to undress and he would wash her down. She was a little embarrassed at being naked in front of him, but she said he was neither tender nor salacious. Rather he washed her as if she was a car or a household appliance.

  After a month, in the absence of any other lead, the police began to take more seriously the story given by the twelve-year-old girl who had seen Natascha being bundled into a white van, and announced that they would be checking up on the seven hundred owners of white vans in the vicinity. When they came to interview Priklopil, he said that he had been at home the whole day on the day that Natascha had gone missing. He could produce no witness to this; nevertheless, the police accepted his story and they left without examining the car or searching the house. Priklopil was so confident that they would not find his secret cellar that he invited the police to look. They declined the offer and apologized for inconveniencing him.

  Two days later, an anonymous witness reported that a white van of the type the police were seeking was seen parked outside Heinestrasse 60 in Strasshof, Priklopil’s home. The owner, the caller said, was a “loner” who lived there with his elderly mother. He was also thought to have a sexual penchant for children. The caller gave a good description of Priklopil.

  In Vienna, other witnesses said that, on the morning Natascha went missing, they had seen a white van with Gänserndorf license plates in the area. Strasshof was in the Gänserndorf administrative district. Even this lead did not spur the police into action.

  While the police investigation was going nowhere, Priklopil told Natascha again that his hopes of getting a ransom from her had been dashed. Her parents had said that they did not want her back. But he could not let her go because she had seen his face, so she would have to stay with him forever. She began to reconcile herself to the situation. One of the first books Natascha read while being held captive in the cellar was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There were disturbing parallels. She too was underground in a world that did not make any sense.

  She tried to turn the prison he had made into her own space and asked for a clock and a calendar. This, she figured, would help her retain some connection with what was happening in the world outside. It was no good relying on him to tell her what day it was. He could be lying. He also switched the light on and off when he felt like it. Without a clock, she could not tell whether this corresponded to day and night. She asked specifically for a clock with a loud tick like one her grandmother had. The regular ticking of a clock, she thought, would be a comfort.

  She also asked for cleaning products, so she could keep the place spick-and-span. She particularly liked those scented with lavender, so she could imagine being outdoors. To overcome her feeling of powerlessness, she began drawing. That way she could indulge her own fantasies, rather than merely be a victim of Priklopil’s.

  After a while, he brought her a television set with a video player and cassettes of programs he had recorded. Some of these were news programs, but he edited out reports concerning her disappearance in an attempt
to maintain the fiction that no one was looking for her. Later he brought her a radio, but had fixed it so that it only received Czech stations. That meant she could listen to music, but she could not understand what anyone was saying. He brought her a Walkman, but only provided a few cassettes so she had to listen to the same songs over and over. It was only after two years, when he figured that any search for her was over, that he bought her a regular radio so she could listen to Austrian stations.

  The radio and TV were a comfort, but the thing that worked best to fill the long hours of loneliness was reading. Priklopil brought her children’s classics, comic books, and crime novels. As she became dependent on books and tapes, he could restrict them when he wanted to punish her for minor infractions, such as using too much air freshener or singing. Otherwise, he could restrict his visits. Normally he would come to the cellar once in the morning and again in the evening. But he also might arrive on a Thursday with an armful of ready meals, then disappear until Sunday evening. He put the lights on a timer. But Natascha had to live with the fact that, if there were fire, a burst pipe, if she had choked on a sausage skin or something happened to him so he could not return with food, she would die there underground, all alone.

  Eventually, she got him to install an intercom. If she wanted something, she would press a button and a light would go on upstairs. Not that this necessarily brought him running—especially on weekends when his mother visited, as she found out later. Later he added a speaker system. He used it to order her around. He would tell her when to brush her teeth, turn the TV off, read her book, do her math assignment, eat her food—sometimes specifying how much or how little she should eat. However, Natascha soon discovered that one of the buttons cut out his voice. Once he realized that she was not listening, it would take him up to an hour to open all the doors to get to her, so she could have, for that period, a little peace. However, he replaced the intercom with a new two-way system that she could not turn off, allowing him to eavesdrop on her twenty-four hours a day. It was so loud when he talked, it was torture. And, if she could not convince him that she was doing exactly what she was told, he would come and take away her prized possessions. She even began to fear that he had installed hidden cameras to watch her every move, perhaps even infrared ones so that he could watch her in the dark. Just in case there were peepholes hidden behind, she filled every crack in the wood paneling with toothpaste.