Against Their Will

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Priklopil then began to blame Natascha for the reckless expense of taking her skiing. He made her figure out how far the ski resort was, so she would know how much the gas would cost to take her there and back. Despite all the money he was spending on her, he said, she would probably spoil everything by acting up.

  “You are nothing without me,” he screamed, banging his fist on the table. “Nothing.”

  Natascha did not react. One of the instructions she had written in her secret diary read: “Don’t answer back when he says that you can’t live without him.”

  Besides, the trip was not for her. Priklopil had often gone skiing, leaving her locked in the cellar. He was taking her so that he could indulge the fantasy that he was going with a willing partner who would admire his prowess on the slopes.

  She played on this. On their way to the car, she said she had changed her mind and wanted to stay home. He had a crowbar in his hand and brought it down on her thigh, splitting the skin. Despite her injury, they set off.

  At the ski rental shop where they stopped to get Natascha some boots, Priklopil became extremely nervous. Natascha would have to talk to the assistant, who would ask how the boots fit. Again, he threatened to kill everyone in the shop if she attempted to give him away.

  After getting the boots, he decided that they could not take the ski lift. Again, it would have given her a chance to talk to people. They would have to drive up to the slopes.

  Her first attempts at skiing met with some success. Suddenly, she felt proud of herself, a feeling she had not had in a long time. Priklopil, of course, criticized and swore at her each time she did something wrong. Nevertheless, the experience boosted her confidence. To see the vast skies and the mountainous panorama filled her with exhilaration.

  Then she had to go to the toilet. Priklopil had no choice but to let her go. However, he directed her to a restroom away from the restaurant area where there would be fewer people and stood outside the door. When Natascha went in, there was no one else inside. She delayed, hoping that someone else would come in. Then the door opened. She thought it might be Priklopil coming to get her because she had been too long. However, it was a woman. For the first time in eight years, Natascha found herself alone with someone other than her kidnapper.

  Natascha plucked up all her courage and approached the stranger. But when she opened her mouth nothing seemed to come out. She spoke but the woman took no notice. It was like a bad dream. The woman turned, smiled at Natascha, and left. Later, she learned that the woman was Dutch and did not understand German. But at the time, it fed into Natascha’s worst nightmare. Perhaps she was invisible. It reminded her that she must not try and seek help, but depend on herself to make her escape.

  For her eighteenth birthday, Natascha was allowed to bake a cake. But the nearest she came to having a party was to watch videos of Turkish and Serbian wedding celebrations that Priklopil had. He bought her a second cake in the shape of a “1” and an “8.” Despite her continued captivity, this was a special day for Natascha. Even before she had been kidnapped, she had dreamt of being eighteen so she could leave home and be free.

  The sight of the “18” cake made her redouble her resolve to escape. She was no longer a child. Despite what he said, she did not need anyone to look after her anymore. Back in her dungeon, she began to revive the ambitions she had had as a little girl—to become an actress, write a book, make music, be free.

  The conditions of her captivity grew slightly better after her eighteenth birthday. She was allowed out to help with the gardening. The neighbors had seen her. Twice they had shouted greetings over the fence. Priklopil had told them that she was “temporary help.” As a reward for her work, he had bought her an orange dress that made her feel almost normal.

  After the conversion work in the house was finished, work started on a new apartment Priklopil had bought in Vienna. Again, Natascha was to be an unpaid laborer. She hoped that the new location would present new opportunities to escape, but whenever Priklopil left the apartment for a moment, he jammed the door closed or screwed boards across it, turning it into a makeshift prison. As it was, she was usually too weary from overwork and her poor diet to make a break for it.

  An opportunity to escape did present itself when a neighbor came to check out the new apartment. But he was from Yugoslavia and spoke little German. Even so, while they talked in the doorway, Priklopil made sure to keep Natascha behind him. There were also fresh beatings to put up with. He demanded absolute obedience. When he said that black was white and white was black, she was forced to say so too. Nevertheless, she was convinced that her opportunity to escape would come soon.

  She noted that Priklopil was becoming more delusional. He had been saying that, if he could trust her not to run away, he would take her on vacation and buy her nice things. But when she promised not to escape, he said he knew she was lying.

  And it was not just a matter of Natascha’s getting away from him. Over the years, he had got inside her. She feared that she might commit suicide if she escaped, finding herself unable to cope with freedom. She didn’t want to go to the police either. They would lock him up, but that would only be doing to him what he had done to her. She had no desire for revenge. She only felt pity for a man who thought he could terrorize someone into loving him.

  Natascha was also afraid of being presented as a victim as the girls in the Dutroux case had been. She wanted to stop being a victim once she was free of Priklopil. She even planned how she would handle the media. She may have disappeared into the cellar as a child, but she would emerge a full-grown woman.

  Priklopil was in a good mood. The apartment they had been working on was going on the market. His money worries would be over for the time being, and he planned to sell the white van he had used to kidnap her eight and a half years before. While they were fixing it up, Natascha realized that her last link to the world before her abduction was about to disappear. It was as if she were condemning herself to the cellar forever, and she had to speak out.

  She told Priklopil that now that she was an adult she had to move out. She said he must have known from the beginning that, sooner or later, he had to either kill her or let her go. She stiffened herself for the blow. It did not come. Instead, he said that she knew he could neither kill her nor free her. But Natascha explained that he had put them in a position where one of them had to die. She had tried to kill herself several times. It would be better, she said, if he committed suicide as there was no other way out for him. Then she said, he was not to worry. If she ran away, she would not go to the police. Instead, she would throw herself under a train. When she said this, it surprised her. But now she knew that she would run away at the next opportunity.

  On the morning August 23, 2006, Natascha awoke as the light came on. Hunger drove her out of bed. There was nothing to eat in the cellar, but she brushed her teeth to take away the sour taste of an empty stomach. Normally she would have tidied up her cell. But that day she could not be bothered. However, she put on her new orange dress and waited for her jailer to open the door.

  She asked whether she could put on a pair of panties. He said this was out of the question. Indoors she had always had to work half-naked to discourage her escaping. In the garden, she had to go without underwear.

  That morning, like many others these days, she went through the big concrete door. The sight of it always made her shudder. Once when he had left her alone for several of days, she had used her last ounce of to strength to break down the inner wooden doors. But there was nothing she could have done about the concrete door. It only opened from the outside. If something prevented him from coming to open it, that door meant that she would die from thirst or starvation. It was a constant terror.

  That day, like so many before, she crawled out of the narrow passageway. Once upstairs, she took deep breaths, relishing the fresh air. Even though it was she who was starving, he forced her to get him two slices of bread and jam from the kitchen. She had not had dinner
the night before, though he had given her a tiny piece of cake, which she was to have for her breakfast. She had wolfed it the night before in lieu of dinner and she knew that there would be nothing more for her now.

  She washed the dishes and looked at the calendar. It was the 3,096th day of her captivity. They set to work writing an ad for the apartment. The details were put on the Internet. Then they went out into the garden. Around noon, he told her to vacuum the interior of the van, to get it ready to sell. While she was doing this, his cell phone rang. From what she could hear, it was someone who was interested in the apartment. Deep in conversation, Priklopil wandered away.

  As soon as he was out of sight, she seized her chance. She dropped the vacuum cleaner and ran. She headed toward the railroad tracks. She had no great hope of getting away. Perhaps Priklopil would catch her and kill her. But she now felt that death was better than going back into the dungeon.

  Suddenly she saw three people and begged them to call the police. They said they could not as they did not have a cell phone with them.

  With tears in her eyes, she climbed over a fence into a garden. There was a woman opening the window. Natascha told her to call the police, she had been kidnapped. The woman wanted to know what Natascha was doing in her garden. Natascha again begged her to call the police, then added: “My name is Natascha Kampusch.”

  It was as if a spell was broken. She was no longer Priklopil’s Maria. For the first time in so many years, she had said her own name.

  Fearing a bloodbath, she insisted that the police should come in an unmarked car.

  The woman was mistrustful and told her to wait by the hedge because she did not want Natascha on her lawn. Nevertheless, she called the police.

  Much to Natascha’s dismay, a police car turned up with lights flashing. Natascha expected gunfire to break out at any moment. The police told her to put her hands up.

  She told them her name, her date of birth, and her address. They had their doubts. This emaciated teenager looked nothing like the plump primary school girl who had gone missing eight years before.

  While they contacted headquarters, she said that she had been kidnapped by Wolfgang Priklopil and held prisoner at Heinestrasse 60. They were still only yards from Priklopil’s front door and, as far as she was concerned, still in great danger.

  The police put her in the car and Natascha ducked down low in the backseat, frightened that Priklopil might see her. When they reached the police station at Deutsch-Wagram, the detectives there greeted her warmly. They had checked out the details she had given and were convinced that she was the lost child they had been trying to find for so long.

  They offered her some food. She refused it, knowing that since she had gone without for so long, it would give her stomach cramps. A kindly woman police officer gave Natascha her jacket to keep her warm, then sat her down while Natascha poured out her story.

  Taken back to Vienna, Natascha found herself swamped by the media. Then she heard that Priklopil was on the run. She knew he would kill himself.

  Her mother was waiting at police headquarters in Vienna. It was a tearful reunion. Her sisters came too, then her father. But her beloved grandmother, sadly, had died.

  While she was being examined by a police psychologist, the police went to Heinsestrasse 60 and found no explosives around the windows and doors. But they did find the dungeon.

  That evening, they took her to a hotel in southern Austria where she was protected under armed guard. Priklopil was still at large and might want to kill her. So Natascha found herself locked up once more. She listened to the radio to see if she could find out what had happened to her kidnapper, until the psychologist put a stop to it. The following day, she returned to Vienna. On the way, she was told that Priklopil had jumped in front of a train and was dead. At last, she was free.

  She was advised to change her name and go into hiding. That was the only way she could lead a normal life, she was told. But Natascha did not want to live in the shadows. She had done that, forcibly, for too long. Two weeks after her escape, Natascha decided to give interviews to the major Austrian news media.

  Natascha Kampusch went on to have her own chat show on Austrian TV. She eventually took possession of the house at Heinsestrasse that played so large a part in her life in order to prevent it from being torn down or turned into some macabre museum. She has visited it regularly, but says that if she ever sold it, she would have the cellar filled in.

  Chapter 8

  Katie Beers—Lost from View

  ON THE WEEKEND BEFORE her tenth birthday, Katie Beers was staying with her Aunt Linda, her wheelchair-bound godmother, in West Bay Shore, Long Island. On Wednesday, her birthday, Katie had to be back with her mother, Marilyn. The two women were embroiled in a custody battle over Katie. That Sunday, Aunt Linda was holding a pre-birthday party for her favorite niece. Katie called a family friend, forty-three-year-old building contractor Joe Esposito, and left a message on his answering machine, saying that they had saved him a piece of cake.

  At 11 a.m. on Monday, Esposito returned her call. He said he had taken the afternoon off work to have fun with her. Before the party, he had delivered a Barbie Dream House, but had been unable to stay. Some neighborhood kids would assemble it while they were out.

  At 1:20 p.m., Esposito arrived at Linda Inghilleri’s yellow-shingled house on Ocean Avenue and came in through the side door. Katie leaped into his arms.

  Esposito had been a longtime friend of both the Inghilleris and the Beers family. He was a small man—just five foot seven and slim—but they called him “Big John” to distinguish him from “Little John” Beers, Katie’s sixteen-year-old half-brother. Linda thought that Esposito was gay. She trusted him with Katie, and they had been out together many times before.

  Linda told them to be back by six and asked Katie to mail some letters for her. Katie grabbed her coat and purse, and the floppy hat she always wore when she went out after her hair had been shorn due to an infestation of head lice.

  They took off in Esposito’s black 1989 Nissan pickup and drove down to the Toys “R” Us in Bay Shore. He bought some toys, a videotape, and the Super Nintendo video game Home Alone 2. After a Slurpee in a 7-Eleven, they went back to Esposito’s house on North Saxon and upstairs to the game room to play the video game, or so Katie thought. Instead Esposito took her into the bedroom, threw her on the bed, and kissed her. It is not clear whether he had planned to do that. It may just have been an impulse. However, he knew that he was in big trouble. Marilyn Beers had already accused him of molesting Little John, and he had been charged with a sex offense some fourteen years before. On the other hand, what happened next may have been planned for a long time.

  Over the previous few years, he had dug a deep pit behind his garage and dispersed the dirt across the adjoining field. Then he’d covered it over with a concrete roof and turned it into an underground bunker. When he finished, he covered it over, laid a cement base, and erected a carport. He covered his tracks so well that neighbors were none the wiser. Nor was his former sister-in-law, with whom he shared the house. As a building contractor, Esposito was always coming and going with building material, and he frequently worked late into the night. Below ground, the bunker was decorated with ceiling hooks, chains, and other restrains. Blood spots that were later found on a sheet indicate that sadomasochistic practices had gone on there.

  Esposito picked up Katie, carried her down to his office, and locked the door. She tried to dial 911 on the office phone, but he grabbed it from her hand. Then he unbolted a bookcase and moved it from its position on a dolly. He rolled back the floor covering to reveal a two-hundred-pound concrete slab. Then, with a block and tackle, he raised it. Beneath it was a six-foot shaft. Esposito carried Katie down a steep flight of steps to the bottom. A circular passageway, wide enough to crawl down, led off it. He used an electric wrench to raise three barriers along its length, and forced Katie through the crawl way.

  It led to the concrete bunker
, which was now lined with cork and foam rubber. The floor measured six feet by seven, and it was barely high enough for Esposito to stand up in. It contained a portable toilet, a dehumidifier, a radiator, and an air duct for ventilation, all illuminated by the blue glow of the TV monitors. These were connected to closed-circuit TV cameras around the house, so he could watch what was going on.

  A smaller metal chamber running the length of the chamber was suspended from the roof. Katie was shoved in there. It contained a bed. She noticed the red stains on the sheets. Had someone been kept in here before, she wondered? There was also a TV and a radio. Esposito gave her a remote control. He explained that he was rescuing her from the bitter custody battle between her mother and Aunt Linda. She would be safe there. But first she had to record a message.

  He bought her some sodas and junk food, then left her locked in. Now he had a detailed timetable to follow. Setting off at 4 p.m., he headed for Nesconset, stopping at a gas station to call Linda. The phone was busy. He tried repeatedly until he got through about half an hour later.

  At 5:06, Linda’s phone rang. Confined to her wheelchair, she did not get to the phone before the answering machine cut in. She heard Katie’s voice. It said: “I’ve been kidnapped by a man with a knife… Oh my God! He’s coming back.”

  Esposito headed on to the Spaceplex Family Center, Long Island’s largest indoor amusement park. When he arrived there, he told security that he had lost a little girl named Katie Beers, last seen at around 4:30.

  Linda knew that Esposito and Katie were going to Spaceplex. She called and had Esposito paged. Then she called 911. Twenty minutes later, she called Spaceplex again. This time she spoke to the manager, who handed the phone to Esposito. He said that Katie had gone to get change when she disappeared. Then he began sobbing.