Girl in the Cellar

by Allan Hall

  She always loved animals as a young girl. She had two cats in Vienna. One of them was called Cindy, and I still have her. But after my daughter was taken, my mother said I should re-name the cat Natascha, because that would bring good luck—nine lives and all that. So we called her Tashy.

  Her room was full of dolls as well, I know she had a lot, loads of them given to her by all her family, she always loved dolls. She loved music, especially Herbert Groenemeyer [Germany’s most famous pop singer].

  As a child she was always very grown-up; when other children might have been more interested in fairy tales, she was fascinated by watching the news. She was always reading books that could give her facts and figures about the world around her. The books she liked to read were those that broadened her horizons. I know she liked books about natural history. I know when she was in that cellar she spent a lot of time alone and she had to learn to keep herself amused. Documentaries and books that kept her informed about the world were her passion.

  I found out Natascha was missing when her mother called me that day. To be honest I wasn’t really that worried—I knew they had had a row, because Natascha’s mother told me. I thought she was just trying to scare her mother, and I wasn’t really worried about it until the next day when she still hadn’t turned up. Then the nightmare started.

  I have been through hell, but my life has really changed now. I have a new wife and now I have my daughter back. I’m 51 years old and I’m still young enough to enjoy my time with both. There is a very famous song by Udo Juergens with a line that goes ‘The sun always shines’. That is my motto for my life.

  I remember in Hungary how happy she was when one of the neighbours invited her to help them make marmalade, and they made a jar for her to take home with her. She was so proud.

  Love and pride radiate from Ludwig Koch for his child, that is evident. But life was not rosy for the young Natascha, not before she was taken, and certainly not afterwards. She lived on a dreary estate in a flat that was often empty after her parents broke up. Her two half-sisters were grown-ups now and lived away, and there was, and still is, an aura of the downtrodden among the residents. To them, life’s glittering prizes seemed destined for other, luckier folk. Not people like her.

  Neighbours who still live there say the tensions that existed between the parents were passed along to Natascha, who expressed them in the classical ways of children uncertain of themselves or their world: bed wetting, anxiety, low self-esteem and oscillating weight. By the time she was taken she endured a cruel nickname among her classmates: Porky. She had put on 10 kilos in just two months before she was snatched.

  She was, like the man she would share her formative years with, not brilliant at school, whatever her parents say. She had above-average intelligence but was an average student: indeed the fact she was snatched while on her way to school earlier than usual came about because she needed extra tuition in German. She was regarded as a pretty, charming girl by neighbours and the mothers of her school friends, but nothing marked her out as extraordinary. She was good at handicrafts, and at kindergarten, when she was four, she made a clay figurine that her father keeps to this day.

  The Alt Wien (Old Vienna) kindergarten on Leopoldauerplatz 77 in Vienna’s 21st district, where Natascha went after school, is only two minutes’ walk away from the Brioschiweg Volksschule, where she was a pupil. Josefine Huttarsch is headmistress of the kindergarten, where she has worked for the past 30 years. She smiled at the mention of Natascha and spoke very fondly of her:

  I remember Natascha very well, although I have not seen her for so many years. She was a very bright child, very aware of things, and very aware of herself in a way. And she definitely was immensely self-confident and cocky, but in a nice way. She was a nice girl, we never had any problems with her.

  The children in this kindergarten are up to ten years old and they come here because their parents work long hours. They do their homework for school here and Natascha was always good at doing that. Of course, sometimes she would spend more time playing and then not have too much time left for the homework, but that’s normal.

  She liked to draw and play creative games a lot, as far as I can remember, I think she also liked sculpting with plasticine. She also was a very lively little girl, ran around the whole time and liked playing outdoors in the garden.

  She had been spending lot of time with grown-ups, I think, with neighbours and friends of the parents, and was therefore able to make conversation like an adult. I think she matured quite early due to the circumstances of her parents not living together and her having frequent contact with adults.

  She was very witty and liked to make jokes, and got along well with everyone. I remember she spoke properly even at a very young age—she was a very articulate child. She had many friends and was always playing with the other children. She was not one to sit alone in a corner.

  But at times there was some sadness in her, I don’t really know how to explain it, it was nothing overt, but there were times like that. I think that she might have had a hard time at home, with her parents separating and all. At the time I didn’t think about it much, because many children coming from a similar background face the same problems and it is more or less normal.

  But she was very impulsive too. Sometimes she would have big arguments with her mum when she was picking her up. She usually came and went by herself, because her school is just around the corner, but her mother would come to pick her up in the afternoons sometimes. I remember them having arguments as they were leaving, and voices would be raised too.

  But it did not strike me as something worrying—you see that kind of stuff all the time. I assumed she had some problems at home, but it did not really show when she was with us in the kindergarten. She never mentioned anything directly.

  Natascha also argued with her dad sometimes—nothing really serious—when he would be late to pick her up. She was very stubborn and quite wilful, but of course not in a bad way.

  I remember very well the last day she was with us, it was a Friday. She was full of energy on that day, even more than usual. Her father was picking her up and taking her to Hungary over the weekend, and she was a bit upset that he was late. She wasn’t cross with him or anything, she just could hardly wait for him to finally show up. Her dad was often a bit late when he was supposed to pick her up, but that’s because he worked a lot. But Natascha was always looking forward to the trips to Hungary.

  Natascha was close to stepsisters Claudia, born in 1968, and Sabine, born in 1970, and is now an aunt several times over, but they could do little to protect her from the feelings of alienation she must have felt. Rows between her parents upset the sensitive Natascha. She loved them both, but neighbours tend to think she was more of a daddy’s girl. And there are allegations that Frau Sirny often left Natascha on her own, fuelling resentments with each passing day.

  Experts have long warned of the potential negative effects of parents arguing in front of their children. A recent study, by the University of Rochester in New York, said it is not only the obvious stuff—throwing objects, shouting and swearing—that distresses children, but also the more subtle, simmering resentment practised by families who pride themselves on never fighting in front of the children.

  Penny Mansfield, the director of the marriage and partnership organisation One Plus One, says: ‘Parents who are distracted by their own conflict tend to be less good at parenting. The children don’t get enough attention.’ Another way some children react, she says, is to mimic the rows they witness. ‘They learn that this is how you relate to people. But most potentially destructive is when the child thinks: “If Dad is so angry at Mum, he can be that angry at me.” Their security is threatened.’

  Ludwig admits there were rows, admits there was tension, but he claims no knowledge of whether it was destructive to Natascha. He hopes not, he says. He has found happiness with his new wife Georgina, 48, a Hungarian schoolteacher, and now lives in a house in the same di
strict where he once lived with Natascha and Brigitta. He inherited it but had to sell it, and now pays rent to live there, the legacy of the business that he lost in the wake of Natascha’s kidnap.

  ‘What else can I tell you about her?’ he says, racking his memory. ‘She was a very intelligent and creative child. I remember at the age of ten she could already command the full attention of over six adults around her. She would simply talk and talk, entertain everyone and make them laugh. She was a real chatterbox, very extrovert and communicative from a very early age.

  ‘She had many friends in the neighbourhood and in school. She loved going to school and I think she did well there, too. She liked all of her subjects.’

  He said that one of her big joys was the kitten she had been given shortly before she was stolen.

  With so much time at home alone she spent a lot of time with the cat and really loved it. It was still young when she vanished. We had a much older cat that had belonged to my mother, it was called Muschi I think, and it had kittens and we gave Natascha one of the kittens. She was delighted, and she raised it by feeding it milk from a bottle.

  Hannes Bartsch, the owner of the Planet Music in Vienna, was a pal in Hungary. He gets all the big rock groups to his place. Natascha met some of them when he brought them down to Hungary. She liked rock music. You know, when I was doing better financially, had a better life, we were down at the Woerthersee, oh, five or six times a year. [The Woerthersee is a favourite vacation resort, catering to more affluent Austrians, set in magnificent mountain scenery in Carinthia.]

  They were filming a famous Austrian TV series when we were there, Ein Schloβ am Woerthersee [‘A Castle by Lake Woerther’], and Natascha got to meet the cast. She was friendly with the stars, Roy Black and Franco Adolfo. They were regulars in the hotel I stayed in. All the stars went there, she experienced all this when she was a little kid. She would talk to them and was never shy. That’s why today she is not afraid of big names and the spotlight, it was nothing special to her.

  Back to the present, and he is keen to show off something. Rising from the table as if wanting to somehow share those precious moments, he walks from his small, wood-panelled kitchen into the garden, shading his eyes from the sunlight as he rummages for the key to the shed. He then pulls open the doors and wheels an electric car out on to the brick yard. ‘Of course when Natascha was here this yard was grass, some things change, but I have always kept her car for her. The batteries are flat now, but I have always kept it clean for her,’ he says and, as if emphasising the point, pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and uses it to brush a fleck from the bonnet.

  Down the long years of her captivity this car had become a touchstone of faith when despair was all around. After the long nights tramping the more sordid areas of Vienna, he would come back to this toy that his lost daughter loved so much. It seemed that just by touching it he could summon her spirit back.

  What it cost was not important. Sometimes things went well with my businesses and sometimes things didn’t go well. Life is like that, a roller-coaster, but what was always important for me was that I did my best for my child.

  And I didn’t just give her presents. I also tried to give her good advice and warn her about life. I always told her to stay away from false friends, from people who just say yes because they want something from you. They show a friendly face but they just want to stick a knife in your back. That’s a lesson she still has with her today, as a lot of people want something from her.

  He said Natascha was never a materialistic child, and would shun fancy presents in favour of more practical ones. He recalled the time on one Hungarian trip when he took her to buy some ‘nice fancy shoes’:

  But she only glanced though the shelves and went straight to the far corner of the shop and picked a pair of Wellington boots. She didn’t care about the fancy shoes, she only wanted wellies so she could play in the garden, water the lawn and the flowers and things like that. She loved playing in the garden and the outdoors in general.

  Natascha is so much like my mother, the resemblance is incredible. She has her looks, her spirit, her intelligence. When I was watching the interview on TV, it was as if I was looking at my late mother when she was younger.

  But Natascha’s got the will to fight from me, and the stubbornness, too. That’s why she could endure everything and that is why she is now able to take control over her own fate.

  It was while she was on holiday in Hungary shortly before she was kidnapped that Natascha came closest to puppy love. Martin Bartsch, 21, son of her father’s friend Hannes, said he thought of her as a ‘little girlfriend’, and recalled how, even though she was three years younger than him, a big gap at the time, he enjoyed her company:

  She wasn’t a typical girl of her age. Usually I found them annoying, but Natascha was interesting to talk to and polite. We would go cycling all around the area. There was a football pitch we used to like to stop at—I was mad about football and always wanted to kick the ball about—and she would always join in, although I don’t know how much she liked football. But that’s what she was like, always willing to join in with everything.

  We never used to take food with us, we went home for that, usually at my place, as my mother was there and Natascha liked her a lot. I never saw Natascha’s mum in Hungary. She was only ever there with her dad. I know he was a great cook, obviously, especially with the bakery stuff, but I think he likes just to rest at the weekends and get away from it all. But you could see he loved Natascha a lot, they had a great relationship, and he was really considerate and caring about her. When we had the grill evenings, sometimes there would be five people there and sometimes there would be 15, but it was always the same.

  When Natascha wasn’t playing she would be cuddling her dad. I think he was the most important player in the whole search for her. He never gave up. Everyone else I’m sure believed she would never be seen again—I didn’t think I would ever see her again. But her dad never for a second wavered in his belief that he would one day find his Natascha.

  Natascha’s last day of freedom before her ordeal began was spent in Hungary with her father and the Bartsch family. They shared a meal together, which was late coming to the table, making them late in turn getting back to Vienna and triggering the row that was to have such catastrophic consequences.

  It was a meal where everyone sat around ‘laughing and talking’, according to Erika Bartsch, Hannes’s wife. Natascha had spent the morning playing with the Bartsch family sheepdog and the early afternoon picking plums from her garden to make jam. She is remembered as a child especially fond of nature, who loved butterflies and enjoyed the nature trails which criss-crossed the region. She liked climbing trees, stroking the heads of the horses in a nearby meadow and, in wintertime, took special delight in sledging on nearby hills. The absence of nature, of the seasons themselves, when she was a prisoner in his dungeon, must have been particularly hard for her to bear.

  Sometimes she took a sewing kit with her on her weekends away and made clothes for her dolls. Often she would weave bracelets from grass and tell her hosts, ‘I am making one to give to Mami.’ She is remembered, above all, as the opposite of the man who would come to possess her: sociable, likeable, charming, kind and extrovert. Frau Bartsch recalled those happy days:

  The kids would play football together on the pitch nearby, or go skipping or hopping, or else they were climbing in the trees. Right opposite us there was a path that led into the woods which was great for the cycles. It was a good life for them. They were forced to amuse themselves to a certain extent, because the other children were Hungarian and they only had a few words, so they couldn’t really talk with each other.

  When we had a barbecue the kids would play in the garden—we had 2,600 square metres—and we adults would sit and talk about everything under the sun. Natascha’s mother never came there, she was always just there with her father. You could see she was happy and had a good relationship with him. Sometimes when
she was tired she would sit on his knee and have a cuddle, they were very close.

  Hungary was a kind of Narnia for Natascha, a never-ending holiday away from the dispiriting tower blocks and potholed streets where she lived. There was no one there to call her Porky or poke fun at her bed-wetting. In fact, according to her father, it stopped when she was there.

  They were joyous episodes, which she cherished when in captivity, and her father hopes to take her back there soon to explore the haunts of a lost childhood.

  A lost childhood indeed—and a childhood that perhaps had a darker side than the hours merely spent alone in her mother’s flat or shut in her room while her parents argued. It was one exposed when police from Task Force Natascha were handed a set of four colour photographs of Natascha as a child. This was shortly after she disappeared. But these were shockingly different to those of Natascha at her first Communion, or the smiling school photographs that adorned the Missing posters pinned up around the city.

  Almost naked, with thigh-length boots and a riding crop, and a tiny top that only reached part of the way to her stomach, she looks uncomfortable as she stares off to the left at the floor. In another she is naked on the bed, wrapped only in a fake fur stole.

  The pictures were reluctantly handed over by Natascha’s mother after they were seen by someone close to the story from day one, who borrowed some of them and passed them on to the police and to an expert psychologist in child abuse. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the person who found the pictures told the authors:

  There were pictures of Natascha in a box of family snaps, and I was leafing through them as I chatted to Natascha’s mother.

  I was shocked when I saw them, and asked her what they were, and she seemed embarrassed, and dismissed them as family snaps taken by Claudia. She had promised to let me have some pictures, so I asked for them. She refused, and so I asked her: ‘What are they, harmless, or not harmless? If they are harmless, surely I can have them?’