GUILTY Austria - Woman Held Captive, Had 7 Children by Father

[JBean]

I "thought" I read the doctor called in the tip. I'll have to search to see if I can find that article/video again.

this makes sense and this is what I mean in terms of where the tip came from. It was someone that learned what had happened and contacted authorities

 

[Mr. E]

Since Elizabeth had aged so prematurely ( and no wonder!) I am wondering if the had moved on to abuse Kirsten.....
and if SHE is the five years old's mother, not Elizabeth.....
just too awful to contemplate, but an idea which is highly possible....

I think that the whole game was up for the , because there was no one left for him to victimize.....no more fun for him....
this so much reminds me of the Nazis....Dr. Josef Mengele comes to mind....

I believe DNA tests proved that the children were all Josef's.

About the boys' speech: I wonder if they have a combination of spoken language and the grunts that were mentioned earlier. I read that Elisabeth read to them, and they watched TV, so I'm sure they could speak. But I'll bet they were encouraged not to speak so as not to make too much noise and make Josef angry, hence their own language of grunts.

 

[shana]

I believe the doctor notified the authorities of his concerns based on Kerstin's condition and the way in which she was dropped-off, and then someone else tipped the police about JF. As I had posted the other day, various persons may have seen the 2 boys in the home. Rosemarie herself could have phoned-in the anon tip, or a person she let know about the condition of the boys.

How many hours were the boys upstairs before the police arrived at the villa?

 

[JanetElaine]

I believe DNA tests proved that the children were all Josef's.

That doesn't prove who the mother is though. I have thought the same thing as NNY. The five year old comes quite a ways after the others (the next ones up are 12, 14, 15, 18, 19).

 

[philamena]

This is one of the worst crimes I've read about.
Fritzl was literally a freak.
Raping his daughter, fathering his own grandchildren, keeping them locked up, psychological abuse.
I've no doubt there was physical abuse too.:furious:

 

[JBean]

Since Elizabeth had aged so prematurely ( and no wonder!) I am wondering if the had moved on to abuse Kirsten.....
and if SHE is the five years old's mother, not Elizabeth.....
just too awful to contemplate, but an idea which is highly possible....

I think that the whole game was up for the , because there was no one left for him to victimize.....no more fun for him....
this so much reminds me of the Nazis....Dr. Josef Mengele comes to mind....

while this certainly is not an unreasonable theory at this point, I thought parentage had been settled.

 

[CarpeDiem]

This is one of the worst crimes I've read about.
Fritzl was literally a freak.
Raping his daughter, fathering his own grandchildren, keeping them locked up, psychological abuse.
I've no doubt there was physical abuse too.:furious:

Imagine what he did to them if he could hear them as he approached. Children make noise, babies cry.

 

[Parmenides]

How many hours were the boys upstairs before the police arrived at the villa?

My understanding is they were still in the cellar when the police arrived.

 

[philamena]

CarpeDiem,
Just thinking about that made my heart drop.
Those poor, poor children. I don't know how they and their mother survived.

Was this guy trying to start his own society?
Was this totally about control for him?
What a creep.

 

[Native New Yorker]

Parentage....
Yes, we all know for certain that the monster fathered all the children....
but we do not know for certain that his daughter is the mother of all of them....especially the youngest.
It is also hypothetically possible that Kirsten fell ill due to a complication of pregnancy....I would not expect the authorities to reveal such an awful detail, if true....

 

[shana]

My understanding is they were still in the cellar when the police arrived.

Thank you

I thought he released them all at the point he decided to take Elisabeth to the hospital in response to the plea for help from Kerstin's mother, and told Rosemarie that Elisabeth had returned home with her remaining children.

imo, many of the news stories are full of exaggerations/inaccuracies and are not properly sourced. As such, we are missing critical details. For example, Elisabeth has apparently so far been interviewed just the one time on that Saturday night for two hours, yet we are reading all sorts of things as if to have come from her since.

Hopefully at the end of the two weeks' investigation, the police will issue a more comprehensive and official report to clarify, at the time charges are laid.

 

[CarpeDiem]

imo, many of the news stories are full of exaggerations/inaccuracies and are not properly sourced. As such, we are missing critical details. For example, Elisabeth has apparently so far been interviewed just the one time on that Saturday night for two hours, yet we are reading all sorts of things as if to have come from her since.

Hopefully at the end of the two weeks' investigation, the police will issue a more comprehensive and official report to clarify, at the time charges are laid.

I agree. In one article it said the kids were grunting instead of talking. Then three paragraphs down it said one asked the cop in response to seeing the sky, "Is God up there?".

 

[Rum Tum Tugger]

Police begin to piece together tortured life of Elisabeth Fritzl​

By Tony Paterson in Amstetten

Thursday, 1 May 2008


A shocking image of Elisabeth Fritzl - the 42-year-old victim of Austria's worst recorded case of multiple rape and incest - was published yesterday.

It shows an elderly looking woman with crudely cut hair that has turned completely grey. She has a deeply-lined face and tight lips which, doctors say, conceal a mouth full of badly decaying teeth.

The drawing, published by the Austrian media, is said to be an "accurate artist's impression" of Elisabeth, based on interviews with doctors and police who have been caring for her since she escaped from the underground cell in which she was held captive for 24 years.

Elisabeth has not been seen in public since she was imprisoned in a windowless bunker beneath her father Josef's garden in 1984 and forced to become his sex slave.

Fritzl, 73, who was arrested after apparently confessing to his crimes at the weekend, is in custody pending his trial.

<Snip>

The artist's drawing of Elisabeth bears little similarity to the only photographs of her published to date - a black-and-white snap of a smiling teenager and a colour picture of her as a 14 year-old secondary school pupil.

Observers say she now looks more like the sister of her mother, Rosemarie, who is 69.

Elisabeth spent yesterday with her mother, her children Stefan, 18, and Felix, five who were held captive underground along with two of her other daughters, now 15 and 14, and a son, 12, who were allowed to live "normal" lives in the house above the cellar.

<snip>

She and her family are so traumatised and unused to open spaces or daylight that doctors have placed a cargo container outside their accommodation to allow them to withdraw into a confined space if they need to.

Elisabeth's 19-year-old daughter, Kersten, remains in a serious condition in hospital.

(5/4/08 Update - Still in induced coma - several vital organs have shut down - Kersten is not expected to live.)

Leopold Etz, one of the police officers who freed Stefan and Felix from the bunker, said he was "staggered" to see the reactions of the children as they tried to adapt to their new surroundings, which they had previously only seen on television.

He added that the boys thought they were in heaven when they emerged, having been told by their mother that "heaven is up there".

Felix has been described as the livelier of the boys, but is also reluctant to leave his mother's side. He was said to have clapped his hands with joy when he saw a cow in a field and is fascinated by the sun and the moon.

<snip>

Mr Etz also said that Stefan and Felix used animal-like language to communicate. "They speak with growls and coos. We cannot understand everything they say," he added.

<snip>

Further details of Elisabeth's ordeal, based on a lengthy interview she gave police, emerged yesterday. She had learnt to fear her domineering father from an early age and offered him what appeared to be total obedience.

"I don't know why it was so, but my father simply chose me for himself," she told officers. She revealed that Fritzl began sexually abusing her from the age of 11 in the cellar, in his car and on walks through the forest.

Deeply ashamed and frightened of being found out, she did everything possible to hide the truth from her friends and classmates.

A former pupil at her school recalled that Elisabeth was "terrified of not being home on time", adding: "When we went to her home, we had to leave as soon as her father appeared."

On two occasions, Elisabeth ran away from home but was picked up by police and sent back each time.

In 1984, when she was 18, her father drugged her with ether and dragged her into the cellar, handcuffing her to a metal pole.

He kept her in the dark for the first few weeks and visited her only to rape her or give her food.

Elisabeth said she faced the choice of being left to starve or being raped.

As Elisabeth began to bear her father's children, Fritzl started improving the bunker and easing her regime. By the early 1990s, he apparently felt relaxed enough to go abroad.

A private videotape, shot by one of his friends and released for the first time yesterday, showed Fritzl on a three-week holiday to Thailand in 1994, while his daughter and children were locked up below ground at home.

Questions were being raised over whether Fritzl used an accomplice to provide food for his prisoners during his three-week holidays. The door to the dungeon also weighed 300kg, indicating that hinging the door into place would have required the assistance of a third party.

Fritzl had told his wife that their daughter had run away to join a sect where there was "no room for children". Officers are convinced that Mrs Fritzl believed him.


Rum Tum

 

[JBean]

Parentage....
Yes, we all know for certain that the monster fathered all the children....
but we do not know for certain that his daughter is the mother of all of them....especially the youngest.
It is also hypothetically possible that Kirsten fell ill due to a complication of pregnancy....I would not expect the authorities to reveal such an awful detail, if true....

Hi NNY do you have a link for that info? I didn't know that parentage was not settled.

 

[Annie]

She does look very old if this is anywhere close. How sad! I hope she can recover somewhat.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor.../Artist's-impression-of-Elisabeth-Fritzl.html

 

[Zanko]

I agree. In one article it said the kids were grunting instead of talking. Then three paragraphs down it said one asked the cop in response to seeing the sky, "Is God up there?".

These children spent their entire lives together in several hundred square feet. Their entire world was comprised of a hand full of people. It seems pretty reasonable that they would have established their own language. It sounds like they established a system of communication with words, nonsensical "noises" and most likely non-verbal cues only understandable to them.

 

[Native New Yorker]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3867629.ece




"The small town of Amstetten is set in a picturesque region of daisy-filled meadows and mountains. In the distance ancient castles perch on craggy mountain outcrops. It is a sunny, tranquil and unmistakably Austrian landscape that evokes Julie Andrews skipping over the hills in The Sound of Music. That film showed Nazism casting its shadow over the Austrian idyll. Last week, the dark side came to be symbolised in a squat, grey building in Amstetten where Josef Fritzl, 73, imprisoned his daughter for 24 years, fathering seven children with her in a windowless, underground warren of sound-proofed rooms.
By the end of last week, people were coming from all over the region for a glimpse of the monster’s lair. The land of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis was peering into its soul to confront the question of how Fritzl could have led a double life for so long. Or, as the sign that has appeared outside his house put it: “Why did nobody notice?”
"She has apparently told police that he initially kept her chained to the wall. For the first four years she was completely alone except when he appeared. Then she began to have her father’s babies. He began to extend the cellar to accommodate his growing underground family, building a kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms."

 

[Native New Yorker]

Hi NNY do you have a link for that info? I didn't know that parentage was not settled.

I do not have a link for my own hypothetical surmises. The only facts that have been published in reference to parentage are the ones stating that DNA showed that all of the children had Josef the Monster as their father.
Nothing was stated as to the mother.
I am only surmising that Elizabeth at 37 might not have been able to bear a child, due to her advanced physical age.
I therefore surmised that Kirsten might have borne the last child, or possibly others.
My guess only.

 

[JBean]

Wall of silence hid Josef Fritzl's crimes

Evidence of how a wall of silence hid the crimes of Josef Fritzl mounted on Saturday as it was revealed that his abuse of his daughter Elisabeth as a teenager was virtually an open secret among people who knew the family.

Former lodgers at the family house and school friends of Elisabeth have admitted that they heard she was being sexually abused and mistreated, yet none contacted police or social services either before or after she disappeared.
Joseph Leitner, a former lodger, said that shortly after he moved in, he learnt through a friend that she had been repeatedly raped by her father.

snip
He also cast doubt on police insistence that Fritzl's wife, Rosemarie, 68, was entirely unaware of what was going on.
The pair, he pointed out, routinely holidayed separately - an arrangement that would have meant there was someone at home to look after the prisoners.
"I am almost certain that she was [aware]," he said. "They always went on separate holidays. When she came back, he flew off to Thailand for a few weeks.
"Somebody had to do it otherwise they would have starved to death."
Police - who have 300 officers working on the case - are planning to track down and interview all 100 tenants who lived in the various flats that Fritzl owned.
It is expected that many others may have harboured similar suspicions, although it appears that at no point was the alarm raised.
On Saturday, it was also claimed that for the first nine years following her imprisonment in 1984, Elisabeth was kept in only one basement room beneath the house

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...all-of-silence-hid-Josef-Fritzl's-crimes.html

 

[JBean]

I do not have a link for my own hypothetical surmises. The only facts that have been published in reference to parentage are the ones stating that DNA showed that all of the children had Josef the Monster as their father.
Nothing was stated as to the mother.
I am only surmising that Elizabeth at 37 might not have been able to bear a child, due to her advanced physical age.
I therefore surmised that Kirsten might have borne the last child, or possibly others.
My guess only.

Oh I see. Thank you. I thought you were saying that her parentage had not been determined because you read it. I gotcha.