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16. 03. 09. - 17:00

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16. 03. 09. - 17:00

A shy Josef Fritzl pleads ´not guilty´ to enslavement and murder charges

By David Rogers in Sankt Pölten

Incest monster Josef Fritzl hid his face in shame as he was brought into court to answer for his 24 years or rape, slavery and murder.

Flanked by eight policemen as he entered the crowded courtroom in Sankt Poelten, Austria, he held an open blue A4 ring binder up against his face.

And he refused to answer any questions as a TV reporter repeatedly asked him: "Why did you do it?"

Dressed in a grey check jacket, charcoal trousers, dark blue shirt and striped blue tie, the 73-year-old engineer was made to stand in the centre of the oak-panelled courtroom for 10 minutes after entering at 9.25am while the local TV journalist repeatedly fired questions at him.

Judge Andrea Humer allowed Fritzl to keep his face covered until the cameramen were told to leave the court and the dungeon demon sat down on an open bench in front of his defence team.

Fritzl pleaded guilty to incest and raping his daughter Elisabeth during her 24 years as his sex slave in a secret dungeon under the family home.

But he denied charges of slavery, grievous assault and murdering one of the seven children Elisabeth bore him.

Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser, 32, dismissed Fritzl's version of his daughter's life in the cellar as a fantasy.

She said: "None of us here really know what went on down there in the cellar."

"Sure we have seen lots in the media. Some of it is true. Some of it is not. What we are interested in here is the truth - the facts.

"Forget all that was in the media. You could say there are perhaps two versions of events. The first version is Josef Fritzl's version of the truth.

"He claims he cared for his family. He claimed he was respectable and an upstanding member of the community.

"Then there is the real truth. That is what counts here," she told the jury.

The prosecutor added: "The fact is he took his daughter Elisabeth downstairs on the pretext he needed help moving a door, and he drugged her and dragged her into the cellar where he tied her up.

"On the second day he put a noose around her waist which severely restricted her freedom even in the small room in which she was confined.

"How big was that room? It was 18 square metres - where she spent the next nine years.

"It is virtually the same size as the jury box in which you are sitting. There was a wash basin but no bath or shower. There was no heating. No fresh air. Just walls to look at and a door. I have been there twice, it is dark and damp and the smell is unbearable."

Ms Burkheiser handed the eight-person jury a box containing what she said were items retrieved from the cellar under the house in Amstetten and invited them to smell them.

The jurors could be seen wrinkling their noses at the contents as their eyes widened in disgust.

She told how Fritzl had "complete control" of Elisabeth's life in the cellar.

"Josef Fritzl had the complete control of this cellar. He decided what food would be allowed down and when it would be eaten.

"He decided what medicines would be allowed down below. He decided who could leave.

"Often the electricity would fail for hours at a time or longer. Sometimes the electricity would be off for up to 10 days. During that time they would be left without any light. There was no flashlight and no candles.

"With no electricity they had no water and no warm food. Even though they were babies to feed with no light to do it by," she explained.

Fritzl - she added - did not even talk to his daughter in her first years under the family home.

"In the first few years as well there was no communication between Josef Fritzl and his daughter. He came, raped her and left.

"But worse than all these conditions and the rape was the uncertainty. When would he come and when would he go? How long would he say? Would he even come back from his holidays?

"It is this uncertainty which the person suffers from more than anything. Not the rapes or the appalling conditions or the lack of proper food and medicines," she said.

And when the children started to arrive, brutal Fritzl would simply rape Elisabeth in front of them, said the prosecutor.

"When Elizabeth gave birth it was in a damp cellar on a dirty blanket. She had been given a book about childbirth just two months before. At the last minute she was also given a mattress. Later after the children were born she was raped in front of them," she said.

Fritzl is accused of allowing one of his children by Elisabeth - twin Michael - to die of neglect after the boy was born with breathing complications.

The infant died after two days and prosecutors say he might have been saved if Fritzl had sought medical help.

Fritzl is alleged to have tossed the child's body in the incinerator rather than risk any discovery of his secret dungeon.

The prosecutor continued: "He turned off the lights to rape her. It was always the same routine. He would come, turn off the lights and rape her, and then leave.

"The lights would then come on again. With the birth of twins Elisabeth knew she was expecting two babies because of the size of the pregnancy.

"She could see from the start that Michael could not breathe - he died two days later. He was blue and had struggled to breathe throughout his short life."

Ms Burkheiser then showed the jury marks she'd made on the door Fritzl had used to enter the court to illustrate how low the cellar's ceiling was and how narrow the passages were.

She said Fritzl had told Elisabeth that the door to her prison was protected by an electronic beam that would release poisonous gas killing her and her children if she tried to escape.

She said: "He told her there was an electric door which would kill anybody that broke the light barrier which surrounded it.

"He added that if the light barrier was broken there was gas that would flood into the room killing everybody.

"There were also three locked doors which Elizabeth would have needed to get through to reach freedom.

"But he did not need to bother - he did not need to bother because she was a broken woman."

But Fritzl's defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer, 60, insisted that his client is "not a monster".

He stunned the court by reading out a string of hate e-mails from people appalled by Fritzl and his crimes.

"I would like to read you some e-mails that I have received about this case. One says 'Fuck you, you bastard', another says 'You will pay'. This one says 'You should be ashamed -you should leave the city'.

"Many have put their full names in. These were not messages directed to Josef Fritzl. These were messages that were sent to me. Where will such hatred and emotion go?

"Will they then be allowed to attack the prosecution, then maybe the judge if they disagree with what she says. Then maybe they will start on their neighbours?

"My point is that this emotion achieves nothing. What we have to deal with here is the facts - and to decide if it is true what is said."

And he urged the jury: "Leave aside the emotions that might be inspired by the terrible things you hear and concentrate on the facts.

"We are not looking for excuses or justification for what he did. We just wanted to decide on the facts, and what is true. Nothing else matters.

"You will hear claims that Josef Fritzl is a monster. But we need to see everything before you decide. He's almost 74 now, then he was almost 73.

"He could have claimed that he was mentally unstable and tried to use a trick to escape these proceedings. But he did not do so. He's not trying to say he was mentally ill."

Amazingly he tried to portray Fritzl as a family man and a caring father because he didn't kill all seven of his incest children.

"He had the power," said Mayer.

"Ignore what you hear in the media, this is a man who had wanted to have two families. If he had not wanted children he could've used contraceptives.

"And if he was a man who didn't care about children then he could have disposed of them. He had the power.

"But this is a man who slept in the cellar with his children and spent time with them over the Christmas period. He cared for his second family.

"When his oldest daughter was ill what would a monster do? What would a killer do? What this man did was take her to the hospital to the intensive care station.

"He could have killed her and everybody else and enjoyed the rest of his life in Amstetten as a respectable man. They would have said what a good man he was on his grave."

And he blamed the media for branding Fritzl a killer.

"Why this charge of murder? Because of the media. When it was announced that he might only get 15 years the media complained and then slavery charges added.

"The circumstances of this case did not justify a charge of slavery. Nor is there justification for a murder charge which again is to keep the media and the public happy. There is no evidence to back them up," claimed Mayer.

Josef Fritzl was then asked to enter the dock. He pleaded guilty to incest, partially guilty to coercion, guilty to depriving his daughter and her children of their liberty, partially guilty to rape and not guilty to slavery and murder.

He then went on to give a chronicle of his life but avoided any of the personal details which were saved until after the media had left.

Fritzl claimed his childhood was very hard because his mother - who was already 42 when he was born - didn't want him. He claimed beating were commonplace.

He stated he had not had a good relationship with his mother who would use bad language and made his life very hard.

His voice broke with emotion at one point as he described how she had deprived him of the chance to have any real friends right up to the age of 12.

He said his only pal was one she knew nothing about and was the only person he trusted until he betrayed him and Fritzl vowed never to allow anyone to get close to him again.

Meanwhile his family life fell apart with Fritzl going in and out of children's homes.

He admitted his mother did not have an easy life after all, saying: " She had to stay on a farm and had to start work when she was just eight."

He said he had stood up to his mother when he was 12 and defended himself adding: "I found the strength to face her and from that moment on I was Satan for her."

He continued: "I had no close relationship to her and she died in 1980 still living with me at Ybbsstraße."

Fritzl left school with excellent grades but his parents couldn't afford to allow him to stay on for further study.

As a result he took a low-paid apprenticeship. It was then that he met his future wife aged just 17 and he claimed she was his first sexual partner.

He said: "She was the first woman for me."

Because they never had any money he had taken work in construction in Luxemburg and Ghana, staying for a year and a half.

For extra cash, they also ran a guesthouse at Mondsee.

He had met his wife and married her in 1956 when he was 21 after she told him she wanted 10 children he said he agreed.

They lived together at Ybbsstraße 40 initially in a separate apartment for him and his new wife.

In 1974 he started renovating the property to add additional flats to rent to tenant and he expanded the cellar store, he claimed.

This was the cellar and Elizabeth was locked up in at the end of August 1984 when she was just 18 years old.

He had asked her to help him fix the door and then drugged her and locked up in a darkened room.

In a final question from the prosecutor before the media were asked to leave Josef Fritzl admitted that he had been well aware when his own wife Rosemarie was expecting twins.

He said her stomach had been much larger and he knew of the risks of pregnancy because Rosemarie had had three Caesareans by then. They were difficult births and she had also suffered a miscarriage, just like Elisabeth did.

Austrian Times

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