Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Daughter Left Alone For Dungeon Labour …

AUSTRIAN pensioner Josef Fritzl left his daughter alone in her basement prison for three days as she gave birth to her father’s twins, one of whom died of breathing difficulties three days later, his lawyer admitted yesterday.

Fritzl, 73, who has confessed to imprisonment and incest, could face first degree murder charges over the death of the baby, his lawyer Rudolf Mayer said.

Referring to the list of charges against his client, Mr Mayer was quoted yesterday in British tabloid The Sun as saying: “He has admitted Elisabeth had the twins on her own in the cellar, and that he did not see her until three days after the birth.

“He told me that when he found one of the babies was dead, he put its body into his furnace. Elisabeth says her baby developed breathing difficulties and Fritzl failed to get medical attention that could have saved its life.

“Police now say he is guilty of first degree murder because he did not allow the child to be treated and it died as a result.”

The Sun quoted Mr Mayer as saying Fritzl had stopped talking to police after they accused him of murdering the child by neglect. “Herr Fritzl admits he raped and imprisoned his daughter, but he does regret what he did, he is emotionally destroyed,” the paper cites him as saying.

“He thought he was protecting his family and said that was his job as the patriarch.”

Fritzl fathered seven children by his daughter Elisabeth, now 42, in the cellar dungeon beneath his home in Amstetten, Austria.

Surviving twin Alexander, now 12, was one of three incest children who were allowed a relatively normal childhood after Fritzl claimed Elisabeth had dumped them and joined a sect.

As more horrific details of Elisabeth’s ordeal emerged yesterday, a former tenant of Fritzl told of how he unwittingly paid the electricity bill for the dank dungeon in which she was held, along with three of the children she conceived with him.

Sepp Leitner told Die Presse that in the 1990s he lived for four years in a small flat on the ground floor immediately above Elisabeth’s cellar prison.

Mr Leitner said he could never understand why his electricity bill, for a tiny 30sq m flat from which he was frequently absent and where he did not even have a washing machine, was so high.

His quarterly bill once reached 5000 schilling ($605) which was exorbitant for the time and which led to a dispute between Mr Leitner and Fritzl, he said.

“If I’d been a bit more persistent and not let it go until the mystery of the high electricity consumption had been resolved, perhaps we’d have found out about the dungeon earlier,” Mr Leitner said.

Because he refused to pay the bill, and because Mr Leitner also had a dog, which was not allowed under his tenancy contract, Fritzl eventually threw him out.

Another former resident, Alfred Dubanovsky, said he had seen a man, whom he believed to be a plumber, enter the dungeon to help Fritzl install a toilet.

Mr Dubanovsky, a petrol pump attendant who lodged in the house for 12 years, said he also saw Fritzl taking wheelbarrow-loads of food to the cellar.

He added that Fritzl had once told him: “One day my house will go down in history.”

On Wednesday, Fritzl’s sister-in-law Christine R told Austrian newspaper Osterreich he was a “despot” and that she believed his tyrannical behaviour towards his seven elder children by wife Rosemarie was the reason most of them married young.

Christine said the whole family knew Fritzl withdrew for hours to his “cellar”, the site of his workshop and of the well-hidden entrance to the dungeon, and would often stay there overnight.

Austrian police have appealed to an estimated 100 former lodgers in the Fritzl apartment building to come forward.

“In the past 24 years around 100 people have lived in the house,” Frank Polzer, the regional police officer leading the investigation, said. “We want to talk to all of them. Possibly one of them observed something that at the time didn’t seem so important but could be of relevance knowing what we do today.”

Meanwhile, the woman who was raped by Fritzl in 1967 came forward yesterday, saying she had received a shock on seeing his picture. “I recognised him immediately,” she told The Guardian. “I will never forget those eyes.”

Fritzl raped her at knifepoint after climbing through the kitchen window of her flat while her husband was on a night shift.

Police were also investigating a claim made by Elisabeth that her father had threatened to pump her prison with poisonous gas if she and three of her children by him tried to escape.

Rosemarie Fritzl has revealed to police that she received what she believed to be a call from her daughter in 1994, 10 years after Elisabeth apparently fled the family home to join a sect.

Police now believe the call, in which Elisabeth supposedly asked her parents to look after a baby she left on their doorstep, was made from a telephone box by Fritzl who imitated his daughter’s voice. Three babies were eventually raised by Rosemarie.

A letter to her family, dictated by Fritzl and written under duress by Elisabeth late last year, indicated he was considering ending her captivity by staging her return. In the letter she said she was thinking of coming home.

But those plans were overtaken after his 19-year-old daughter by Elisabeth fell ill and was taken to hospital two weeks ago.

Some Austrian commentators criticised the Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer’s concerns that the dungeon drama would damage the country’s image.

“It would make sense to start looking for answers - many of which are slumbering deep within ourselves - instead of reacting in a patriotic knee-jerk way,” said an editorial in the Kurier.

(Australian)