Secrets in the Cellar

by John Glatt

  Dr. Kastner asserted that she would study every part of Fritzl’s personality, saying it would be difficult for him to feign insanity.

  “In a very few cases,” she explained, “some of the subjects have tried to fake a mental condition in a bid to appear unfit for trial. But that is a rare occurrence and it can hardly be successful, as any condition that would deem a person unfit for trial is very complex and with a number of symptoms.”

  The length of time needed to complete her tests would depend on how cooperative her subject would be.

  “The analysis could take anything between a single session to several days or even weeks,” she explained. “I’ve had a few cases where subjects have refused to cooperate.”

  There was much speculation in the press as to what had driven Josef Fritzl to commit his terrible crimes. One popular theory was that he was suffering from so-called “Frankenstein syndrome.”

  “He was like Dr. Frankenstein,” German psychiatrist Dr. Christian Lüdke told the London Mail. “Fritzl was delusional and enjoyed being the master of life and death, exercising the ultimate power.

  “He enjoyed this fantasy of playing God. He was like Dr. Frankenstein, fathering the children, then deciding their fate and controlling all they did. This man is the personification of the terrifying power of evil—the devil.”

  Although it is impossible to obtain a true psychological profile without many hours of face-to-face interviews, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow believes that Fritzl’s growing up in Nazi Germany and the relationship with his mother are key to understanding him.

  “So what kind of questions would I ask him?” said Dr. Ablow, noting that as he has never interviewed Fritzl, all his reflections represent theories. “What were your experiences in Germany at that time? What did you see happen to children? Did you have any fantasies about what you’d like to do if you had all that power?

  “Equally, how did your mother provoke these feelings in you, that you’d like to have a relationship with her? Did she know about these feelings? Did she punish you for the feelings? Were there times when she knew you to be having sexual feelings that weren’t about her?”

  The next morning, a team of ten forensic investigators began examining the handiwork Fritzl had put into the cellar construction, to determine if he had done it alone or had any outside assistance. It had already been calculated that in building the dungeon, Fritzl had somehow moved 197 tons of earth—the equivalent of seventeen truckloads—and then somehow disposed of it without raising suspicions.

  Equally baffling was how Fritzl had brought a washing machine, fridge and two beds into the cellar over the years, without anyone noticing.

  They were also paying special attention to the electric installations, plumbing and gas lines, as well as the eight electronic security doors. And they now planned to break through old walls, to reach some hidden ones revealed by the sonar probes.

  Eventually police would discover many rooms of all sizes in the cellar. One of particular interest contained a cache of diaries, invoices and other paperwork that the obsessive Fritzl had kept locked away for years. These would provide an in-depth look at how the dungeon was constructed, as well as other shocking revelations about Fritzl’s twisted sexual history.

  “He kept information going back more than twenty-four years,” said a police spokesman. “He was extremely careful. Everything will now need to be checked.”

  Another team of highly trained specialists, wearing state-of-the-art Kappler protective suits, had also begun clearing out the dungeon. Over the next few days they would remove piles of trash, including dozens of empty cans of Fritzl’s favorite Skol Lager, empty pizza and cereal boxes, and takeaway containers. Everything would then be transported to a police laboratory to be examined forensically.

  The investigators worked under the constant gaze of tourists, now coming from as far as Germany and Hungary to make the pilgrimage to the Fritzl house and be photographed in front of it.

  There were also reports that a local entrepreneur was operating bus tours from Tyrol into Amstetten, 250 miles away, stopping briefly in front of the house, before going back again.

  “It’s bad enough [with] journalists and TV crews,” said one angry Amstetten resident, “but now there is this ghoulish tourism. It is appalling, we just want to be left in peace.”

  On Wednesday morning, Amstetten residents awoke to discover the Fritzl family thank-you poster on display in a storefront window in the main square. As word of it spread, the entire town descended on the square to see it for themselves, with many being moved to tears.

  “The initiative . . . came from the family themselves,” explained attorney Herbst. “It is their wish to thank the community for the support.”

  Later that day, Amstetten-Mauer clinic director Dr. Berthold Kepplinger held a press conference, saying the family would have to remain at the clinic for several more months at the least. When they were well enough to go out into the world, they would be given new identities, similar to being in a witness protection program.

  “In order to give them a good start in their new life,” said Dr. Kepplinger, “they all need to be very carefully protected and very slowly introduced to the real world, and to each other.”

  He said integrating the two sets of Fritzl children together had “gone extremely well,” and they had now settled into a routine of playing together and painting. The family had also been given a computer, which was mainly being used for games.

  Each day, the family met as a group to discuss how to move on with their lives.

  “Apart from the psychiatric support of both the adults and the children,” said Dr. Kepplinger, “we have started the first sessions of family therapy. These are primarily dealing with the issues of planning their future life.”

  On the more immediate front, Dr. Kepplinger said, Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix would also need additional therapy, to help them fully adjust to daylight, after spending their lives in the badly lit cellar. They would also undergo intensive physiotherapy and ergotherapy, to help them adapt to the larger spaces they now moved around in.

  They were also receiving therapy to help them climb stairs and manage other physical activities they never had to do before. They would receive immunization shots, usually given to newborn babies, to build up their resistance to germs and bacteria in the outside world.

  One treatment for the downstairs children was learning how to play. Therapists were shocked to find that Stefan and Felix had absolutely no concept of “play,” after spending their entire lives in the claustrophobic cellar. Elisabeth was now showing them how to swim and run—though Stefan had problems even standing up.

  Experts designed customized treatments for individual family members, who each had a unique set of issues and problems to overcome.

  “We are making every effort to give them what they need as a group or as individuals,” said Dr. Kepplinger, “and we are carefully monitoring progress.”

  But these different treatments were already causing problems. The three “normal” upstairs children, now being isolated twenty-four hours a day in a hospital ward, were becoming increasingly frustrated and resentful, while their mother and downstairs siblings needed a far “slower pace of life,” requiring peace and quiet.

  “[They] are extremely different,” said Dr. Kepplinger. “They have lived different lives, at different speeds, and both are having to adjust to the here and now. While for one set, even the smallest details are interesting, for the others, they’re dull. For one lot, seeing a large cloud float by is a major event, for their upstairs siblings it is just boring.”

  Refusing to elaborate further, Dr. Kepplinger observed that Josef Fritzl’s female children had a far different view of their father than their male siblings.

  Once again he appealed to the media to stop harassing the family, after a clinic security officer had been badly injured by a photographer trying to break into the hospital. Ultimately, more than twenty photographers, most
ly English, would be caught attempting to sneak into the clinic.

  “This madness has to end,” said the doctor. “The family needs time and peace. The protection of their privacy is of enormous importance for the success of the therapy. We are doing everything we can to protect the family from external stress.”

  Family lawyer Christoph Herbst said the “aggressive” media were effectively imprisoning Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix for a second time.

  “The children would like to go out in the open,” he said. “They have never experienced rain in their lives, nor have they felt fresh air. They’re incredibly curious about everything around them, and they would like to touch the trees and the plants in the hospital gardens. But they are unable to leave the floor they are residing [on].”

  Herbst said the family was now considering moving abroad under new identities.

  “They are being hunted by the media,” he said. “The family cannot live a normal life in Austria. I’m looking at the options and weighing up opportunities.”

  A few days later, Austrian authorities completed the official documents, providing new identities for Rosemarie, Elisabeth and her six children. All that was now needed were signatures to activate the new ID papers from the Amstetten district council.

  That week’s edition of the German magazine Bunte carried a major interview with Natascha Kampusch, who revealed that she had now bought Wolfgang Priklopil’s house, which had been her prison for eight years. She said it would be therapeutic for her to own the house, to protect it from vandals or being demolished.

  She had now been back to the scene of her horrific ordeal for the first time since her dramatic August 2006 escape.

  “It is not as threatening as it was back then,” she said. “But it is still a house of horrors for me.”

  The beautiful 20-year-old, soon to launch her own Austrian cable television talk show, gave her own unique perspective on the Fritzl case, which mirrored her own.

  “My stomach churned when I saw the pictures,” she said. “I felt really sick. All the emotions that I’ve carefully tried to suppress were suddenly there again. It’s very stressful.”

  After closely following the case, she described Josef Fritzl as “self-loving” and a “serious egoist,” saying she was angry about his statement to the media.

  “He’s a liar,” she said. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and it’s monstrous for him to claim that he loves his wife and his daughter . . . what he did was sick.”

  She offered to personally help Elisabeth and her family with their healing, using her own similar experiences, but only if they needed her.

  “If they don’t want my help,” she said, “then I’m not going to force myself on them. In my case, you wonder how a total stranger can possibly take a child away from [his or her] parents, and to put a whole family through such severe trauma. But this Fritzl did that to his own child, to his own family. That is even more unbelievable.”

  She warned that healing would take a long time, saying that even after nearly two years out of her cellar, she was still being helped by doctors, psychologists, social workers.

  “It’s a very dark past,” she explained. “It’s as if I lost my memory and have now started a completely new life.”

  On Thursday, May 15, Kerstin Fritzl woke up from her coma. Dr. Albert Reiter had been making his morning rounds when he saw his patient suddenly open her eyes and smile at him.

  “It was an amazing moment,” he recalled. “She opened her eyes and showed emotional reactions. We smiled at her and she smiled back at us.”

  The doctors had wanted Elisabeth to be there when she regained consciousness, as Kerstin had never seen anyone apart from her mother, two brothers and her father Josef Fritzl. But Elisabeth was told the good news immediately, and drove straight to the hospital to be at her daughter’s bedside. Everybody breathed a huge sigh of relief, as it appeared Kerstin had not suffered any brain damage.

  For the next two weeks, Elisabeth and the doctors were constantly at Kerstin’s bedside, talking to her and giving her medication as she grew stronger by the day.

  “It was very important that Elisabeth was there to motivate her,” said Dr. Reiter, “and get her to participate in some of the things we asked her to participate in. That was so difficult with all the different tubes going into her neck and body, and catheters and all those things.”

  The doctors’ main concerns, during those crucial first days, were to have Kerstin breathing on her own and be able to swallow solid food again.

  “We mobilized her,” explained the doctor. “We put her up in bed, and helped her prepare to be able to swallow foods, so she didn’t choke, especially with the tubes still in her neck. So we were preparing her for the removal of the breathing tube.”

  It would be another two weeks until she could finally be taken off the respirator and start the next stage of her recovery.

  Later that day, Chief Inspector Franz Polzer revealed that Josef Fritzl had been cruelly bluffing Elisabeth and his children for years, and there was no mechanism to release lethal gas into the cellar. He had also not installed any mechanism to open the cellar doors in the event of his death.

  Chief Polzer said the investigation was almost complete, and police would soon be inspecting the 600-pound steel-and-reinforced-concrete door.

  “It is clear,” said Polzer, “that the suspect displayed a high degree of professionalism when he assembled it.”

  Police also released a postcard from Rosemarie Fritzl, dated April 21 during her Italian vacation, proving that her husband had delayed taking Kerstin to the hospital until she had left—which could have meant the difference between her life and death.

  It also strengthened the police view that Rosemarie had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on under her nose.

  A forensic search of Fritzl’s paperwork had also shown that his real intention in bringing Lisa, Monika and Alexander upstairs was monetary gain. He was making at least $60,000 a year in perfectly legal Austrian state subsidies.

  “They were cash cows for him,” an investigator close to the case told the London Sun. “Everything he did was not out of concern for them, but to get money.”

  By Saturday, it was clear that the European paparazzi were ignoring Dr. Kepplinger’s pleas to leave the family alone. Late Thursday night, one British photographer, seeking the reported $1 million bounty, almost succeeded in scaling the third balcony next to the sealed area where the family lived. But he was spotted by a nurse, whose screams alerted security staff, who caught him after a struggle, during which one guard fell from the balcony and was severely injured.

  Shortly afterwards, a male nurse was caught attempting to sell a cell phone photograph to a magazine for $442,000. This led to the clinic banning all fifteen hospital employees with access to the family from carrying any phones or cameras. A letter was sent to all clinic staff, warning of immediate legal action if anyone was caught abusing their position.

  It was also revealed that Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix had disguised themselves, managing to slip past photographers and spend a few hours playing in a nearby park. After seeing trees for the first time in his life, Felix had announced that when he grew up, he wanted to become a gardener.

  “He was simply so fascinated by them,” said one of the family’s security guards, Franz Prankl, “and could not believe how huge they grew.”

  During the trip, which was closely monitored by doctors, the two boys, wearing dark sunglasses, marveled at the trees and grass and a fish pond.

  On the way back to the clinic, they all stopped off at McDonald’s—which Felix had only seen on television advertisements in the cellar, always being told it did not really exist and was only fiction. The little boy was ecstatic, eating his first Happy Meal.

  The family had also received a personal invitation from Austrian-born movie superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, to visit him in Hollywood, as soon as they were well enough. The California governor had reportedly r
ead about the tragedy and wanted to do something to help.

  “He will pay for it privately, and Elisabeth and the children will be personal guests,” a Schwarzenegger source told London’s Daily Star. “These children have been prisoners all their lives. Can you imagine how they’d react to Disneyland or a trip to Universal Studios?”

  And movie star Ben Affleck had also weighed in about the Fritzl case. During an interview to promote his directorial debut in a movie about child abduction called Gone Baby Gone, he was asked what should happen to people who criminally abuse children.

  “Emotionally, I think the Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl should be killed,” he declared.

  Exactly a month after Josef Fritzl had brought Kerstin out of the cellar, Austrian police announced that they were investigating him for a third unsolved sex-related murder. Nine months earlier, 42-year-old Czech prostitute Gabriele Supekova had been found dead near the Austrian border, a few miles away from where Fritzl had been vacationing at the time.

  CHAPTER 26

  Miracle

  On Monday, May 19, Austrian newspapers announced that Elisabeth Fritzl would give a television interview about her twenty-four-year cellar ordeal. It was reported that she would tell her story to Christoph Feurstein, the same Austrian journalist who had conducted the landmark 2006 interview with Natascha Kampusch.

  It was also reported that after “marathon negotiations” between ORF TV and Fritzl family lawyer Christoph Herbst, Elisabeth’s interview would be broadcast the following Monday night. According to the report, the family stood to make millions of dollars from global syndication.

  But less than twenty-four hours later, attorney Herbst totally dismissed the reports as erroneous, saying that Elisabeth hadn’t even spoken to the police yet.