Girl in the Cellar

by Allan Hall

  Before we did the allotment up he regarded the land as his ‘rocky field’ where he used to wash his car. Therefore he didn’t like our allotment at all. He would have preferred to live in isolation and tranquillity.

  He could also be a real bellyacher. At lunchtimes he always started mowing his lawn when it was the ‘quiet time’. In Austria you are supposed to respect people’s privacy between midday and three, and not do things like mowing lawns or trimming hedges. But not him. He always started mowing with a big lawn tractor. He only did this in order to antagonise other people. He was a bit bossy and, when working, a nitpicker. Until now, everyone thought he just had a lot of fads. For example, when somebody parked their car badly, he immediately reported it to the police.

  The police would duly come along, unaware of what the complainant had ‘parked’ beneath his garage. Herr Drkosch went on:

  There were constantly arguments, as Priklopil used to park his car on the small road behind his house in a way that prevented other neighbours from passing by and accessing their property. Just before he died he hosed down the whole road and the water was almost three centimetres deep. I first thought a water conduit had broken, but then I saw a hose coming out of Priklopil’s garden. Then he came and alleged the local authority had assigned him to take care of this place and water it.

  Another neighbour has a much more disturbing memory of him. Stefan Freiberger said: ‘My eight-year-old daughter, and another neighbour’s child of the same age, were riding their bikes in the nearby forest because there are a lot of raspberries and blackberries. Suddenly he came and took off his clothes. He was completely naked. The children naturally were afraid and returned home immediately. My wife tells me to this day that we should have called the police.’

  Priklopil’s seemingly easy access to cash, his fancy cars and apparent lack of regular work hours made neigh bours believe that he either had a private income or had had a windfall. ‘I always wondered where he got all the money from that he needed for building,’ said near neighbour Rosemarie Helfert. ‘It was always rumoured that he’d won the lottery.’

  ‘In my eyes, he didn’t work at anything,’ said Peter Drkosch.

  He would leave by car at seven in the morning and would return two hours later. In the afternoon, he would leave again. During the last three weeks, he left three times a week at three in the morning—my wife always woke up because of that. When he came back with his Mercedes van, he stopped at the gate, opened it, drove his van on to the property and immediately locked the gate again. When he would leave an hour later, he would do the same. He always locked the gate.

  In June this year, I saw him working on the roof, telling a woman who was standing on the ground that she should hand him the drill and his tools. It was a young voice, and I thought, finally he has a girlfriend. He would certainly be the right age for that. Once my wife was in the garden, and she heard that voice too. He would speak differently to his mother; the young voice he always addressed with a commanding tone.

  Local postman Hermann Fallenbüchl, who delivered the mail in the Heinestrasse, said: ‘I never spoke to him and I saw him maybe once a month, no more. He was very polite, greeted me in a friendly way and waved from his car. Only once did I see an old woman—it must have been his mother.’

  ‘Priklopil was a phantom in the town,’ said Fallenbüchl.

  In the early 1990s Priklopil forged a business partnership with the one individual who seemed to be a true friend to him. Ernst Holzapfel, who was quizzed by police after Natascha escaped, was cleared of any involvement in her kidnapping and detention, but if Priklopil had chosen to reveal his secret to anyone it might have been him. He would even come to meet Natascha a month before her breakout and, like the neighbours who never suspected, thought she was merely a friend.

  Holzapfel was a pal from the Siemens days and invited ‘Wolfi’, as he called him, to join him in a business venture, the Resan construction and renovation company. The pair started out renovating old properties and then branched out into the entertainment business, staging birthday and wedding parties at a gaudily decorated warehouse on a Viennese industrial estate. The pair made money and ‘Wolfi’ was able to indulge himself in his cars—‘bombing up and down country lanes’, as another former Siemens workmate said. He once received a speeding ticket for £50, and on another occasion was involved in a minor accident in which no one was hurt.

  People around the Strasshof house began to refer to Priklopil as a ‘Bachener’—a colloquial, derogatory term for homosexual—although Holzapfel claims he never saw this side of his friend and business partner.

  The ‘realm’ referred to by police psychologist Manfred Kram—the realm in which he was going to rule everything—would be the erstwhile shelter beneath his garage. He meticulously set about making this into an undetectable, soundproofed, windowless void—the only way for fresh air to reach it would be through a ventilation system controlled from above by him. He bought the materials necessary for the conversion from everyday DIY stores, always paying cash.

  He bought a desk for the intended victim to use. He installed a small sink and toilet, plumbed into the mains, and used insulating material of the kind favoured by music recording engineers to make the chamber soundproof. After Natascha finally escaped, police lifted floor-boards inside his house to reveal stairs leading down to a maze of doors and passages. Underground, detectives found a metal cupboard, behind which was a tunnel barely big enough for a person to squeeze through. At the end of the tunnel was a makeshift concrete door leading to yet another passage and finally the room where Natascha was held. Her world measured barely more than 5 square metres, with a bed on a raised platform and its ladder used to hang clothes.

  This was the end station of Wolfgang Prikopil’s life: a hole in the ground, 3.5m by 1.8m by 1.5m, to which childhood isolation, an all-forgiving motherly love, a few fragile friendships and an increasingly powerful compulsion had somehow led him. His work training and innate skill with his hands allowed him to build it without too much effort. This much we know—what remains as murky as his own hideous motives are the circumstances which led him one day to choose Natascha Kampusch as the resident of this subterranean pit.

  Apart from his council flat, the Strasshof house with its prepared dungeon and the home of Natascha, there is a fourth location that is central to the complicated existence of Wolfgang Priklopil. This is Christine’s Schnellimbiss, a lowly truck-stop cum fast-food joint in a dreary outlying district of Vienna—far removed from the period grace of the old imperial capital’s still imposing buildings—where Priklopil downed the occasional non-alcoholic drink. It is central, and not a little chilling, because it is a place that Natascha’s parents used to go to and, according to her father in interviews with the authors, Natascha herself. Ludwig Koch would never walk from his home to the pub near his house: for 20 years he would drive across town to Christine’s.

  Christine’s is at the corner of Obachgasse and Rautenweg, which is about five minutes’ walk from the Rennbahnweg estate and on the route between Priklopil’s council flat in the Rugierstrasse and his house in Strasshof. It lies in the most down-at-heel part of Vienna’s northern industrial zone, close to the city limits, among construction companies and discount DIY markets and just across the road from an enormous garbage processing facility, a pyramid-like metal building that towers over the grim area.

  The bar’s clientele consists mostly of workers from the nearby companies and drinkers from the neighbourhood, many of them from the Rennbahnweg estate. The bar itself is a run-down wooden shed with six bench-tables. With a mental measuring tape the casual observer can calculate it to be about eight times the size of Priklopil’s underground cell.

  The owner, Christine Palfrader, is a bulky woman in her early fifties who is fed up with the glare of publicity, the TV cameras that come barging through the door, the Klieg lights and the swarms of irrepressible reporters. But she remembered Wolfgang Priklopil.

  It is a mi
racle, a miracle that she is alive and well. But we all know there is more to that story. God only knows what has really been happening. As for Priklopil, he was sometimes here several times a week, but we did not know his name until we saw him on TV. He was a quiet man, always very friendly and polite with everyone. He used to stand at the same place at the counter each time. I cannot remember precisely what he ate or drank, but I think it was usually a sausage and it was never alcohol—maybe an apple juice mixed with sparkling water, something like that. I don’t remember when he first started coming here. He was not someone you would notice or talk about.

  He only talked to two other technicians, some stuff about their job. They both admired him and said he knew a lot about his work and was a really clever man. We all had the impression he was educated and smart, and he always dressed smartly too.

  He was handsome, good-looking, but somehow unnoticeable. He just did not stick out. You could say he was invisible. The only thing people noticed him for was his flashy car. He had this big sporty BMW that he would park in front of the bar. The engine used to make a lot of noise, so people would turn and look.

  I last saw him in July 2006 before closing down for three weeks for the August holidays.

  Also a regular at the bar is Natascha’s father Ludwig, known here by his nickname ‘Luki’. He stops here after knocking off the night shift at the bakery where he is now employed, to eat breakfast and drink a beer or wine spritzer at seven in the morning in his back-to-front, nocturnal life. The question has still not been answered: did he meet ‘Wolfi’ without knowing who he was? Did he engage him in conversation one day, ask him about the weather?

  Did he even buy him a glass of apple juice without knowing that, some seven to ten minutes’ drive away, depending on the traffic, his little girl was captive in this man’s specially constructed gaol? Christine cannot recall ever seeing the two men together. But there is yet a further twist in this bizarre Bermuda triangle of intertwining acquaintances and happenstance meetings.

  A former ‘good friend’ of Ludwig’s, who was also a boyfriend of Natascha’s mother, Brigitta Sirny, has also been named as knowing Priklopil. Ronnie Husek owns a haulage business in the industrial estate around the corner from the snack bar. ‘I know Husek a bit. Frau Sirny knows him very well,’ says Herr Koch. ‘He used to be a friend of mine, but no longer.’ That is because Herr Husek began an affair with Frau Sirny when she and Ludwig were still together, claim neighbours.

  In this poor part of Vienna, witnesses have reported seeing Herr Husek with Priklopil at a grocer’s shop that Frau Sirny used to run: Husek bringing him around so that the technically gifted loner could fix a faulty fuse box.

  Among the witnesses is the strictly anti-Sirny Anneliese Glaser, who had a clear memory of the visit: ‘And I am sure she knew Priklopil, the kidnapper. I remember him very well, he came to the shop with this Husek, Ronnie Husek, and was fixing the fuse box outside. It was in September 1997, just before she lost the shop. Frau Sirny then came too and she talked to them both. I know that Frau Sirny knew Husek, and it would make sense that he called a friend of his to fix the fuse box, and this friend was obviously Priklopil.’

  Frau Glaser says she told detectives on the case of her suspicions, but claims they were apathetic, to say the least, about her allegations. ‘I believe this story needs to be investigated. There are many things that need to be clarified. Natascha did not tell the story about the night before, and this bit is missing in reports. I would like to meet her again, Natascha, to talk to her.’

  Husek is also said to know Wolfgang’s business buddy Holzapfel. So far he has refused to speak about any friendship. In fact, he has not spoken since he gave a press conference after Natascha reappeared, in which he said he met her while she was in captivity but didn’t know who she was.

  Can it really all be a coincidence—the perpetrator drinking in the same pub as the victim’s father, with the man who became the lover of the victim’s mother and who knew Priklopil’s business partner? But there is more.

  Natascha Kampusch was there with her father. In an interview with the authors, Herr Koch, his emotions spent along with his money, could not be certain of having seen the kidnapper at the bar, but revealed that he had been there with Natascha:

  When I first saw his pictures on TV he did seem familiar to me. It’s possible that I had seen him at Christine’s or elsewhere, but I can’t remember. I certainly knew his car from the neighbourhood, I saw it several times. It’s quite noticeable, it’s not a model you see every day.

  I’ve been going to Christine’s for at least 20 years, I forget exactly how long. If I went there at a time when I was looking after Natascha then I would always have taken her with me because I always had her with me, I never left her alone. Yes, I can say she has been in there with me, that’s true, but don’t ask me for dates.

  I know the owner really well, I’ve been going there since it opened. I just don’t recall ever meeting Wolfgang Priklopil there but I had seen him somewhere.

  Kidnapper, captor, friends, parents, all in the same bar, all simply thrown together? Did Priklopil, seeing her there, somehow tell himself he would be saving her from what he judged a wretched life if he took her? Did Natascha exchange a glance with him there, a friendly smile across the smoky saloon? Did she meet any of those regulars or hear them come to the house when she was a captive?

  However it came about, the plan that had been growing in Wolfgang Priklopil’s mind for many years was about to come to fruition on 2 March 1998. For the next 3,096 days, Natascha Kampusch would vanish from the face of the earth.

  3

  The Abduction of Natascha

  ‘Hello Ernst, Wolfgang. I won’t be in tomorrow. Got something up.’ With these few words Wolfgang Priklopil launched the abduction of Natascha Kampusch. He called his partner the evening before and then set about preparing. He checked that everything was ready in the special room. He laid out underpants and towels, arranged the childrens’ books that he had bought in shops far, far from his neighbourhood. And he programmed the security and ventilation systems one more time, ensuring that the compressed air pump that would keep his trophy alive was working, along with the plethora of intruder alarms and video cameras vital to keep his secret safe.

  Shortly after 6 a.m. on Monday 2 March, as radio newscasters were informing him that it was the birthday of perestroika architect Mikhail Gorbachev, that the last will of the late Princess Diana had been published, and, closer to home, that a walker had discovered a 5-kilo anti-tank shell from the Second World War in a Viennese suburb, Priklopil drank his coffee, set the numerous alarms on his house and went out into the wet, dark morning. He started his white Mercedes van and drove off for the rendezvous with the little girl who, on this day, would cross over the line from his special dream to his special possession. Nothing could stop him now: nothing could save Natascha now.

  Both were drawn inexorably to the time and the place where worlds would meld, change and shatter.

  At flat 18 in block 38 on the Rennbahnweg estate Frau Sirny was up extraordinarily early, reading through complex paperwork regarding the bankruptcy of two grocery shops she once owned. She recalled making several cups of coffee as she ploughed through the weighty documents, going to the bathroom and calling Natascha to get up at around 6.40 a.m. to be on her way to school. Natascha was due to have a special lesson in German and was supposed to be there early. Frau Sirny had quickly prepared her daughter’s clothes and a row developed that ended when she slapped her on the ear. In fact, the argument was a continuation of a squabble between them the evening before. On the previous Friday her father had collected her for one of their trips to Hungary. He was supposed to drop her off back at home no later than 6.00 p.m. on the Sunday but, as usual, to the constant irritation of his former partner, he failed to be on time. It was 7.45 p.m on Sunday 1 March when he deposited her outside the tower block. One of the last things she did before kissing her ‘papi’ goodbye was to reach int
o the glove compartment of his car for her passport in the left-hand pocket of her jacket. She then trudged into the gloom of block 38 and hoped the lifts were working.

  She let herself in but found she was home alone. On her bedroom door there was a note from her mother: ‘Gone to the cinema. Back later. Mutti. X.’ This was a common occurrence: Natascha was something of a latch-key kid whose mother did not run her life around her. She was used to arriving home to an empty flat.

  Natsacha changed into a tracksuit and went to a neighbour who knew her well. Frau Glaser, who would later make claims that began to warp the public perception of Natascha as an accidental victim, once worked for Frau Sirny. She has assumed, in the media whirlpool that continues to swirl in Vienna, the mantle of older sister, the woman who was ready to step in and help ‘poor Natascha’ when her mother wasn’t there. Frau Glaser, who lived one floor below Natascha and her mother, claimed that on this night, after welcoming the child inside, she sent her back upstairs to leave a note for her mother in case she came home early and panicked if Natascha wasn’t home.

  Ludwig Koch brought Natascha back from a weekend trip to Hungary sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m., a bit later than it was agreed with the mother, who was by then already gone. I remember that day so clearly, as if it happened yesterday. I will never forget it.

  Natascha came to my flat and told me her mother was not at home, so we tried to call her on the mobile, but it was off. I then told her to leave a message for Frau Sirny to say that she was at my place. Natascha was in a good mood, she told us about how she had had a great time in Hungary and about all the things they did there with her dad, Herr Koch. We had a nice conversation, small talk—she was such a bright kid and very nice to talk to.