During her first year of captivity, she was kept entirely restrained, but afterward, she was allowed to walk around freely inside. Fritzl's wife eventually filed a missing persons report. To cover up Elisabeth's disappearance, Fritzl forced her to write a letter saying she had moved in with a friend and that she would try to leave the country if her parents came after her. The letter was postmarked in Branau.
Over the following 24 years, Fritzl would come down to Elisabeth every three days to give her food and supplies and rape her. After the birth of her first three children, he expanded the cell from sq. In total, she gave birth to seven children, all conceived by her father:. Monika, Alexander, and Lisa were all taken above ground by Fritzl, who deceived his wife into thinking they were foundlings and raised them with her. The other children were left in the basement with Elisabeth until their discovery.
To keep them from trying to leave, Fritzl convinced them that the cell was rigged to gas or would electrocute them if they tried to force the door. This captivity went on for over two decades, until April 19, , when Kerstin collapsed in the dungeon.
Fritzl took her out of the dungeon and had her admitted to a hospital, where she was treated for severe kidney failure. When the topic of Elisabeth came up, Fritzl told the authorities that she was living with a cult , presenting as proof a letter he had dictated and postmarked in Kematen. A week later, Elisabeth convinced Fritzl to let her visit Kerstin in the hospital.
When a doctor saw Elisabeth and tipped off the police, the two of them were detained at the hospital and questioned. After being promised that she wouldn't have to see her father again, Elisabeth told the whole story of her captivity. Fritzl was arrested shortly after midnight on the following day. In March , Fritzl was put on trial for incest, coercion, rape, false imprisonment, enslavement, and negligent homicide for Michael, the twin who died shortly after birth.
He pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison. Police concerned about the deathly pale girl put out an appeal for her mother to contact them and Elisabeth, watching them on a TV in the cellar, begged her father to set her free.
Incredibly, he relented, driving her to hospital and telling police that the family had recently been released from the sect. But when officers managed to get Elisabeth alone, she revealed the whole shocking story - on condition she was never to see her father again.
With ages ranging from six to 19 when their ordeal ended, the children were given intense therapy for many years and the whole family are now living under adopted names. Elisabeth also fell out with her mother, who she believed could have stood up to Fritzl, but they reconciled and have started to spend more time together.
After years of psychiatric help, Elisabeth reportedly found love at the age of 52, when she fell for year-old bodyguard Thomas Wagner in Jump directly to the content. Sign in.
All Football. News Alison Maloney. Alison Maloney. Then the babies started to come. They were a horror for her.
But they also provided her with longed-for company, and a purpose to live after years in which she had contemplated suicide. The births — over 12 years — all took place without any medical help.
To prepare for them, her father provided her with disinfectant, a dirty pair of scissors and a s book on childbirth. Fritzl often threatened Elisabeth and her children, warning them that if they tried to escape they would be killed. The indictment said: "He told them he had installed a system so that the doors would give them electric shocks if they tried to open them and that poison would be released into the cellar if they tried to escape, killing them all instantly.
He would punish her by switching off all the power to the cellar for days at a time "so she was left alone in total darkness". She cried as the freezer he later installed so that he could stockpile food while he went away on holiday defrosted and leaked its contents on to the floor of her already horrendously damp prison. The end of her ordeal came last April when Kerstin, her year-old daughter, became gravely ill.
Fritzl, not known for his mercy in the past, put her in his Mercedes and drove her to hospital. There, the doctors became deeply suspicious of the deadly pale creature with bad teeth who lay dying in intensive care. Repeated media appeals were broadcast for the mother to come forward with information that was necessary if they were going to have any chance of saving her life.
Elisabeth and her two boys viewed the appeals on the television in their cellar. She pleaded with her father to let her out. His powers waning, his ability to keep two families sustained reducing by the day as he aged and his heart grew weaker, he had already begun to hatch a plan as to how he could release his daughter without too many questions being asked.
He relented perhaps for the first time ever. He told the hospital the family had appeared on his doorstep, having escaped from their sect. But the doctors and police did not believe his story this time round. At the hospital Elisabeth was whisked into a room away from her father, where police threatened to charge her with child abuse because of the way she had clearly neglected her daughter. Elisabeth said she had a completely different tale from the one they expected to hear.
She would start to tell them only on condition they promised her she would never have to set eyes on her father again. Rodney King was beaten but not murdered, as we said. This has been corrected. This article is more than 12 years old. Elisabeth helped her father Josef fix the door on his new cellar — then her world went dark. Elisabeth Fritzl pictured before her ordeal.
How it began It had seemed an innocent enough request: could she help him hoist a door into its frame? Life underground Over the next 24 years the horror for Elisabeth was unrelenting — the cold, the damp, the rats, which she was sometimes forced to catch with her bare hands, the water that ran off the walls in such large quantities she had to use towels to soak it up.
A 'devoted father' Fritzl dictated letters to her which she wrote from her prison, driving sometimes miles in his car to post them back to his wife Rosemarie. She spent the first five years entirely alone.
He hardly ever spoke to her. Babies were company Then the babies started to come. A way out The end of her ordeal came last April when Kerstin, her year-old daughter, became gravely ill. Topics Josef Fritzl Austria Europe news.
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