Austrian teen wants kidnap-ordeal house
The Austrian teenager who was held captive for just over eight years said she wants ownership of the house she was locked up in so that her captor’s mother can live there, a newspaper reported tonight.
In an interview with the newspaper Kurier, Natascha Kampusch said she wanted possession of the house so that “people don’t turn (it) into an odd thing, a type of pilgrimage site where ashtrays and coffee mugs are sold.”
Miss Kampusch said she would let her captor’s mother live in the house, situated in the semi-rural Vienna suburb of Strasshof.
Wolfgang Priklopil, 44, snatched Miss Kampusch off a Vienna street on her way to school when she was 10 and then largely confined her to an underground, windowless cell in his home. He killed himself by jumping in front of a commuter train within hours of her escape on August 23.
Miss Kampusch said she hadn’t met Priklopil’s mother but that she planned to “when the time is right”.
Kampusch fled to freedom when Priklopil was distracted by a mobile-phone call while she was vacuuming his car. Her reappearance solved one of Austria’s biggest mysteries.
