'Cellar' family in astonishing reunion
Long-lost members of an Austrian family terrorised by decades of imprisonment had an “astonishing” reunion at the clinic where psychiatrists are helping them cope.
Hospital officials said most of the seven children Josef Fritzl fathered over the past 24 years with the daughter he held captive in a windowless cell spent their first moments together on Sunday – a day after those kept confined finally gained their freedom.
The meeting also reunited the suspect’s wife with the daughter Fritzl had led her to believe left home to join a religious cult, but instead was imprisoned in a cramped warren of secured and soundproofed cellar rooms, clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters.
“It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together,” Mr Kepplinger said.
Under the circumstances, the children were doing “quite well” in the care of a team of specialists, he said.
Officials said one of the children, who is receiving medical treatment at another hospital, was not part of the reunion.
Police announced yesterday that DNA tests confirmed Fritzl was the biological father of all his daughter’s six surviving children.
Investigators said they also combed through Fritzl’s other properties but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he had held his daughter Elisabeth – now 42 – captive since she was 18.
Forensics experts yesterday removed boxes of belongings out of the cell Fritzl constructed beneath his apartment in Amstetten.
Police say Fritzl, 73, confessed to imprisoning Elisabeth, sexually abusing her for years, fathering seven children with her and discarding in a furnace the body of one of the children who died in infancy.
Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said there was “no evidence” indicating that Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, knew what was going on or was involved.
Mr Polzer also said records show that Fritzl had no criminal past dating beyond 15 years, adding that the statute of limitations would apply to any earlier offences. He would not elaborate.
He said Fritzl’s legitimate children – Elisabeth’s brothers and sisters – told police during questioning that they noticed “absolutely” nothing about their father’s double life.
Officials have said Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offences under Austrian law.
But prosecutors in Lower Austria said they were looking into the possibility of charging Fritzl with “murder through failure to act” in connection with the infant’s death. Murder in Austria is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client also was under psychiatric care. Asked whether he showed any remorse, Mr Mayer said only: “I cannot say at this point.”
Fritzl “is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken”, Mr Mayer said.
However, prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was “completely calm, completely without emotion” when he was formally remanded into custody yesterday.
About 200 people, many holding candles, gathered for a vigil in Amstetten’s main square last night. In steady rain, they sang hymns and prayed for the victims.
The town’s authorities authorised the construction of an addition to the apartment building that Fritzl owned and lived in, with a basement, in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber said. He said inspectors examined the project in 1983 – the year before the young woman went missing – and nothing looked suspicious.
Officials said three of the secret children – aged 19, 18 and five – “never saw sunlight” until they were freed a few days ago.
The other three children lived with the grandparents. Fritzl and his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.
Mr Kepplinger, the psychiatric clinic director, said the eldest of the two boys who grew up in the cellar can read and write in a “reduced form.”
He said Elisabeth has spoken “quite a lot” about what she went through in captivity, but he declined to provide details.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, said that Fritzl apparently chose which of the children would live upstairs with him and his wife according to whether they were “crybabies.”
The case started unfolding on April 19 after the eldest of the secret children, a 19-year-old woman, was found unconscious and gravely ill and was taken to a hospital.
After receiving a tip-off, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday near the hospital. Fritzl freed the captive children the same day, Mr Polzer said.
Hospital officials said the 19-year-old remained in a critical condition yesterday because of the effects of lack of oxygen, and was undergoing dialysis.
Amstetten mayor Herbert Katzengrueber said that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the town had honoured the suspect and his wife in 2006 on their 50th wedding anniversary.
