"The fewer pictures you have in your head the better." "There are things that you just don't want to see," a policeman at the house told the Guardian. Their only window to the world was a television set. Some of the narrow rooms were no more than 1.70m-high. "There was a shelf with plenty of cans and containers, and behind the shelf was a door made of reinforced concrete, secured electronically and running on steel rails, and only the suspect knew the code," said local official Heinz Lenze. They were lit by lightbulbs.Īfter Elisabeth Fritzl and her children emerged, Josef Fritzl, an electrical engineering technician by training, told investigators how to enter their basement prison through a hidden door operated by secret code. The basement was a network of windowless chambers with facilities for sleeping, cooking and washing and one was described as a padded cell. "She appeared greatly disturbed," said the spokesman. They said 42-year-old Elisabeth Fritzl told them her father lured her into the basement of the block where they lived in the town of Amstetten in 1984, and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.Įlisabeth Fritzl agreed to make a "comprehensive statement" detailing her ordeal to the police after being assured she would have no further contact with her father, who she said abused her from the age of 11. Police arrested 73-year-old Fritzl on suspicion of incest and abduction. One child died and three were removed by Josef Fritzl while the other three lived with their mother Elisabeth in the basement, never seeing the light of day.Ī police spokesman said the woman's nightmarish version of events was "completely believable". Last night Austrians were struggling to come to terms with revelations of a house of horrors and a monster in their midst.įorensic scientists were pouring over the cellar prison in which police say a man kept his daughter for 24 years, sexually abusing her and forcing her to give birth there to seven children. The door could only be opened by a secret code.Īnd the only person who knew the code was the occupant's jailer. AMSTETTEN - It was a modern-day, windowless dungeon, reached by a small, hidden door.
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