AUSTRIAN POLICE are investigating claims that a 73-year-old man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years in his cellar was convicted of attempted rape in the 1960s. DEREK SCALLYreports from Amstetten
Retired engineer Rudolf Fritzl appeared before a remand judge yesterday as DNA test results confirmed that he is the father of 14 children - seven with his wife and seven with his daughter, Elisabeth.
"These results prove clearly that Fritzl is the father of the children born to her in the cellar," said Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria. On Monday, Fritzl admitted that, since 1984, he had sexually assaulted his daughter on a regular basis in a soundproof, windowless cellar under his home.
He faces a life sentence on possible charges including rape and imprisonment. Prosecutors say he may also face the charge of "murder by neglect" following the death of a newborn baby, which he disposed of in the cellar furnace.
Police said yesterday they were checking claims in an Austrian newspaper that Fritzl was convicted of the attempted rape of a work colleague in the 1960s.
They confirmed that he was convicted of arson in the 1970s, but said the case was expunged from his record due to the passing of time as is standard practice in Austria.
Authorities defended the decision to give the Fritzl couple custody of three children he claimed were abandoned on his doorstop by a daughter he said had joined a cult.
"There weren't any doubts about [ Fritzl's] integrity," said Josef Schögl, head of the local family court. "Why should I put the child in a foster home, when it could grow up in a family?" Elisabeth and her children are being kept away from the media at a local clinic, where 19-year-old Kerstin, the oldest daughter, is being treated for an unspecified illness.
"[ Kerstin] is in a critical condition, in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator," said clinic director Berthold Kepplinger. "We did see a small improvement in her condition today." He told yesterday of the "astonishing" reunion between Elisabeth's children: three grew up with her behind the locked cell door, the other three grew up with Elisabeth's parents upstairs. The two children who had grown up in the cellar were pale and thin and are seeing psychiatrists and physiotherapists, he said, but showed no serious physical scars from their underground ordeal.
About 200 residents of Amstetten, the town where Fritzl constructed his "house of horrors", held a rainy candle-lit vigil in support of the family in the town square.
"The outside world seems to think Amstetten is a terrible town, and that people in the community do not care for one another. We want to show this is not true," said organiser Elisabeth Anderson.
Austria's justice minister presented a Bill yesterday to strengthen the country's "victim protection law".
As doubts continued to hover over Mr Fritzl's claim that he had acted without an accomplice, the public was asked to come forward with any information about the man whose face was plastered across newspapers and television screens. Police continued to rule out any possibility that Rosemarie, his wife of more than 50 years, knew anything about her husband's double life.