AUSTRIAN MAN Josef Fritzl pleaded guilty yesterday to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth beneath his home for 24 years and fathering her seven children by rape, but denied enslavement charges or of murdering one of the children shortly after birth.
Hiding his face from cameras as he entered court, he spoke in a low voice of a “difficult” childhood, with a mother who abused him and forbade him from having friends.
“My mother didn’t want me – she was 42 when she had me – and treated me accordingly. I was beaten,” said Fritzl (73) speaking at the opening of his trial in St Pölten, 65km from Vienna.
State prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser (32) told the eight-member jury that Fritzl was “not the nice man from next door”, but a man who sedated his 18-year-old daughter in 1984 and chained her up in a soundproofed dungeon under his home.
Until he freed her last April, Fritzl raped her more than 3,000 times – several times a week, for nearly a quarter of a century, in the dungeon.
“For the first nine years, she lived in a cellar the size of this jury box with a ceiling just 1.74m high,” said Ms Burkheiser.
“She got her water from gaps in the walls. No warm water, no shower, no heat and, worst of all, no daylight.”
Ms Burkheiser said Fritzl treated his daughter like his “property”, deciding what food she ate, when food was brought, what clothes she wore. There were often shortages of food and clothes, she said, and the electricity in the cellar often cut off, sometimes for 10 days. Then there was the psychological torture.
“The worst thing was the uncertainty: when will he come again, when will he go? How long will he stay this time? When will he turn on the electricity again? What will happen to us if he doesn’t come back?”
Fritzl faces counts of rape, incest, deprivation of liberty, and murder. Michael, a twin boy born on April 28th, 1996, developed breathing difficulties and died at just two days old.
“When a father doesn’t do everything for his baby who then dies, that is sufficient for a charge of murder by neglect under Austrian law,” said Ms Burkheiser. “How could you treat your own flesh and blood like that, Mr Fritzl?” Fritzl shifted in his seat slightly when addressed, the only time during the morning proceedings that he showed a reaction.
Defence attorney Rudolf Mayer told jurors he was defending Fritzl because the man had a right to a fair trial. “You have to leave your emotion out of this,” he told the jurors.
“You have to search yourself and ask, ‘is this person a monster?’
“He managed to take care of two families. You cannot call someone who does that a monster. Despite the way he’s been described, try to see the accused as a human being.”