Mother and six children held in underground room for 24 years see outside world for first time – the shocking Josef Fritzl case

Mother and six children held in underground room for 24 years see outside world for first time – the shocking Josef Fritzl case

Held captive in basement dungeon for 24 years

When the public found that Josef Fritzl had held a woman, his daughter, and three of her children captive in a rat-infested basement dungeon for 24 years, the act seemed unspeakable, as if a real-life boogey man had stepped from the pages of a horror novel into their reality. The four-day trail of Josef exposed a web of horror, a series of events that surpassed the worst snuff film or penny dreadful, events that would cause permanent physical and emotional damage to the captives and send one person to prison for life.

Elisabeth flees from Josef Fritzl’s abuse

was born on April 9, 1934, in Amstetten, Austria, a small town of 14,000 located halfway between Vienna and Salzburg. At the age of twenty-one, he married 17-year-old Rosemarie and together they had seven children: two sons and five daughters. Elisabeth Fritzl was born in 1966 when Josef was 31 years old. When Elisabeth turned 11 years old, Josef began sexually abusing her.

When Elisabeth was 15 years old, she began training to be a waitress at the Rosenberger highway rest stop on the A1 autobahn near Strengberg. She and other girls in the program slept in a dormitory below the kitchen. For the first time in her life, Elisabeth felt safe.

In January 1983, she ran away from home to escape her father’s abuse. She hid in Vienna, in the city’s 20th district, with a friend. Police found her within three weeks and returned her to her parents. Her failed attempt to escape his abuse had just given her father the story he would present to authorities when Elisabeth “went missing”.

Elisabeth finished her waitress training and found a job in nearby Linz in northern Austria. With the means to support herself in hand, she planned to move from the home and leave her childhood tormentor behind.

Elisabeth is trapped and locked in a room

An engineer by trade, Josef had no problem designing a secure, soundproof dungeon in his basement. Josef had discovered a small hidden basement under an older section of the property. Under a new section of the house, he constructed a basement and connected it to the older, pre-existing basement using a web of narrow corridors which he constructed. In 1982, he began building an underground dungeon within its walls. Plumbing, electricity, sink, and toilet were all he needed to sustain and control a human’s life.

On August 29, 1984, Josef asked Elisabeth to help him carry and install a door he was putting in the basement. This was the final piece Josef needed to complete the dungeon. Elisabeth held the door while Josef fitted it into the doorframe. Once completed, they stood back and admired their work. Josef reached behind him and grabbed an ether-soaked rag which he held on Elisabeth’s face until she lost consciousness. Josef drug her limp body into the basement dungeon, raped her, and secured her with a chain around her stomach tied to a column. He closed the door, leaving Elisabeth in a rat-infested hole where she would remain for the next 24 years.

Where had Elisabeth disappeared to?

After her “disappearance”, her mother, Rosemarie, filed a missing persons report with the police. A month later, Josef claimed to have received a letter from Elisabeth in the mail. He turned the letter over to the police explaining that Elisabeth had joined a cult. The letter, dated September 21, 1984, was postmarked from Braunau and made clear that she was tired of living at home and was living safely with a friend (similar circumstances to her prior, failed runaway attempt). She warned her parents, “If you look for me, I will leave the country.” Her father, threatening to shut off all gas and electricity in the basement, had coerced her into penning the letter in her own hand.

Life in the basement dungeon, hidden from the outside world for 24 years

Elisabeth’s first years inside the cell were a particularly brutal type of hell. Early on, the chains that bound her to a column were removed and replaced with a leash that let her reach the toilet. Sometime later the leash was removed, and she was allowed to move about the small basement room. While in captivity, Elisabeth gave birth to seven children, all fathered by Josef Continue reading