Elisabeth Fritzl’s formative adult years were stolen from her by her evil father Josef Fritzl, who caged her in a purpose built lair beneath their family home for 24 years.
Now she must face a new horror, with diabolical Fritzl potentially walking free as early as this year. Elisabeth was just 18 years old when, in 1984, her monstrous father locked her in his hellish basement prison.
Year upon year, Elisabeth remained hidden away from the society she’d once known, with neighbours strolling around obliviously mere feet above her. All the while, she was subjected to repeated rapes by Fritzl, which resulted in the births of seven children.
In the spring of 2008, Fritzl’s unthinkable crimes finally came to light when one of Elisabeth’s children required urgent hospital treatment. The story shocked the world and, in March 2009, Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment.
With her father behind bars, Elisabeth, who was 42 by the time she made her escape, was left to make a new life for herself, all while processing her quarter of a century of trauma.
Now she must deal with the news that Fritzl is launching a bid for freedom next month – and he could be back walking the streets as a free man this year, after having served just 15 years.
Lawyers for Fritzl, now 89, have revealed they will submit a parole application in weeks and are confident he will be released having served just 15 years for his depraved crimes. The pensioner’s team have argued that the rapist no longer poses any danger to society, given his fraility and old age.
Fritzl’s lawyer Astrid Wagner recently told the Mirror: “We will start an action in March and call for parole and if the court rejects it we will appeal and given his condition I believe he will be released by next year. He wants to live close to where he previously did and he wants to live alone but I think that is very unlikely given his age and condition. He would need a carer and none of his friends or family want to know.”
Most people watching the awful story unfold wondered how Elisabeth would ever manage to put the pieces of her life back together. But just as she managed to survive against the odds – keeping her sanity and caring for her children in horrific circumstances – she also surprised many by overcoming her ordeal and finding happiness.
Elisabeth was given a new name following the trial, with strict laws to prevent her identity from being revealed. She now lives with her six surviving children in a brightly-painted house in a tiny hamlet in the Austrian countryside, which also cannot be identified and only referred to by the country’s media as ‘Village X’.
The children, now aged between 21 and 35, sleep in rooms with doors permanently open after undergoing weekly therapy sessions to eliminate the traumas they suffered inside the cellar. Their two-storey family home is kept under constant CCTV surveillance and patrolled by security guards, while any stranger caught lurking nearby can expect to be picked up by police within minutes.
The close-knit village’s residents also help protect the family, according to reports. One photographer sent to Village X recalled: “There are only a few villagers and they are all in with the police. I was quickly surrounded by people who told me: ‘They don’t want to talk to you, they don’t want to see you – please get out of here.”
But a local restaurant owner revealed: “The family is doing more than fine. They come often to my venue and we treat them like any other guests. Everybody in the village knows them.” Another resident said: “Given what they have been through, they are very polite, happy and smile a lot.”
And in 2009 it was revealed that, just a year after she escaped captivity, Elisabeth found love with Thomas Wagner, a bodyguard with the Austrian firm A&T securities who had been assigned to protect her. Thomas, who is 23 years younger than Elisabeth, moved to live with her and her family.
One of the team of psychiatric carers revealed that the romance has helped her overcome the traumas of her past, leading her to radically scale back the therapy she was undergoing for post-traumatic stress disorders. The psychiatrist said: “This is vivid proof of love being the strongest force in the world.
“With the approval of her doctors she has ceased psychiatric therapies while she gets on with her life – learning to drive, helping her children with their homework, making friends with people in her locality. She lost the best years of her life in that cellar; she is determined that every day remaining to her will be filled with activity.”
Another source close to the medical team that still monitors the family recently added: “It may seem remarkable but they are still together. Thomas has become a big brother to the children.”
In 2011, Josef Fritzl’s sister-in-law, who calls herself Christine R, broke the news blackout on Elisabeth by giving a fascinating insight into how she has returned to normality following her nightmare. She said: “Elisabeth likes to go shopping a lot. She couldn’t do that while she was locked in the cellar for those 24 years.
“She loves jeans with glitter pockets and she passed her driving test without difficulty. Now she’s looking for a car. The kids are all going to school and working hard. Felix, the smallest one, has got a PlayStation.”
She added that Elisabeth had no financial worries after Austrian authorities provided her with £54,000 in child allowance that she was denied during her time in the cellar. After she was finally rescued in April 2008, Elisabeth needed as much resilience to face her life in freedom as she did to survive her decades of captivity.
She was placed with her three “cellar children” under the care of a team of social workers, therapists and psychiatrists at a clinic outside Amstetten where she lived in hospital rooms, overlooking trees and a wide lawn. Felix was reported to have spent much of his time stroking the grass on the lawn in sheer wonderment.
Berthold Kepplinger, the clinic’s chief physician at the time, remarked: “For them a passing cloud is a phenomenon.” Soon after her release Elisabeth started to develop an obsession with cleanliness, showering up to 10 times a day, according to reports.
Elisabeth was gradually reunited with her three teenage “upstairs” children, Lisa, Monika and Alexander, the brothers and sisters her three cellar children had never met. Her relationship with her mother, Rosemarie, was harder to repair, with Elisabeth finding it difficult to believe she had no idea she had been imprisoned underneath her feet.
Rosemarie reportedly fled the home she shared with Fritzl soon after the scandal broke, and now tries to supplement her meagre pension by selling homemade bags and paintings of flowers. Christine R said she now visits Elisabeth and her family at least once a week, claiming “whatever suspicion there was has gone”.
For 15 years, Fritzl languished at Austria’s Stein prison. He also changed his name, to Josef Mayrhoff, perhaps in a pitiful attempt to escape his own infamy or paint himself as a victim, and he is now believed to have dementia.
Mark Perry, a British journalist who interviewed Fritzl in his prison cell, says he has shown no remorse for his crimes. He recalls: “He kept saying, ‘Just look into the cellars of other people, you might find other families and other girls down there.’ He doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong at all. He thinks it’s a failure of justice and that he’s been wrongly locked up.”
The bid for freedom by Fritzl, who was moved from a psychiatric facility to a normal Austrian prison last year, is likely to outrage those affected by his crimes. Lawyers have also revealed that Fritzl is under the delusion that he would receive a great ‘fanfare’ upon his release.
Ms Wagner said: “He believes that when he is released, he will come out to a big celebration with people cheering and music and wanting to shake his hand. This is obviously not the case. It is a fantasy. I don’t think he fully understands what the world really thinks.
“Every time I see him, he says he regrets his decisions every day. He has ruined his life. He always talks about his regrets about his crimes. He thinks he has friends on the outside, but he hasn’t. One thing he accepts is that his family no longer want to see him and respects that.”
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
