i suppose you could describe me as her man, sort of. he admits he had sexual longings for her but says i was capable to keep my desires under control. meanwhile, the victims of his cruelty, the six children he fathered, his daughter, elisabeth, and his wife, rosemarie, were reunited in a psychiatric clinic outside amstetten, where they could get the emotional counseling they needed. it was very amazing to watch the family, because they behave like a normal family. there are lots of things which have been reported badly or wrongly. i mean, first, i mean, the children speak normal german. they communicate as anybody does. they walk as anybody does. and also what has been reported about elisabeth, i mean, she s a normal looking woman, very attractive person. if you meet her and if you see her, you know, the most
knowing your children aren t likely to get out of there either, so the mixed blessing of having a child but knowing that child is also going to be a prisoner and that happening over and over again. i just can t imagine how she did not, how elisabeth did not shut down entirely and give up. in total, elisabeth gave birth to seven of her father s children. today, only six are alive. michael, a twin, died soon after birth. his tiny body incinerated by josef fritzl, most likely in the furnace. three others, felix now 5, stefan now 18, and kirsten, 19, were condemned to lead a life in captivity with their mother. but, incredibly, fritzl selected the middle three children for a life of freedom upstairs.
manufacture evidence. translator: and a bit later on, i don t remember exactly when, he told us that a letter had arrived. the letter said that it was pointless to search for her because she was deeply involved with a sect and that she was so happy there that she was definitely not coming home. translator: we were a couple. we wrote to each other. we saw each other. all of a sudden all contact ended. when i called, i was palmed off. it was over. and i didn t hear from her again. elisabeth fritzl had simply vanished and no one seemed to think it unusual. coming up, elisabeth is forced to give up three of her children. translator: people said it was irresponsible. what a bad mother elisabeth was to leave the children on the door step. after four years in the
been difficult at all for a member of the sect to give elisabeth a lift at night and for her to leave the baby on the door step at a time when she wouldn t have been seen. fritzl s closest neighbors bought his story, too. translator: people said that it was irresponsible. what a bad mother elisabeth was just to leave the children on the doorstep. frau fritzl already had seven children and now she has to bring up grandchildren, as well. terrible. incredibly, over the 24 years elisabeth was in captivity, there were more than 100 tenants renting rooms in the fritzl house right above elisabeth s prison. none suspected. translator: in hindsight, you can always claim that you heard something, like knocking, but that simply isn t the case. i can t recall ever hearing knocking or anything at all. and if i heard something, what could i have done? it could have been children playing. you don t know. after the first child was abandoned in 1992, social
father, josef fritzl, had imprisoned her at age 18 in a cellar compound he had secretly designed and built in their own house. there he raped her repeatedly. there she d given birth to seven children. april 27th, with elisabeth s testimony in hand, police go to herr fritzl s house. the fritzls live on the third floor, leasing out the first two floors to renters. what the police found shocked them. to this day, there is no video footage available of the basement, but using evidence from police photos, we have rendered a computer animation of what that awful cellar compound might look like. to access it, one needed to go down the cellar stairs and through a warren of rooms. there were eight locked doors before reaching the living area. the final door was concealed