relationship. he was correct. if he gave you his word, you could count on it. if he borrowed a tool and said he would return it two days later, then two days later it was back. what he said, he did. you could always count on it. anton graf saw the fritzls every summer and had known elisabeth throughout her childhood, so when she went missing, josef was sure to let him know all about it. translator: and then one day he came to see us and he told us lizzie won t be coming home. she s involved in a sect and has disappeared. to reinforce the idea that his daughter had disappeared to join a sect josef fritzl began an elaborate deception which lasted over two decades. to stop too many probing questions, he even started to
hospital, kirsten has finally been released and reunited with her brothers and sisters. however, doctors say their emotional recovery will be long and difficult, especially elisabeth s. i am sad to say that i think she is profoundly damaged. to imagine somebody held captive for 24 years, i truly see some sort of recovery that she lives and hopefully is healthy and is restored to some kind of life that she can lead, but i think there is absolutely no way to repair all of the damage that she sustained. however, there is some sign of hope. recently the fritzl children sent a note of thanks to the townspeople for their expressions of concern and wrote of their relief at being free. stefan, age 18, wrote translator: i like the sun
the whole appetite has to be a little bigger for her. when the second baby arrived, the austrian press took note. mark perry covered the case for a local newspaper. 1994, the first story, just after christmas. the second time she put the baby in front of the door of her grandfather. how bad must she be? then mr. fritzl quoting here, vanished since 1984. we think she s in the hands of some religious group. and, in fact, she was in his hands. even austrian social services bought in to fritzl s complex web of deception. translator: if, as people assumed and her father kept claiming, elisabeth was living with a sect, it wouldn t have
certain things or why she was distant and quiet. fritzl has told investigators that his decision to incarcerate his daughter was to rescue her from what he described as persons of questionable moral standards and that ever since she started puberty elisabeth had ceased to obey his rules. one of the things with all of us in law enforcement see over the years especially applies in cases of familial violence and it s the defense that i was doing something to protect or better the life of the victim. they re absurd but that doesn t stop most of these guys from trying. fritzl admitted in an interview for an austrian magazine that he had other reasons to lock up his daughter. my desire to have sex with elisabeth also got much stronger as time went by. we first had sex in spring 1985. i could not control myself any more. not surprisingly, elisabeth had a different version from her
translator: i did get the impression, though, that she felt more comfortable at school than at home and that sometimes she went quiet when it was time to go home again. it was the same for both of us. it was like a silence descending. andreas kruzig was elisabeth s former boyfriend. translator: she really confided in me. i knew that she was under pressure from her parents and that she ran away from home when she was 14 or 15. according to elisabeth s testimony to police, the situation at home was worse than just a stern father. she says her father s sexual abuse began at age 11. she d kept it secret. translator: the abuse at 11 years. i thought about it a lot recently, whether i noticed anything back when we were at school. now it s easier to understand why she didn t talk about boys or about sex. now with hindsight i understand why she didn t talk about