statute of limitations. the austrian statute requires that criminal convictions be removed from all records after ten years. thus, erasing fritzl s criminal past. as a result, josef fritzl presented himself to the outside world as a strong family man in a devoutly catholic country. his favorite daughter, elisabeth, was the fourth child of seven from his marriage to rosemarie. there were five girls and two boys, with a father ruling the roost. translator: i did hear talk amongst the neighbors that herr fritzl was very firm with his children and that absolute obedience to herr fritzl prevailed. his wife, too, was very submissive towards him. we all knew it. he was very domineering with his family. according to classmates, elisabeth found the atmosphere at home oppressive, causing her to run away. translator: i did get the impression, though, that she felt more comfortable at school
several properties that he rented out. his only hobby seemed to be home repair. translator: herr fritzl was always very hard working. we often heard the noise of a cement mixer. i think herr fritzl did most of the building work himself. we thought he was adding on an extra room to rent out or something like that. according to the police, years before imprisoning his daughter fritzl carefully planned and built his maximum security prison. one of the strangest things about the fritzl case is the amount of preplanning, not just premeditation, i assume, about what he wanted to do to his daughter, but the amount of planning to enable him to build this bunker, fortify it, make sure that nobody in very close quarters could hear anything in it. translator: today we know with certainty that part of the old cellar in the old house was kept back as a reserve, so to speak, and that this news house
immediately next door, the old lady had moved into nursing care. next to her, the couple spent their time in vienna. the couple in the third house is herbert and regina pence. translator: all the gardens are open while herr fritzl s is all concealed, built up and the spaces are covered by trees and bushes. you can t see anything. the neighbor wanted to prune the hedge last year, but herr fritzl said no, leave it. fritzl s neighbors speak of a family who kept to themselves always. translator: the fritzl family never came to any of the garden parties we used to have around here. they never came. so in the end, basically, people stopped inviting them, because everyone knew the fritzls would never come to any kind of party. josef fritzl was a successful electrical engineer who owned
it was great for me to have a second proper family in the cellar with a wife and a few children. like a dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, herr fritzl always made sure to celebrate birthdays and holidays with his cellar family, even bringing down a christmas tree. translator: we know today from the doctors that those who are imprisoned do things that are totally at a different pace, the way they talk, the way they now choose to spend their time in freedom. it s simply impossible to imagine what it must have been like to establish a daily routine in this prison and to live with the constant reminder of the world outside, watching television, seeing pictures, and hearing stories from their father about what life was like up there. meanwhile, elisabeth tried to give her imprisoned children a degree of normality, teaching them to read and write. they had lessons. they learned grammar.
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.