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Austrian incest monster Josef Fritzel 'thinks he's a pop star' as release looms

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Josef Fritzl pictured (Image: Getty Images)
Josef Fritzl pictured (Image: Getty Images)

Evil paedophile Josef Fritzl talks to the TV and believes he is a pop star in prison as he suffers from dementia, a psychologist studying the monster has said.

The 88-year-old, was jailed for life in 2009 after admitting he had kept his daughter Elisabeth locked in the cellar as his sex slave for 24 years. During her ordeal underneath the family home in Amstetten, in the state of Lower Austria, fiend Fritzl fathered seven children with her.

The rapist disgusted the world when his shocking crimes but a new psychiatric report ruled that Fritzl is no longer a threat to the general public which could see him moved from a high security prison in Austria. Local media have reported that he seems confused, regularly talks to the television and thinks he is a pop star. It has also been claimed that he speaks of visits from relatives that never happened.

His daughter Elisabeth is not believed to have had any contact with him since he was jailed and now lives in an unknown part of Austria with the children conceived during the rapes. He changed his name to Mayrhoff after his teeth were kicked out by other inmates at Garsten Abbey, a former monastery converted into a secure psychiatric unit. Under the terms of his sentence, Frizl will be eligible for parole this year.

And that seems likely now after a new psychiatric report into the state of his mind says that the cellar monster is no longer dangerous. The report says he can barely walk and needs a walking frame to get around. They say he could not pose a serious threat to either his old or new victims.

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If Fritzl's wish is granted, he would most likely released into a nursing home to live out his days in comfort. Heidi Kastner, one of Austria's leading forensic psychiatric experts from Linz University, has reportedly spent a year preparing her new study of Fritzl.

She concluded that the country's most notorious prisoner no longer poses any danger and could be transferred through the normal prison system at the Krems-Stein jail, as part of a first step towards being released. He can now only get around with the help of a walker after a number of falls while behind bars and Kastner argues that there is no longer any risk of him carrying out any criminal activity.

After being sentenced, Fritzl originally worked as a prison librarian. According to local media, a few years later he began to show signs of dementia and frrom there on, he has been stuck doing menial tasks and "dirty chores". In 2019, it was reported that Fritzl's health was declining rapidly and that he lives apart from the rest of the prison population.

A fellow prisoner told local media: "Fritzl was and still is separated from everyone else. He has totally withdrawn himself and barely leaves his cell. He doesn't want contact with others, and all together it looks as though he has resigned himself to dying."

Tim Hanlon

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