After spending 24 years of her adult life locked inside a cellar by her own depraved father, Elisabeth Fritzl finally found freedom as her father Joseph lost his.
From the age of 18 to 42, his daughter, now 57, endured almost daily rapes by her father Josef Fritzl in the purpose-built lair below the family home in Austria where she lived with the three children sired through his incest.
Without sunlight, fresh air, and other human interaction, Elisabeth lived a horrendous solitude for nearly a quarter of a century until she was finally able to escape, with her ordeal stunning people across the globe in horror. Monster Fritzl, who fathered seven of Elisabeth's children, was finally exposed when one of their children had to go to hospital and the alarm was raised.
He was put behind bars for life in a high-security prison for mentally disturbed offenders, Stein Prison, in 2009 after he was found guilty of enslaving his daughter. But now aged 88 and nearing 15 years of his sentence, he is soon eligible to apply for parole and has been granted conditional release.
The serial rapist has been ruled as no longer posing a threat to public safety, according to the latest psychiatric report. Heidi Kastner, one of Austria's leading forensic psychiatric experts from Linz University, spent a year preparing her study of Fritzl and argued he should be transferred through the normal prison system at the Krems-Stein jail, as part of a first step towards freedom.
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Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in prison in March 2009Today, the incest monster was snapped in a car as he arrived at Landesgericht District Court at 7.20am UK time for a hearing. It comes after he was allegedly seen visiting local cafes near Stein Prison in Krems an der Donau, Austria. He is set to be moved to a regular prison before he is eligible for release in March.
His attorney, Astrid Wagner, said after the hearing: "We were successful. It was a long hearing. He told again how he regrets what he did. He was actually close to tears.
"'In summary, the court came to the conclusion that my client is actually no longer dangerous." 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.
Her mother Rosemarie had no idea that she was locked in the cellarThe 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."
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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."
One of Elisabeth's daughter, Monika, who lived upstairs with her grandparents (Ian Vogler)
Locals protect Elisabeth who has managed to rebuild her life (Elisabeth Frtzl as pictured in the early 1980s)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".
Over the past 15 years, Fritzl has 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."
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