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July 25, 2008 7:22:27 AM CDT

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'I Am No Monster': Fritzl

Posted May 7, 08 11:37 AM CDT in World,  Crime & Courts 

(Newser) – Josef Fritzl complained today about receiving bad press since admitting to keeping an incestuous second family locked in his Austrian cellar, the Telegraph reports. "I am no monster," Fritzl said through his lawyer, calling his treatment “unfair” and calling the media's narrative “entirely one-dimensional” because it neglected the fact that he kept his dungeon family alive for over 20 years.

“I could have killed all of them, and no one would have known. No one would have ever found about it,” the 73-year-old said. He also defended the treatment of his 19-year-old granddaughter/daughter, hospitalized with organ failure. “Kerstin would not be alive today if it wasn’t for me. I have made sure that she gets to a hospital.”

Source Daily Telegraph (UK)

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A person walks by the front of a house that was the scene of a crime of incest and abuse in Amstetten, Lower Austria, Saturday, May 3, 2008 as the gathering of evidence continues.   (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)
A police helicopter flies over the house in Amstetten, where 73-year-old Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter for 24 years in a windowless basement cell and fathering seven children with her, in Amstetten,...   (AP Photo/Hans Punz)
A photo dated June 11, 1951, shows a man who was identified by a former schoolmate as the then 16-year-old Josef Fritzl.   (AP Photo/Private)
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child abuse  • Josef Fritzl  • sexual abuse  • Austria  • incest  • Amstetten, Austria  • Kerstin Fritzl  • prosecutors


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