Stories related to: Austria

Austria made crime headlines again yesterday when a man walked into a Vienna police station and confessed to killing five family members with an ax, CNN reports. He killed his wife and 7-year-old daughter, as well as his parents and father-in-law in other cities, a police spokesman said. Police found the five bodies with ax wounds. The man cited “financial difficulties” as his motive. More »

Josef Fritzl’s family has broken its silence, the Daily Telegraph reports, with a hand-painted sign hung in a window of their Austrian home. The family thanks the public for its support: “We hope that there will be a time when we can return to normal life,” it says, in text surrounded by rainbows and handprints with messages from family members. More »

The Austrian woman who spent 24 years in a cellar as the sex slave of her sadistic father has said she never wants to see him again, reports the Daily Telegraph . The information was revealed as Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, spent her first Mother's Day with five of her six surviving children. When she was first reunited with the three raised "above ground" by her parents she hugged them, sobbing: "My babies. You are so beautiful," the paper reported. More »

Switzerland faces a potato shortage just weeks before hundreds of thousands of famished European soccer fans descend on the country expecting to snack on French fries. The nation, which is co-hosting the upcoming international soccer tournament Euro 2008, is mashing the pending crisis by lifting trade barriers to import 5,000 tons of extra spuds, reports Der Spiegel. More »

In jail-cell notes released by his lawyer, Josef Fritzl goes to bizarre lengths to defend the rape and imprisonment of his daughter, citing his Nazi upbringing for instilling “a high regard for decency and uprightness,” and a need to save the 18-year-old Elisabeth from drinking and dissipation. “She was going out to seedy bars and would spend whole nights there drinking and smoking," he wrote. "I only tried to rescue her from that life." More »

Elisabeth Fritzl intended to leave home just before her father imprisoned her, letters published in the Oesterreich newspaper show. “After the exams … I'm moving in with my sister and her boyfriend,” the 18-year-old wrote to a friend in 1984. “Cross your fingers for me. When you get this letter, it will all be over,” she wrote just weeks before she disappeared. More »

The Josef Fritzl case has spurred Austrian legislators to initiate changes in sex crime laws to prevent child abuse, the BBC reports. As Fritzl kept his daughter imprisoned as a sex slave, he was granted custody for three of the children he fathered with her— despite a rape conviction. His conviction was wiped off the books after 15 years. Austria now wants to keep sex crime records for at least 30 years. More »

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. More »

Josef Fritzl was a regular at a brothel near his Austrian town and the prostitutes there feared him and shunned him whenever they could, the Scotsman reports. His domineering, "perverse" demands terrified the women, said a bartender. Among customers "95% are normal and 3% are a bit weird. Fritzl belongs to the remaining 2% that are definitely mentally ill," the man added. More »

Josef Fritzl might not have stopped at raping his daughter, Austrian police now say, fearing now that Fritzl raped granddaughter Kerstin, the oldest incest child born in his cellar dungeon, the Daily Mail reports. But police aren't able to question the 19-year-old because she is still in an induced coma, though she is now stable and expected to live. More »

Josef Fritzl's attorney is bonding with his client and painting a new picture of him for the press, Der Spiegel reports. “Josef Fritzl is being portrayed as a horrific monster and sexual tyrant," said Rudolf Mayer, a renowned Viennese lawyer. "My job is to show him as a human being." Mayer said he looked into Fritzl's eyes and gleaned much of his psyche in their first meeting. More »

A tenant who lived in Josef Fritzl's house for 4 years in the early '80s knew the Austrian father was abusing his daughter Elisabeth, the Times of London reports. The lodger said he was told of the abuse by a neighbor, who had helped the teenage Elisabeth escape to Vienna—only for police to track her down and return her to her father, who later imprisoned her in a cellar for 24 years. More »

It seems Josef Fritzl’s daughter wasn’t the only woman he abused. Fritzl was a known sex offender even before his basement of horrors came to light, with prior convictions for a rape, an attempted rape, and public exposure, the Times of London reports. It’s a major embarrassment for Amstetten police, who had claimed Fritzl had no criminal record.   More »

Kerstin Fritzl, the eldest of Josef Fritzl’s “downstairs family,” has slipped into a coma from which she is unlikely to recover, the Daily Telegraph reports. “She is suffering from multiple organ failure,” said a hospital spokesman. “That means her chances of survival are very low.” Police say they will consider bringing murder charges against Fritzl if the girl dies. More »

A former tenant who lived just above the basement where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter recalled wondering why his electricity bills were so high and why food disappeared from his kitchen, AFP reports. Police are tracking down the 100 or so lodgers who lived at the Fritzl house in the last 24 years, hoping to shed more light on what occurred there, the Guardian notes. "We want to talk to all of them," an officer said. More »

Josef Fritzl threatened to gas his captive daughter and their children if they tried to escape, the Guardian reports, claiming he had rigged a toxic-gas system in the basement. Meanwhile, the possibility of an accomplice arose for the first time today, when a 12-year lodger at the house said he had seen another man, identified as a “plumber,” go into the basement, reports the BBC. More »

Stefan and Felix Fritzl were awestruck by the moon, nudging each other, pointing, giggling with joy, the Guardian reports of the boys' first days outside the windowless Austrian cellar they grew up in. The pair, aged 18 and 5, had only seen the sky on television. Now, they’re adjusting to the “real world,” marveling at everyday objects and developing a tolerance for sunlight. More »

Barbaric grandfather Josef Fritzl spent hours like a "normal" dad watching car racing on TV with the three dungeon children he fathered with his sex-slave daughter, reports the Times of London. But he also severely beat the children and his daughter, Elisabeth, who was raped repeatedly in a padded room in the cellar where she was imprisoned for 24 years, investigators believe. More »

The 73-year-old Austrian man who has confessed to fathering seven children by his imprisoned daughter is being investigated in connection with a 20-year-old murder case. Police say that a teenager assaulted and killed in 1986—near property owned by Fritzl's wife—bore an "incredible" resemblance to his daughter, reports the UK Times . More »

Doctors have begun to tally the physical toll of a lifetime of imprisonment on the three Austrian children locked in a cellar by their grandfather/father Josef Fritzl. The children all have defective immune systems, are anemic and suffer from a vitamin D deficiency from their time in a 650-square-foot cellar. None had ever seen daylight, a doctor or a dentist before their release, reports the Times of London. The oldest, 19, has already lost most of her teeth. More »