.....................The trial will last only five days, running to a strict timetable, and it is likely to end with a guilty verdict and a sentence that will leave Fritzl, 74, in jail for the rest of his life.......................
..................Media and the public have been banned from most of the hearing except its start and end. Judges have ruled that because the evidence is so harrowing, jurors must spend no longer than two hours a day listening to it.
Ten hours of testimony?
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:30 pm
wildroses wrote:
.....................The trial will last only five days, running to a strict timetable, and it is likely to end with a guilty verdict and a sentence that will leave Fritzl, 74, in jail for the rest of his life.......................
..................Media and the public have been banned from most of the hearing except its start and end. Judges have ruled that because the evidence is so harrowing, jurors must spend no longer than two hours a day listening to it.
Ten hours of testimony?
There was one story that said that Elisabeth's taped testimony totaled about ten hours and was to be parsed out over days--but then there is the following story:
Quote:
Fritzl in dock in Austria's trial of century
Kate Connolly in Berlin
The Observer, Saturday 14 March 2009
Article history
Austria is bracing itself for one of the most extraordinary trials in its history as Josef Fritzl, 74, steps into the dock tomorrow, accused of imprisoning his own daughter for 24 years in a catacomb under the family home and fathering her seven children.
He is expected to plead guilty to most of the charges in the courtroom in St Pölten, west of Vienna, but his lawyer will argue in mitigation that his initial intention was to protect his then 18-year-old from debauchery.
Fritzl is expected to contest the charge – one never before heard in an Austrian courtroom – that he enslaved his daughter Elisabeth. He will also reject the charge of murder. Prosecutors will argue that his failure to call for medical assistance in 1996, when a new-born baby twin named Michael fought for breath and turned blue, led to the boy's death. Fritzl has admitted to disposing of the corpse in an incinerator.
Authorities have enforced a 1km-radius no-fly zone around the courtroom and prison. "We fear that some media will try to fly over the courtroom to get pictures and the helicopter noise could disturb the proceedings. We also want to avoid possible breakouts from the prison," said the court's vice-president, Franz Cutkatold The Observer.
Of some 2,000 journalists and technicians expected for the trial, only 95 will find a place in the courtroom. Three places have been reserved for members of the public.
They will get the first in-the-flesh glimpse of Fritzl when he is brought into the courtroom at 9.30am tomorrow. On Tuesday, jurors will hear evidence from Elisabeth, now 43, via a huge TV screen. The evidence was recorded last year, to save her from having to face her father.
A verdict is expected on Friday. Austria's weekend press revealed yesterday in every last detail how Fritzl was preparing for the trial, including that his last pre-trial supper would consist of devilled cutlets, rice and cucumber salad. Prison head Colonel Gunther Mörwald was quoted as saying: "A fellow prisoner will be giving him a trim and a shave, as he was looking like he needed one before his big day."
A shy Josef Fritzl pleads ´not guilty´ to enslavement and murder charges
Austrian Times
By David Rogers in Sankt Pölten
Incest monster Josef Fritzl hid his face in shame as he was brought into court to answer for his 24 years or rape, slavery and murder.
Flanked by eight policemen as he entered the crowded courtroom in Sankt Poelten, Austria, he held an open blue A4 ring binder up against his face.
And he refused to answer any questions as a TV reporter repeatedly asked him: "Why did you do it?"
Dressed in a grey check jacket, charcoal trousers, dark blue shirt and striped blue tie, the 73-year-old engineer was made to stand in the centre of the oak-panelled courtroom for 10 minutes after entering at 9.25am while the local TV journalist repeatedly fired questions at him.
Judge Andrea Humer allowed Fritzl to keep his face covered until the cameramen were told to leave the court and the dungeon demon sat down on an open bench in front of his defence team.
Fritzl pleaded guilty to incest and raping his daughter Elisabeth during her 24 years as his sex slave in a secret dungeon under the family home.
But he denied charges of slavery, grievous assault and murdering one of the seven children Elisabeth bore him.
Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser, 32, dismissed Fritzl's version of his daughter's life in the cellar as a fantasy.
She said: "None of us here really know what went on down there in the cellar."
"Sure we have seen lots in the media. Some of it is true. Some of it is not. What we are interested in here is the truth - the facts.
"Forget all that was in the media. You could say there are perhaps two versions of events. The first version is Josef Fritzl's version of the truth.
"He claims he cared for his family. He claimed he was respectable and an upstanding member of the community.
"Then there is the real truth. That is what counts here," she told the jury.
The prosecutor added: "The fact is he took his daughter Elisabeth downstairs on the pretext he needed help moving a door, and he drugged her and dragged her into the cellar where he tied her up.
"On the second day he put a noose around her waist which severely restricted her freedom even in the small room in which she was confined.
"How big was that room? It was 18 square metres - where she spent the next nine years.
"It is virtually the same size as the jury box in which you are sitting. There was a wash basin but no bath or shower. There was no heating. No fresh air. Just walls to look at and a door. I have been there twice, it is dark and damp and the smell is unbearable."
Ms Burkheiser handed the eight-person jury a box containing what she said were items retrieved from the cellar under the house in Amstetten and invited them to smell them.
The jurors could be seen wrinkling their noses at the contents as their eyes widened in disgust.
She told how Fritzl had "complete control" of Elisabeth's life in the cellar.
"Josef Fritzl had the complete control of this cellar. He decided what food would be allowed down and when it would be eaten.
"He decided what medicines would be allowed down below. He decided who could leave.
"Often the electricity would fail for hours at a time or longer. Sometimes the electricity would be off for up to 10 days. During that time they would be left without any light. There was no flashlight and no candles.
"With no electricity they had no water and no warm food. Even though they were babies to feed with no light to do it by," she explained.
Fritzl - she added - did not even talk to his daughter in her first years under the family home.
"In the first few years as well there was no communication between Josef Fritzl and his daughter. He came, raped her and left.
"But worse than all these conditions and the rape was the uncertainty. When would he come and when would he go? How long would he say? Would he even come back from his holidays?
"It is this uncertainty which the person suffers from more than anything. Not the rapes or the appalling conditions or the lack of proper food and medicines," she said.
And when the children started to arrive, brutal Fritzl would simply rape Elisabeth in front of them, said the prosecutor.
"When Elizabeth gave birth it was in a damp cellar on a dirty blanket. She had been given a book about childbirth just two months before. At the last minute she was also given a mattress. Later after the children were born she was raped in front of them," she said.
Fritzl is accused of allowing one of his children by Elisabeth - twin Michael - to die of neglect after the boy was born with breathing complications.
The infant died after two days and prosecutors say he might have been saved if Fritzl had sought medical help.
Fritzl is alleged to have tossed the child's body in the incinerator rather than risk any discovery of his secret dungeon.
The prosecutor continued: "He turned off the lights to rape her. It was always the same routine. He would come, turn off the lights and rape her, and then leave.
"The lights would then come on again. With the birth of twins Elisabeth knew she was expecting two babies because of the size of the pregnancy.
"She could see from the start that Michael could not breathe - he died two days later. He was blue and had struggled to breathe throughout his short life."
Ms Burkheiser then showed the jury marks she'd made on the door Fritzl had used to enter the court to illustrate how low the cellar's ceiling was and how narrow the passages were.
She said Fritzl had told Elisabeth that the door to her prison was protected by an electronic beam that would release poisonous gas killing her and her children if she tried to escape.
She said: "He told her there was an electric door which would kill anybody that broke the light barrier which surrounded it.
"He added that if the light barrier was broken there was gas that would flood into the room killing everybody.
"There were also three locked doors which Elizabeth would have needed to get through to reach freedom.
"But he did not need to bother - he did not need to bother because she was a broken woman."
But Fritzl's defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer, 60, insisted that his client is "not a monster".
He stunned the court by reading out a string of hate emails from people appalled by Fritzl and his crimes.
"I would like to read you some e-mails that I have received about this case. One says 'Fuck you, you bastard', another says 'You will pay'. This one says 'You should be ashamed -you should leave the city'.
"Many have put their full names in. These were not messages directed to Josef Fritzl. These were messages that were sent to me. Where will such hatred and emotion go?
"Will they then be allowed to attack the prosecution, then maybe the judge if they disagree with what she says. Then maybe they will start on their neighbours?
"My point is that this emotion achieves nothing. What we have to deal with here is the facts - and to decide if it is true what is said."
And he urged the jury: "Leave aside the emotions that might be inspired by the terrible things you hear and concentrate on the facts.
"We are not looking for excuses or justification for what he did. We just wanted to decide on the facts, and what is true. Nothing else matters.
"You will hear claims that Josef Fritzl is a monster. But we need to see everything before you decide. He's almost 74 now, then he was almost 73.
"He could have claimed that he was mentally unstable and tried to use a trick to escape these proceedings. But he did not do so. He's not trying to say he was mentally ill."
Amazingly he tried to portray Fritzl as a family man and a caring father because he didn't kill all seven of his incest children.
"He had the power," said Mayer.
"Ignore what you hear in the media, this is a man who had wanted to have two families. If he had not wanted children he could've used contraceptives.
"And if he was a man who didn't care about children then he could have disposed of them. He had the power.
"But this is a man who slept in the cellar with his children and spent time with them over the Christmas period. He cared for his second family.
"When his oldest daughter was ill what would a monster do? What would a killer do? What this man did was take her to the hospital to the intensive care station.
"He could have killed her and everybody else and enjoyed the rest of his life in Amstetten as a respectable man. They would have said what a good man he was on his grave."
And he blamed the media for branding Fritzl a killer.
"Why this charge of murder? Because of the media. When it was announced that he might only get 15 years the media complained and then slavery charges added.
"The circumstances of this case did not justify a charge of slavery. Nor is there justification for a murder charge which again is to keep the media and the public happy. There is no evidence to back them up," claimed Mayer.
Josef Fritzl was then asked to enter the dock. He pleaded guilty to incest, partially guilty to coercion, guilty to depriving his daughter and her children of their liberty, partially guilty to rape and not guilty to slavery and murder.
He then went on to give a chronicle of his life but avoided any of the personal details which were saved until after the media had left.
Fritzl claimed his childhood was very hard because his mother - who was already 42 when he was born - didn't want him. He claimed beating were commonplace.
He stated he had not had a good relationship with his mother who would use bad language and made his life very hard.
His voice broke with emotion at one point as he described how she had deprived him of the chance to have any real friends right up to the age of 12.
He said his only pal was one she knew nothing about and was the only person he trusted until he betrayed him and Fritzl vowed never to allow anyone to get close to him again.
Meanwhile his family life fell apart with Fritzl going in and out of children's homes.
He admitted his mother did not have an easy life after all, saying: " She had to stay on a farm and had to start work when she was just eight."
He said he had stood up to his mother when he was 12 and defended himself adding: "I found the strength to face her and from that moment on I was Satan for her."
He continued: "I had no close relationship to her and she died in 1980 still living with me at Ybbsstraße."
Fritzl left school with excellent grades but his parents couldn't afford to allow him to stay on for further study.
As a result he took a low-paid apprenticeship. It was then that he met his future wife aged just 17 and he claimed she was his first sexual partner.
He said: "She was the first woman for me."
Because they never had any money he had taken work in construction in Luxemburg and Ghana, staying for a year and a half.
For extra cash, they also ran a guesthouse at Mondsee.
He had met his wife and married her in 1956 when he was 21 after she told him she wanted 10 children he said he agreed.
They lived together at Ybbsstraße 40 initially in a separate apartment for him and his new wife.
In 1974 he started renovating the property to add additional flats to rent to tenant and he expanded the cellar store, he claimed.
This was the cellar and Elizabeth was locked up in at the end of August 1984 when she was just 18 years old.
He had asked her to help him fix the door and then drugged her and locked up in a darkened room.
In a final question from the prosecutor before the media were asked to leave Josef Fritzl admitted that he had been well aware when his own wife Rosemarie was expecting twins.
He said her stomach had been much larger and he knew of the risks of pregnancy because Rosemarie had had three Caesareans by then. They were difficult births and she had also suffered a miscarriage, just like Elisabeth did.
http://austriantimes.at/index.php?id=11829
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Posts: 1601
dithersPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:03 pm
Quote:
Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser, 32, dismissed Fritzl's version of his daughter's life in the cellar as a fantasy.
She said: "None of us here really know what went on down there in the cellar."
I'd say the defense has a pretty tough row to hoe if this is the best they can do. The mere admission - or rather mere fact - that she/they were held in this underground prison is all that one needs know - no matter what the circumstances, etc.
Hard to tell - but he looks quite a bit thinner judging from this pic. Understandable though. Does anyone know if his wife or any other family was in the courtroom?
I'm shocked the press was able to address him in the Courtroom that way. That would never be allowed in an American Court. Especially with such a high profile defendant.
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SeraphPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:28 pm
Wow, how do you plead guilty to 'partial rape'? Bazaar, is the only thing I can fathom, regarding his attorney's defense strategy.
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dithersPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:43 pm
Seraph wrote:
Wow, how do you plead guilty to 'partial rape'? Bazaar, is the only thing I can fathom, regarding his attorney's defense strategy.
Why not simply plead 'no contest' to all of the charges and spare everyone - including the taxpayers?
There is certainly no way he'll ever walk the streets again as a free man, is there?
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SeraphPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:53 pm
dithers wrote:
Why not simply plead 'no contest' to all of the charges and spare everyone - including the taxpayers?
There is certainly no way he'll ever walk the streets again as a free man, is there?
Hiya Dithers, I agree completely. My guess is, a lot of people are making a lot of money. Seems the usual reason for a circus.
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Location: United Kingdom
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:12 pm
dithers wrote:
Why not simply plead 'no contest' to all of the charges and spare everyone - including the taxpayers?
There is certainly no way he'll ever walk the streets again as a free man, is there?
Yes, there is a way.
There is only a life sentence if he is convicted of the murder of the little baby.
If he is convicted of the rape, it's 20 years and of the enslavement, it's 15 years--or vice versa; it's in one of the articles above.
His total sentence depends upon the crime with the longest sentence for which he is convicted.
Sentences do not run consecutively, only concurrently.
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1601
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:22 pm
dithers wrote:
Why not simply plead 'no contest' to all of the charges and spare everyone - including the taxpayers?
There is certainly no way he'll ever walk the streets again as a free man, is there?
At the bottom of this CNN article, the potential sentences for the various available crimes are listed and explained more coherently than I did it:
Fritzl murder trial verdict could come this week
Friztl pleads guilty to imprisonment, incest denies murder, enslavement
Fritzl answers "partly guilty" when asked his response to rape charge
Austrian accused of keeping daughter in cellar for decades, fathering her 7 children
Verdict could come as early as Thursday, court official says
ST. POELTEN, Austria (CNN) -- A verdict in the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man accused of keeping his daughter in a cellar for decades and fathering her seven children, could come as early as Thursday, a court official told reporters Monday.
Josef Fritzl expects to spend the rest of his life in prison, his attorney has said.
As his trial began behind closed doors Monday Fritzl pleaded guilty to incest and other charges, but denied charges of murder and enslavement -- the most serious charges against him.
He pleaded "Partly guilty" to multiple charges of rape, but did not elaborate. "Partly guilty" is a plea option in Austrian courts.
Franz Cutka, a spokesman for the Landesgericht St. Poelten court, said the "partly guilty" plea might mean that Fritzl contends he is not guilty of all the individual rape charges or that the violence used was not as severe as rape.
Cutka was not in court for the plea and does not speak for the defendant. Fritzl's attorney was not immediately available to explain what he meant.
Fritzl arrived at the courthouse in St. Poelten covering his face with a blue binder to shield himself from reporters, television cameras and photographers and escorted by a phalanx of police officers. Watch Fritzl arrive in court »
Fritzl faces six charges at a closed-door trial in St. Poelten, 45 miles (70 km) east of Amstetten, where Fritzl lived. Cameras were removed from the court
The trial is scheduled to last five days, but his attorney Rudolph Mayer said it could be shorter.
Fritzl was charged in November with incest and the repeated rape of his daughter, Elisabeth, over a 24-year period.
But he was also charged with the murder of one of the children he fathered with her, an infant who died soon after birth. State Prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Michael Fritzl died from lack of medical care.
In an opening statement, prosecuting attorney Christiane Burkheiser handed damp-smelling items from the cellar where Elisabeth and her children had lived to jurors to give them an idea of the conditions in which they were allegedly locked up.
In all, Fritzl is charged with: murder, involvement in slave trade (slavery), rape, incest, assault and deprivation of liberty, Sedlacek's office said. He could face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of murder. Mayer said Sunday that Fritzl expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
"This man obviously led a double life for 24 years. He had a wife and had seven kids with her. And then he had another family with his daughter, fathered another seven children with her," said Franz Polzer, a police officer in Amstetten, the town where Fritzl lived, at the time of his arrest.
The case first came to light in April 2008 when Elisabeth's daughter, Kerstin, became seriously ill with convulsions.
Elisabeth persuaded her father to allow Kerstin, then 19, to be taken to a hospital for treatment.
Hospital staff became suspicious of the case and alerted police, who discovered the family members in the cellar.
Fritzl confessed to police that he raped his daughter, kept her and their children in captivity and burned the body of the dead infant in an oven in the house. Elisabeth told police the infant was one of twins who died a few days after birth.
When Elisabeth gained her freedom, she told police her father began sexually abusing her at age 11. On August 8, 1984, she told police, her father enticed her into the basement, where he drugged her, put her in handcuffs and locked her in a room.
Fritzl explained Elisabeth's disappearance in 1984 by saying the girl, who was then 18, had run away from home. He backed up the story with letters he forced Elisabeth to write.
Elisabeth Fritzl and all but three of her children lived in the specially designed cellar beneath her father's home in Amstetten, Austria, west of Vienna. The other three children lived upstairs with Fritzl and his wife; Fritzl had left them on his own doorstep, pretending the missing Elisabeth had dropped them off.
Under Austrian law, if Fritzl is convicted on several offenses, he will be given the sentence linked to the worst crime. The charges he faces are:
• Murder: The infant who died in 1996 died from a lack of medical care, the state prosecutor said. The charge carries a sentence of life in prison.
• Involvement in slave trade: From 1984 until 2008, prosecutors allege, Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a dungeon, abused her sexually and treated her as if she were his personal property -- in a situation similar to slavery. If he is convicted, the sentence could range from 10 to 20 years in prison.
• Rape: Between August 30, 1984, and June 30, 1989, Fritzl "regularly sexually abused Elisabeth," according to the prosecutor. The sentence could be from five to 15 years in prison.
• Incest: Parallel to the rape charge. It carries a sentence of up to one year.
• Withdrawal of liberty: Three of the children Fritzl had with Elisabeth were illegally held captive in a dungeon with no daylight or fresh air, according to prosecutors. That charge carries a sentence of one to 10 years.
• Assault: Between August 28, 1984, and April 26, 2006, Fritzl repeatedly threatened Elisabeth and their three children with gas and booby traps as warnings in case they tried to escape, authorities allege. The sentence would range from six months to five years. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/16/austria.incest.trial.fritzl/index.html
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PerryPeabodyPosted:
Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:57 am
Daughter Confronts 'Dungeon Dad' Fritzl in Incest Testimony [via tape]
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
AP
ST. POELTEN, Austria — The woman who bore seven children through incest and was allegedly locked in a squalid dungeon for 24 years confronted her father in a videotape shown in court Tuesday — testimony that could send him to prison for life.
Josef Fritzl, 73, again hid his face behind a blue binder and stayed silent as he was led into the court in St. Poelten, west of Vienna, for the second day of his trial.
Fritzl has pleaded guilty to incest with his daughter Elisabeth and false imprisonment, but is contesting negligent homicide and enslavement charges against him and has acknowledged only partial guilt on rape and coercion charges.
On Tuesday, jurors, Fritzl and the rest of the court viewed videotaped testimony from Elisabeth, the key witness against Fritzl. Now 42, she was 18 when he allegedly imprisoned her in the cramped, windowless cell he built beneath the family's home in Amstetten.
Those in court also saw videotaped testimony from Harald, one of Elisabeth's brothers, court spokesman Franz Cutka told The Associated Press.
Fritzl has been charged with homicide in the death of an infant — a male twin born to Elisabeth in April 1996 — who prosecutors say might have survived with proper medical care had he and his mother not been locked in the basement.
Police say DNA tests prove Fritzl is the biological father of all six of Elisabeth's surviving children, three of whom never saw daylight until the crime came to light and shocked the world 11 months ago.
Cutka said Fritzl responded to questions from the judge and prosecutors about different points as they came up in the testimony from both his daughter and son. He declined to provide more details.
Fritzl could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of homicide. He faces up to 20 years behind bars if found guilty of enslavement, up to 15 for a rape conviction, and one year for an incest conviction.
Reporters were not allowed into the courtroom Tuesday morning, and were expected to remain excluded until shortly before the verdict, which could come as early as Thursday.
In her opening statement Monday, prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said Fritzl refused to speak to his daughter during the first few years of her ordeal, coming downstairs only to rape her. Burkheiser said the rapes sometimes occurred in front of the children, and she described Elisabeth as a "broken" woman.
Three of the children grew up underground in Amstetten and the other three were brought upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently believed they had been abandoned.
Elisabeth and her six surviving children have spent months recovering from their ordeal in a psychiatric clinic and at a secret location.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said he did expect any surprises at the trial.
"The facts are relatively clear ... there can't really be any surprises in a situation that has already been cleared up," Mayer said.
He said Fritzl answered all the court's questions during closed-door proceedings Monday afternoon. "He was cooperative," Mayer said.
Jurors also will consider several reports from experts — including one on Fritzl's psychological state, one on the newborn that died and one on the door leading into the dungeon, which prosecutors say could not be opened from the inside.
The Associated Press normally withholds the names of victims of sexual assault. In this case, the withholding of Elisabeth's name by the AP became impractical when her name and her father's were announced publicly by police and details about them became the subject of publicity both in their home country and around the world.
Austrian media ridiculed Fritzl on Tuesday for hiding his face in court when the trial began Monday.
"Now he's ashamed — 25 years too late," the Heute newspaper said in a front page headline over a photo of Fritzl trying to shield himself from news cameras.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509489,00.html
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Posts: 1601
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:42 am
Court enters dark and depraved world of man who allegedly raped his own daughter
Roger Boyes in St Pölten
March 17, 2009
timesonline.co.uk
“Light off: rape.” To make the point, the Austrian prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser threw the switch in the courtroom. “Light on. Josef Fritzl leaves the cellar.” [emphasis added]
The trial of Fritzl – on charges of imprisoning and raping his daughter for almost a quarter of a century and murdering one of the seven children he fathered with her – was never going to be routine. It was indeed billed as Austria’s Trial of the Century.
But no one had reckoned with the concentrated drama that was packed into the first day of hearings – from the moment Fritzl appeared with his head buried in a blue folder to shield him from the cameras, to the prosecution’s attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the dungeon, to the claims by his defence that he was no monster but a caring family man.
Ms Burkheiser’s task was to make the jurors feel like temporary prisoners of Fritzl. First, she had the height of the adapted cellar – he had told the authorities he was building a nuclear bunker – marked on the doorpost of the courtroom in St Pölten: 1.78 metres (6ft). Then, she passed to the jury objects retrieved from the cellar where Elisabeth gave birth to her children. “Smell!” said the prosecutor. And the jurors retched at the sheer pungency of 24-year-old mould.
“They had to crawl on their knees in order to get around the dungeon,” she told the court. “It was damp and mouldy. The dampness crept into their backs and into their bones.”
To drive home her point, the prosecutor threaded the phrase “light on, light off” throughout her speech. Fritzl, she made clear, wanted absolute control over his downstairs family. [emphasis added]
Was Ms Burkheiser’s performance enough to transport the eight jurors underground? Or to discomfit Fritzl? The 73-year-old building engineer had entered the courtroom hiding his face behind the folder, his hands quivering, besieged by questions from the waiting media.
“How do you explain yourself? How can you abuse your daughter for 24 years?” asked Austrian television reporters, thrusting their microphones into the dock. He did not answer. Fritzl did eventually speak, after the cameras were excluded from the courtroom. Only then was the face exposed.
The voice, confirming his identity and marital status, was reedy, had none of the deep timbre that had been associated with the man who fathered 13 children, seven of them in an incestuous relationship with his imprisoned daughter. And the face – so tanned when he abandoned his entombed family for a month to take a holiday in Thailand – was parchment yellow, a prison complexion.
He had pleaded guilty or, as he said, partially guilty to rape – the prosecutor calculated that he raped his daughter 3,000 times – to coercion, to forced imprisonment, to incest. Not guilty to murdering one of his daughter’s babies – neglected so badly that he died, blue in the face, two days after birth – and not guilty to enslavement.
The pleas had been widely expected as had the essence of his defence, that he was no monster but rather a frustrated, violent father who cared for his so-called second family. “The exceptional aspect of this case is that my client did not behave like a monster,” said Rupert Mayer, his defence lawyer. “The special point is that he chose his daughter for this role, that he created children together with her and looked after them . . . he bought them schoolbooks, celebrated Christmas and birthdays with them.” He appealed to the jury to be objective. “If you just want to have sex, you don’t have children,” Mr Mayer said. “As a monster, I’d kill all of them downstairs.”
For his part, Fritzl told the three judges and eight jurors that he, too, had suffered abuse as a child. “I had a very difficult childhood,” he said in a trembling voice. “My mother didn’t want me. She was 42 when she had me – she simply didn’t want a child and she treated me correspondingly. I was beaten.” At the age of 12, he said, he had made it clear to his mother that he would not tolerate being beaten any longer and would defend himself. “From that point on, I was Satan personified for her,” he said. She never showed him any affection and his father appeared only “rarely and sporadically”.
The defence team strategy is plain: if they can get their client off the hook on the murder charge (a possible 15-year jail term) and enslavement (up to 20 years), then the maximum time that Fritzl would have to serve would be for the rape charge.
Under Austrian law that is ten years’ imprisonment. With good behaviour and counting the year spent in pretrial arrest, Fritzl could hope to be free by the Christmas of 2016 – a triumph of sorts for Mr Mayer, who ranks as one of the most effective defence lawyers in the country. [emphasis added]
The judge could avoid this politically embarrassing outcome – Austrian tabloids are already demanding a lifetime behind bars – if Fritzl were sent to a guarded psychiatric clinic for an indefinite period of observation before starting his jail sentence.
But the prosecutor, Ms Burkheiser, 33, seemed determined yesterday to secure the longest possible jail term. First she had to dismantle the myth of Fritzl as a caring man. There were, she emphasised, no mitigating circumstances. So the narrative underpinning the prosecution case became a horror story, the tale of a vicious man who abused his daughter for years before he threw her into his extraordinary dungeon at the age of 18.
The first part of the video testimony of Elisabeth, now 43, was shown to the jurors and to Fritzl in the darkened courtroom. Little notes – scribbled on the back of shopping bills left behind in the cellar by her father – constituted a kind of secret diary by Elisabeth, a chronicle of abuse.
The genre of the horror story has two conventions, and the prosecutor made use of both. The first is the mythic power of the locked door. The horror story seeks to stir the reader’s imagination about what lies beyond the door. For the imprisoned Fritzl family, the door became a potent symbol. “The accused repeatedly threatened the family with death if they should attempt to escape and he claimed to have an automatic switch which would cause a massive electric shock and a release of gas if the outer doors to the cellar were touched,” Ms Burkheiser said. “The effect would be death within a few minutes. There were no attempts to flee.”
Once he was beyond the door to the cellar, Fritzl let himself loose, behaved in an animalistic way. No details of his sex practices were made public yesterday and a court spokesman explained that they were one of the reasons why proceedings had to be held in camera.
The other horror story convention is the existential fear, the sense that one can wake up in an ordinary way one morning and by the end of that day be plunged into a living hell. That, said the prosecutor, is what happened to Elisabeth Fritzl on August 28, 1984. Drugged with ether and entombed in a soundproofed chamber behind eight locked doors for the next quarter of a century, Elisabeth lived a sub-human existence. There she gave birth – Fritzl provided a pair of rusty scissors to cut the umbilical cord.
It is not on the charge sheet, but Fritzl stole his daughter’s life. She and her downstairs children lived without sunlight, without human contact. On a whim Fritzl would cut off electricity for several days.
At lunchtime the drama ended abruptly – the one carried out in the public’s view, at any rate. Austria’s strict laws on privacy and the protection of victims does not merely restrict reporters in what they can say or write; if the judge so requires, it keeps them out of the courtroom altogether. Even the court spokesman, delegated with briefing the media at 4pm, would barely divulge anything, saying it was all confidential.
None of Fritzl’s alleged victims was present in court for the opening of the trial. They are spending the week in a psychiatric clinic to escape the publicity surrounding the trial. Journalists and the public are expected to remain excluded from the proceedings. They will be readmitted for the verdict, which is expected by Friday.
The horror story has one gentler variant: the tale where the protagonist, after undergoing numerous tortures, wakes up and realises he has merely survived an unpleasant nightmare. This, the prosecutor made plain, was sadly not the case of the Fritzl family. They are out in the sunlight at last, but their nightmare continues.
Chief prosecutor takes her first big case
Christiane Burkheiser, 33, is the star of the trial. She is conducting her first important case since being made chief prosecutor – she was on duty when the Fritzl family were released from the bunker in April. She has brought a new style to the courtroom: to evoke the dank atmosphere of the Fritzl dungeon she gave foetid pieces of material to the jury and ordered them to smell the evidence. Her office is only 20 metres away from Fritzl’s cell
Rupert Mayer, 61, Fritzl’s defence lawyer, is one of the most flamboyant figures in the Austrian legal profession. He has defended neo-Nazis, contract killers and, in one case, the parents of a girl held prisoner in a wooden cage. Mr Mayer makes a point of defending causes for which he has no sympathy: despite having a severe dog hair allergy he tried to enter the Vienna regional parliament as president of the newly established Party of Austrian Dog Friends
Judge Andrea Humer, 48, is an expert in trials from which the press and public are excluded. She has applied some of this experience, arguing that Fritzl’s daughter needs protection. Her most prominent case so far has been a gay sex scandal in the theological seminary in St Pölten. It is unusual for both the prosecutor and the judge to be women, but this case demands sensitive questioning of the main victim, Elisabeth Fritzl
Thanks, Perry, for the many articles you have posted in this forum.
Friday ... judgment day on earth for him ... hope they keep in jail for the rest of his life.
YIF
Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 10488
Location: France
IsanahPosted:
Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:48 am
Josef Fritzl admits all charges
Josef Fritzl on 17 March 2009
Fritzl said he hoped his admission of guilt would help the victims
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering seven children with her, has changed his pleas to guilty on all charges.
Fritzl said video testimony from his daughter, played in court on Tuesday, made him change his mind.
Josef Fritzl locked up his daughter for 24 years. The charges include rape, incest, murder and enslavement.
A court doctor has recommended that the 73-year-old be sent to a psychiatric facility for treatment.
At the start of his trial on Monday, Fritzl denied the charges of enslavement and murdering one of the children soon after its birth.
His surprise turnabout also altered his plea from "partial" to guilty on the charge of rape.
Fritzl's lawyer said watching his daughter's testimony had profoundly affected him, "destroying" his emotions.
Proceedings have ended for the day. A verdict and sentencing is expected on Thursday.
'Sorry'
Wearing a grey suit and a blue shirt, Fritzl did not hide his face on Wednesday, as he had done for the past two days, when he was led into the courtroom in St Poelten, west of Vienna.
As proceedings began, the judge asked Fritzl how he felt after watching the videotaped testimony of his daughter.
FRITZL'S CRIMES
Murder
Enslavement
Deprivation of liberty
Rape
Incest
Coercion
"Your daughter told you the baby was suffering from breathing problems," the judge said. "You had time to get first aid."
Fritzl said: "I was hoping the little one would survive but I should have done something. I don't know why I didn't help. I just lost sight [of the issue]."
He then said he was "sorry".
Speaking later outside court, Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer said his daughter's testimony had allowed him to see for the first time the impact of his actions.
Describing his client, Mr Mayer said Fritzl was "a person who had only one idea - 'I must always be full of power'".
Mr Mayer said he was "very, very surprised" by Fritzl's plea reversal, but that Fritzl hoped his change of plea would help his victims.
The court later heard psychiatrist Dr Adelheid Kastner say there was a danger Fritzl would repeat his behaviour if he was left untreated.
She recommended that he be sent to a psychiatric facility.
Lawyer on defending Fritzl
She said Fritzl had an overwhelming need to dominate and control, which she said stemmed from his childhood.
She said he was an unwanted, unloved child, intelligent, who had grown up determined to have somebody who belonged to him alone.
He was emotionally deficient but that he knew what he was doing was wrong, she added.
Soundproofed chamber
The court viewed the testimony from Fritzl's daughter on Tuesday.
Austrian media reports said his daughter Elisabeth was in a private viewing chamber in the courthouse at the time. However, officials refused to confirm this, saying only that a number of unnamed people had been there.
Fritzl lured his 18-year-old daughter into a cellar with windowless, soundproofed chambers beneath their house in Amstetten in 1984.
He imprisoned her there and raped her repeatedly over a number of years.
The daughter and three of the children fathered by Fritzl were kept captive in the cellar until the case came to light in April last year, when one of the children became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.
He was accused of murdering one of newborn twin boys his daughter gave birth to in 1996, having failed to arrange medical care for the ailing infant.
JOSEF FRITZL TRIAL
Josef Fritzl Profile: Josef Fritzl
The man at the centre of a case that has shocked the world
Court senses dungeon's stench
Day-by-day: Josef Fritzl trial
Inside Fritzl's cellar dungeon
In pictures: Josef Fritzl trial
Media spotlight on Fritzl trial
Comic play satirises Fritzl frenzy
Timeline: Austrian cellar case
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 11272
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Wed Mar 18, 2009 11:06 am
??????
Joseph Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth 'secretly attended two days of trial
From Times Online
March 18, 2009
Jenny Booth
The daughter that Joseph Fritzl imprisoned and raped for 24 years has secretly been present in court for much of his trial – and may have provoked the Austrian engineer to plead guilty to all charges against him today, according to media reports.
Elisabeth, 42, who gave birth to seven children by Fritzl while held captive in a mouldy cellar for nearly a quarter of a century, was present in the courtroom on both Monday and Tuesday, a source close to the case has told the AP news agency.
The source suggested that Elisabeth’s presence alone might have unnerved Fritzl and prompted him to announce this morning that he was now admitting murder and enslavement charges, which are likely to result in a life sentence.
Until today Fritzl had admitted only the lesser charges of rape and incest, and could have been out of prison within eight years.
Kurier, an Austrian daily newspaper, also alleged today that Elisabeth spent some time in the courtroom while Fritzl was being questioned yesterday. She sat at the back and slipped out of a side door, the paper said, citing a source at the psychiatric clinic where Elisabeth and her children are staying during the trial.
Elisabeth plans to write a book and had gone to court to gather some impressions of the trial, the newspaper said.
The reports that Elisabeth has been present are particularly surprising because the exceptional nature of Fritzl’s trial, where witnesses are not questioned in person and evidence is given on pre-recorded video, was designed expressly so that Elisabeth, as the chief victim, should not have to appear in court in person to face her father.
Court officials have repeatedly stressed that the very short and very private nature of the proceedings was “purely so that the victims should be spared pain”, and not – as some have alleged – to prevent embarrassment to the Austrian social services and justice authorities who should have picked up on the case.
Reporters have been told that the reason Elisabeth and her children are staying in a psychiatric clinic for the duration of the trial was to prevent them being upset by too much exposure to the case, and also for security reasons.
Rudolf Mayer, Fritzl’s lawyer appeared to add weight to the reports of Elisabeth’s presence by suggesting today that it may have played a part in prompting Fritzl's shocking decision to change his plea to guilty on all counts.
“If some of the victims were present yesterday, that certainly must have had a strong trigger effect," said Mr Mayer.
“I didn’t see her in court, but then I can’t see everything.” He said that he knew that there had been three people in a special victims waiting room attached to Courtroom 119 at St Pölten
He also revealed that Fritzl had asked to see a psychiatrist after yesterday’s session.
“It must really have shaken him up,” he said, referring to Elisabeth’s testimony.
Dr Franz Cutka, a court spokesman, has also failed to quash the rumours of Elisabeth's secret visit by saying today: “I cannot confirm or deny this."
Almost all of yesterday’s court proceedings, which were heard in private, was devoted to watching harrowing video testimony pre-recorded by Elisabeth herself last summer, in which she laid bare the extent of her suffering as she was repeatedly raped by her incestuous father, often in front of their children.
One of her seven children, a twin boy, died three days after he was born, when Fritzl failed to take it to a doctor when it suffered breathing difficulties. The prosecution has charged him with murder by neglect.
Even Mr Mayer, the defence counsel, was taken by surprise when Fritzl announced this morning that he was now pleading guilty on all counts.
Asked by the judge what had caused him to change his plea, he said it was his daughter’s videotaped testimony.
“I plead guilty to the crimes I’ve been charged with,” said Fritzl.
“When I saw the video tapes I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth.
"I don’t know why I have not seen the baby would have needed help. I just overlooked it. I thought the little one would survive. I just want to say that it happened by accident and that I never planned it.”
Elisabeth, who has been shielded from the media ever since she was released from the dungeon under her family home last April, has changed her name and moved away from Amstetten where she was held captive. Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser has sought to portray her in court as a broken woman.
Today the psychiatrist who has spent months assessing Fritzl cast new light on the abnormal relationship between father and daughter that lies at the heart of the case.
Adelhaid Kastner told the court that she had asked Fritzl why he had chosen Elisabeth out of his seven legitimate children as his victim.
“He replied: because she was most like me. She was as stubborn me, as strong as me. The stronger your opponent, the bigger the victory. That may very well have been the reason."
She said the large number of children Fritzl fathered only strengthened the control he had over his victim. “The more children, the more power,” Kastner said. “This is about possession ... power ... control.”
Ms Kastner also said that Fritzl had a very serious personality disorder and would pose a threat to others even at his advanced age if freed. She recommended that Fritzl serve his sentence in a special prison for psychologically deranged criminals.
“Fritzl is guilty for what he did,” she said, adding he also believed “he was born to rape.”
The trial has been adjourned until tomorrow, when closing statements from the prosecution and defence will be heard, and the verdicts announced.
I say "GOOD FOR ELIZABETH"! She had the guts to go into that courtroom....even if it was just to sit in the back. I can certainly understand why she did not want to get on that stand and do it via video. Bless her and her children!
For the sake of the community...I hope this man NEVER sees the light of day again!
Joined: 02 Apr 2006
Posts: 7169
gwenPosted:
Wed Mar 18, 2009 11:49 am
Fritzl Pleads Guilty to All Charges in Incest Case
ST. POELTEN, Austria — In a stunning turn of events, an Austrian on trial for imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children pleaded guilty Wednesday to all charges against him — including negligent homicide — after hearing his daughter's heart-wrenching testimony.
In a change of heart, Josef Fritzl calmly acknowledged his guilt on the third day of a trial that has drawn media attention from around the world for its shocking allegations.
"I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment," Fritzl, 73, told a panel of judges, referring at one point to what he called "my sick behavior."
Fritzl faces up to life imprisonment on the negligent homicide count, which he initially had contested along with an enslavement charge. Prosecutors also had charged him with rape, incest, forced imprisonment and coercion.
Psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner, meanwhile, told the court Wednesday that Fritzl had a very serious personality disorder and would pose a threat to others even at his advanced age if freed. She recommended that Fritzl serve out his sentence in a psychiatric ward.
Asked by the presiding judge what had led him to change his mind, Fritzl said it was the videotaped testimony from his daughter Elisabeth. Fritzl, jurors and the rest of the court had viewed 11 hours of her testimony during closed-door sessions Monday and Tuesday.
Officials would not confirm an Austrian media report that Elisabeth was in the courtroom on Tuesday.
Elisabeth was the prosecution's key witness against Fritzl. Now 42, she was 18 when he imprisoned her in the cramped, windowless cell he built beneath the family's home in the town of Amstetten.
The negligent homicide charge came for the death of an infant twin boy — Michael — born to Elisabeth in April 1996 who prosecutors say might have survived with proper medical care had he and his mother not been locked in the basement.
Fritzl expressed regret that he didn't bring the ailing infant out of the dungeon and get medical help.
"I don't know why I didn't help," Fritzl said. "I just overlooked it. I thought the little one would survive."
"I should have recognized that the baby was doing poorly," he added.
Wearing a mismatched gray suit and a blue shirt, Fritzl did not hide his face behind a binder Wednesday as he had done for the last two days when led into the courtroom in St. Poelten, west of Vienna.
After the plea change and the psychiatrist's testimony, officials adjourned the trial until Thursday morning.
Legal experts say the jury will still have to deliver a verdict despite Fritzl's guilty pleas, although his confessions are grounds for a lesser sentence. The verdict and sentence for Fritzl are expected Thursday after the prosecution and the defense give their closing statements.
Police say DNA tests prove Fritzl is the biological father of all six of Elisabeth's surviving children, three of whom never saw daylight until the crime came to light 11 months ago.
Three of the children grew up underground in Amstetten and the other three were brought upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently believed they had been abandoned.
Prosecutors have alleged that Fritzl refused to speak to his daughter during the first few years of her ordeal, coming downstairs only to rape her. They said the rapes sometimes occurred in front of the children, and described Elisabeth as a "broken" woman.
Elisabeth and her six surviving children, who range in age from 6 to 20, have spent months recovering from their ordeal in a psychiatric clinic and at a secret location.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said he had not been aware of Fritzl's change of heart before Wednesday's session.
"He didn't discuss it with me," Mayer said, adding that Fritzl asked to see a psychiatrist after Tuesday's session. "It must really have shaken him up."
Mayer declined to confirm an Austrian newspaper report that Elisabeth was in the courtroom Tuesday, but said if one of Fritzl's victims had been present, it would have had a major impact on his client.
Court spokesman Franz Cutka neither confirmed nor denied Elisabeth's presence.
Kastner, the psychiatrist who met with Fritzl several times and put together a psychological profile for the court, said the Austrian had a deep need to control people. She said Fritzl had an ability to block out his crimes but knew what he was doing was wrong, acknowledging he had a guilty conscience when he went to bed at night and when he woke up in the morning.
"Fritzl is guilty for what he did," she said.
She said the large number of children Fritzl fathered only strengthened the control he had over his victim. "The more children, the more power," Kastner said. "This is about possession ... power ... control."
Fritzl had testified earlier this week that he had a difficult childhood and a bad relationship with his mother.
"The climate in his parent's house was marked by fear," Kastner said.
The Associated Press normally withholds the names of victims of sexual assault. In this case, the withholding of Elisabeth's name by the AP became impractical when her name and her father's were announced publicly by police and details about them became the subject of publicity both in their home country and around the world.
Fritzl gets life sentence in Austria incest case Found guilty of homicide, he'll serve time in secure psychiatric facility
MSNBC
March 19: A jury has convicted Josef Fritzl of homicide and has sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward. Fritzl held his daughter captive in a basement for twenty-four years and fathered seven children with her.
ST. POELTEN, Austria - A jury in Austria convicted Josef Fritzl on Thursday of homicide and sentenced him to life imprisonment in a secure psychiatric facility.
Fritzl also was convicted of enslavement, rape, incest, forced imprisonment and coercion for holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children.
Fritzl accepted Thursday's verdicts and waived his right to appeal.
The homicide count — "murder by neglect" in German — was the most serious of the charges against 73-year-old Fritzl, and the jury gave him the maximum punishment allowed by law.
Fritzl gets life sentence in Austria incest case Found guilty of homicide, he'll serve time in secure psychiatric facility
MSNBC
March 19: A jury has convicted Josef Fritzl of homicide and has sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward. Fritzl held his daughter captive in a basement for twenty-four years and fathered seven children with her.
ST. POELTEN, Austria - A jury in Austria convicted Josef Fritzl on Thursday of homicide and sentenced him to life imprisonment in a secure psychiatric facility.
Fritzl also was convicted of enslavement, rape, incest, forced imprisonment and coercion for holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children.
Fritzl accepted Thursday's verdicts and waived his right to appeal.
The homicide count — "murder by neglect" in German — was the most serious of the charges against 73-year-old Fritzl, and the jury gave him the maximum punishment allowed by law.
I wonder why the jury elected life imprisonment in a secure psychiatric facility instead of prison. Too bad he wasn't sentenced to the worst prison in the country.
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 11111
PerryPeabodyPosted:
Thu Mar 19, 2009 4:56 pm
Josef Fritzl sentenced to life in psychiatric institution
Austrian who kept daughter enslaved for 24 years and fathered seven of her children to spend rest of life behind bars
Kate Connolly in St Pölten and Helen Pidd
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 March 2009 13.50 GMT
LIfe imprisonment for Josef Fritzl Link to this video Josef Fritzl, the Austrian engineer who kept his daughter as a sex slave in a secret cellar underneath the family home for 24 years, has been sentenced to life imprisonment, having been found guilty of a catalogue of crimes including the negligent murder of one of the seven children he fathered with his daughter.
The jury at St Pölten court found him guilty on all counts – of negligent murder, enslavement, incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment. Fritzl quietly accepted the verdicts and waived his right to appeal.
It has not been decided exactly where the 73-year-old will serve his sentence, though he will initially be transferred to the psychiatric wing of a prison in the capital, Vienna, for assessment, the court authorities said.
The life sentence would entail a minimum of 15 years in prison, according to Franz Cutka, vice president of St Pölten courts. The 11 months he has already spent on remand count towards that sentence, he added.
After 15 years, he could apply to three judges for parole, but Fritzl's lawyer said his client expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The homicide count of "murder by neglect" was the most serious of the charges against him, and the jury gave him the maximum punishment allowed by law.
The jury was not swayed by Fritzl's 11th-hour confession of guilt, or his claim to be sorry "from the bottom of my heart".
In what was seen as a last-ditch attempt to mitigate his punishment, the 73-year-old defendant had made an emotional statement to court this morning.
"I regret from the bottom of my heart what I have done to my family. Unfortunately, I cannot make amends for it. I can only try to look for possibilities to try to limit the damage that's been done," he said.
But prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser urged the jury not show mercy just because he had pleaded guilty.
She told them: "Don't be duped like Elisabeth was 24 years ago."
At a press conference after the verdict, Erich Huber-Günsthofer, the deputy director of St Pölten prison, where Fritzl has been held since his arrest last April, said the prisoner would initially be sent for assessment at the Mittersteig prison in Vienna. At Mittersteig, there is a psychiatric wing where Fritzl's mental health will be assessed.
Huber-Günsthofer, said that five questions would be asked: "Can he have therapy? Is he willing to undergo therapy? Can he change his ways? Is he ready to change his ways? And how much of a risk does he pose to others?"
Fritzl may then be transferred to another prison or psychiatric institution of his choice. "He has the right to voice an opinion on where he should be sent, but this wish has to tally with any expert opinion and with the directorate of the prison," added Huber-Günsthofer
By giving Fritzl a life sentence, the jury ensured he received the maximum punishment for the crimes he committed over more than two decades.
Twenty-four years ago, he lured his then 18-year-old daughter into the cellar of their family home. There, in this damp, windowless prison, Fritzl raped her more than 3,000 times, his abuse resulting in seven children.
One of the babies, a twin boy called Michael, died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar.
Fritzl failed to get the boy medical help and later burned his body in an incinerator. It was this failure that resulted in a guilty verdict for the most serious charge against him, that of murder through negligence, which carries a life sentence.
Adelheid Kastner, the forensic psychiatrist who spent 25 hours with Fritzl in order to produce a report on his mental health, told the court yesterday that he should be sent to a secure psychiatric facility.
The article explains the probable reason the jury chose what they did, and it makes sense.
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 11111
gwenPosted:
Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:49 am
Police: Incest Dad Fritzl Suspected in 4 Unsolved Murders
Depraved father Josef Fritzl, convicted after imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years, is being investigated over at least four unsolved murders and disappearances.
Even as he was led away to prison, police were re-examining missing person and unsolved murder cases over the past four decades.
One is the 1986 murder of Martina Posch, 17, who was raped, strangled and dumped in a lake a short distance from where Fritzl and wife Rosemarie ran a guesthouse.
"What really stands out is that Martina looks similar to Fritzl's daughter. The likeness is incredible," police chief Alois Lissl said.
Other cases include the shotgun murder of Anna Neumayer, 17, near Fritzl's workplace in 1966 and the disappearance of Julia Kuehrer, 16, near his home in 2006.
The investigation also includes sex worker Gabriele Superkova, 20, was murdered and dumped in a lake near where Fritzl was holidaying in 2007.
Austrian Incest Victim in Love
posted: 3 HOURS 34 MINUTES AGO(June 9) -
Elisabeth Fritzl, the Austrian woman who was held captive in a cellar for decades by her rapist father, has dropped out of psychiatric therapy after falling in love with her bodyguard, Britain's Daily Mail reports.
Elisabeth Fritzl, above in an undated photo, is ending her psychiatric therapy because of the progress she's made with the help of her boyfriend, according to Britain's Daily Mail on Tuesday. The Austrian woman was imprisoned in her family's cellar for 24 years by her father, Josef Fritzl, who is pictured above.
The 43-year-old, who bore seven children (one of whom died as an infant) by Josef Fritzl during her confinement, fell for the man, known only as Thomas W., after he was assigned to protect her and her kids after she was freed in April 2008.
Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, Elisabeth decided to end her long therapy sessions because of the progress she's made with the help of the boyfriend, who now lives with her and the children in Austria. "This is vivid proof of love being the strongest force in the world," one of her doctors told the Daily Mail.
The woman's psyche was shattered after being raped thousands of times by her father over the course of 24 years. Elisabeth, who was 18 when she was imprisoned in the basement of her Amstetten home, has suffered nightmares and flashbacks as a result of the ordeal.
On March 19, Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a secure psychiatric facility for his crimes. He reportedly wants to write a book about his relationship with Elisabeth, with the intention of donating the proceeds to her and her children.
Go to the Daily Mail to read more about Elisabeth's recovery and how some of her kids are coping with life outside of confinement.
Cellar victim Elisabeth Fritzl stops therapy after finding love with bodyguard boyfriend
By Alan Hall
Last updated at 10:09 AM on 09th June 2009
Cellar incest victim Elisabeth Fritzl is no longer having psychiatric therapy because her love for her bodyguard has worked miracles on her shattered psyche.
She fell for the bodyguard, 14 years her junior, after he was assigned to protect her and the six children she bore by her rapist father Josef during 24 years of captivity.
Miss Fritzl, 43, was diagnosed with post traumatic stress resulting in blackouts, nightmares and flashbacks after being freed in April last year.
But she has given up long sessions on the couch, aimed at neutralising the painful memories of the 3,000 rapes she endured during her incarceration at the hands of her father.
Elisabeth Fritzl was held captive for 24 years by her father, Josef, who repeatedly raped her and kept her in a dungeon. But finding love has helped Elisabeth become strong enough to give up her regular therapy sessions.
The bodyguard, known only as Thomas W, has helped her make huge progress. He now lives in Miss Fritzl's house in Austria with all her children, with whom he is also said to have bonded.
One of her psychiatric carers 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.'
Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in March this year.
Thomas is the only consenting relationship Elisabeth has had with a man since her kidnap in 1984.
Elisabeth was just 18 when she was drugged with ether by her convicted-rapist father and imprisoned in the clandestine warren he constructed beneath the family home in Amstetten, two hours from Vienna.
Freed by her father in April last year after her 19-year-old daughter Kerstin fell gravely ill in the cellar, her children are said to have 'bonded well' with Thomas.
Kerstin and her brother Stefan were two of the three cellar children who spent their entire lives underground. Three other children were taken out of the dungeon and raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie.
Both Kerstin, 20, and Stefan, 19, still undergo many hours of therapy each week.
They sleep in rooms where doors are permanently open and are encouraged by their carers to slowly and carefully talk about their experiences in the hope that by mentally revisiting the cellar they can slowly eliminate the traumas they suffered there.
Fritzl, sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes in March this year, has tried to contact his wife and the six children he fathered with her, but they have refused to take his calls.
He still harbours a dream of writing a book about his perverted love for Elisabeth, the proceeds of which he says he will donate to her and his incest children.
He still harbours a dream of writing a book about his perverted love for Elisabeth, the proceeds of which he says he will donate to her and his incest children.
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