From Hell To Heaven, The Elisabeth Fritzl Story

Josef Fritzl, the father of Elisabeth Fritzl, is calling himself the victim in this current day, true story. I will tell you the story as I know it, and let you decide.

Warning: While I have covered several tragic stories that involved children and read many others, this may be one of the most horrific the world has ever seen. I’ve resolved myself to the fact this will be a long read. I will provide most of the appropriate photographs as thumbnails for easier loading to various computers, each clickable for a larger view.

Josef Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie Fritzl lived in the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten and together had seven children; one of those children, their daughter Elisabeth Fritzl.

Josef Fritzl has a rather dark background:

According to notes found in his prison cell where he currently resides, Josef Fritzl holds the Nazis responsible for fostering his twisted morality. The 73-year-old said that Hitler’s Germany had instilled “control and the respect of authority” in him. He is quoted as saying: “I always put a lot of value on good behaviour and respect.”

Josef Fritzl was born in Amstetten on April 9, 1935, but little is known of his early life. Even his parents’ names, mother Rosa and father Franz Fritzl, have been withheld by Austrian authorities, who say privacy laws prevent them from releasing birth, marriage and death certificates.

Johann Kreitler, director of the high school Fritzl attended from 1947-1951, said Josef Fritzl left school at 16 and later went to a vocational school.

A souvenir photo from a school trip with 4b of the Secondary Sports School, Amstetten in 1951 to the Hellbrunn Residence near Salzburg, Austria shows a 16-year-old Josef Fritzl looking tall and handsome, with dark hair and a serious demeanor. A former classmate who gave his name only as Erich S. recalled Fritzl as a “slightly different” teenager and remembers his unfashionable haircut.

After leaving an HTL technical college with a qualification in electrical engineering, Josef Fritzl started work at a steel company in Linz. In 1967, he served a sentence for raping a  24-year-old nurse .

After his release from prison, an Amstetten construction material firm, Zehetner, employed Josef Fritzl from 1969-1971. Sigrid Reisinger, the daughter of Josef Fritzl’s former employer, currently heads the firm. By this 1969-1971 time period Josef Fritzl already had a criminal record.

From 1973-1996 Josef Fritzl went to work selling machines for a German company in Austria and was often on the road. He purchased an inn and campground in Unterach, about 90 miles west of Amstetten, that his wife Rosemarie Fritzl ran during summers from 1973 to 1996.

As a youngster Josef Fritzl had developed a fixation on his mother Rosa, seeing her as “the best woman in the world” and has said he had to fight his urge to have a sexual relationship with his mother.

“My father was somebody who was a waster, he never took responsibility and was just a loser who always cheated on my mother,” the Sun has quoted Josef Fritzl as saying about Franz Fritzl, Josef’s father.

The site of a Nazi concentration camp where 500 women were caged during World War II is a short walk from Josef Fritzl’s 40 Ybbstrasse in Amstetten, Austria home. In a tree-filled park in Amstettens historic centre, a memorial with the carved image of a Nazi storm trooper bears the name of Franz Fritzl as one of those who fell in Hitlers war. Young Josef Fritzl may have joined the Hitler Youth, although officials say records were burned at the end of the war.

Josef Fritzl began raping his own daughter Elisabeth Fritzl in 1977, when she was eleven years old.

In 1978 Josef Fritzl obtained a grant and it’s thousands of pounds in funding made available by tax payers in the Seventies Cold War era, and built a prison under his home.

This grant from the government was supposed to be used to build nuclear fallout shelters.

On January 28, 1983, Elisabeth Fritzl ran away from home with a friend, escaping to Vienna’s 20th District in hiding, escaping from her father’s wrath and rape. It was not to be; the police located Elisabeth and returned her to her parents.

In 1983 Josef Fritzl was allowed to extend the underground prison into proper quarters with rooms and running water.

This soundproofed prison at 40 Ybbstrasse in Amstetten, Austria was a concealed network of windowless chambers constructed in the basement of the building and ran underneath both the building itself and under the garden outside. The entrance was via a concrete-reenforced metal door that weighed 300 kilograms (661 lbs.), as well as an additional steel door, hidden behind cupboards in the basement controlled by an electronic keyless-entry system.

On August 24, 1984 Josef Fritzl locked his daughter, 18 year-old Elisabeth Fritzl, into this underground prison. On the day following Elisabeth’s disappearance, her mother Rosemarie reported her daughter missing to the authorites. Almost a month later Josef Fritzl handed over a letter to the police dated September 21, 1984, the first of several that Elisabeth would later be forced to write while in captivity. The letter was postmarked at the post office in the town of Braunau am Inn. According to the letter, Elisabeth had had enough of living at home and was staying with a friend. She also warned her parents not to look for her, otherwise she would leave the country. Her father stated to police that she had most likely joined a religious sect.

The Austrian authorities, convinced by Josef Fritzl’s lies, gave up looking for her shortly after Elisabeth Fritzl’s disappearance in 1984.

Elisabeth Fritzl would remain a captive in this underground dungeon, living secretly beneath her mother as well as her two brothers and four sisters for the next 24 years. For the next 24 years she was raped, beaten and held captive by her father, never to see daylight, finish her education, or even have the chance to run away again. Dawn and dusk was replaced by the switching on and switching off of an artificial light. One day was indistinguishable from the day before, and the passing of time was only recognizable by the transient nature of life. Her own hair turning gray, until it was completely white. Josef Fritzl raped his daughter repeatedly for the next 24 years, and on six occasions fathered his own daughters offspring.

Kerstin, now age 19, Stefan, age 18, Lisa, age 16, Monika, age 14, Alexander, age 12 and Felix, now age 5. Alexander had been born with a twin, little Michael. Having the need for medical care that he was denied due to being imprisoned in this dungeon, Michael died at three days old. Josef Fritzl then disposed of the little baby into a furnace.

Lisa, Monika and Alexander were each taken from Elisabeth by Josef to live upstairs with his wife Rosemarie to care for. Each of the three children supposedly had been left on the family’s doorstep as infants, Lisa at nine months in 1993, Monika at ten months in 1994, and Alexander at fifteen months in 1997, each supposedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note Josef had made her write indicating that she was unable to look after them.

At nine months old Lisa arrived at their doorstep in 1993 in a cardboard box. Included with the baby Lisa in the cardboard box and is part of her adoption file today was a letter. “You will probably be shocked to hear from me after all these years, and with a real live surprise, no less,” Elisabeth wrote as her father dictated, from her concrete prison. “I breast-fed her for about 6 1/2 months, and now she drinks her milk from the bottle. She is a good girl, and she eats everything else from the spoon.”

At ten months old baby Monika arrived at their doorstep on December 16, 1994 shortly after midnight. Baby Monika was found in Lisa’s stroller in the vestibule of the Fritzl house. When the telephone rang Rosemarie Fritzl answered, and she was convinced that it was her daughter Elisabeth on the other line, asking her to take care of the child. “I just left her at your door,” the caller said. Josef Fritzl had used a recording of Elisabeth’s voice to make the call. Her mother Rosemarie Fritzl was shocked not only because her daughter seemed to have contacted her again, but that she had done so via telephone… calling the new, unlisted phone number that the Fritzl family had just received. Rosemarie told the Amstetten authorities about the new, unlisted number, and how it was “completely inexplicable”.

When Elisabeth Fritzl herself had been a toddler, Josef Fritzl had been convicted of raping a 24-year-old nurse in 1967 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. However, under current Austrian law, unless the crime carries a life sentence, a conviction must be removed within 15 years, and can be expunged after as little as 5 years. Therefore Josef Fritzl did not have any criminal convictions on record from the time of the first adoption of Elisabeth’s children in 1994. Josef Fritzl received £737 a week for raising Lisa, Monika and Alexander after claiming daughter Elisabeth dumped them on his doorstep.

Kerstin, Stefan and Felix remained below, imprisoned along with their mother. Elisabeth never told her children that they were all imprisoned by their father. She did what she could to create an illusion of normality. She would teach them, read to them, told them fairy stories and sang them lullabies to help them to sleep.

They also had a television.

On April 26, 2008, their whole life would change.

Kerstin Fritzl, then 19 years old, Elisabeth’s oldest child and one of the three children that spent their entire life imprisoned below the Fritzl home, became very ill in April, 2008. On Wednesday, April 16, 2008 Elisabeth gave Kerstin aspirin and cough medicine, however Kerstin became increasingly ill, dizzy, biting her lip and tongue which became bloody from her hourly convulsions. Her illness was unknown and in desperate need of medical care. But no one knew Josef Fritzl’s secret, sick double life, including his wife of 52 years, 69 year-old Rosemarie Fritzl who lived just above them.

Rosemarie Fritzl goes on holiday every year to Italy. She would be leaving the family home for abroad that Saturday so Josef Fritzl waited for her to be away from the home before seeking the much needed medical care for his now deathly ill daughter Kerstin.

Once Josef Fritzl knew Rosemarie was gone and able to continue concealing his secret, he removed Kerstin from the dungeon with the help of Elisabeth. Elisabeth remained in the dungeon with her remaining two children Stefan and Felix while Kerstin was taken by ambulance to the Amstetten clinic on Saturday, April 19, 2008 for medical help.

What Josef Fritzl didn’t know was that Elisabeth Fritzl had concealed a note in Kerstin’s clothing to be found by the medical staff.

Elisabeth’s note read:

“Wednesday, I gave her aspirin and cough medicine for the condition. Thursday, the cough worsened. Friday, the coughing gets even worse. She has been biting her lip as well as her tongue. Please, please help her! Kerstin is really terrified of other people, she was never in a hospital.

If there are any problems please ask my father for help. He is the only person that she knows. Kerstin, please stay strong, until we see each other again! We will come back to you soon!”

When Josef Fritzl arrived at the hospital and discussed Kerstin’s condition with staff, they found aspects of his story to be odd. Josef used his old story of a child being dumped on his doorstep with a note, telling staff Kerstin’s mother was unable and unwilling to look after the 19-year-old and had left her at his house. He told them that he had heard noises in the stairwell and had found a young woman leaning, apathetically, against the wall on the ground floor. She had been carrying a note, in which Elisabeth stated that Kerstin was her daughter and that she urgently needed medical attention. But suspicious staff alerted the police. Dr. Albert Reiter said: “I could not believe that a mother who wrote such a note and seemed so concerned would just vanish. I raised the alarm with the police and we launched a TV appeal for her to get in touch.”

The police launched an investigation. The case of Elisabeth Fritzl, who was still officially classified as “missing,” was reopened. Austrian police issued a nationwide appeal to missing person Elisabeth Fritzl to contact them about her daughter Kerstin, indicating her help was needed in order to save Kerstin. Josef Fritzl repeated his old story about the sect, and then he presented his usual trump card: a “new” letter from his supposedly long-lost daughter. In the letter, dated January 2008, she wrote that her son Felix had been very ill in September, and that he had had epileptic seizures and symptoms of paralysis, but had recovered. Kerstin, the letter read, had also had health problems, including circulatory symptoms and stabbing chest pains. The letter had been postmarked in the town of Kematen an der Krems, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Amstetten. This led the investigators to focus on the wrong town. Naturally, none of the doctors they questioned in the Kematen vicinity had any recollection of a woman named Kerstin Fritzl.

On Monday morning, April 21, 2008, the officer in charge of sects at the St. Pölten diocese, Manfred Wohlfahrt, was called. Manfred Wohlfahrt, who had not been consulted previously regarding Elisabeth’s disappearance these last 24 years, was asked to come to the Amstetten police headquarters. The police showed him Elisabeth’s first letter and the note that Kerstin had been carrying. Did the letters offer any clues as to where the woman who wrote them could be, did the diction and choice of words suggest a sect? Manfred Wohlfahrt’s conclusion indicated the words were assembled into “oddly smooth, constructed and not very authentic” sentences. The letters seemed “dictated,” Manfred Wohlfahrt said.

But back in the underground prison, Elisabeth saw the appeal on television, and successfully persuaded her father Josef to allow her to go to Kerstin at the hospital. As the pair visited the hospital on April 26, 2008, they were confronted by police. They were questioned separately and within just over two hours, 42 year-old Elisabeth Fritzl revealed the past 24 years of her life.

The boys Felix and Stefan thought they were in heaven when they emerged from their hell, having been told by their mother Elisabeth Fritzl that “heaven is up there”. When little five year old Felix saw the moon he pointed to it and asked: “Is that God up there?”

Felix Fritzl clapped his hands with joy when he saw a cow in a field, and is fascinated by the sun and the moon.

Kerstin was critically ill in the hospital after suffering multi-organ failure and remained in a medical induced coma for the next 7 weeks. Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix are all said to be Vitamin D deficient due to lack of sunlight, which has left them with rotten teeth and depleted immune systems. Elisabeth and Stefan walk with a stoop caused by the low ceilings and Elisabeth is said to look at least two decades older than her 42 years. Although Stefan and Felix can speak German, they prefer to communicate with each other with animal-like grunts. Felix also appears to have suffered developmentally, preferring to crawl, although he can walk. Felix is enjoying playing outside but has to wear dark sunglasses to protect his eyes from sunlight. Stefan is able to read and write, but is extremely thin and very pale. For the first few weeks after he came out he only moved very slowly, but his motor functions are improving.

A windowless chamber resembling the dungeon was built inside the Mauer Clinic so the family could  have somewhere familiar to retreat to when the outside world became too much. Elisabeth Fritzl is said to huddle forlornly in it for hours, with little Felix at her side. They may have finally escaped Josef Fritzl’s clutches, but it’s going to be a long time before any of them are truly free.

Kerstin has just recently been withdrawn from the drugs that were keeping her unconscious while her body healed. She had enjoyed listening to the singer Robbie Williams during her long imprisonment under her father’s house in the Austrian town of Amstetten, so the medical staff played his music through headphones for three days while she eased out of her coma. Her mother Elisabeth was kept near to her to be there when she awoke.

When Kerstin opened her eyes, Chief Dr. Albert Reiter smiled at her and said “Hello Kerstin”, to which she replied back “Hello” and smiled.

After Kerstin Fritzl woke up she would stay up late listening to Robbie Williams and told doctors she wants to see him live in concert.

Chief Dr. Albert Reiter said: “She still had the breathing tubes inside her but she was sitting up in bed waving her arms and dancing in bed. One night I had to order her to finally go to sleep at 3am as she kept listening to Robbie Williams CDs. She wants very much to go to a Robbie Williams concert.”

19 year-old Kerstin Fritzl was reunited on June 8, 2008 with her entire family, minus Josef Fritzl. Kerstin, Stefan, age 18, Lisa, age 16, Monika, age 14, Alexander, age 12, Felix, age 5, her mother 42 year-old Elisabeth and her grandmother 69 year-old Rosemarie. All six of Elisabeths’ children as well as her mother Rosemarie are together living in an apartment on the grounds of the Amstetten-Mauer neuropsychiatric clinic, with a team of professionals consisting of a psychiatrist, neurologist, speech therapist and other experts looking after them.

Dr. Albert Reiter said: “It was an extraordinary moment when Kerstin, holding my arm, and I were able to walk through the door into a new home, crossing the threshold into a new life. The entire family is happy that they are all together for the first time.”

Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, want to see their pals they’re missing since being shut in a clinic since Josef Fritzl’s arrest, and their mother Elisabeth, 42, is ready to send them back to class in September. Lisa, Monika and Alexander are keen to see their friends again. They are being as positive as possible, but it’s been very hard for them to adapt to life inside. Despite their joy at being with Elisabeth and the rest of their family, it’s almost like they are now in a prison themselves. They handed their mobile phones in when they first arrived at the clinic and have not spoken to anyone since. It’s still to be decided if they will return to their old schools or go elsewhere. Brothers Stefan, 18, and Felix, 5, and sister Kerstin 19 are learning life skills at the clinic in Amstetten, Austria, after spending their lives underground. Thanks to their mom Elisabeth, Stefan and Kerstin can both read and write. Elisabeth, 42, is desperate to give a normal life to the children she bore Josef Fritzl during the 24 years she was kept in the dungeon.

This story is reminiscent of Natascha Kampusch who ran to freedom in 2006, the Austrian teenager held captive in a cellar in a house in a Vienna suburb for eight years. Also Sabine Dardenne, who was held captive for 80 days, and the three sisters Viktoria, Katharina and Elisabeth who were kept in a dark, filthy house – aged 7, 11 and 13 – in Linz, Austria, for seven years, after their mother had a nervous breakdown. Released in 2005, the three sisters could not stand exposure to natural light and communicated in their own singsong form of German. Even after a year of therapy, one of the sisters was said to be so disturbed that she stood on one foot for long periods staring at the floor.

Elisabeth may talk about her nightmare to the TV station and interviewer who filmed fellow Austrian captive Natascha Kampusch’s story. Elisabeth will be paid nothing by the station but stands to make a fortune in syndication rights. Her children will not be in the TV studio.

According to inmates at the St. Poelten Jail where Josef Fritzl is being held in Austria for his vile crimes, Josef will never live to face trial. Prisoners have placed a bounty on his head. Josef Fritzl was moved to solitary confinement after his cellmate threatened to kill him. The cellmate, a hardened criminal injured in a shoot-out, flew into a rage when he discovered that Josef Fritzl had admitted to kidnapping his daughter and holding her as a sex slave. “Child abusers are hated in Austrian prisons,” said the former bank robber. “I know that if somebody has been blacklisted there is always a way of getting to him even if he is in solitary confinement,” said the 63-year-old. “It can be during walks in the yard or during personal hygiene, or even at dinner which is prepared and served by the inmates.”

Along with more than 5,000 hate letters, Josef Fritzl has also received a lot of fan mail in prison, including over 200 letters from lonely women around the world offering him love and support. Some of the women who write believe he is “good at heart” and misunderstood. It is thought they accept his claims that he locked up Elisabeth below the family home in Amstetten for 24 years only to prevent her from straying and to teach her the “joys of motherhood”.

An inmate released from the Austrian jail where Fritzl is being held said: “He really looks unwell. He’s lost a lot of weight and hasn’t left his cell for fear of being attacked. He is suffering.” The 73-year-old has a heart condition and doctors want to test him for an unspecified blood disease.

The case may take as long as two years to come to court, so cellar monster Josef Fritzl may well cheat justice by dying before his trial.