Siblings in incest-imprisonment case meet
AMSTETTEN, Austria (AP) - April 29, 2008 Authorities said the daughter, most of her children whom suspect
Josef Fritzl fathered through incest, and Fritzl's wife met each
other Sunday morning at a clinic where they have been getting
psychiatric treatment and counseling.
"It was astonishing how easily it happened - how the mother and
grandmother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger
told reporters Tuesday.
Kepplinger said the family members interacted very naturally -
even though the three children who lived upstairs with the
grandparents had never met their siblings in the windowless cell.
Officials said one of the children who is receiving medical
treatment at another hospital was not part of the gathering.
Word of the reunion came as police announced that DNA tests
confirmed Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving
children he had with his daughter.
Police also said they combed through Fritzl's other properties
but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he
had held his daughter - now 42 - captive since she was 18.
Police said Fritzl confessed Monday to holding the daughter
captive, sexually abusing her, fathering her children and tossing
the body of one child who died in infancy into a furnace.
Officials had said Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if
charged, tried and convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his
alleged offenses under Austrian law.
But prosecutors in Lower Austria said Tuesday they were looking
into the possibility of charging Fritzl with "murder through
failure to act" in connection with the infant death. Murder in
Austria is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Investigators say they believe his wife, with whom he had seven
children, was unaware that the daughter she believed ran away to
join a religious cult in 1984 was living as a prisoner beneath her
feet.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client also was under
psychiatric care and "is really hit by this. He is very serious,
but he is emotionally broken."
But prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was "completely
calm, completely without emotion" when he was formally placed in
pretrial detention Tuesday.
Austria is still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a girl who
was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more
than eight years, and residents of Amstetten were puzzled as to how
the Fritzl case could go undetected for so long.
"How is it possible that no one knew anything for 24 years?"
asked Anita Fabian, a teacher in Amstetten. "This was not possible
without accomplices."
Regarding the apartment building that Fritzl owned and lived in,
the town's authorities authorized the construction of an addition
with a basement in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the
Austria Press Agency. He said inspectors examined the project in
1983 - the year before the young woman went missing - and nothing
looked suspicious.
Police said the surviving children are three boys and three
girls, ranging in age from 5 to 19. Officials said three of the
secret children - aged 19, 18 and 5 - "never saw sunlight" until
they were freed a few days ago.
Police released several photos showing parts of the cramped
basement cell, with a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom.
Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently
kept them from escaping.
Three of the children lived with the grandparents. Fritzl and
his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that
they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, told APA that Fritzl
apparently chose which of the children would live upstairs with him
and his wife according to whether they were "crybabies."
Officials said social workers made regular visits to the family
but found nothing out of the ordinary, reporting that Fritzl's wife
was attentive, the three children were doing well in school and
clubs, and that all of them played musical instruments.
The case unfolded after the eldest of the secret children, a
19-year-old woman, was found unconscious and gravely ill on April
19 in the building and was taken to a hospital.
Hospital officials said the 19-year-old remained in critical
condition Tuesday because of the effects of lack of oxygen, and was
undergoing dialysis.
Amstetten Mayor Herbert Katzengrueber told the AP in an
interview that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the
town had honored the suspect and his wife in 2006 for their 50th
wedding anniversary.
Katzengrueber said he was at a loss to explain how such an
atrocity could happen.
"No one can really explain it," he said. "I am appalled and
saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown. ... These
have been awful and sad days."
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Associated Press writers George Jahn and Bradley S. Klapper
contributed to this report. William J. Kole reported from Vienna.