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UPDATE:Josef Fritzl - transferred yesterday from police custody in Amstetten to a court in nearby St Poelten

by infomatique | April 27, 2008 at 06:52 pm | 21387 views | add comment

UPDATE: TUESDAY

A 73-year-old Austrian man who has admitted locking up his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children is due to appear before a magistrates court later today.

Josef Fritzl was transferred yesterday from police custody in Amstetten to a court in nearby St Poelten where he is to appear before a custodial judge.

The judge can rule within 14 days whether to extend the custody.

Mr Fritzl confessed yesterday to imprisoning his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth in an underground dungeon in the family home in Amstetten, 100km west of Vienna.

He still faces several days of questioning and police were expected to continue searching the cellar today.

Police said they want to know how Mr Fritzl fed his daughter and three of her children also held captive, how the babies were born and cared for in the windowless dungeon, and how he could have incarcerated his victims for so long without his wife knowing.

UPDATE: MONDAY

A 73-year-old Austrian man has confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children.

Officers are still searching the family house in Amstetten, east Austria, where the woman, Elisabeth Fritzl, and her children were allegedly held prisoner by her father, Josef, in three cramped underground rooms.

Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria confirmed that Josef Fritzl made the confession this morning.

Police said Ms Fritzl had told them Josef had lured her into the basement of the block where the family lived in Amstetten in 1984, and drugged and handcuffed her before locking her up.

Three of her children were locked up since birth in the basement, along with their mother, and had never seen sunlight or received any education, police said.

Authorities are still trying to piece together details of the case, which is reminiscent of that of Austrian Natascha Kampusch who spent eight years locked up in a windowless cell before escaping in August 2006.

Police said Josef, an electrical engineering technician by training, had told investigators how to enter the basement prison through a small hidden door, operated by a secret code which only he knew.

Josef's wife Rosemarie had been unaware of what happened to her daughter and it was assumed Elisabeth had disappeared voluntarily when her parents received a letter from her saying they should not search for her.

Austrian police have arrested a 73-year-old man accused of locking up his daughter in his cellar for 24 years, and fathering seven children with her.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, has accused her father, Josef, of 'massive crimes'. DNA tests are being conducted on Ms Fritzl and six surviving children.

Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her father put her to sleep with an anaesthetic on 28 August 1984, handcuffing her in a locked basement.

Officially, she was declared a missing person, with Interpol opening an investigation. Local authorities concluded she had been seized by a religious cult.

Ms Fritzl told police that she spent years imprisoned in an underground chamber beneath the family home near the eastern town of Amstetten.

She said she was 'regularly abused' by her father and their incestuous relationship produced seven children.

All the children appear to have been born in the basement. Investigators said one child, a twin, died shortly after birth. Police said the body was subsequently burned.

Three boys and three girls, now aged between five and 20, survived. Josef Fritzl legally adopted two boys and one girl.

Mr Fritzl is said to have told his wife, Rosemarie, and local authorities that three babies had been left by Elisabeth on their doorstep, in different years.

Each delivery was accompanied by a letter purportedly signed by Elisabeth Fritzl, saying she could not support the child because she already had others to care for.

The three adopted children, living with the man who was both their father and their grandfather, went to school as normal, seemingly unaware that their mother and three other siblings (a girl of 19, and boys of 18 and five) were trapped underground.

Elisabeth Fritzl and five of her children are now in hospital. All are being treated by a team of psychologists. Reports said the mother was physically frail and badly disturbed by her ordeal.

Neither neighbours nor social services appear to have had the slightest inkling that the woman and three of her children were imprisoned in their family home.

Police said the case only came to light after one of the girls, 19-year-old Kerstin, was admitted to hospital in a critical condition in mid-April.

Doctors stepped up efforts to find the mother, looking for background medical information, and Josef Fritzl brought his secret offspring into the family home.

He is said to have told his wife they suddenly reappeared.

Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her mother knew nothing about the sexual abuse she had endured since the age of 11, some seven years before she was locked away.

Authorities found Elisabeth Fritzl and the three underground children yesterday evening.

Mr Fritzl gave police the security access codes to the basement this evening.

Police found several rooms 170 centimetres high, equipped with water and a television.