House of Horrors. Nige Cawthorne
was anything but discreet about the building work. On one occasion, he fixed an industrial winch to the roof of the house. The heavy-duty lifting device was installed directly above the entrance to the cellar. Fritzl brought it in to raise massive concrete blocks as he turned the bunker into an unbreachable fortress. It may have also been used to help shift the dungeon’s heavy concrete-filled steel door that could only be opened by an electric motor operated by a remote control.
In 1983, local officials came to inspect his handiwork and gave their approval. Building inspectors checked out the underground bunker and fire safety officers checked the incinerator that was later used to burn his child’s body, metres away from the hidden dungeon. The inspection team pronounced the ventilation shaft safe, gave Fritzl the appropriate stamp and left. They even advanced him State funds towards the construction shelter and later gave him permission to extend the basement and put in running water. In the eyes of the authorities, he was simply a good family man, trying to protect his wife and children in the event of a nuclear attack. This now looks like paranoia, but fear was running high at the time. Given the chilly political climate, nobody gave it a second thought. It is now apparent that Fritzl was actually building a prison where he had planned all along to incarcerate Elisabeth.
Elisabeth left school at 15 and, while her older siblings escaped by marrying, she remained under her father’s constant gaze and was put to work full time at his lakeside guesthouse and campsite.
At the age of 16, Elisabeth ran away. She found work as a waitress at a motorway truck stop and lived in a hostel, but Fritzl caught up with her and brought her back. Elisabeth’s attempts to escape her father were common knowledge, according to Alfred Dubanovsky, who knew her when she was at school. ‘After she vanished, we all talked about it,’ he said. ‘We knew she had run away before and thought she had done it again because she had told someone in our group that she had had enough, couldn’t stand it any more at home and that her father had beat her, and had hurt her. She said she was scared of him.’
Even before her captivity, Elisabeth had spent most of her time indoors, he said, as her father did not let her out. However, as she got older, she began to come out of herself, even though her father tried to prevent it. ‘She was a great girl, but very shy and pretty nervous,’ said Dubanovsky. ‘You needed to know her before she would trust you, but we got on really well. We used to spend a lot of time together, we were in the same class and we were friends. We had even danced together a couple of times. We all used to go the Belami disco at the bottom of her road, but she was rarely allowed out to see us.’
Joseph Leitner, now a waiter who lives in Neustadt near Amstetten, had also heard about the abuse. He attended the Amstetten Institute of Technology with a friend of Elisabeth’s who knew her by the nickname ‘Sissi’. Later, he became a lodger who rented a room from Fritzl, even though he had been warned by a friend about his behaviour before he moved in.
‘I knew Sissi was being raped by her father before she disappeared,’ he said. ‘I had a good friend from school who was really close to Elisabeth. I would say they were best friends; they spent a lot of time together. She confided in me, and she told me what a monster Josef was – and what he had done to Sissi.’
Elisabeth made another attempt to escape, this time with their mutual friend. ‘They came up with a plan to run away together,’ said Leitner. ‘It was in 1983. Elisabeth packed her bags and left the house. She and my friend were 17, and the two went to Linz but also spent some time in Vienna. Josef was furious and eventually found Elisabeth and dragged her home. Sissi was banned from having anything to do with my friend again. Her mother also made sure of that. She banned Elisabeth from seeing her – and watched her carefully to make sure they were kept apart.’
Leitner also knew of Elisabeth’s earlier attempt to flee when she was 16. ‘She could not take it living at home any more and tried to escape,’ he said.
There were also indications around this time that Elisabeth was suicidal. However, the authorities unaccountably took no notice of her plight and aided Fritzl in getting her back. ‘She had taken sleeping pills and went to Vienna,’ said Leitner. ‘But the police found her and they, or her father, brought her back home.’
Again, Leitner and his friend were not surprised when Sissi disappeared for a third time, nor was Leitner surprised that her friend kept quiet about what she knew. ‘When Elisabeth vanished again just a year later, my friend thought she had run off again,’ he said. ‘She never said anything because she was scared. It wasn’t only Elisabeth that was terrified of Fritzl, my friends were, too. They never went to the police because they were too scared of what Fritzl would do. That was why my friend kept quiet for so long.’
Leitner himself was also frightened of Fritzl, but now regrets taking no action. ‘I feared he would take revenge,’ he admitted. ‘I have been tormented by nightmares ever since.’
Others knew of Elisabeth’s distress and her plans to flee the family home. Classmate Susanne Parb, now into her forties, said, ‘Elisabeth used to say, “It would be great if only I could escape. I can’t wait for the day when I’ll be free of him.” When she was 16, she ran away to Vienna but he tracked her down. I wish he had never found her because all this may never have happened. She then got a job in a motorway restaurant and was saving money. Her plan was to leave when she was 18 because then he couldn’t force her to come back home. She had her bag packed and was bracing herself to say goodbye to her mother when she vanished. It made sense that she had run off to a cult because everyone knew she lived in fear of her father.’
The reason she wanted to leave was clear enough. ‘Before she vanished, Elisabeth told me she was beaten very badly at home,’ said Susanne. ‘Her father was clever, though, to make sure he didn’t hit her where anyone could see the bruises and that’s why the teachers didn’t know. But Elisabeth never spoke about the rape. I think she must have been very ashamed.’
There was no love lost between Fritzl and Elisabeth’s friend Susanne. ‘I went to her house a few times to play but never when the father was there,’ she said. ‘He didn’t like me because I asked questions about why Elisabeth could not leave and come to mine for dinner. Soon, he banned me from meeting her. Elisabeth didn’t seem sad at school but was just very quiet. She had a good relationship with her brother Harald and her younger sister Doris.’
Susanne also knew that Elisabeth was not the only one in the family who suffered abuse. ‘After Elisabeth disappeared, I spoke to Harald a few times and when he had been drinking he told me how his father beat him,’ she recalled. ‘He used to say, “I’m very afraid that one day he will kill me.”’
In 1982, Elisabeth spent three weeks in hiding in Brigittenau, Vienna’s 20th district. The police picked her up and returned her to her parents. By making repeated attempts to escape and failing, Elisabeth unwittingly helped to provide her father with the cover story he would later use when he took her down to his basement and kept her imprisoned there. When he said that she had run off again, people naturally believed him; she had a track record. After all, she was a proven runaway, a rascal, a troublesome child. She was just the sort of delinquent who would end up in the hands of some strange sect. In the eyes of the good people of Amstetten, she had finally gone completely off the rails, leaving her parents distraught. She was an ungrateful child. Consequently, no one really cared where she had gone or what had happened to her.
It seems only natural that a teenager who was suffering extreme physical and sexual abuse at home would want to run away, but Fritzl still claims Elisabeth was in the throes of ‘teenage rebellion’ that had to be curbed at all costs. ‘Ever since she entered puberty, Elisabeth stopped doing what she was told; she just did not follow any of my rules any more,’ he said. ‘She would go out all night in local bars, and come back stinking of alcohol and smoke. I tried to rescue her from the swamp and I organised her a trainee job as a waitress.’
He also accused her of ‘promiscuity’. ‘I have always had high regard for decency and uprightness,’ he said. ‘I was growing up in Nazi times, when hard discipline was a very important thing. I belong to an old school of thinking that just does not exist today.’
After