House of Horrors. Nige Cawthorne
age, the Austrian police would have no further jurisdiction over her; youngsters of 19 upwards could leave home and go where they pleased, and the police would have no authority to pursue them. In the meantime, she had entered a training programme as a waitress at the Rosenberger highway rest stop near Strengberg on the A1 autobahn that ran from Linz to Vienna. She and other girls in the programme slept in a dormitory below the kitchen. After the years of abuse, it must have felt liberating to get away. For the first time, she felt safe from her father. However, Strengberg was little more than ten miles from Amstetten, so he could still keep an eye on her.
Later, she was sent to a catering college, where she lodged. The sexes were strictly segregated there, but she managed to meet an apprentice chef named Andreas Kruzik. The 18-year-old trainee was struck by Elisabeth, whom he described as a ‘pretty, but serious and withdrawn girl’. Twenty-four years later, the 42-year-old divorced father-of-one recalled, ‘My heart jumped into my mouth when we first met and I saw how beautiful she was. I struck up a conversation with her, talking about school and exams and trying to make her laugh. I knew then that I had fallen in love with her.’
It seems that his feelings were reciprocated. ‘I noticed that she was slowly opening up and started to show interest in me,’ he said. ‘It was not so simple to be intimate because such things were not allowed in the school and there were only few opportunities to make out. The girls’ dormitory was a strict taboo and any boy caught there would have been expelled from the school.’
During their busy two months at catering college, they used to go for long walks in the woods and spend time together. ‘We became inseparable,’ said Andreas.
It is plain that Elisabeth had found a soul-mate, someone she could unburden herself to – up to a point, at least. ‘She really confided in me,’ said Andreas. ‘I knew that she was under pressure from her parents and that she ran away from home when she was 14 or 15 and that she was closer to some of her other siblings. There was a trusted sister whom she stayed with often.’
Although they were physically intimate, the couple never had full sex because Elisabeth ‘would suddenly pull back’, Andreas said. ‘She told me that she couldn’t have sex with me. At the time, I thought it was because she didn’t feel ready, but I know now that she must have been traumatised by what her father had done to her.’
By then, she had already been sexually abused by Fritzl for over seven years, according to what she told police, but she was reticent about her home life. ‘She spoke of her parents and her home only once, and said that she had a very strict father,’ Andreas said. ‘She said he got her a waitress apprenticeship at a tank station, but that she would have preferred to become a cosmetician.’ They even talked of running away together and getting married, although Andreas now fears that Fritzl may have learnt of their plans.
The couple finally decided to sleep together at his house but, before they had the chance, Fritzl turned up at the college gates, forced Elisabeth into his car and took her home. ‘That night, she said she wanted to sleep with me and planned to stay at mine, but her father arrived to take her home,’ Andreas said. While Fritzl waited outside, they snatched a passionate farewell. ‘I kissed her goodbye and said I would be down at Amstetten to visit her, but she was worried about her dad. He was waiting in the car and she feared that if he found out about me she would be punished. She was very depressed and worried. She had failed part of the exam – the theory part – but I was cracking jokes and trying to cheer her up. I said, “Don’t worry, you can repeat the exams.” But it seemed like there was something else bothering her.’
Before she left, Elisabeth made Andreas promise to keep their love secret. Under the circumstances, it seemed a reasonable precaution. He knew that her father was a strict disciplinarian, but it would have been impossible for Andreas or anyone else to appreciate the lengths this tyrannical, self-centred beast would go to in order to dominate his own child. ‘She told me her dad was strict but I had no idea he would do anything like this. Who would? We were madly in love and said we would write,’ he said.
Andreas was not allowed to say goodbye to Elisabeth as she climbed into her father’s grey Mercedes because she was banned from talking to boys. He remembers their hurried, secret farewell. ‘As we kissed goodbye, we promised each other to write as often as possible,’ he said. But when he received no reply, he thought she had lost interest in him. ‘Now I realise she was no longer able to answer my letters.’
Elisabeth plainly did not get his letters, as she would have replied. Before she disappeared underground, she was already in correspondence with another male friend who lived Wiener Neustadt, a small town south of Vienna, 70 miles from Amstetten. During her last month of freedom, she wrote three letters to him. The first was dated ‘9 May 1984’ and the recipient was named only as ‘E’. Her letter was clearly a reply to another from him as she said that she was very happy to receive a ‘nice long’ message from him. ‘Basically, I’m doing pretty fine,’ she wrote. ‘Sometimes, I still feel some pain and feel sick. I’m still in contact with …’ When the letter was released to the press, the name had been blanked out, but this was plainly Andreas. ‘He went into the next hospitality class for cooks and waiters. I’ve been dating him since the course. Sometimes there are problems because he is from Enzesfeld-Lindabrunn [just a few miles north of Wiener Neustadt]. This is very far from my place and this is why I’m very sad.’
She confided her plans to leave home. ‘After the exams … I’m moving in with my sister and her boyfriend,’ she wrote. ‘As soon as I’ve moved, I will send you my new address. You could come and visit me with your friends if you want to.’
She also talked about applying for a job in a nearby town and told E, ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me.’
Her letter was also full of delightful, girlish trivia. ‘I had my hair cut – layered on the sides and on the fringe,’ she wrote. ‘At the back, I want to let it grow long.’ Then she asked, ‘Do you have parties when your parents are at home, too? You are a crazy guy.’
E was plainly living a family life completely alien to Elisabeth. He seemed to be a normal, everyday teenager, whose parents tolerated a certain amount of youthful high spirits and disorder – out of love for their children. The idea that such a life was possible must have been a comfort. In E, Elisabeth had clearly found someone she could depend on for friendship and support, someone she did not want to lose contact with.
‘I have a sensitive question I want to ask,’ she wrote. ‘I’d like to know if we’re going to stay friends when you have a girlfriend? Most of the time friendships break up because of that. And it is very important to me. If you can believe it, I deal with boys much better than girls.’
She then explained why it was much easier to unburden herself to him than to her girlfriends at school. ‘Girls are not as trustworthy as boys,’ she wrote. ‘Probably that’s because I was around my brother from when I was a little child. I’m very proud of my brother who is now 21 years old. I know his problems and he knows mine, and I wouldn’t say anything bad about him.’ And she signed off the letter by saying, ‘I hope we see each other soon. Best regards.’
Elisabeth sent the letter with Polaroid snap of herself attached. It shows her wearing a checked blouse, sitting on the steps of her parent’s roof-terrace swimming pool on a balmy summer’s evening in 1984. The sun has caught her bobbed red hair and a smile is starting to emerge on her lips. She wrote at the bottom of the letter, ‘PS: the picture is a little bit dark but I will send you better ones soon, OK?’ And on the back of the picture, she scrawled, ‘Think of me!!! Sissy.’
This is the last known photograph of Elisabeth Fritzl before she disappeared into her long captivity underground. She appears momentarily happy: she has a boyfriend and has found another friend she can rely on, and she now faces the tantalising prospect that she may soon be able to escape the family home and her father’s abusive tyranny.
Her second letter to E, dated 29 May 1984, was written on notepaper decorated with a cartoon girl dancing in a yellow dress. It read, ‘Hello E. It is now already half-past ten and I’m lying in bed. Of course, I went out on Saturday. Can you imagine how hammered I was?