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her mother.
Ulrike married a man named Pramesberger and became a teacher. She moved to Bad Goisern in the foothills of the Alps, some 65 miles from Amstetten, to an impressive chalet-style property set in extensive grounds. Gabriele lives with her partner and child near Amstetten in a small chalet. Only Josef Jnr, Gabriele’s twin brother, continued to live in the family home, although he is now in his late thirties. Very much under his father’s thrall, he remained a virtual slave.
‘One son wasn’t allowed to leave,’ said Polzer, ‘just like Elisabeth. He is very slow and has a few problems and difficulties. Josef kept him, using this son as his slave and house-boy. I believe it was Josef’s youngest son. He had to wait on his father hand and foot, and skivvy for him.’
Christine described how Fritzl expected his wife to play a subservient role from the start of their married life. ‘When Rosemarie married Sepp she was 17, and had no professional qualifications, so she was always dependent on him – and for 51 years he exploited that,’ she said.
Rosemarie was poorly educated and had trained as a kitchen help. Fritzl’s pride in his own intelligence and resourcefulness prevented him from taking his wife seriously, Christine said. He was completely in control in their marriage.
‘Listen, if I myself was scared of him at a family party, and I did not feel confident to say anything in any form that could possibly offend him,’ she said, ‘then you can imagine how it must have been for a woman that spent so many years with him. He was a tyrant. What he said was good and the others had to shut up. He was a despot and I hated him.’
Asked what would have happened had Rosemarie challenged Fritzl, Christine said, ‘We don’t know what he would have done to her. Maybe he would have slapped her.’
It never happened. Fritzl had intimidated her far too much for it to come to that. He frequently mocked his wife, put her down and took a sadistic delight in humiliating her in public. ‘He was relaxed and sociable with everyone in the family apart from Rosi,’ said Christine. ‘He used to tell her off in front of the others. The worst things were his crude, dirty jokes, which he used to laugh loudly about. This was embarrassing for everyone, because we all knew they hadn’t had sex with each other for years.’
Rosemarie secretly confided this to friends, but Fritzl was quite open about it. ‘He would always say, “My wife is much too fat for me,”’ said Christine. It was a comment he made regularly to others, often within Rosemarie’s earshot.
She also said the narcissistic Fritzl spent a fortune on a hair transplant after she said he was bald. ‘Josef would be spiteful about my weight, but I would say, “Better to be chubby than bald,”’ Christine said. ‘He is so vain he went to Vienna for a hair transplant.’
The most difficult time for the family came in 1967, when Fritzl was convicted of rape and went to prison for 18 months. Christine is 12 years younger than her sister, and was young and impressionable at the time. ‘I was 16 when he was locked up for rape and I found that crime truly disgusting – all the more so seeing as he already had four children with my sister,’ she said. ‘I have always hated him. He was born a criminal and will die a criminal.’ She could not understand how her sister could take him back.
Despite his protestations of love for Rosemarie, Christine said that Fritzl showed no gratitude for his wife’s tolerance and understanding. Prison had not chastened him and his conviction taught him no humility. Instead, he began to batter and brutalise his family. Rosemarie and their seven children were subjected to regular vicious beatings as he unleashed a relentless reign of terror against his cowering victims. According to a friend, Rosemarie was so desperate that she plotted to flee the monster with her two boys and five girls at least 20 times, but she told her friend that she feared, ‘Josef will hunt us down and drag us back’.
Details of the harrowing home life of Rosemarie and the children were provided by Elfriede Hoera, now 69, who became close to Rosemarie after she and her husband Paul met the Fritzls on a camping trip in 1973. Elfriede said Rosemarie lived in total fear of her husband, whose ‘father was a Nazi stormtrooper who died fighting for Adolf Hitler’. Elfriede said her best friend had told her, ‘We must escape – he has hit me many times and beats the children. He slaps me hard in the face if I don’t do what he wants and he makes the children cry. I can’t stand it any longer – I want to run away from him.’
Fritzl was still working at the time so there was some respite. ‘I am always happy when he is out of the house,’ Rosemarie confided, but she dreaded his return. ‘That swine beats me up – and the children,’ she said. ‘All the time he treats us like rubbish. I really hate the bastard. My marriage is made up of quarrels and arguments. We haven’t had sex for a very long time – though I’m very happy when he doesn’t touch me.’
It seemed to Elfriede that Rosemary had resigned herself to her fate. ‘I must stay for the sake of my children,’ she said. ‘Josef will find us if we all run away.’
Elfriede knew Rosemarie for many years and was in a position to assess how she and the children suffered. ‘Fritzl was a tyrant who terrorised his family,’ she said. ‘He bossed them around and brutalised them like an army officer. I saw him beating his children and Rosemarie told me how he beat her many, many times – too many times for me to remember.’
Elfriede said she also had regular talks with Fritzl’s daughter Elisabeth when, as a teenager, she spent three years working as a kitchen helper at a guesthouse they owned. Although Fritzl said Elisabeth was his favourite, this appeared to be belied by his brutal treatment of her. Elfriede recalled, ‘Josef did not like Elisabeth at all and she was a very shy, sad child – not happy at all. I never saw her laugh once and she seemed somehow disturbed.’
But Elfriede failed to find out what the root of the problem was. ‘I tried to get close to her but she never confided in me what was happening to her,’ she said. ‘I once asked her why she was so sad and she just said, “Papa is so dominant and strict.”’
It appeared to Elfriede that Fritzl only liked three of his children – his daughters Gabriele and Ulrike, and his son Josef. The other four – Rosemarie Jr, Doris, Harald and Elisabeth – routinely suffered the full fury of his hate-fuelled rages. ‘Josef was very cruel to them,’ Elfriede said. ‘Rosemarie told me it was common for him to attack them.’
Elfriede witnessed this for herself. ‘When I saw Josef hit his children with his open hand across the face they always burst out in tears,’ she said. ‘I felt so sorry for Rosemarie and her family.’
One day she saw Fritzl drag his daughter Rosemarie from a caravan by the hair before slapping the weeping youngster across the face for disobeying him. There was nothing discreet about his abuse. Elfriede told how she had witnessed Fritzl openly lash out at his children in public outside their home.
‘Josef was driving down the road one night and saw the kids running around,’ she recalled. ‘He stopped the car and got out in the middle of the street and started beating them. It was awful – I heard the screams.’ Elisabeth was also subject to these assaults and had bruises all over her body.
Elfriede, who now lives in Munich, across the border in Germany, said she often asked Rosemarie why Fritzl doted on some of his children while appearing to loathe the others. ‘Rosemarie said she did not know,’ Elfriede recalled. ‘But she once told me, “Ulrike is Josef’s favourite – she is the only one to answer him back.” He seemed to respect that.’
Elfriede even begged Rosemarie to take the kids and run away from the brute who had turned their home into a living hell.
‘I tried to convince her to go but she was helpless,’ she said. ‘She told me she wanted to leave Fritzl – but she knew she could not escape with all seven of her children. She knew Fritzl would hunt them down and drag them back. She stayed in the marriage because of the kids. Many times she told me how she was afraid to stand up to him for fear of being beaten up. And she feared for the safety of the youngsters because he beat them so brutally.’
Mother-of-two Elfriede lost touch