Secrets in the Cellar (3 page)

“If You Scream, I Will Kill You!”

By summer 1967, Josef Fritzl was losing control as his insatiable sex drive was making him take more and more risks. He now spent hours hiding in the bushes, spying on women, leading to a rash of complaints to the police about his perverse behavior.

Then on September 4, police say he turned violent, attempting to drag a young woman into the Linz-Ebels woods and rape her. She fought him off, managing to escape. Several weeks later, he struck again, allegedly raping a 20-year-old Linz woman. His terrified victim was “too embarrassed” to go to the police, remaining silent for the next forty years.

Four weeks later on October 6, Josef Fritzl climbed through the kitchen window of another woman’s home after midnight. He took a large knife from a drawer, wrapping it in a dishcloth, before sneaking into the bedroom. Then, at knifepoint, he violently raped a newly married 24-year-old nurse in her bed, while her husband was away, working the night shift.

“I felt the bedclothes being pulled back,” the woman would tell an Austrian newspaper in 2008, still too traumatized to give her real name. “At first I thought it was my husband coming home, but then I felt this knife being pushed against my throat. He pushed it against my neck and said, ‘If you scream, I will kill you.’ Then he raped me. I will never forget those eyes.”

As Josef Fritzl calmly walked out of the bedroom, he threatened to return and kill her if she ever told anyone what had happened.

Three weeks later, Linz police arrested Fritzl for the rape, and under interrogation, he broke down and confessed.

“We traced him by a print from his palm at the scene,” recalled Gerhard Marwan. “He was identified by the victim, a nurse, as well as by a twenty-one-year-old woman who was attacked in Ebelsbergerwald woods, but managed to escape.”

The official police report for the incident read:

On October 24, 1967, the engineer Josef Fritzl, 32, was questioned and arrested, after he managed to enter the bedroom of a flat on the raised ground floor belonging to a 24-year-old married nurse on the night of October 6, 1967, threatening her with a knife and raping her. Already on September 4, 1967, in Linz-Ebels he tried to drag a passing-by 21-year-old woman into the woods and rape her.

The local daily newspaper,
Oberösterreichische Nachrichten
, reported Fritzl’s arrest, in a story headlined “Father of Four Exposed by Police as Vulgar Sex Offender. Came Through the Window—Threatened Woman With Death.”

After his rape arrest, Fritzl was fired from his job at VOEST, and a few months later a Linz court sentenced him to 18 months’ imprisonment.

“I was sixteen when he was locked up,” remembered his sister-in-law Christine. “And I found the crime simply disgusting, not least because he already had four children with my sister. I deeply despised him for that. He was born a criminal and he will die a criminal.”

In 2008, when asked why he had raped the young nurse, Fritzl replied, “I do not know what drove me to do that. I always wanted to be a good husband and a good father.”

During his 18 months’ incarceration, Rosemarie Fritzl stood by her husband, ignoring her family’s pleas to take their four children and walk out on him. The story had been well publicized in the newspapers, and everyone in Amstetten was aware of it. But Rosemarie Fritzl carried on as if nothing had happened, her head held high.

“Everyone makes a mistake,” said Christine. “She tried to hold the family together as well as possible. I think this changed their relationship a little. You can surely imagine that a woman in such a situation would have been utterly broken and shocked over something like this.”

On Josef Fritzl’s release from prison in late 1969, the talented engineer had few problems finding a new job. He was immediately hired by the Amstetten construction company Zehnter Baustoffhandel und Betonwerk, who apparently turned a blind eye to putting a convicted rapist on the payroll.

“My father often said he was an absolute genius,” remembered Sigrid Reisinger, whose late father had hired him and who now runs the company. “He was hired even though he had a record of a sexual nature.”

But other employees at the company, which manufactures construction materials, were less comfortable with the prospect of working alongside a sex offender.

“I didn’t want that,” a former female employee later told a German newspaper, saying she repeatedly warned her children to avoid any contact with him.

Nevertheless, the industrious Josef Fritzl gained a reputation as a brilliant technician, and was on the fast track to promotion. He was soon appointed technical director, overseeing a complicated project to develop machinery for the manufacture of concrete sewage pipes.

The massive pipes were sixteen-and-a-half feet tall, ten feet wide and ten feet deep. The research and development project took Fritzl and his team many months to finish, teaching him invaluable lessons in pouring concrete and construction methods.

“Concrete technology was Fritzl’s specialty,” explained Franz Halder, who spent three months as his project assistant. “He could have built anything.”

At work, Josef Fritzl refused to discuss his private life, keeping to himself. In all the time they spent together, all Halder knew about his boss was that he was married and had a criminal record.

“He did an excellent job,” another employee would later tell the London
Times
, “but there was always something uneasy about him, as it was widely known that he had served time in prison for a sexual offense.”

When Josef Fritzl turned 35 in April 1970, it appeared as though prison had finally taught him to control his obsessive sexual cravings. But that was far from the case. The only lesson he had learned was to be more careful—and to never get caught again.

In 1971, a year after Josef’s release, Rosemarie Fritzl became pregnant again, giving birth to twins, Josef Jr. and Gabrielle. Now a father of six, Josef Fritzl decided his family needed more room, moving into his mother’s large three-level house in the thriving Ybbsstrasse, a main shopping thoroughfare in Amstetten.

When he moved into the house, he told neighbors that Maria Fritzl had died, but he would later claim to have imprisoned her in a top floor bedroom until she finally died in 1980.

“I locked her up in a room at the top of the house,” he reportedly confessed to a psychiatrist. “I then bricked in the window so that she never again saw the light of day.”

Built in 1890, number 40 was a drab gray provincial house, just a few blocks from where he had been raised. It was on a busy main road lined with cafes, with a bakery next door, and a flower store and tattoo parlor across the street. It was also not overlooked by any neighboring homes—something he took into account when purchasing it.

Just a ten-minute walk away was the immaculately groomed town’s main square, with its smart yellow-and-white painted town hall. A large golden spread eagle peered out over the town, dominating the landscape and watching the 23,000 residents.

Josef Fritzl had decided to become an entrepreneur, viewing his mother’s house as a business investment. He first demolished the original house, then built a new one a few yards nearer to the road.

But he was careful to leave the small cellar beneath the old house intact—for he already had ambitious plans to develop it into a private bunker, where he could do what he wanted without any inquiring eyes to see.

It was common knowledge in Amstetten that Fritzl was a convicted sex offender. By nature Austrians mind their own business and respect privacy. However, some nearby residents quietly warned their children to keep away from Ybbsstrasse 40.

“I was only ten at the time,” recalled one former neighbor, “but I remember how we children were afraid to play near [his] house, because of the rumors that he had raped a woman and spent some time in jail for it.”

Soon after his twins were born, Josef Fritzl took a new job for a German company, selling industrial machines all over Austria. He bought a new Mercedes and began dressing immaculately in suits. He was by all accounts a highly persuasive and successful salesman.

His new job also meant being away from his wife and family for several days at a time. He began frequenting many of Lower Austria’s brothels, developing a taste for sadomasochistic sex. But his sexual demands were now so extreme that many prostitutes were too scared to take him as a customer.

Back at home, Josef Fritzl terrorized his family. He ran his new house like military boot camp, insisting his children always call him “sir.” He also imposed strict curfews, demanding they come straight home from school. If they ever disobeyed his edicts, he would beat them with his fist until they were black and blue, just like his mother had done to him.

“He behaved like a drill instructor with his children,” said his sister-in-law Christine. “They had to stop whatever they were doing and stand still when he would enter the room—even if they were in the middle of some game. You could sense their constant fear of punishment.”

And he did not spare his wife Rosemarie from his violent temper; she often feared for her life.

“Josef beat her, and she was petrified of him,” said her friend Anton Klammer. “Rosemarie was happy and normal, but when he was around she used to shrink away.”

Christine said her older sister was totally “dominated and constantly belittled in public” by her husband, never daring to answer him back.

“If she had,” said Christine, “we don’t know what he would have done to her. Maybe he would have slapped her. In any case, he was a tyrant. What he said was good and the others had to shut up.”

In late 1972, Rosemarie, now 33, became pregnant for the seventh and final time. Many in Amstetten had forgotten Josef’s criminal past, now considering him the image of a good Catholic father. They respected his work ethic and dedication to his family, even if he was an old-school disciplinarian. At that time in Austria, the physical punishment of children was well accepted, even thought to be a necessary part of good child rearing.

In 1973, Josef Fritzl branched out into the hospitality business, buying an inn and leasing a nearby campsite on the banks of the scenic Mondsee Lake in Upper Austria. Lying 92 miles west of Amstetten, the breathtakingly beautiful Mondsee (Moon) is one of Austria’s premier tourist resorts.

Each year, thousands of visitors arrive to see the imposing Drachenwand and Schafberg Mountains, towering majestically over the freshwater lake. And no trip there is complete without visiting a nearby church, where the famous
Sound of Music
wedding scene was filmed.

Seven miles long and one mile wide, Mondsee Lake resembles a crescent moon—which is how it got its name.

According to legend, a Bavarian duke was saved from drowning in the lake by the light of a full moon. He later founded the Mondsee monastery as a thank you. In summer the lake’s water is said to be warmer than any other Austrian lake, making it a popular spot for swimming and sailing.

Josef Fritzl, who was a keen fisherman, was also drawn there by the excellent fishing, as the lake is rich with a variety of marine life, including three different types of trout, as well as carp, whitefish and burbot.

He had quit his job as a salesman to devote himself full-time to property development, ordering Rosemarie to run the guest house—which he had christened “Seestern” (Starfish).

But first he worked hard, landscaping the campsite and renovating the guest house to prepare for its first customers. The residents of Unterach, the tiny town by the lake, were most impressed by Josef Fritzl’s professionalism.

“He was an upright gentleman who was never out of line,” Unterach City Council member Helmut Greifeneder later told the German magazine
Stern
. “He wanted strict order, and when he made contracts he made sure every word was perfect.”

Fritzl’s new campsite was laid out immaculately. All the caravans were lined up perfectly in formation, on a manicured lawn with perfectly landscaped flowerbeds.

Businessman Anton Graf, who rented land to Fritzl, said his tenant was a man of his word and totally reliable.

“We had a business relationship,” Graf recalled. “He was correct. If he borrowed a tool and said he would return it two days later, then two days later, it was back. If he gave you his word, you could count on it.”

Every summer, Fritzl remained in Amstetten with the children, while Rosemarie ran the guest house with a skeleton staff. For the next few years, this continued, Rosemarie only too glad to steer clear of her ruthlessly dominating husband, who had announced after the birth of their daughter Doris that year that he had no further use for her sexually, as she had gained weight.

But the father of seven wanted more children, and had already selected a second wife to start a new family with.

Soon after leasing the camping ground, Josef Fritzl became good friends with Paul Hoerer and his girlfriend Andrea Schmitt, a young couple from Munich, Germany, who spent a 1973 camping vacation at Mondsee Lake. Over the next thirty-five years, Hoerer and Schmitt would get to know Fritzl and his family well.

“We spent a lot of time together after that,” said Hoerer. “When we first met Josef, he was a really kind, outgoing and open-minded person who laughed a lot. Josef, Rosemarie, Andrea and I always had so much fun—we laughed all the time.”

The couple would visit the Fritzls’ Amstetten home, meeting Rosemarie and their children numerous times over the years. Paul spent memorable nights with Josef and Rosemarie, dining on the elaborate roof terrace Fritzl had designed and built.

“[He] was a decent, outgoing and, above all, amusing bloke,” said Hoerer. “[His house was] tip-top. White marble everywhere.”

When they entertained guests, Rosemarie always played the part of a happily married wife—but that was far from the truth.

In the early 1970s, she became best friends with Elfriede Hoera, who worked for three summers in the kitchen at the Fritzls’ guest house. Years later, Elfriede would recall how Rosemarie had confided to her that “Fritzl was a tyrant who terrorized his family. He bossed them around and brutalized them like an army officer. She stayed in the marriage because of the kids. Many times she told me that she was afraid to stand up to him, for fear of being beaten up.” She said if she ran away, he would only track her down and make her life hell.