Missing girl wanted her toy car

2006-08-24 23:38

Vienna - An Austrian teenager who escaped eight years' captivity in the hands of a man she had to call "master" simply asked for her favourite toy car when she was reunited with her family, her father said on Thursday.

The disappearance of Natascha Kampusch at the age of 10 as she walked to school in 1998 remains one of Austria's most baffling crime mysteries.

Speaking about the moment the family was reunited, Kampusch's father, Ludwig Koch, told the Austrian daily Kurier: "She said: 'Dad, I love you.'

"And the next question was: 'Is my toy car still there?'

"It was Natascha's favourite toy, I never gave it away in all those years."

"I always put out of my mind the thought that she was dead."

He and her half-sister identified the 18-year-old on Wednesday and were joined by her mother on Thursday at the hotel where Kampusch is staying with a policewoman and a psychologist.

Captor kills himself

She escaped on Wednesday while her kidnapper was distracted, police said.

A man police believe to be her captor committed suicide by throwing himself under a train soon afterwards.

"Her health is OK and mentally she also appears to be OK, at least in the eyes of a layman," said police spokesperson Armin Halm.

But her father, who split from her mother before the kidnapping, told the paper Natascha was "emaciated and has a very, very white skin and blotches all over her body", according to quotes released ahead of Friday's edition.

"I don't dare to think about where they come from," he said.

Adolf Brenner, the policeman who questioned her first on Wednesday, told local news agency APA she was forced to call her captor "master" in the first years of her ordeal.

The police spokesperson said it was unclear whether Kampusch had been abused.

Officers were due to interview her later on Thursday once DNA tests confirmed her identity.

Escape

Kampusch escaped from a garden outside the house of the kidnapper, whom police identified as Wolfgang Priklopil, in Strasshof, a hamlet 25km outside the capital, Vienna, and about 10km from her home, police said.

"It seems there was a moment when she was not observed (when) the suspect was busy and she had a chance to escape ..." chief inspector Johan Fruestueck told Reuters Television.

She showed up in another garden nearby and identified herself to a neighbour.

Her captor equipped a 6m² cell beneath the house's garage with running water, toilet, washing facilities, bed, books, radio and occasionally television, said police officials.

Police said they wanted to know details of the relationship between Kampusch and the man, given that she appeared to come down with "Stockholm Syndrome", a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.

Kampusch's captor had recently loosened his security measures, allowing her occasional outings in the village with him.

He was distracted by a phone call, allowing her to flee, investigator Erich Zwettler told Sky Television.

Panicked

"He noticed his victim had escaped, panicked, jumped into his car and drove away fast," Zwettler said.

Priklopil's red sports car was found abandoned in a Vienna parking lot.

Police said it was virtually certain Priklopil was the man who committed suicide while a manhunt was under way.

While the body was mutilated by the train, he had the key to Priklopil's car in his pocket and wore his clothes.

Priklopil, a communications technician, had been questioned by police soon after Kampusch's disappearance - just like hundreds of owners of white vans similar to the one a schoolfriend had seen Kampusch get into on the day she vanished.

The hunt for the teenager had never been dropped.

Sightings had been reported in Hungary, divers searched ponds and police flew over the region with infrared cameras.

- Reuters