Horror dad's double life probed

2008-05-01 09:18

Amstetten - Josef Fritzl's double life as reputable citizen and "horror father" of seven children with his own daughter has sparked further investigations as police look into whether he was also responsible for an unsolved murder two decades ago.

The Fritzl family, meanwhile, continued on its slow road to recovery with more supervised meetings involving the six children of Elisabeth, who was confined to a dingy dungeon for 24 years by her father.

Investigations remained focused on the crime attributed to the suspect by his own confession and DNA testing - the confinement of his daughter for 24 years to a basement dungeon where she raised six children he sired, after one died in infancy.

Other murder

But Alois Lissl, police chief of Upper Austria province, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that, even though no evidence had surfaced so far, investigators have widened their probe into an unsolved murder 22 years ago to include the incest suspect because he could have been in the area at the "time and place" of the killing.

The bound body of Martina Posch was found on a shore of the Upper Austrian lake of Mondsee on November 12 1986. The wife of the incest suspect owned part of an inn and camping ground on the other side of the lake at that time.

"We have found no sign" of a concrete link up to now, Lissl said in a telephone interview. Still, he said, the incest suspect would be asked for an alibi because the property owned by his wife could mean he was in the area when Posch was killed.

Authorities acknowledged, however, that many question marks remained about Fritzl's life. His childhood is especially fuzzy.

"I don't even know who his parents were," said police Colonel Franz Polzer, chief investigator.

A Franz Fritzl is listed on a war dead memorial in the town of Amstetten, about 120km west of Vienna. He apparently died in World War II between 1939 and 1945, but the city's government refused to say if it was Josef's father or even if they knew.

Authorities said Fritzl has made a complete profile even more difficult by refusing to undergo more questioning.

Terrorised

Police also refused to comment on reports that Fritzl had a police record for other crimes - which had been erased from files under Austrian statutes of limitation. "I can neither confirm nor deny," Polzer said, but added that police and justice authorities would thoroughly examine Fritzl's past.

Hospital personnel in Lower Austria, meanwhile, fought to save the life of the young woman whose hospitalisation triggered the discovery that her family had been imprisoned and terrorised for decades.

Kerstin Fritzl's condition was critical but stable, authorities said. The 19-year-old is one of seven children Josef Fritzl has confessed to have fathered with his daughter Elisabeth.

Kerstin, who is in an induced coma and on a respirator, is undergoing dialysis because of the effects of lack of oxygen. She was brought to the hospital unconscious and later suffered seizures. The fate of her family came to light after doctors, mystified by her ailment, publicly appealed for her mother to come forward because they needed her medical history.

Still, the other dungeon children appeared to be doing relatively well.

Berthold Kepplinger, director of the clinic where most of the victims are recovering from their ordeal, said the family members were "talking a lot" with each other and that they even celebrated an impromptu birthday party on Tuesday for one of the kids.

No accomplices

"The family is doing well under the circumstances," Kepplinger said, considering they had to get accustomed to everyday conditions for others, such as daylight.

The youngest, five-year-old Felix, was "very affectionate" and doesn't stray from his mother's side, he said.

Elisabeth and her mother, who cared for the three children father Josef brought into his own apartment, were also "getting along very well," said Kepplinger. He said staff was trying to create the conditions for "the best possible start into a new life."

Leopold Etz, chief of homicide investigations for Lower Austria province, said authorities were confident that Fritzl acted alone.

"I think we can rule out accomplices," Etz told the AP.

He said DNA tests confirmed that no other man entered the soundproof cellar rooms Fritzl made into a prison below his home. On Tuesday, tests confirmed Fritzl as the biological father of his daughter's six surviving children. Police say Fritzl confessed to incinerating the body of the seventh, who died in infancy.

Fritzl led his wife to believe that Elisabeth had run away to join a religious cult when she disappeared, and authorities say there was no evidence the suspect's wife, Rosemarie, knew what was going on or was involved.

Elisabeth "never said that her mother was in the cellar," Etz said.

The father faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offences. However, prosecutors said Tuesday they were investigating whether he can be charged with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the infant's death. That is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Polzer said one detail Fritzl had divulged - that the heavy steel door shutting the basement dungeon could be opened from the inside if he was away for a protracted period - was being checked.

- AP