|
Fritzl planned to free daughter
01/05/2008 21:57 - (SA)
Amstetten - A letter Josef Fritzl forced his captive daughter to write late last year indicates he may have been planning to release her from the cellar where she was held captive for more than two decades, police said on Thursday.
The revelation came as authorities released another chilling detail of the "house of horrors": The man who fathered seven children with his daughter repeatedly warned his dungeon prisoners that they would be gassed if they tried to escape.
Police Colonel Franz Polzer said Elisabeth Fritzl wrote to her family, who believed she had fled to a cult, that she wants to come home but "it's not possible yet".
DNA testing on the letter proved that 42-year-old Elisabeth had written the letter, but Polzer said she was forced by her father to do so.
"He may have had plans to end the captivity at some point," Polzer told The Associated Press on Thursday. "It just shows how perfectly he planned everything."
Fritzl's elaborate crime came to the attention of authorities on April 19 when one of Elisabeth's daughters, 19-year-old Kerstin, was admitted to hospital suffering from an illness linked to an unidentified infection.
A spark of humanity
Baffled doctors then appealed on TV for Kerstin's mother to come forward because they needed information from her about her daughter's medical history. Fritzl then allowed Elisabeth to go to hospital, and her story came to light.
"It shows that he must have had a spark of humanity," Polzer said.
Meanwhile, Federal Bureau of Investigations spokesperson Helmut Greiner said investigators were checking to verify whether Fritzl had indeed set up a mechanism that could send gas into the dingy, windowless enclosure as he had claimed during initial police questioning.
Experts are also checking another Fritzl claim that the reinforced door leading to the enclosure had a timer that enabled it to be easily opened if he was gone for an unusually long period of time, said Greiner.
A former tenant of Fritzl's, meanwhile, said he heard occasional suspicious noises from the area of confinement during his 12 years of residency starting in 1995.
Alfred Dubanovsky told the AP that that he occasionally heard "knocking, banging" and what sounded like objects being dropped while living in a ground floor flat of the building owned by Josef Fritzl and above the basement dungeon.
He told the AP that he asked Fritzl whether the noise came from the basement gas heater and Fritzl said "yes".
Police became suspicious
Days before Elisabeth told police of her 24 years in captivity, law enforcement officials had become suspicious and started investigating Fritzl, according to a police statement.
It said police decided to compare DNA samples of the hospitalised Kerstin and of Fritzl, along with family members living with him in late April, about 10 days before revealing the ordeal to the public. Fritzl and Elisabeth were detained April 26 near the hospital where Kerstin was being treated and Elisabeth then told her story to interrogators.
The letter is one part of evidence that authorities are using to piece together Josef Fritzl's double life as reputable citizen and "horror father" who allegedly held his own daughter and three of their children captive.
|
News
