Reversal Of Fortune: “Dungeon Dad” Pleads Guilty To All Charges
Posted March 18, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Josef Fritzl may have hidden his face behind a blue binder for the past two days in an Austrian courtroom, but he couldn’t hide his guilt. And in the end, the 73-year-old standing trial for a series of horrific crimes decided not to contest the accusations against him, pleading guilty to all charges.
The former engineer now agrees his actions led to the death of his son and that he enslaved his daughter, locking her up in a hidden basement dungeon in the town of Amstetten for 24 years and fathering seven children with her, while telling the world she ran away to join a religious cult. Many of the sexual attacks came in front of her kids.
The admission came one day after a lengthy video statement from Elisabeth Fritzl, who was just 18 when her father forced her into captivity and committed repeated acts of incest on her. He admits seeing that tape helped change his mind about his plea.
She gave birth to seven children by him and didn’t see the light of day until a medical emergency last year forced one of those offspring to the hospital – and the now 42-year-old mother emerged from her nearly quarter century captivity.
Fritzl, who had already admitted to the incest, as well as rape and forced imprisonment, calmly walked into court Wednesday morning and reversed his former plea. “I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment,” he told the panel of judges, referring to his “sick behavior.”
The admission of negligent homicide stems from the 1996 death of a three day old infant that the father had with his daughter. When the twin experienced breathing problems, Fritzl refused to call in medical help, which would have revealed his secret. Instead, the baby boy died and his dad burned the body in an incinerator to destroy the evidence.
He took three of the other children into his own home upstairs, telling his wife they were abandoned. But three others were left in the windowless locked dungeon all their lives and had grown up never seeing daylight.
The stunning reversal ends a salacious trial that had the world riveted, and now moves onto the penalty phase. It’s expected Fritzl will receive a life sentence for his crimes.
A psychiatrist told the court the accused suffers from a dangerous personality disorder and would be a threat to society if he were ever set free. The doctor claims the bad dad has an extreme need to control everything and everybody and while he knew what he was doing was wrong, he was able to simply block it out.
But she believes Fritzl should serve his punishment in a psychiatric ward instead of a jail cell.
In the end the father agrees he should have tried to do something to save the ailing infant. “I don’t know why I didn’t help,” he told the judges. “I just overlooked it. I thought the little one would survive.
“I should have recognized that the baby was doing poorly.”
With the admission of guilt, Fritzl seems to have lifted a burden off of himself. For the first time since the trial began on Monday, he didn’t hide his face, allowing cameras to catch their first clear glimpse of him since his arrest in 2008.
The sentence and the final verdict are both expected Thursday, after the defence and prosecutors give their closing statements.
Previous stories:
“I am not a monster”: accused dad
Family reunited for first time
Accused father was ‘tyrant’ at home
Father accused of being ‘incest addict’
Father found fit to stand trial
Dad admits to several crimes, but not murder
Woman held captive for 24 years testifies in court
Photo credit: APA via Getty Images
