If you haven’t heard about Josef Fritzl as I’m assuming most of us have, here’s the quick, (skip it if you already know) lowdown. It’s fucking bizarre and getting weirder with each day.
Josef Fritzl, 73, built a sound proofed living area with an electronically sealed door 24 years ago to properly seal away his kidnapped daughter Elisabeth who was around 18. He told his wife she had run away indefinitely. A letter in her handwriting validated the lie.
Over the course of 24 years seven children were born. Three of the fruits of incest are raised upstairs as notes written in Elisabeth’s handwriting arrive with the infants who grow up thinking their unwanting parents abandoned. One pregnancy yielded twins but only one of them survived. Fritzl says he disposed of the tiny body in a furnace.
Seven kids later the oldest daughter Kerstin lapses into a coma. Elisabeth’s days of pleading pay off and Fritzl decides to play his Kid on the Doorstep card. This note says she is unable and unwilling to care for her daughter.
At the hospital the doctors can’t rouse Kerstin. They are fed the same story about Elisabeth’s disappearance. The hospital contacts the news and a message goes out asking for Elisabeth to PLEASE contact the hospital as they need more information to help her.
Elisabeth had a TV in her chamber (see, Fritzl wasn’t a TOTAL monster—she could watch TV!) and saw the message. She convinced her capture/rapist/father if he let her out she would answer their questions and stick to the story about the cult—which makes me mad as I hope to start my own cult soon and I do NOT appreciate Fritzl furthering their defaming. I’ll let you guys know when you can apply.
As soon as she was alone, she confessed it all to the police.
End of low down.
If a writer friend had pitched this as a story of fiction to me I think I would have replied with something like, “C’mon, what the fucking fuck, that’s a little too far fetched!”
News like this is such a slap in the face it’s almost too much to wrap one’s mind around. There’s almost too much to consider. I’ve tried to though.
Imagine growing up in cellar room. Everyday, the same electrically powered lights to see you through the day. You’ve been born into a prison for committing a crime of fate. You’re a living byproduct of the choices of a cold, ugly man. You’ve never seen the sun. You’ve never run further than the length of a hallway. You eat what he brings you.
Imagine at eighteen your father who has already abused you lures you into the cellar, drugs and binds you. Imagine you’re pregnant and are going to give birth in your prison, assisted only by the man who captured you. As your father ages he tells you if anything happens to him, poisonous gas will fill the chamber.
Imagine trying pleading for the life of your oldest daughter who you’ve raised in the chamber for the last nineteen years goes into a coma and it takes days to convince him to take her to the hospital but only after you’ve penned a note saying your are unable and unwilling to take care of Kerstin. The same bittersweet note you’ve written to free three of your surviving children.
I mentioned the case gets stranger with each passing day. Apparently Fritzl rented out a room to a man for twelve years—all he knew about the cellar Fritzl disappeared into is that if he or anyone renting a room, it was grounds for immediate eviction.
There’s been no comment from Mrs. Fritzl yet. One hopes an intense naïveness and overly trusting nature clouded her vision and she couldn’t really see what was going on. I’m trying to fight my own cynical nature until she comments and explains what happened.
Which I think is what most of us are thinking—how could something like this happen?
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4 comments:
GTA IV
I hope that was an attempt at a tasteless joke.
How has someone not broken into the cell he's in yet and castrated him with a melon baller?
Nah Phil, it's in reference to the new game out that is eating up much of the available free time people use to read/ comment on blogs, forums, etc.
I couldn't believe that this could go on as long as it did. I find it a bit unbelievable that no one knew about this at all. You did some good research here, I hadn't heard about some of these facts you brought up in the story (and I tried to read up as much as I could).
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