An Austrian man who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children after raping her has written a book from prison, saying he hopes one day to be reconciled with his family.
Josef Fritzl, 88 – who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 for murder, enslavement, rape and incest – co-authored the book with his lawyer, Astrid Wagner.
His daughter Elisabeth Fritzl disappeared in 1984 at the age of 18. She was not found until 26 April 2008 when she was discovered in a secret cellar her father had built beneath the family home in Amstetten, Austria, and which she had inadvertently helped him to construct.
In an interview, Wagner said she had been approached by Fritzl, asking her to help him publish his memoirs and become his lawyer. “I agreed. He then sent me the manuscript and I edited it. Since then I’ve been his lawyer,” she told the tabloid Bild.
She said she believed Fritzl, like many criminals, “has failed to recognise the dimension of his crime. They need to try to get to grips with their guilt.”
Wagner said she understood his book as his way of “explaining why he went astray to such an extent”.
In the book, titled The Abysses of Josef F, the prisoner said he could not understand why his wife, Rosemarie, had broken off all contact with him.
In an interview this week with the Sun, Fritzl said he hoped to see his family again. “I definitely believe that I am going to see them again one day,” he said. “I do understand people who want me to die in jail. But I want to experience freedom one day..”
Fritzl is being held in Stein, a high-security psychiatric prison in Krems on the River Danube. In theory he could be released after 15 years, although this was highly unlikely, Wagner said.
