15 January 2024 , 10:06
726
0
Depraved monster Josef Fritzl could soon be released from prison after it was ruled he was no longer a danger to the public.
Now, 88, Fritzl was jailed in March 2009 after a court heard how he kept his daughter Elisabeth locked in the cellar of the family home in Amstetten in Lower Austria State as his sex slave for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.
Under the terms of his sentence, Fritzl will be eligible for parole this year and a recent psychiatric report into the state of his mind said he is no longer dangerous. The report says he needs a walking frame after a number of falls while behind bars and they says he could not pose a serious threat to either his old or new potential victims.
Fritzl's bid for freedom in June 2022 was dashed when Austrian High Court judges blocked his parole appeal. The court ruled that Fritzl must stay in the high-security prison after judges reversed plans to move him to a softer jail. Austria's Higher Regional Court in Vienna reversed a decision taken in April 2022 that would have seen Fritzl being moved to a regular prison. Instead, the rapist - who allegedly suffers from dementia - would serve more time in the high-security prison for mentally ill criminals.
Fritzl was jailed in 2009 (Getty Images)Heidi Kastner, one of Austria's leading forensic psychiatric experts from Linz University, spent a year preparing her study of Fritzl and said that her country's most notorious prisoner no longer poses any danger, and that there is no longer any risk of him carrying out any criminal activity. She believes he could be transferred through the normal prison system at the Krems-Stein jail, as part of a first step towards being released.
Sherlock Holmes Museum boss wins fight to evict brother from home in 10-year row
Fritzl's lawyer Astrid Wagner told Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung: "I am already in the process of obtaining a conditional discharge for him. If the application is approved - which I assume will be the case - I would like to ensure that he gets a place in a home for frail people.
It was April 2008 when Fritzl's crimes were first discovered after he took one of the children born to his daughter to hospital due to a life-threatening illness. Of the seven children born from the repeated abuse of his daughter, three remained in captivity with their mother. However, one died shortly after birth.
The others were brought up by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie after he claimed they had appeared on their doorstep. Most people watching the awful story in the media wondered how Elisabeth, who was locked up from the age of 18 to 42, would ever managed to put the pieces of her life back together.
A photo of Elisabeth from the early 80s (Ian Vogler)But just as she managed to survive against the odds - keeping her sanity and caring for her children in horrific circumstances - she also surprised many by overcoming her ordeal and finding happiness. Elisabeth was given a new name following the trial, with strict laws to prevent her identity being revealed.
She now lives with her six surviving children in a brightly-painted house in a tiny hamlet in the Austrian countryside, which also cannot be identified and only referred to by the country’s media as ‘Village X’. The children, now aged between 17 and 31, sleep in rooms with doors permanently open after undergoing weekly therapy sessions to eliminate the traumas they suffered inside the cellar.
In 2009 it was revealed that, just a year after she escaped captivity, Elisabeth found love with Thomas Wagner, a bodyguard with the Austrian firm A&T securities who had been assigned to protect her. Thomas, who is 23 years younger than Elisabeth, moved to live with her and her family.
One of the team of psychiatric carers revealed that the romance has helped her overcome the traumas of her past, leading her to radically scale back the therapy she was undergoing for post-traumatic stress disorders. The psychiatrist said: “This is vivid proof of love being the strongest force in the world.
“With the approval of her doctors she has ceased psychiatric therapies while she gets on with her life – learning to drive, helping her children with their homework, making friends with people in her locality. She lost the best years of her life in that cellar; she is determined that every day remaining to her will be filled with activity.”
Another source close to the medical team that still monitors the family recently added: “It may seem remarkable but they are still together. Thomas has become a big brother to the children.”