Author(s): Stefanie Marsh

True Crime

The inside account of the Fritzl case - Josef Fritzl's horrific incarceration of his daughter in an airless dungeon for 24 years, and the seven children he fathered with her. By the time Elisabeth Fritzl was 11 years old, her father had singled her out for special attention. When she was 12, Fritzl obtained planning permission to build a cellar, which he worked on for five years. By the time Elisabeth was 17, the cellar was ready, but Fritzl feared that a missing minor would attract attention. He waited. Two years later, he ambushed Elisabeth, drugged her, and dragged her down to the cellar. She was to be imprisoned underground for 24 years. Tied up like a dog, she was raped frequently by Fritzl. She bore him seven children in the cellar - six survived. Lisa, Monika and Alexander were taken 'upstairs' to live with their grandmother, believed to have been left on the doorstep. Kerstin, Stefan and Felix were never to see daylight, trapped with their mother in the 5-room cellar, with only a television and radio to connect them to the rest of the world.Stefanie Marsh and Bojan Pancevski were the first English-speaking reporters to break the case and were there as the police uncovered the dungeon and discovered exactly how Josef had kept secret his double life for so long.