January 26, 2024 • 50 mins
Discover a dark, haunting true crime story in the latest episode of the 'Twisted Truth' podcast. Hosts Emily and Alysa delve into the chilling and infamous case of Elisabeth Fritzl, a survivor of incomprehensible abuse at the hands of her own father, Josef Fritzl, for over twenty-four years.
This episode walks listeners through the harrowingly detailed chronology of Elizabeth's life, her grim existence in a secret basement prison, the woeful plight of her children, and disturbing family dynamics rooted in deceit, manipulation, and unthinkable horror.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:14):
Hey y'all, you're listening to Twisted Truth, a true crime podcast brought to you by Emily and Alysa.
Today I will be talking about the horrific case of Elisabeth Fritzl,
a woman who was kidnapped and held captive by her father for 24 years.
This story is very graphic and has several mentions of rape, incest, and abuse.
If this is not something you can handle, we completely understand and encourage
(00:34):
you to skip to the next episode.
So Elisabeth Fritzl was born in 1966, just after a year before her father,
Josef, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for breaking into a woman's home and assaulting her.
He only served 12 months of the sentence, and the incident was eventually taken
away from his record after 15 years.
Did they record what the assault was? Like, did he, like, break in and,
(00:54):
like, beat her, rape her? Like, did they say?
Um, I believe it's because he raped her. Oh, okay.
But that didn't stop Josef from prying on 11-year-old Elisabeth in 1977 when
he reportedly attacked her for the first time.
Josef would continue to inflict sexual abuse on his daughter for many years to come.
After finishing her primary education, Elisabeth enrolled in a waitressing program
(01:15):
with false hopes of escaping her life at home in Amstetten. So where was her mother?
Or is it too soon to ask? Too soon to ask.
Okay, because I'm trying to like put together the pieces. I'm like,
okay, so her father's there.
So her mother didn't know about the, well, any of this. She didn't know about
any of this. But she was present. She was at the house, yeah.
(01:36):
Oh. And Elisabeth had six other siblings, so she was one of seven.
So there was many kids in this house. Oh, wow.
Elisabeth tried to run away from home on two separate occasions,
but was retrieved by authorities each time and brought home to her parents.
After completing her waitressing program, then-18-year-old Elisabeth had a job
prospect about 40 minutes away in the city of Linz.
(01:56):
But that's when her father Josef decided to trap Elisabeth for good.
On August 28, 1984, shortly after Elisabeth turned 18, Josef lured her into
the basement under the pretext of needing help with a door.
Little did she know that Josef had been meticulously transforming the basement into a prison chamber.
He used the door Elisabeth herself had helped install to seal her inside after
rendering her unconscious with an ether-soaked towel.
(02:19):
Sorry, I'm just a little bit in shock right now. That's just crazy to me.
So if she had siblings, they just... She must have had to be the youngest one
because how the fuck would you not know?
I'm going to go get up really quick. Yeah, how the fuck would you not know that
your one sibling has just been captured underneath?
Well, and she's obviously not allowed to leave. Yeah, no, she's not.
(02:40):
So he was able to build the bunker underground because it was during the Cold War.
And everybody was building bunkers. They were like bomb shelters.
No, no, no. So it wasn't abnormal?
It wasn't abnormal. No. So he was building it. Everyone else was building them.
He actually got funding from the city to build this.
Are you fucking kidding me? Because they thought it was a bomb shelter.
So the city funded this prison for her. That's insane.
(03:03):
After Josef trapped Elisabeth in the underground chamber, his actions took a sinister turn.
Concerned for her daughter's well-being, Rosemary filed a missing persons report
hoping to locate Elisabeth.
However, Josef, the perpetrator of the heinous crime, manipulated the situation
to further conceal his dark secrets.
So the mother reported the daughter. Yes. So as soon as they couldn't find her,
her mother reported her missing. But she's living in the same home. She is.
(03:27):
Okay. She has no idea. That's crazy. It's down in the basement.
It's hidden behind a door.
Approximately a month after the missing persons report was filed,
Josef presented the letter to the police that he claimed Elisabeth had written.
In this fabricated letter, Elisabeth falsely stated that she had voluntarily
run away with a friend to join a cult and urged her parents not to search for
her. Are you fucking kidding me?
(03:49):
What the hell? Out of all the things that you could have written, she joined a cult? Yeah.
It was the only thing that I guess he could think of that she wouldn't have
contact with them because you're not allowed to if you're in a cult.
I don't know very much about cults. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you're in a cult,
you're not allowed to talk to the outside people. So...
Josef explained Elisabeth's troubled past, specifically referencing her previous
(04:09):
attempts to run away from home, which is insane because she ran away from home
because he was abusing her.
And when she was reported, did she never mention to the police,
like, yeah, I ran away because he was assaulting me?
No, because they didn't find her. After she was taken that first time.
Oh, you mean when she originally ran away? Yeah. No, she never said anything.
Well, I mean, how could she? Yeah, she was 11.
(04:30):
By portraying her as a troubled teen, he convinced both his
wife and the the authorities that Elisabeth had willingly joined a
religious cult providing a false explanation for her disappearance
consequently Elisabeth's missing persons case
was closed allowing Josef to continue his horrific acts of confinement and abuse
without arousing suspicion from the outside world this period marked the beginning
of the prolonged and deeply disturbing captivity that Elisabeth endured for
(04:53):
the next 24 years could you imagine 18 then you're stuck How old was she when she was finally 24?
She was 42. Oh my God. Yeah, she was 42 years old when they found her. That's crazy.
In the early stages of Elizabeth Fritzl's captivity, Josef Fritzl implemented
a horrifying and dehumanizing regime.
(05:13):
Elizabeth found herself chained to a pole within the underground chamber,
with Josef descending into her confined space only sporadically,
typically to deliver sustenance and subject her to sexual assault.
The initial physical restraint symbolized not only the loss of freedom,
but also the complete control Yosef sought to exert over his daughter.
As time passed, Elizabeth was granted a modicum of additional freedom,
(05:34):
allowing her to use the toilet.
Like, could you imagine? Like, as time passed. So before that,
she wasn't allowed to use the toilet.
So what, would you just bring her a bucket and then just be like,
here. Yeah. That's insane.
And never once was the mother like, let me check out this bunker that.
No, she wasn't allowed. He told her not to go down there. And she was like, whatever.
I'm aware. Okay. But this was also in the 60s. In the 60s. Yeah. Okay.
(05:57):
It still flabbergasts me what time was like back then. Yeah,
where it's, like, the wife are not allowed to, like, talk back to their husbands.
It's, like, you do you. I'm not gonna.
Yeah, and, like, back then, sexual predators weren't even a thing.
No. Like, they were, but nobody knew. Yeah, I mean, like, when people say,
like, they're just so, like, blown away. Like, somebody actually, like, does this?
(06:19):
And it's, like, it's just so crazy. Because now, 2024, we suspect everybody
is a fucking predator. Yeah, no, my kids don't go outside without me. It's, yeah.
What a weird time to be born back then. To ensure that his heinous activities
remained concealed, Yosef gave explicit instructions to his wife,
Rosemary, never to disturb him in the basement.
Rosemary, unaware of the sinister reality beneath their own house,
(06:41):
complied with Yosef's directives. So, yeah. He told her no. She was like, okay.
No, I understand. Could never be me. What's down there? What are you doing? Yeah.
Passage of time unfolded in a nightmarish manner for Elizabeth as days turned
into weeks, then into months, and eventually into years.
So, I'm sorry. I'm curious, though. What was the relationship between Rosemary and Elizabeth?
(07:04):
Was it good? It was normal. And also in the 1960s, especially when you have
so many kids, it's just you have kids.
Yeah. I just didn't know if maybe they had a rocky relationship. No.
She did think that Elizabeth was a troubled teen, but that's because she kept
running away. I mean, yeah. It's fair.
Yeah. And she had no idea what was happening. Okay. Let me rephrase that.
She says she has no idea what happened.
(07:26):
I can't prove otherwise. Passage of time unfolded in a nightmarish manner for
Elizabeth as days turned into weeks, then into months, and eventually into years.
Joseph's psychological manipulation intensified as he threatened Elizabeth with
the prospect of gassing the basement should she attempt to escape or resist his advances.
So he said that he had a chemical trigger that he could flip at any time and
(07:51):
it would gas her in the basement and kill her.
And I'm assuming that this basement or bunker was wired with,
like, cameras where he could constantly keep an eye on her.
It was the 1960s, so I don't think there were cameras. Oh, right.
Okay, I just, it's kind of, like, weird to me that, how would he know?
You know, if she was trying to escape, it would just automatically,
I guess, sensors of some kind? I guess.
(08:14):
Well, he, again, he only said that that wasn't actually there.
He said that it was going to be gas to keep her in line, but that was,
it was, he never actually built it. So maybe like if she somehow got out of
her captured contraption, it would just set off a trigger, like an alarm.
Yeah, let him know or something.
Elizabeth had lost track of the numerous instances of sexual assault perpetrated by her father.
(08:35):
The cumulative effect of enduring such brutality, coupled with a perpetual threat
of violence, had devastating impact on her mental and emotional well-being.
Elizabeth's captivity took an even more disturbing turn with the births of her
children. Following a miscarriage in 1986, Elizabeth gave birth to her first
child, Kirsten, in 1989.
This was followed by the arrivals of Stefan in 1990 and Lisa in 1992.
(08:57):
However, Joseph Fritzl, recognizing the increasingly cramped conditions in the
one-bedroom basement, devised a chilling plan.
So right now, it's literally just one bedroom in the basement with her and her three children.
Oh my god. Yeah. Three? Three children. So she just had them back to back?
Yeah, so the first one was born in 1989, the second in 1990,
(09:19):
and the third in 1992. Wow. Yeah.
How, I guess that bunker must have had to have been like really underground.
It was, and it was soundproof because of the Cold War. It was a bomb shelter, so it was bomb proof.
In an attempt to alleviate the overcrowded space, Joseph took a drastic and heart-wrenching step.
(09:39):
When Lisa was just nine months old, he placed her in a cardboard box and left
her on the Fritzl's doorstep.
With the abandoned infant was a note allegedly written by Elizabeth,
stating that she couldn't care for the child and asking her parents to take care of the baby.
Yosef orchestrated this act to create the illusion that Elizabeth had briefly
returned to entrust her parents with a child she couldn't raise. Wow.
Yeah, so he took one of the kids that he made her add in this bunker and brought it upstairs.
(10:05):
Later, these kids are going to be recalled as the upstairs children,
and the other ones are the downstairs children.
Okay, so they took the youngest child and placed it in a box.
Explaining. Yeah. So they said. And what was the mother's reaction to this?
Sorry. Jump in the head. I just want to know.
She basically just took it as it is and raised the children.
(10:28):
I mean, yeah, this is a respectful mother, you know, thinking not anything of it.
Like, of course, I'll raise my grandchild, but that's still,
to know the backstory, fuck up. Yeah.
And again, she says she doesn't know the backstory.
I'm sorry. I just still can't. I mean, I'll never know, but it's just wild.
This calculated move added another layer of manipulation to the already twisted
(10:51):
dynamics within the Fritzl household.
Elizabeth's captivity took an even darker turn as Yosef continued his assaults,
leading to the birth of four more children.
So a total of seven? Seven children. Wow. Yeah. And she was one of seven children.
So seven born children, one miscarriage. Miscarriage. Okay.
God, so many kids. That's so much to put through your body. Well,
(11:12):
not to mention she never went to the hospital, so she had the birth of them all in that room.
Wow. After the birth of Monica in 1994, Elizabeth pleaded with Yosef for more space in the basement.
Yosef agreed to an enlargement of the underground chamber, but subjected Elizabeth
and her two eldest children to the harrowing task of digging out more soil with
their bare hands to create additional space.
(11:32):
So they dug the rest of this area. So right now, it's one bedroom.
It ends up being like four or five different rooms. He made them dig it out with their bare hands.
How long did that take? me it didn't say how long
would you think i imagine years but i mean
if they have nothing else what do they do with all the dirt then would he
(11:54):
just like have them put it in a bucket yeah the neighbors
aren't like what's he doing with all this yeah i don't know in the midst of
this torment elizabeth gave birth to alexander in 1996 who was a part of a set
of twins sadly one yeah sadly one of the twins did not survive childbirth and
yosef displaying a gruesome and and heartless disposition,
(12:15):
reportedly disposed of the deceased infant's body in the furnace used to heat the house.
Does that circulate through the house? Yeah. So he cremated the child in the
family's furnace, the above family's furnace.
The, like the main house. The main house. Wow. Yeah. And what did that smell?
I imagine. I mean, I have no idea, but I would think you're burning a corpse.
(12:38):
And plastic smells when you burn it, so I imagine. It's fucking crazy.
God, so at this point, 10 kids.
No, they have seven kids. Well, I'm saying that she did. She just now gave birth to one.
No, so these are the ones that were included in those ones. Okay.
Because it just said she gave birth to four more, but now we're getting their names. Mm-hmm.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Monica and Alexander,
(13:00):
as infants, were taken from the basement and introduced to the outside world.
Remarkably, Yosef managed to present them to Rosemary, his wife,
as children seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Yeah.
Okay. And he's just like, more kids. More kids claim to be hers that she's just
dropped off. She can't take care of them, and she's dropped them off.
Astonishingly, Rosemary did not find this sudden introduction of additional
(13:22):
family members suspicious, highlighting
the level of manipulation and deception orchestrated by Yosef.
And he just stumbles upon these each time. Like, it's never Rosemary who's just
like, oh my god, there's more kids at my front door.
Well, maybe. Maybe she is. But he's putting them at the front door,
and he leaves a note. So he probably waits for her to open the door to be the first to discover.
Yeah. Wow. But it sounds like with these ones, she brought them.
(13:47):
He was just like, oh, here's kids.
I don't know how this woman did not have like a million and one questions.
Yeah. Like, where are these coming from?
Where's my. But I guess like. Like, how was his reaction? Just like nonchalant.
Like, hey, honey, we have more kids. I guess our youngest just keeps dropping them off.
Yeah. Or was he like, we need to find this girl. Like, what is she thinking?
Yeah. No. She needs to come home and take care of her kids.
(14:09):
I don't know. So Elizabeth's first two children endured a life confined to the
basement due to their memories of living there with their mother and the abuser
who was both their father and grandfather.
So because they were old enough to remember living in the basement,
they weren't allowed to be part of the upstairs children.
Okay. I mean, that makes sense. But still that horrible. Yeah.
(14:30):
In contrast, Lisa, Monica, and Alexander were fortunate enough to escape the
grim underground existence as they were taken away as infants.
These three children experienced a relatively normal childhood,
attending school and participating in extracurricular activities under the care of their grandmother.
In a disturbing twist, Yosef and Rosemary successfully adopted Lisa and obtained
(14:50):
approval as foster parents for Monica and Alexander.
Astonishingly, when social workers visited the Fritzl household,
nothing raised suspicion. The facade of normalcy carefully contained by Yosef remained intact.
So they had social workers come by and they were like, oh yeah,
yeah, they're adopting these kids that their daughter dropped off.
And that's so weird to me because if the government is going to fund this bunker
(15:11):
because of everything that's going on in the world, wouldn't you consider checking?
Yeah. But I guess they would have no reason because everybody at that time was
building them and they'd have to go check everybody's bunker, I guess.
Well, yeah, but that would make sense. Especially, okay, like maybe not just
like, but if you're dealing with social workers.
Yeah, they should check. But I don't know how that works back in that time.
(15:32):
No, I also don't. To me, that is just weird.
In 2002, Elizabeth gave birth to her sixth child, Felix, who tragically ended
up spending his entire life in the hospital.
Yosef later confessed to investigators that his wife, Rosemarie,
could not take on the responsibility of raising another child.
Obviously, because she has three upstairs right now. Right.
This decision condemned Felix, along with his two older siblings, to a life in captivity.
(15:56):
So, Kirsten, Stefan, and Felix are the three in the basement.
Kirsten, Stefan, and Felix. Yeah, they're the three in the basement.
And Lisa, Monica, and Alexander are the upstairs children.
Living in the basement, Elizabeth and her three children faced a daily existence
shrouded in the harsh artificial light, unable to distinguish between night and day.
Their surroundings were confined and devoid of the basic elements of a normal life.
(16:18):
The basement became both their living space and a prison, with limited access to the outside world.
Elizabeth's children, who remained with her underground, had no knowledge of
what life beyond their confined space was like.
Despite having a television, their exposure to the outside world was mediated
through this electronic window, showing them things they could only dream of experiencing.
So they were able to watch TV and be like, oh, that's the outside.
(16:40):
Could you imagine, though, being
a child and never being outside and just watching it on the TV? God, no.
No. This small connection to the outside served as both a source of curiosity
and a painful reminder of the life they were denied. mind.
For Josef Ritzel's captives, life was marked by isolation, confinement,
and a perpetual lack of freedom.
(17:00):
The basement became a grim and artificial reality, where the captives existed
in a state of perpetual uncertainty, cut off from the outside world.
As time passed and all of Elizabeth's children were born, the basement underwent
some modifications to accommodate their bleak existence.
It now featured two bedrooms, providing a minimal semblance of privacy,
and a padded room where Josef would allegedly take Elizabeth to subject her to of further assault.
(17:22):
Oh, my God. In addition to these dismal living spaces, there was a small bathroom,
a fridge, and hot plates serving as the meager amenities of their confined room.
So, yeah, there was a bedroom for them to sleep in and then a room that he would
take her to assault her in.
Where everybody would sleep in. Or could she take the other kids and use that assault room to sleep?
(17:44):
No, I don't. Or is that strictly just a... I think it's just an assault room.
It was a padded room so no other kids could hear.
Despite the grim circumstances, Elizabeth demonstrated resilience by taking
on the role of an educator for her children.
She taught them to read and write, fostering a semblance of normalcy within
the confines of their prison.
Elizabeth also shared stories from her memories of the outside world,
(18:04):
providing a window into reality the children had never known.
Movie sessions on their television became a shared escape, allowing them to
briefly immerse themselves in a world beyond their confined space. face.
I couldn't even imagine you were outside of this place for 18 years of your
life. So you know everything that goes on outside.
Yeah. I mean, luckily, I don't want to say luckily, but she had 18 years of education.
(18:28):
Yeah. So she could. So she could educate the kids properly.
Had she been like 11 with like a sixth grader level of education,
that probably would have been very difficult.
But at least the kids were sort of looking for, at least they had like an actual
education to kind of... Yeah. Well, as much as they can at 18, yeah.
In stark contrast, Elizabeth's upstairs children lived a seemingly comfortable life with Rosemary.
(18:53):
The facade meticulously maintained by Yosef and Rosemary portrayed Elizabeth
as having left these children as infants on their doorstep, a story accepted
by neighbors and friends.
So they were just like, oh, yeah, your daughter left her children. Cool.
The facade began to crumble when the eldest child from the basement,
Kirsten, grew fatally ill.
This health crisis would eventually become the a catalyst for the revelation
(19:14):
of the unspeakable horrors endured
by Elizabeth and her children in the basement for over two decades.
The Fritzl family's dark secrets were on the verge of exposure,
bringing an end to the prolonged nightmare that had been hidden for too long.
So how old was her oldest child at this point? 19.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. And at 19 years old, you just assumed like, this is my life.
(19:36):
Like, Like, who did they, like, who does they think her father was?
They just knew that was her dad that would just come by? Oh,
yeah, they knew that that was her father. They didn't know that was her dad.
They just thought, oh, our dad. Well, yeah, this is my mom, this is her husband,
this is my dad. Like a normal, quote, normal setting. Yeah. Okay.
(19:56):
On April 19th, 2008, Elizabeth Fritzl managed to persuade her father,
Yosef, to seek medical care for their eldest daughter, Kirsten.
In an act of desperation and determination, Elizabeth concealed a note in Christian's
pocket before she was transported to a local hospital by an ambulance.
The note served as a silent plea for help, alerting hospital workers to the
dire circumstances and providing a glimpse into the unimaginable captivity that
(20:20):
Kirsten and her siblings endured beneath the Fretzel home.
The mysterious note prompted authorities to take action, urging Kirsten's mother
to come forward and provide more information about her daughter's medical history.
So at this point, Yosef is with Kirsten at the hospital. Well,
of course, he's not going to let her out of sight.
Yeah, and Elizabeth is still in the basement. so they
(20:41):
find that note and they're trying to find her mother they're
trying to find elizabeth to be like what's going on what does
it do you were you able to figure out what that note no it doesn't say what
the nuts said we curious though i wonder if it was just like kind of vague or
just like help yeah just help i i don't know uh kirsten who was in critical
condition due to kidney failure oh my god became the subject of local news as
(21:04):
people desperately searched for clues about her her family.
Unbeknownst to the outside world, Elizabeth, combined in the basement,
observed these developments unfold on a television screen, aware that the time
had come to be with her ailing daughter.
So she's watching the news report in the basement of them trying to find the
mother of this girl who's in kidney failure.
And the kidney failure, do they say what's causing that? Because dehydration.
(21:26):
Well, dehydration and she had no access to UV rays, light, the sun.
She was in a basement for her whole 19 years of her life.
See, I'm not educated Wow. Yeah, no, she came to the hospital and she was extremely
pale and she had very bad dental health. Well, yeah, of course, you know.
The note in Kirsten's deteriorating health became the catalyst for an investigation
(21:49):
that would eventually expose the harrowing truth hidden beneath the surface
for more than two decades.
Elizabeth, fueled by a mother's instinct and the urgency of the situation,
faced the prospect of revealing the shocking reality of her captivity to the outside world.
So now she's like, oh, I got to save my daughter.
But that means I'm going to have to tell everybody what's been happening.
Can you imagine having to explain that?
(22:11):
But Joseph? No, Elizabeth. No, no, no.
Father's name? You say? Yosef. Yosef, yes. So he's going to allow her to come
forward and just kind of like say, you know, oh, it's coming up.
Okay, yeah, I'm trying to think about this. I'm like, it's not adding up for me right now.
So in the face of unfolding crisis surrounding Kirsten's critical condition,
(22:31):
Josef Fritzl, ever the manipulator, concocted a plan to divert attention and buy himself more time.
Recognizing that authorities were actively searching for Kirsten's mother,
Elizabeth, he reopened her missing person case.
To further mislead investigators, Josef compelled Elizabeth to forge another
letter, backdating it to January of 2008 and postmarking it from a nearby town.
(22:51):
In this fabricated letter, Yosef reiterated the false claim that Elizabeth had
willingly run away with a religious cult, reinforcing the narrative he had successfully
employed years earlier.
With this new piece of information, Yosef handed the letter to authorities,
diverting their attention to the supposed origin town.
So he's saying, hey, the mother of these children that were dropped off at my
(23:12):
house is in a cult and lives in this town.
Go get her. So he was hoping they would leave him alone long enough for him to come up with a plan.
And that's just insane to me because, one, you have Rosemary,
right, who knows that these three children, who's the third or the fourth random
other child. She's not watching this on the news.
Like, she's not like, wait, there's another one? And where did he get this one?
(23:36):
So what he says in the letter, I know it's kind of in this letter,
is Elizabeth wrote the letter supposedly and said that this daughter Kirsten
was with her, but she became severely ill and they couldn't get medical care for her.
So you take her to the hospital is basically what happened.
I'm sorry, that's just still not- I agree. For me, all of these things that
(23:58):
he's thinking that might just clear the unknown is now just raising more questions for me.
Right now, what he's doing is he's trying to push the investigators away from
him long enough to come up with another plan.
So he's just like, I'm going to relieve pressure on me for right now.
It's going to come back, but I need to think of something in the meantime.
(24:19):
So he's just trying to give himself time. well his time
is stupid because it just it just doesn't make
sense to me and i'm only you know like i'm not
an investigator i don't know but everything that
he's saying just has it has more questions no
i absolutely i'm like what the fuck these are so unjustifiable and so like like
(24:39):
how would how would they not come back and just have more questions for him
immediately not even just to like buy him more time but i would be like this
doesn't make sense like well they They had to go check out the town where this girl was in a cult.
This calculated move allowed Joseph to continue covering his tracks and obscuring
the reality of the crimes he had committed.
The reopening of Elizabeth's missing person case, coupled with the false letters,
(25:01):
served as a smokescreen that temporarily
shielded Joseph from the imminent exposure of his heinous actions.
So, yeah, it was a temporary little fix-it band-aid on the problem.
And Kirsten just went along with the story. Kirsten's unconscious.
Oh, she's unconscious? Yeah, she's in kidney failure. She was taken to the hospital by an ambulance.
He finally brought her to the hospital after she was unconscious because it was so bad.
(25:24):
Oh, my God. So she's just been unconscious since she's been at the hospital?
That's why they can't ask her where her mother is. They have to hope the media
can find this mother because she can't answer them. Okay.
And I guess that would leave reason for him to be like, I don't know.
I'm in the same boat as you, I guess. Yeah, he's like, an unconscious person
was brought to my house with a note.
(25:46):
So I guess, yeah, I'd be like, if they had more questions, he'd be like,
I can't answer them. Yeah. But when you find out, let me know.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
The fabricated letter not only explained Kirsten's medical condition,
but also claimed that Elizabeth intended to return home soon with her three other children.
This play was designed to serve as a plausible reason for their emergencies
from the basement, concealing the true nature of their captivity.
(26:09):
So he planned on letting them out, I guess.
I'm not sure why. eye but he's trying to make he wrote
in the note that she was going to come home with her other children
to be with kirsten who's super sick so he
wanted a reason why all of a sudden she comes out and she has three other children
out of the basement but again what yeah doesn't make sense no but that's okay
(26:31):
because the plan unraveled when investigators observed that the letter seemed
dictated and the handwriting was too well constructed for someone supposedly
in elizabeth's position.
These discrepancies raise suspicion about the veracity of the letter's contents and its origin.
So the police were like, this doesn't make any fucking sense. Yeah.
Understandable yeah to further
(26:52):
complicate matters investigators after visiting the town mentioned
in the letter found no trace of the alleged religious sect elizabeth
was claimed to have joined obviously because it didn't exist this discovery
cast doubt on the existence of the sect and raised questions about the authenticity
of the entire narrative presented by yosef obviously the narrative is trash
on april 26 2008 yosef fritzl decided to allow his daughter Elizabeth and their
(27:16):
three children to resurface to the outside world.
Seizing an opportunity when Rosemary and the other three children were away,
Yosef snuck Elizabeth and the three basement captives out of their longstanding prison.
So Rosemary, I guess, was away with the other kids and he's like,
all right, come on, we're going to get out of here.
But again, I still don't understand how he's like, oh, none of these people
will tell that they've been in a basement for 24 years.
(27:37):
But where did he resurface them to? Just the upstairs? Or did he
allow them to go to the the grocery store and other places he
he let them come out to go to the hospital because the police
needed to talk to this girl's mom so that's
when he took the opportunity to bring forward elizabeth yes and the children
okay however the unusual appearance of furry individuals visiting kirsten at
(27:58):
the hospital that same day raised suspicions clearly the police were promptly
notified and upon arrival they caught joseph fritzl and elizabeth in the act
both were taken into custody for questioning,
and the shocking truth behind the Fritzl family's dark secrets began to unravel.
Oh my god, I got goosebumps. Yeah.
Can you imagine all of these years full of suspense, waiting for this moment
(28:18):
to finally get the help you need, and then you're looked at like a fucking criminal?
Yeah. And then you're just like trying to convince these investigators like,
I am a fucking victim. Yeah. Like, I need help.
Initially hesitant to speak, Elizabeth found the courage to open up to authorities
when assured that she would never have to see her father again.
Trust was established, and Elizabeth, motivated by the promise that her children
(28:40):
and mother would be taken care of, began to recount the horrific story of her captivity.
See, originally, the detectives thought that abuse was going on in the home,
that Elizabeth was perpetrating, that she was the reason that her children were
in such malnourished conditions.
Yeah. Yeah, but they later find out, obviously, that that's not the case.
I mean, yeah, that's, it's, I can't say that's not something that they would
(29:01):
have assumed automatically because who assumes you've been in the basement for
24 years and just given birth to eight, you know. Seven children, yeah.
Seven, eight children just in these conditions. That's insane.
It took two hours for elizabeth fritzl to
recount her 24 years of captivity to the police with
shocking details documented across three full pages you'd
(29:22):
think it'd be longer than that dude honestly and could you
imagine being a detective just like listening listening
to the story like i would have
had to assume like this is some crazy shit some crazy
made-up shit like i would
have to take so many mental breaks i'm like okay i gotta walk
around for here i am thinking this is just a negligent mother
(29:43):
and then this is the reality i would have
oh my god i couldn't on april 26
2008 following her courageous testimony joseph fritzl
was arrested on suspicion of serious crimes against his family members thank
god yeah the following day on april 27 2008 the police publicly announced joseph
fritzl's arrest simultaneously elizabeth her mother rosemary and the five other
(30:06):
children were taken into care it's weird that the mother was taken into care
like it was rosemary was taken into care.
Well, maybe they suspected that she was in on it, too.
Oh, yeah. Well, there was a whole investigation to see if she knew anything. Yeah.
The revelation of Yosef's arrest and the public acknowledgement of the family's
ordeal captured widespread attention and disbelief. Obviously. Clearly.
(30:28):
2008 is when they came out. And she was captive in... No, in 1980... Hold on.
Gosh. Hold this. 1984. 1984 to 2008.
Yeah. Wow.
And not one time did she try to escape. She couldn't. It was completely barricaded.
(30:49):
Also, what really gets me back to the beginning of the story is he asked her to help with the door.
I know. That he closed her in. Could you imagine? You're just bringing a door.
You're like, yeah, Dad, I'll help you put this on the bunker so we don't get
bombed. Oh, now I'm trapped. For 24 years.
Amidst the trauma and upheaval, the family experienced a reunion that was both
(31:11):
emotional and unprecedented.
Mm-hmm. The moment when Elizabeth and all of her children were reunited was
reported as a remarkable event, signifying the end of their captivity and the
beginning of a new chapter.
Gosh, can you imagine those kids?
Just like, I've been upstairs with grandma all this time. Did they tell them
the true story? Yes, so the upstairs kids learn what happened.
Okay, yeah, because they're older, right? Well, they're like 14,
(31:34):
15, 16. I guess that's an appropriate age-ish.
I mean, it's still all around a fucked up situation. Agreed.
But I can't even imagine. I have no word. No, no.
Unfortunately, Kirsten, who had been hospitalized at the age of 19 due to her
critical condition, remained in an induced coma during the reunion,
adding a somber note to an otherwise profound note.
(31:55):
So everyone got reunited, but Kirsten still on office. So she doesn't even know
that they've been taken out of the basement.
Could you imagine when she woke up?
The physical toll of 24 years in captivity was starkly evident in Elizabeth
Fritzl's condition when she was freed. Her sallow appearance and completely
white hair reflected the harsh reality of being held captive in a windowless
(32:15):
basement for an extended period of time.
The prolonged lack of exposure to natural light in the confined space had taken
a toll on her well-being.
Elizabeth's son, Stephan, age 18, and Felix, age 5. Oh, I didn't even realize Felix is 5 years old.
Oh, and he was one of the ones that were- He was the last one that could have
gone up stairs, but couldn't because Rosemary couldn't handle any more kids. Right.
(32:38):
Elizabeth's son, Stefan, age 18, and Felix, age 5, also exhibited signs of their long confinement.
Their pale complexion suggested an adjustment period to the newfound light and
space they were exposed to after years in the dark dungeon.
Stefan, in particular, faced challenges in walking due to his height,
having grown to 5'8", while the dungeon's height was limited to 5'6".
(32:58):
So, for however long he was 5'8", he had to hunch over.
Oh my goodness. So, he's probably had some major back issues.
Back issues, yeah. And I was just thinking in my head while you were telling me this that,
It was amazing to me that Elizabeth never got sick. But then I'm thinking,
okay, she was captive at 18. So she had her vaccine.
She's had, you know, I want to say proper health up until then.
(33:20):
And I guess the other children in the basement wouldn't need it because there's
no bacteria or anything coming in.
But you'd think there would be because, I mean, they're digging holes.
And this basement, the walls oozed water so much that they had to have towels put against it.
So like the damp, cold conditions. Yeah.
I assume they would have gotten sick at some point in the 24 years.
(33:41):
It just wasn't so bad as it was with Kirsten, which it did get bad eventually
because she had kidney failure.
On the other hand, the upstairs children who were raised by their grandmother,
Rosemary, experienced a complex mix of emotions.
Lisa, age 15, Monica, age 14, and Alexander, age 12, reportedly felt anger at
having been deceived throughout their lives.
Yeah. yeah despite this betrayal they expressed happiness
(34:04):
at being reunited with their mother elizabeth and their siblings the
family's reunion was marked by a mix of emotions ranging from the joy of reconnection
to the challenges of coming to terms with the shocking revelations that have
been hidden for so long yeah i i couldn't imagine being those three children
upstairs and being like you're telling me i have a mother downstairs who's been
down there with my whole siblings and i'm I don't know that, and you people are...
(34:29):
And my father is actually my grandfather.
Yeah, so not... It's like the emotional, mental trauma. Well,
not only are they... Is Elizabeth their mother? She's their sister.
Yeah, I... In the course of his interrogation, Josef Fritzl not only confessed
to the heinous crimes of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children,
(34:51):
but also admitted to the disturbing act of burning the body of his infant son in an incinerator.
April 29, 2008, in a bid to corroborate the familial relationships,
police conducted DNA testing that confirmed Josef Fritzl as the biological father
of Elizabeth's children.
The scientific evidence served as a crucial component in building a case against him.
As if her testimony wasn't enough. Wasn't enough, yeah, I know.
(35:12):
But, I mean, they have to prove it for court. Yeah, I know, but still.
Josef Fritzl's trial commenced in March 2009, where he faced charges of murder
by negligence for his infant son.
As he had failed to seek medical care that could have potentially saved the child's life.
But yeah, this is the- So that was the miscarriage baby. No,
it wasn't the miscarriage baby.
This is the baby that was a set of twins with Alexander, but he died during childbirth.
(35:35):
So stillborn? Yeah. Okay.
So he could have been saved, but because she didn't get that proper medical
care when she was obviously giving birth, that was the cause of his death. Wow. Wow.
Additionally, Fritzl was tried for decades of enslavement, incest,
sexual assault, and false imprisonment of Elizabeth. That's it? I know.
Despite extensive psychiatric evaluations revealing a severe personality disorder,
(36:00):
prosecutors determined that Fritzl was mentally fit to stand trial. Good. Good.
But also, what I hate about this case.
So, remember in the beginning where I said that he was already arrested for assaulting someone?
Yes. And he only served 12 months of his sentence and that got taken off.
It was expunged or whatever.
Yeah. So there's actually a lot of cases that they think are linked to him of
(36:26):
women who were raped and murdered.
Wow. Yeah. So after the fact, after all this happened, they found cases where he probably did it.
But they couldn't prove it. But they couldn't prove it before he ended up capturing
his daughter in the basement.
So had he been taken seriously in
the beginning he would have just been in prison none of this would have
(36:47):
happened wow during his trial joseph pleaded guilty
to charges of sexual assault and incest but maintained his
plea of not guilty to the charges of murder and imprisonment i know when arriving
at court he sought to avoid the press by burying his face in a blue folder and
in the courtroom he appeared stoic and emotionless showing no apparent remorse
for the heinous crimes he committed fritzl's demeanor was marked by an absence
(37:10):
of emotion contributing to the chilling atmosphere surrounding the trial.
His psychiatric evaluation provided some insight into his mind where he reportedly
attributed his actions to an abusive upbringing.
So he was like, I was abused growing up, so that's why I did that. That makes no sense.
And that doesn't justify it. No. It doesn't matter. I don't care where you come
from. You don't do that shit.
Yeah. I know too many people that literally reverse that parent psychology where
(37:33):
they want to do like the complete opposite from their parents.
Yeah. And that is not an excuse.
You're going to really hate these next couple of sentences. I hate the whole thing.
Fritzl described himself as an alibi child, suggesting that he was conceived
solely as a means for his mother to prove her ability to have children,
which fucking who cares? Yeah.
Next. Yeah. In a disturbing revelation during the psychiatric evaluation,
(37:57):
Fritzl is reported to have said, I was born to assault and I held myself back
for a relatively long time.
I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter.
I'm sorry. So he's like, oh, well, it could have been worse.
I could have done other things.
But instead, I locked up my daughter. I'm sorry. Did he say that he enjoyed it? Like enjoyed it?
Enjoyed the abuse from, I guess, his family?
(38:18):
No. He was just saying he was born to be an abuser. And he held himself back
for so long. And he could have done a lot worse. So it was inevitable.
Yeah. And he held back what he really wanted to do. Yeah.
He's saying, well, it wasn't as bad. I could have done really worse stuff.
Oh, OK. Sorry, son of a bitch. Yeah, I hate that.
The turning point in Joseph Fritzl's trial occurred on the second day when Elizabeth's
(38:39):
video testimony was aired in court.
Reports indicate that upon recognizing Elizabeth's presence in court and making
eye contact with her, Fritzl visibly paled and broke down.
Good. Following this emotional encounter, Joseph Fritzl pleaded guilty to all
charges the following day.
So to the murder and- To everything. Okay.
Elizabeth's testimony and the direct confrontation with the consequences of
(39:02):
his actions likely contributed to his change in plea.
Doubtful. Well, he was completely stoic, and he was like, nope,
I'm not guilty of these, whatever.
And then she came on and testified and looked him in the eyes and said what
happened, and he immediately changed it to guilty.
I don't know why it would have been a change.
I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know. But still, I mean.
(39:23):
Can you imagine, though, this 42-year-old woman now on the stand telling this? She's 42. Yeah.
Gray hair and everything. Yeah. And she was 18. Yeah. Yeah.
On March 19th, 2009, Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole.
At the age of 74 during the trial, he accepted the sentence without contest.
(39:44):
Currently serving his sentence, Fritzl is confined to a monastery in Upper Austria
that has been repurposed as
a prison, specifically in a section designated for the criminally insane.
I wish that they could kind of do the same kind of treatment those kind of people do to others.
You know like she he was she was captive yeah for
years and a small i mean yes the jail
(40:05):
cell is probably smaller than what she was captive in but just to
kind of give him the same conditions and like a taste of his own medicine i wish
that was something that you could just request to the judge
like hey make him pee in a bucket don't let him leave for like 10 years and
then when he's finally had like some okay behavioral just you'd let him go to
the bathroom you know that's i don't know if you caught the part where he's
74 at this time yeah so imagine like an old old-ass man just finally getting
(40:30):
what he deserves yeah crazy just give him the chair.
During the trial, Elizabeth and her family were undergoing psychiatric and medical
care to help them reacclimate to the outside world.
I couldn't. And that was paid for by the government?
Yeah, obviously. But I couldn't even imagine trying to reacclimate to the world.
So you went into captivity in 1986.
(40:50):
It's now 2008. Do you know all the technological advances and all that stuff
that's changed? You come out and all of a sudden there's like internet.
There's like, it's insane. saying.
As part of their therapy, they were encouraged to explore creative outlets.
In display of gratitude and acknowledgement of the ongoing support from the
community, the family created posters expressing their thanks.
(41:10):
Posters conveyed a heartfelt message.
We, the whole family, would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you
for your sympathy at our fate.
Your compassion is helping us greatly to overcome these difficult times,
and it shows us there are also good and honest people here who really care for us.
We hope that soon there will be a time where we can find our way back into normal
life. After the trial, Elizabeth and her family were given the option to take
(41:31):
on new identities and relocate to an unnamed village in northern Austria.
The opportunity for a fresh start was a crucial aspect of their rehabilitation.
Allowing them to rebuild their lives away from the public scrutiny and reminders
of the traumatic events they had endured.
The family's journey toward healing involved not only individual therapy,
but also the support and understanding of the community as they sought to reclaim
(41:52):
a sense of normalcy in their lives.
Did they take that? Yeah. So they have changed their names.
They live somewhere unknown they're nobody knows
where they are okay yeah so they've started a whole new life
because i mean could you imagine being that family yeah and
then having to go to the grocery store you couldn't go get gas you
couldn't do anything without you know obviously somebody looking at
(42:13):
them i mean i know i would probably be probably i wouldn't mean
to but yeah just to at least you've
you've heard the story yes you know what i mean like it's it
would be be something so i would feel compelled to
just go and be like oh my god yeah like and i
imagine that's not healthy for them no not by any means you know but it's it's
not only something that they need to work through but it's just like how could
(42:37):
somebody do that to somebody and not feel especially just yeah i i just i all
the whole town was so upset when this came out because Because it's this girl's father.
I mean, yes, that adds to just how unbelievable this story is.
But regardless, if it was just like a neighbor or somebody, it's just horrible
(42:57):
all around. It is horrible all around.
I just feel like it adds another layer of horrible that it was her father,
someone who's supposed to protect her.
And she had these six other siblings. And she's in that basement knowing,
I'm the only one down here. Yeah.
And the mother's just, did the mother stay with the husband? No, no.
They're divorced. He's in jail. She is, her and Elizabeth are now making a relationship.
(43:19):
Okay. But are they staying together up in like northern Austria? I don't know.
We don't know any details about their existence there.
That's kind of the point. Yeah. Well, that was a lot. That was definitely, not expecting it.
It was 24 years later.
(43:39):
Yeah 24 years and seven kids later did
they end up having like a proper burial for the the unborn
child or stillborn child no because he was incinerated he
was cremated but they had still like bones and
stuff that they could bury and give something i i imagine
not it had been 15 years okay
(44:00):
i'm sorry math is not on my side right now but
i imagine he didn't hold on to the bones for 15 years
yeah they might have i mean when they got out done like
a memorial but yeah i have no idea i don't feel
like that's something they would have shared with anybody and then what about the
house was the house sold is somebody else living in there now do you know i
may just burn that motherfucker down no it still exists it's still there i was
(44:22):
surprised they also didn't charge him for the bunker like you claimed on a government
form that this was for the cold sport and you just trapped your daughter in
there yeah unbelievable i mean they could have.
I mean, they could have charged him for it, but it doesn't really matter.
He's going to prison for the rest of his life. How is he going to pay that anyways?
Well, just to have it on record.
The motherfucker deserves way more than just those charges.
(44:45):
Yeah, not to mention he was 74 when he went to jail, so he's going to be in
jail for, what, 10 years before he dies? And he's still alive? Or is he dead now?
I'm sorry. I was eager to find out. Hopefully.
So Yosef is still alive. He's 88 years old right now. And yeah,
he's still alive. Look at this fucker.
Ew. I was just about to Google his nasty, dusty ass.
(45:06):
Can you? Yeah. Oh, let me show you. We'll have these in the show notes for you
guys to look at. I'm going to show you the pictures of the basement.
If you want to look at, there's this comprehensive map. Oh, my God. Yeah.
That looks like a lot. I mean, it's just like the first living area.
They had to dig the remainder out. So if you want to describe it for the listeners.
(45:29):
Oh, right, right. So it was just beginning those two bedrooms.
Yes. No, well, it was one bedroom first.
It was only one room. So one room and they had to dig kind of like an underground
tunnel that led into the second bedroom and then dug out from the first bedroom to the bathroom.
Or was that already there? The bathroom wasn't there.
(45:49):
Wow. They didn't even have that. Okay.
So then from the bathroom, dug another tunnel to the living room and then that
living room they had to dig upward to make.
The sexual abuse room. Yeah. And then from that living room, a workshop.
What is that workshop? That might be in the basement that's already there. Let me see.
(46:13):
Okay, yeah. So the workshop and the utility room, this is their actual basement.
So this comes from the house into this. There's this hidden door here,
and that leads into... So this is all the hidden stuff.
Wow. So the workshop and the utility room are his regular basement that they knew existed.
But were never allowed to roll in there. They were never allowed to.
No, so let me show you the door to get in.
(46:35):
Yeah, I can just tell by looking at him, he looks like a monster. Yeah.
So the door is this tiny ass panel down here behind this shelf with all this
stuff. So like you're like, oh, a radiator's back there or something.
I want to go back there. Yeah, no. So he had to like crawl through that to get
there. To get there every time.
If you mind, I'm doing that at 74 years old. So it also says here that he,
(46:58):
the motive behind all of this was to abuse, he abused her, his daughter to make
her pregnant so she can raise children in the Fitzell name.
I didn't even read that. But he had seven other children in the family upstairs.
I know. It doesn't make any fucking sense.
And it's like, that was a poor excuse. Just say you're a monster and enjoyed
incest. Well, he did basically. He said I was born to be an abuser.
(47:23):
That's insane. insane yeah and so did kristin she
finally awoke kirsten kirsten she finally woke yeah so
she was so she recovered okay she did well yeah i'm
trying to i'm trying to make sure that we get the whole happy ending you know
there's it's not really no happy ending to this but at least ultimately he was
(47:43):
captured charged and i guess she is still alive yes okay perfect that's good.
Yeah, she has woken up from a medically induced coma and has been reunited with
her mother, Elizabeth, and her siblings. That happened June 11th, 2008.
So, how long was that? June 11th. Yeah, hold on.
April? I think it was, yeah, April 29th. So, two months later.
(48:06):
Wow. She was in a coma for two months. Wow.
And then, all of a sudden, at that two months, she wakes up and she's like,
what the fuck? I guess. I couldn't even imagine.
Wow. Can you imagine how many detectives go into her room when she wakes up and explain?
Yeah like real quick before you know you
get out of bed and stuff this is what's happened your father grandfather has
(48:28):
been charged he's in trial and
your mother is waiting for you well also we don't know if the
basement children thought that was normal so
could you imagine her thinking oh so what
he was doing was wrong this isn't how normal people live
what we were experiencing is and
what was really what other people did yeah i
(48:49):
can't imagine all the questions that they had or really i mean
what would you tell your children in that case would
you tell them like this isn't real yeah you're
you are supposed to live a happy life but that would only make
things they'd make them upset i don't know if i would do that if i'd be because
you know there's no way your mother like you're the mother right you're elizabeth
and you're teaching them everything and you're you're telling he they're watching
(49:13):
things like other people play outside there's they can't just write it off as
this is an imaginary world yeah you know but how would But they know.
I mean, they grew their, lived their entire life in the basement.
They just thought that a normal life is like an imaginary beautiful world.
Maybe. You know, like Harry Potter.
Oh yeah, like it's not real. Yeah, it's just like kids playing outside and,
(49:37):
you know, throwing a ball with their dad and shit like that.
Like normal people activities and they're just like, wow, that's a thing?
Like, that's insane to me.
Well, thanks for ruining my day. I'm sorry.
Is it too early for this? It's only, it's only that early. It's only,
well, yeah, it's like afternoon time.
Thank you for listening to the Elizabeth Fritzl case on Twisted Truth,
(49:59):
a true crime podcast hosted by Emily and Alyssa.
Music.
Until next time, stay curious, stay vigilant, and never underestimate the power of the truth.
Music.
(00:14):
Hey y'all, you're listening to Twisted Truth, a true crime podcast brought to you by Emily and Alysa.
Today I will be talking about the horrific case of Elisabeth Fritzl,
a woman who was kidnapped and held captive by her father for 24 years.
This story is very graphic and has several mentions of rape, incest, and abuse.
If this is not something you can handle, we completely understand and encourage
(00:34):
you to skip to the next episode.
So Elisabeth Fritzl was born in 1966, just after a year before her father,
Josef, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for breaking into a woman's home and assaulting her.
He only served 12 months of the sentence, and the incident was eventually taken
away from his record after 15 years.
Did they record what the assault was? Like, did he, like, break in and,
(00:54):
like, beat her, rape her? Like, did they say?
Um, I believe it's because he raped her. Oh, okay.
But that didn't stop Josef from prying on 11-year-old Elisabeth in 1977 when
he reportedly attacked her for the first time.
Josef would continue to inflict sexual abuse on his daughter for many years to come.
After finishing her primary education, Elisabeth enrolled in a waitressing program
(01:15):
with false hopes of escaping her life at home in Amstetten. So where was her mother?
Or is it too soon to ask? Too soon to ask.
Okay, because I'm trying to like put together the pieces. I'm like,
okay, so her father's there.
So her mother didn't know about the, well, any of this. She didn't know about
any of this. But she was present. She was at the house, yeah.
(01:36):
Oh. And Elisabeth had six other siblings, so she was one of seven.
So there was many kids in this house. Oh, wow.
Elisabeth tried to run away from home on two separate occasions,
but was retrieved by authorities each time and brought home to her parents.
After completing her waitressing program, then-18-year-old Elisabeth had a job
prospect about 40 minutes away in the city of Linz.
(01:56):
But that's when her father Josef decided to trap Elisabeth for good.
On August 28, 1984, shortly after Elisabeth turned 18, Josef lured her into
the basement under the pretext of needing help with a door.
Little did she know that Josef had been meticulously transforming the basement into a prison chamber.
He used the door Elisabeth herself had helped install to seal her inside after
rendering her unconscious with an ether-soaked towel.
(02:19):
Sorry, I'm just a little bit in shock right now. That's just crazy to me.
So if she had siblings, they just... She must have had to be the youngest one
because how the fuck would you not know?
I'm going to go get up really quick. Yeah, how the fuck would you not know that
your one sibling has just been captured underneath?
Well, and she's obviously not allowed to leave. Yeah, no, she's not.
(02:40):
So he was able to build the bunker underground because it was during the Cold War.
And everybody was building bunkers. They were like bomb shelters.
No, no, no. So it wasn't abnormal?
It wasn't abnormal. No. So he was building it. Everyone else was building them.
He actually got funding from the city to build this.
Are you fucking kidding me? Because they thought it was a bomb shelter.
So the city funded this prison for her. That's insane.
(03:03):
After Josef trapped Elisabeth in the underground chamber, his actions took a sinister turn.
Concerned for her daughter's well-being, Rosemary filed a missing persons report
hoping to locate Elisabeth.
However, Josef, the perpetrator of the heinous crime, manipulated the situation
to further conceal his dark secrets.
So the mother reported the daughter. Yes. So as soon as they couldn't find her,
her mother reported her missing. But she's living in the same home. She is.
(03:27):
Okay. She has no idea. That's crazy. It's down in the basement.
It's hidden behind a door.
Approximately a month after the missing persons report was filed,
Josef presented the letter to the police that he claimed Elisabeth had written.
In this fabricated letter, Elisabeth falsely stated that she had voluntarily
run away with a friend to join a cult and urged her parents not to search for
her. Are you fucking kidding me?
(03:49):
What the hell? Out of all the things that you could have written, she joined a cult? Yeah.
It was the only thing that I guess he could think of that she wouldn't have
contact with them because you're not allowed to if you're in a cult.
I don't know very much about cults. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you're in a cult,
you're not allowed to talk to the outside people. So...
Josef explained Elisabeth's troubled past, specifically referencing her previous
(04:09):
attempts to run away from home, which is insane because she ran away from home
because he was abusing her.
And when she was reported, did she never mention to the police,
like, yeah, I ran away because he was assaulting me?
No, because they didn't find her. After she was taken that first time.
Oh, you mean when she originally ran away? Yeah. No, she never said anything.
Well, I mean, how could she? Yeah, she was 11.
(04:30):
By portraying her as a troubled teen, he convinced both his
wife and the the authorities that Elisabeth had willingly joined a
religious cult providing a false explanation for her disappearance
consequently Elisabeth's missing persons case
was closed allowing Josef to continue his horrific acts of confinement and abuse
without arousing suspicion from the outside world this period marked the beginning
of the prolonged and deeply disturbing captivity that Elisabeth endured for
(04:53):
the next 24 years could you imagine 18 then you're stuck How old was she when she was finally 24?
She was 42. Oh my God. Yeah, she was 42 years old when they found her. That's crazy.
In the early stages of Elizabeth Fritzl's captivity, Josef Fritzl implemented
a horrifying and dehumanizing regime.
(05:13):
Elizabeth found herself chained to a pole within the underground chamber,
with Josef descending into her confined space only sporadically,
typically to deliver sustenance and subject her to sexual assault.
The initial physical restraint symbolized not only the loss of freedom,
but also the complete control Yosef sought to exert over his daughter.
As time passed, Elizabeth was granted a modicum of additional freedom,
(05:34):
allowing her to use the toilet.
Like, could you imagine? Like, as time passed. So before that,
she wasn't allowed to use the toilet.
So what, would you just bring her a bucket and then just be like,
here. Yeah. That's insane.
And never once was the mother like, let me check out this bunker that.
No, she wasn't allowed. He told her not to go down there. And she was like, whatever.
I'm aware. Okay. But this was also in the 60s. In the 60s. Yeah. Okay.
(05:57):
It still flabbergasts me what time was like back then. Yeah,
where it's, like, the wife are not allowed to, like, talk back to their husbands.
It's, like, you do you. I'm not gonna.
Yeah, and, like, back then, sexual predators weren't even a thing.
No. Like, they were, but nobody knew. Yeah, I mean, like, when people say,
like, they're just so, like, blown away. Like, somebody actually, like, does this?
(06:19):
And it's, like, it's just so crazy. Because now, 2024, we suspect everybody
is a fucking predator. Yeah, no, my kids don't go outside without me. It's, yeah.
What a weird time to be born back then. To ensure that his heinous activities
remained concealed, Yosef gave explicit instructions to his wife,
Rosemary, never to disturb him in the basement.
Rosemary, unaware of the sinister reality beneath their own house,
(06:41):
complied with Yosef's directives. So, yeah. He told her no. She was like, okay.
No, I understand. Could never be me. What's down there? What are you doing? Yeah.
Passage of time unfolded in a nightmarish manner for Elizabeth as days turned
into weeks, then into months, and eventually into years.
So, I'm sorry. I'm curious, though. What was the relationship between Rosemary and Elizabeth?
(07:04):
Was it good? It was normal. And also in the 1960s, especially when you have
so many kids, it's just you have kids.
Yeah. I just didn't know if maybe they had a rocky relationship. No.
She did think that Elizabeth was a troubled teen, but that's because she kept
running away. I mean, yeah. It's fair.
Yeah. And she had no idea what was happening. Okay. Let me rephrase that.
She says she has no idea what happened.
(07:26):
I can't prove otherwise. Passage of time unfolded in a nightmarish manner for
Elizabeth as days turned into weeks, then into months, and eventually into years.
Joseph's psychological manipulation intensified as he threatened Elizabeth with
the prospect of gassing the basement should she attempt to escape or resist his advances.
So he said that he had a chemical trigger that he could flip at any time and
(07:51):
it would gas her in the basement and kill her.
And I'm assuming that this basement or bunker was wired with,
like, cameras where he could constantly keep an eye on her.
It was the 1960s, so I don't think there were cameras. Oh, right.
Okay, I just, it's kind of, like, weird to me that, how would he know?
You know, if she was trying to escape, it would just automatically,
I guess, sensors of some kind? I guess.
(08:14):
Well, he, again, he only said that that wasn't actually there.
He said that it was going to be gas to keep her in line, but that was,
it was, he never actually built it. So maybe like if she somehow got out of
her captured contraption, it would just set off a trigger, like an alarm.
Yeah, let him know or something.
Elizabeth had lost track of the numerous instances of sexual assault perpetrated by her father.
(08:35):
The cumulative effect of enduring such brutality, coupled with a perpetual threat
of violence, had devastating impact on her mental and emotional well-being.
Elizabeth's captivity took an even more disturbing turn with the births of her
children. Following a miscarriage in 1986, Elizabeth gave birth to her first
child, Kirsten, in 1989.
This was followed by the arrivals of Stefan in 1990 and Lisa in 1992.
(08:57):
However, Joseph Fritzl, recognizing the increasingly cramped conditions in the
one-bedroom basement, devised a chilling plan.
So right now, it's literally just one bedroom in the basement with her and her three children.
Oh my god. Yeah. Three? Three children. So she just had them back to back?
Yeah, so the first one was born in 1989, the second in 1990,
(09:19):
and the third in 1992. Wow. Yeah.
How, I guess that bunker must have had to have been like really underground.
It was, and it was soundproof because of the Cold War. It was a bomb shelter, so it was bomb proof.
In an attempt to alleviate the overcrowded space, Joseph took a drastic and heart-wrenching step.
(09:39):
When Lisa was just nine months old, he placed her in a cardboard box and left
her on the Fritzl's doorstep.
With the abandoned infant was a note allegedly written by Elizabeth,
stating that she couldn't care for the child and asking her parents to take care of the baby.
Yosef orchestrated this act to create the illusion that Elizabeth had briefly
returned to entrust her parents with a child she couldn't raise. Wow.
Yeah, so he took one of the kids that he made her add in this bunker and brought it upstairs.
(10:05):
Later, these kids are going to be recalled as the upstairs children,
and the other ones are the downstairs children.
Okay, so they took the youngest child and placed it in a box.
Explaining. Yeah. So they said. And what was the mother's reaction to this?
Sorry. Jump in the head. I just want to know.
She basically just took it as it is and raised the children.
(10:28):
I mean, yeah, this is a respectful mother, you know, thinking not anything of it.
Like, of course, I'll raise my grandchild, but that's still,
to know the backstory, fuck up. Yeah.
And again, she says she doesn't know the backstory.
I'm sorry. I just still can't. I mean, I'll never know, but it's just wild.
This calculated move added another layer of manipulation to the already twisted
(10:51):
dynamics within the Fritzl household.
Elizabeth's captivity took an even darker turn as Yosef continued his assaults,
leading to the birth of four more children.
So a total of seven? Seven children. Wow. Yeah. And she was one of seven children.
So seven born children, one miscarriage. Miscarriage. Okay.
God, so many kids. That's so much to put through your body. Well,
(11:12):
not to mention she never went to the hospital, so she had the birth of them all in that room.
Wow. After the birth of Monica in 1994, Elizabeth pleaded with Yosef for more space in the basement.
Yosef agreed to an enlargement of the underground chamber, but subjected Elizabeth
and her two eldest children to the harrowing task of digging out more soil with
their bare hands to create additional space.
(11:32):
So they dug the rest of this area. So right now, it's one bedroom.
It ends up being like four or five different rooms. He made them dig it out with their bare hands.
How long did that take? me it didn't say how long
would you think i imagine years but i mean
if they have nothing else what do they do with all the dirt then would he
(11:54):
just like have them put it in a bucket yeah the neighbors
aren't like what's he doing with all this yeah i don't know in the midst of
this torment elizabeth gave birth to alexander in 1996 who was a part of a set
of twins sadly one yeah sadly one of the twins did not survive childbirth and
yosef displaying a gruesome and and heartless disposition,
(12:15):
reportedly disposed of the deceased infant's body in the furnace used to heat the house.
Does that circulate through the house? Yeah. So he cremated the child in the
family's furnace, the above family's furnace.
The, like the main house. The main house. Wow. Yeah. And what did that smell?
I imagine. I mean, I have no idea, but I would think you're burning a corpse.
(12:38):
And plastic smells when you burn it, so I imagine. It's fucking crazy.
God, so at this point, 10 kids.
No, they have seven kids. Well, I'm saying that she did. She just now gave birth to one.
No, so these are the ones that were included in those ones. Okay.
Because it just said she gave birth to four more, but now we're getting their names. Mm-hmm.
Adding to the complexity of the situation, Monica and Alexander,
(13:00):
as infants, were taken from the basement and introduced to the outside world.
Remarkably, Yosef managed to present them to Rosemary, his wife,
as children seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Yeah.
Okay. And he's just like, more kids. More kids claim to be hers that she's just
dropped off. She can't take care of them, and she's dropped them off.
Astonishingly, Rosemary did not find this sudden introduction of additional
(13:22):
family members suspicious, highlighting
the level of manipulation and deception orchestrated by Yosef.
And he just stumbles upon these each time. Like, it's never Rosemary who's just
like, oh my god, there's more kids at my front door.
Well, maybe. Maybe she is. But he's putting them at the front door,
and he leaves a note. So he probably waits for her to open the door to be the first to discover.
Yeah. Wow. But it sounds like with these ones, she brought them.
(13:47):
He was just like, oh, here's kids.
I don't know how this woman did not have like a million and one questions.
Yeah. Like, where are these coming from?
Where's my. But I guess like. Like, how was his reaction? Just like nonchalant.
Like, hey, honey, we have more kids. I guess our youngest just keeps dropping them off.
Yeah. Or was he like, we need to find this girl. Like, what is she thinking?
Yeah. No. She needs to come home and take care of her kids.
(14:09):
I don't know. So Elizabeth's first two children endured a life confined to the
basement due to their memories of living there with their mother and the abuser
who was both their father and grandfather.
So because they were old enough to remember living in the basement,
they weren't allowed to be part of the upstairs children.
Okay. I mean, that makes sense. But still that horrible. Yeah.
(14:30):
In contrast, Lisa, Monica, and Alexander were fortunate enough to escape the
grim underground existence as they were taken away as infants.
These three children experienced a relatively normal childhood,
attending school and participating in extracurricular activities under the care of their grandmother.
In a disturbing twist, Yosef and Rosemary successfully adopted Lisa and obtained
(14:50):
approval as foster parents for Monica and Alexander.
Astonishingly, when social workers visited the Fritzl household,
nothing raised suspicion. The facade of normalcy carefully contained by Yosef remained intact.
So they had social workers come by and they were like, oh yeah,
yeah, they're adopting these kids that their daughter dropped off.
And that's so weird to me because if the government is going to fund this bunker
(15:11):
because of everything that's going on in the world, wouldn't you consider checking?
Yeah. But I guess they would have no reason because everybody at that time was
building them and they'd have to go check everybody's bunker, I guess.
Well, yeah, but that would make sense. Especially, okay, like maybe not just
like, but if you're dealing with social workers.
Yeah, they should check. But I don't know how that works back in that time.
(15:32):
No, I also don't. To me, that is just weird.
In 2002, Elizabeth gave birth to her sixth child, Felix, who tragically ended
up spending his entire life in the hospital.
Yosef later confessed to investigators that his wife, Rosemarie,
could not take on the responsibility of raising another child.
Obviously, because she has three upstairs right now. Right.
This decision condemned Felix, along with his two older siblings, to a life in captivity.
(15:56):
So, Kirsten, Stefan, and Felix are the three in the basement.
Kirsten, Stefan, and Felix. Yeah, they're the three in the basement.
And Lisa, Monica, and Alexander are the upstairs children.
Living in the basement, Elizabeth and her three children faced a daily existence
shrouded in the harsh artificial light, unable to distinguish between night and day.
Their surroundings were confined and devoid of the basic elements of a normal life.
(16:18):
The basement became both their living space and a prison, with limited access to the outside world.
Elizabeth's children, who remained with her underground, had no knowledge of
what life beyond their confined space was like.
Despite having a television, their exposure to the outside world was mediated
through this electronic window, showing them things they could only dream of experiencing.
So they were able to watch TV and be like, oh, that's the outside.
(16:40):
Could you imagine, though, being
a child and never being outside and just watching it on the TV? God, no.
No. This small connection to the outside served as both a source of curiosity
and a painful reminder of the life they were denied. mind.
For Josef Ritzel's captives, life was marked by isolation, confinement,
and a perpetual lack of freedom.
(17:00):
The basement became a grim and artificial reality, where the captives existed
in a state of perpetual uncertainty, cut off from the outside world.
As time passed and all of Elizabeth's children were born, the basement underwent
some modifications to accommodate their bleak existence.
It now featured two bedrooms, providing a minimal semblance of privacy,
and a padded room where Josef would allegedly take Elizabeth to subject her to of further assault.
(17:22):
Oh, my God. In addition to these dismal living spaces, there was a small bathroom,
a fridge, and hot plates serving as the meager amenities of their confined room.
So, yeah, there was a bedroom for them to sleep in and then a room that he would
take her to assault her in.
Where everybody would sleep in. Or could she take the other kids and use that assault room to sleep?
(17:44):
No, I don't. Or is that strictly just a... I think it's just an assault room.
It was a padded room so no other kids could hear.
Despite the grim circumstances, Elizabeth demonstrated resilience by taking
on the role of an educator for her children.
She taught them to read and write, fostering a semblance of normalcy within
the confines of their prison.
Elizabeth also shared stories from her memories of the outside world,
(18:04):
providing a window into reality the children had never known.
Movie sessions on their television became a shared escape, allowing them to
briefly immerse themselves in a world beyond their confined space. face.
I couldn't even imagine you were outside of this place for 18 years of your
life. So you know everything that goes on outside.
Yeah. I mean, luckily, I don't want to say luckily, but she had 18 years of education.
(18:28):
Yeah. So she could. So she could educate the kids properly.
Had she been like 11 with like a sixth grader level of education,
that probably would have been very difficult.
But at least the kids were sort of looking for, at least they had like an actual
education to kind of... Yeah. Well, as much as they can at 18, yeah.
In stark contrast, Elizabeth's upstairs children lived a seemingly comfortable life with Rosemary.
(18:53):
The facade meticulously maintained by Yosef and Rosemary portrayed Elizabeth
as having left these children as infants on their doorstep, a story accepted
by neighbors and friends.
So they were just like, oh, yeah, your daughter left her children. Cool.
The facade began to crumble when the eldest child from the basement,
Kirsten, grew fatally ill.
This health crisis would eventually become the a catalyst for the revelation
(19:14):
of the unspeakable horrors endured
by Elizabeth and her children in the basement for over two decades.
The Fritzl family's dark secrets were on the verge of exposure,
bringing an end to the prolonged nightmare that had been hidden for too long.
So how old was her oldest child at this point? 19.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. And at 19 years old, you just assumed like, this is my life.
(19:36):
Like, Like, who did they, like, who does they think her father was?
They just knew that was her dad that would just come by? Oh,
yeah, they knew that that was her father. They didn't know that was her dad.
They just thought, oh, our dad. Well, yeah, this is my mom, this is her husband,
this is my dad. Like a normal, quote, normal setting. Yeah. Okay.
(19:56):
On April 19th, 2008, Elizabeth Fritzl managed to persuade her father,
Yosef, to seek medical care for their eldest daughter, Kirsten.
In an act of desperation and determination, Elizabeth concealed a note in Christian's
pocket before she was transported to a local hospital by an ambulance.
The note served as a silent plea for help, alerting hospital workers to the
dire circumstances and providing a glimpse into the unimaginable captivity that
(20:20):
Kirsten and her siblings endured beneath the Fretzel home.
The mysterious note prompted authorities to take action, urging Kirsten's mother
to come forward and provide more information about her daughter's medical history.
So at this point, Yosef is with Kirsten at the hospital. Well,
of course, he's not going to let her out of sight.
Yeah, and Elizabeth is still in the basement. so they
(20:41):
find that note and they're trying to find her mother they're
trying to find elizabeth to be like what's going on what does
it do you were you able to figure out what that note no it doesn't say what
the nuts said we curious though i wonder if it was just like kind of vague or
just like help yeah just help i i don't know uh kirsten who was in critical
condition due to kidney failure oh my god became the subject of local news as
(21:04):
people desperately searched for clues about her her family.
Unbeknownst to the outside world, Elizabeth, combined in the basement,
observed these developments unfold on a television screen, aware that the time
had come to be with her ailing daughter.
So she's watching the news report in the basement of them trying to find the
mother of this girl who's in kidney failure.
And the kidney failure, do they say what's causing that? Because dehydration.
(21:26):
Well, dehydration and she had no access to UV rays, light, the sun.
She was in a basement for her whole 19 years of her life.
See, I'm not educated Wow. Yeah, no, she came to the hospital and she was extremely
pale and she had very bad dental health. Well, yeah, of course, you know.
The note in Kirsten's deteriorating health became the catalyst for an investigation
(21:49):
that would eventually expose the harrowing truth hidden beneath the surface
for more than two decades.
Elizabeth, fueled by a mother's instinct and the urgency of the situation,
faced the prospect of revealing the shocking reality of her captivity to the outside world.
So now she's like, oh, I got to save my daughter.
But that means I'm going to have to tell everybody what's been happening.
Can you imagine having to explain that?
(22:11):
But Joseph? No, Elizabeth. No, no, no.
Father's name? You say? Yosef. Yosef, yes. So he's going to allow her to come
forward and just kind of like say, you know, oh, it's coming up.
Okay, yeah, I'm trying to think about this. I'm like, it's not adding up for me right now.
So in the face of unfolding crisis surrounding Kirsten's critical condition,
(22:31):
Josef Fritzl, ever the manipulator, concocted a plan to divert attention and buy himself more time.
Recognizing that authorities were actively searching for Kirsten's mother,
Elizabeth, he reopened her missing person case.
To further mislead investigators, Josef compelled Elizabeth to forge another
letter, backdating it to January of 2008 and postmarking it from a nearby town.
(22:51):
In this fabricated letter, Yosef reiterated the false claim that Elizabeth had
willingly run away with a religious cult, reinforcing the narrative he had successfully
employed years earlier.
With this new piece of information, Yosef handed the letter to authorities,
diverting their attention to the supposed origin town.
So he's saying, hey, the mother of these children that were dropped off at my
(23:12):
house is in a cult and lives in this town.
Go get her. So he was hoping they would leave him alone long enough for him to come up with a plan.
And that's just insane to me because, one, you have Rosemary,
right, who knows that these three children, who's the third or the fourth random
other child. She's not watching this on the news.
Like, she's not like, wait, there's another one? And where did he get this one?
(23:36):
So what he says in the letter, I know it's kind of in this letter,
is Elizabeth wrote the letter supposedly and said that this daughter Kirsten
was with her, but she became severely ill and they couldn't get medical care for her.
So you take her to the hospital is basically what happened.
I'm sorry, that's just still not- I agree. For me, all of these things that
(23:58):
he's thinking that might just clear the unknown is now just raising more questions for me.
Right now, what he's doing is he's trying to push the investigators away from
him long enough to come up with another plan.
So he's just like, I'm going to relieve pressure on me for right now.
It's going to come back, but I need to think of something in the meantime.
(24:19):
So he's just trying to give himself time. well his time
is stupid because it just it just doesn't make
sense to me and i'm only you know like i'm not
an investigator i don't know but everything that
he's saying just has it has more questions no
i absolutely i'm like what the fuck these are so unjustifiable and so like like
(24:39):
how would how would they not come back and just have more questions for him
immediately not even just to like buy him more time but i would be like this
doesn't make sense like well they They had to go check out the town where this girl was in a cult.
This calculated move allowed Joseph to continue covering his tracks and obscuring
the reality of the crimes he had committed.
The reopening of Elizabeth's missing person case, coupled with the false letters,
(25:01):
served as a smokescreen that temporarily
shielded Joseph from the imminent exposure of his heinous actions.
So, yeah, it was a temporary little fix-it band-aid on the problem.
And Kirsten just went along with the story. Kirsten's unconscious.
Oh, she's unconscious? Yeah, she's in kidney failure. She was taken to the hospital by an ambulance.
He finally brought her to the hospital after she was unconscious because it was so bad.
(25:24):
Oh, my God. So she's just been unconscious since she's been at the hospital?
That's why they can't ask her where her mother is. They have to hope the media
can find this mother because she can't answer them. Okay.
And I guess that would leave reason for him to be like, I don't know.
I'm in the same boat as you, I guess. Yeah, he's like, an unconscious person
was brought to my house with a note.
(25:46):
So I guess, yeah, I'd be like, if they had more questions, he'd be like,
I can't answer them. Yeah. But when you find out, let me know.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
The fabricated letter not only explained Kirsten's medical condition,
but also claimed that Elizabeth intended to return home soon with her three other children.
This play was designed to serve as a plausible reason for their emergencies
from the basement, concealing the true nature of their captivity.
(26:09):
So he planned on letting them out, I guess.
I'm not sure why. eye but he's trying to make he wrote
in the note that she was going to come home with her other children
to be with kirsten who's super sick so he
wanted a reason why all of a sudden she comes out and she has three other children
out of the basement but again what yeah doesn't make sense no but that's okay
(26:31):
because the plan unraveled when investigators observed that the letter seemed
dictated and the handwriting was too well constructed for someone supposedly
in elizabeth's position.
These discrepancies raise suspicion about the veracity of the letter's contents and its origin.
So the police were like, this doesn't make any fucking sense. Yeah.
Understandable yeah to further
(26:52):
complicate matters investigators after visiting the town mentioned
in the letter found no trace of the alleged religious sect elizabeth
was claimed to have joined obviously because it didn't exist this discovery
cast doubt on the existence of the sect and raised questions about the authenticity
of the entire narrative presented by yosef obviously the narrative is trash
on april 26 2008 yosef fritzl decided to allow his daughter Elizabeth and their
(27:16):
three children to resurface to the outside world.
Seizing an opportunity when Rosemary and the other three children were away,
Yosef snuck Elizabeth and the three basement captives out of their longstanding prison.
So Rosemary, I guess, was away with the other kids and he's like,
all right, come on, we're going to get out of here.
But again, I still don't understand how he's like, oh, none of these people
will tell that they've been in a basement for 24 years.
(27:37):
But where did he resurface them to? Just the upstairs? Or did he
allow them to go to the the grocery store and other places he
he let them come out to go to the hospital because the police
needed to talk to this girl's mom so that's
when he took the opportunity to bring forward elizabeth yes and the children
okay however the unusual appearance of furry individuals visiting kirsten at
(27:58):
the hospital that same day raised suspicions clearly the police were promptly
notified and upon arrival they caught joseph fritzl and elizabeth in the act
both were taken into custody for questioning,
and the shocking truth behind the Fritzl family's dark secrets began to unravel.
Oh my god, I got goosebumps. Yeah.
Can you imagine all of these years full of suspense, waiting for this moment
(28:18):
to finally get the help you need, and then you're looked at like a fucking criminal?
Yeah. And then you're just like trying to convince these investigators like,
I am a fucking victim. Yeah. Like, I need help.
Initially hesitant to speak, Elizabeth found the courage to open up to authorities
when assured that she would never have to see her father again.
Trust was established, and Elizabeth, motivated by the promise that her children
(28:40):
and mother would be taken care of, began to recount the horrific story of her captivity.
See, originally, the detectives thought that abuse was going on in the home,
that Elizabeth was perpetrating, that she was the reason that her children were
in such malnourished conditions.
Yeah. Yeah, but they later find out, obviously, that that's not the case.
I mean, yeah, that's, it's, I can't say that's not something that they would
(29:01):
have assumed automatically because who assumes you've been in the basement for
24 years and just given birth to eight, you know. Seven children, yeah.
Seven, eight children just in these conditions. That's insane.
It took two hours for elizabeth fritzl to
recount her 24 years of captivity to the police with
shocking details documented across three full pages you'd
(29:22):
think it'd be longer than that dude honestly and could you
imagine being a detective just like listening listening
to the story like i would have
had to assume like this is some crazy shit some crazy
made-up shit like i would
have to take so many mental breaks i'm like okay i gotta walk
around for here i am thinking this is just a negligent mother
(29:43):
and then this is the reality i would have
oh my god i couldn't on april 26
2008 following her courageous testimony joseph fritzl
was arrested on suspicion of serious crimes against his family members thank
god yeah the following day on april 27 2008 the police publicly announced joseph
fritzl's arrest simultaneously elizabeth her mother rosemary and the five other
(30:06):
children were taken into care it's weird that the mother was taken into care
like it was rosemary was taken into care.
Well, maybe they suspected that she was in on it, too.
Oh, yeah. Well, there was a whole investigation to see if she knew anything. Yeah.
The revelation of Yosef's arrest and the public acknowledgement of the family's
ordeal captured widespread attention and disbelief. Obviously. Clearly.
(30:28):
2008 is when they came out. And she was captive in... No, in 1980... Hold on.
Gosh. Hold this. 1984. 1984 to 2008.
Yeah. Wow.
And not one time did she try to escape. She couldn't. It was completely barricaded.
(30:49):
Also, what really gets me back to the beginning of the story is he asked her to help with the door.
I know. That he closed her in. Could you imagine? You're just bringing a door.
You're like, yeah, Dad, I'll help you put this on the bunker so we don't get
bombed. Oh, now I'm trapped. For 24 years.
Amidst the trauma and upheaval, the family experienced a reunion that was both
(31:11):
emotional and unprecedented.
Mm-hmm. The moment when Elizabeth and all of her children were reunited was
reported as a remarkable event, signifying the end of their captivity and the
beginning of a new chapter.
Gosh, can you imagine those kids?
Just like, I've been upstairs with grandma all this time. Did they tell them
the true story? Yes, so the upstairs kids learn what happened.
Okay, yeah, because they're older, right? Well, they're like 14,
(31:34):
15, 16. I guess that's an appropriate age-ish.
I mean, it's still all around a fucked up situation. Agreed.
But I can't even imagine. I have no word. No, no.
Unfortunately, Kirsten, who had been hospitalized at the age of 19 due to her
critical condition, remained in an induced coma during the reunion,
adding a somber note to an otherwise profound note.
(31:55):
So everyone got reunited, but Kirsten still on office. So she doesn't even know
that they've been taken out of the basement.
Could you imagine when she woke up?
The physical toll of 24 years in captivity was starkly evident in Elizabeth
Fritzl's condition when she was freed. Her sallow appearance and completely
white hair reflected the harsh reality of being held captive in a windowless
(32:15):
basement for an extended period of time.
The prolonged lack of exposure to natural light in the confined space had taken
a toll on her well-being.
Elizabeth's son, Stephan, age 18, and Felix, age 5. Oh, I didn't even realize Felix is 5 years old.
Oh, and he was one of the ones that were- He was the last one that could have
gone up stairs, but couldn't because Rosemary couldn't handle any more kids. Right.
(32:38):
Elizabeth's son, Stefan, age 18, and Felix, age 5, also exhibited signs of their long confinement.
Their pale complexion suggested an adjustment period to the newfound light and
space they were exposed to after years in the dark dungeon.
Stefan, in particular, faced challenges in walking due to his height,
having grown to 5'8", while the dungeon's height was limited to 5'6".
(32:58):
So, for however long he was 5'8", he had to hunch over.
Oh my goodness. So, he's probably had some major back issues.
Back issues, yeah. And I was just thinking in my head while you were telling me this that,
It was amazing to me that Elizabeth never got sick. But then I'm thinking,
okay, she was captive at 18. So she had her vaccine.
She's had, you know, I want to say proper health up until then.
(33:20):
And I guess the other children in the basement wouldn't need it because there's
no bacteria or anything coming in.
But you'd think there would be because, I mean, they're digging holes.
And this basement, the walls oozed water so much that they had to have towels put against it.
So like the damp, cold conditions. Yeah.
I assume they would have gotten sick at some point in the 24 years.
(33:41):
It just wasn't so bad as it was with Kirsten, which it did get bad eventually
because she had kidney failure.
On the other hand, the upstairs children who were raised by their grandmother,
Rosemary, experienced a complex mix of emotions.
Lisa, age 15, Monica, age 14, and Alexander, age 12, reportedly felt anger at
having been deceived throughout their lives.
Yeah. yeah despite this betrayal they expressed happiness
(34:04):
at being reunited with their mother elizabeth and their siblings the
family's reunion was marked by a mix of emotions ranging from the joy of reconnection
to the challenges of coming to terms with the shocking revelations that have
been hidden for so long yeah i i couldn't imagine being those three children
upstairs and being like you're telling me i have a mother downstairs who's been
down there with my whole siblings and i'm I don't know that, and you people are...
(34:29):
And my father is actually my grandfather.
Yeah, so not... It's like the emotional, mental trauma. Well,
not only are they... Is Elizabeth their mother? She's their sister.
Yeah, I... In the course of his interrogation, Josef Fritzl not only confessed
to the heinous crimes of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children,
(34:51):
but also admitted to the disturbing act of burning the body of his infant son in an incinerator.
April 29, 2008, in a bid to corroborate the familial relationships,
police conducted DNA testing that confirmed Josef Fritzl as the biological father
of Elizabeth's children.
The scientific evidence served as a crucial component in building a case against him.
As if her testimony wasn't enough. Wasn't enough, yeah, I know.
(35:12):
But, I mean, they have to prove it for court. Yeah, I know, but still.
Josef Fritzl's trial commenced in March 2009, where he faced charges of murder
by negligence for his infant son.
As he had failed to seek medical care that could have potentially saved the child's life.
But yeah, this is the- So that was the miscarriage baby. No,
it wasn't the miscarriage baby.
This is the baby that was a set of twins with Alexander, but he died during childbirth.
(35:35):
So stillborn? Yeah. Okay.
So he could have been saved, but because she didn't get that proper medical
care when she was obviously giving birth, that was the cause of his death. Wow. Wow.
Additionally, Fritzl was tried for decades of enslavement, incest,
sexual assault, and false imprisonment of Elizabeth. That's it? I know.
Despite extensive psychiatric evaluations revealing a severe personality disorder,
(36:00):
prosecutors determined that Fritzl was mentally fit to stand trial. Good. Good.
But also, what I hate about this case.
So, remember in the beginning where I said that he was already arrested for assaulting someone?
Yes. And he only served 12 months of his sentence and that got taken off.
It was expunged or whatever.
Yeah. So there's actually a lot of cases that they think are linked to him of
(36:26):
women who were raped and murdered.
Wow. Yeah. So after the fact, after all this happened, they found cases where he probably did it.
But they couldn't prove it. But they couldn't prove it before he ended up capturing
his daughter in the basement.
So had he been taken seriously in
the beginning he would have just been in prison none of this would have
(36:47):
happened wow during his trial joseph pleaded guilty
to charges of sexual assault and incest but maintained his
plea of not guilty to the charges of murder and imprisonment i know when arriving
at court he sought to avoid the press by burying his face in a blue folder and
in the courtroom he appeared stoic and emotionless showing no apparent remorse
for the heinous crimes he committed fritzl's demeanor was marked by an absence
(37:10):
of emotion contributing to the chilling atmosphere surrounding the trial.
His psychiatric evaluation provided some insight into his mind where he reportedly
attributed his actions to an abusive upbringing.
So he was like, I was abused growing up, so that's why I did that. That makes no sense.
And that doesn't justify it. No. It doesn't matter. I don't care where you come
from. You don't do that shit.
Yeah. I know too many people that literally reverse that parent psychology where
(37:33):
they want to do like the complete opposite from their parents.
Yeah. And that is not an excuse.
You're going to really hate these next couple of sentences. I hate the whole thing.
Fritzl described himself as an alibi child, suggesting that he was conceived
solely as a means for his mother to prove her ability to have children,
which fucking who cares? Yeah.
Next. Yeah. In a disturbing revelation during the psychiatric evaluation,
(37:57):
Fritzl is reported to have said, I was born to assault and I held myself back
for a relatively long time.
I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter.
I'm sorry. So he's like, oh, well, it could have been worse.
I could have done other things.
But instead, I locked up my daughter. I'm sorry. Did he say that he enjoyed it? Like enjoyed it?
Enjoyed the abuse from, I guess, his family?
(38:18):
No. He was just saying he was born to be an abuser. And he held himself back
for so long. And he could have done a lot worse. So it was inevitable.
Yeah. And he held back what he really wanted to do. Yeah.
He's saying, well, it wasn't as bad. I could have done really worse stuff.
Oh, OK. Sorry, son of a bitch. Yeah, I hate that.
The turning point in Joseph Fritzl's trial occurred on the second day when Elizabeth's
(38:39):
video testimony was aired in court.
Reports indicate that upon recognizing Elizabeth's presence in court and making
eye contact with her, Fritzl visibly paled and broke down.
Good. Following this emotional encounter, Joseph Fritzl pleaded guilty to all
charges the following day.
So to the murder and- To everything. Okay.
Elizabeth's testimony and the direct confrontation with the consequences of
(39:02):
his actions likely contributed to his change in plea.
Doubtful. Well, he was completely stoic, and he was like, nope,
I'm not guilty of these, whatever.
And then she came on and testified and looked him in the eyes and said what
happened, and he immediately changed it to guilty.
I don't know why it would have been a change.
I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know. But still, I mean.
(39:23):
Can you imagine, though, this 42-year-old woman now on the stand telling this? She's 42. Yeah.
Gray hair and everything. Yeah. And she was 18. Yeah. Yeah.
On March 19th, 2009, Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole.
At the age of 74 during the trial, he accepted the sentence without contest.
(39:44):
Currently serving his sentence, Fritzl is confined to a monastery in Upper Austria
that has been repurposed as
a prison, specifically in a section designated for the criminally insane.
I wish that they could kind of do the same kind of treatment those kind of people do to others.
You know like she he was she was captive yeah for
years and a small i mean yes the jail
(40:05):
cell is probably smaller than what she was captive in but just to
kind of give him the same conditions and like a taste of his own medicine i wish
that was something that you could just request to the judge
like hey make him pee in a bucket don't let him leave for like 10 years and
then when he's finally had like some okay behavioral just you'd let him go to
the bathroom you know that's i don't know if you caught the part where he's
74 at this time yeah so imagine like an old old-ass man just finally getting
(40:30):
what he deserves yeah crazy just give him the chair.
During the trial, Elizabeth and her family were undergoing psychiatric and medical
care to help them reacclimate to the outside world.
I couldn't. And that was paid for by the government?
Yeah, obviously. But I couldn't even imagine trying to reacclimate to the world.
So you went into captivity in 1986.
(40:50):
It's now 2008. Do you know all the technological advances and all that stuff
that's changed? You come out and all of a sudden there's like internet.
There's like, it's insane. saying.
As part of their therapy, they were encouraged to explore creative outlets.
In display of gratitude and acknowledgement of the ongoing support from the
community, the family created posters expressing their thanks.
(41:10):
Posters conveyed a heartfelt message.
We, the whole family, would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you
for your sympathy at our fate.
Your compassion is helping us greatly to overcome these difficult times,
and it shows us there are also good and honest people here who really care for us.
We hope that soon there will be a time where we can find our way back into normal
life. After the trial, Elizabeth and her family were given the option to take
(41:31):
on new identities and relocate to an unnamed village in northern Austria.
The opportunity for a fresh start was a crucial aspect of their rehabilitation.
Allowing them to rebuild their lives away from the public scrutiny and reminders
of the traumatic events they had endured.
The family's journey toward healing involved not only individual therapy,
but also the support and understanding of the community as they sought to reclaim
(41:52):
a sense of normalcy in their lives.
Did they take that? Yeah. So they have changed their names.
They live somewhere unknown they're nobody knows
where they are okay yeah so they've started a whole new life
because i mean could you imagine being that family yeah and
then having to go to the grocery store you couldn't go get gas you
couldn't do anything without you know obviously somebody looking at
(42:13):
them i mean i know i would probably be probably i wouldn't mean
to but yeah just to at least you've
you've heard the story yes you know what i mean like it's it
would be be something so i would feel compelled to
just go and be like oh my god yeah like and i
imagine that's not healthy for them no not by any means you know but it's it's
not only something that they need to work through but it's just like how could
(42:37):
somebody do that to somebody and not feel especially just yeah i i just i all
the whole town was so upset when this came out because Because it's this girl's father.
I mean, yes, that adds to just how unbelievable this story is.
But regardless, if it was just like a neighbor or somebody, it's just horrible
(42:57):
all around. It is horrible all around.
I just feel like it adds another layer of horrible that it was her father,
someone who's supposed to protect her.
And she had these six other siblings. And she's in that basement knowing,
I'm the only one down here. Yeah.
And the mother's just, did the mother stay with the husband? No, no.
They're divorced. He's in jail. She is, her and Elizabeth are now making a relationship.
(43:19):
Okay. But are they staying together up in like northern Austria? I don't know.
We don't know any details about their existence there.
That's kind of the point. Yeah. Well, that was a lot. That was definitely, not expecting it.
It was 24 years later.
(43:39):
Yeah 24 years and seven kids later did
they end up having like a proper burial for the the unborn
child or stillborn child no because he was incinerated he
was cremated but they had still like bones and
stuff that they could bury and give something i i imagine
not it had been 15 years okay
(44:00):
i'm sorry math is not on my side right now but
i imagine he didn't hold on to the bones for 15 years
yeah they might have i mean when they got out done like
a memorial but yeah i have no idea i don't feel
like that's something they would have shared with anybody and then what about the
house was the house sold is somebody else living in there now do you know i
may just burn that motherfucker down no it still exists it's still there i was
(44:22):
surprised they also didn't charge him for the bunker like you claimed on a government
form that this was for the cold sport and you just trapped your daughter in
there yeah unbelievable i mean they could have.
I mean, they could have charged him for it, but it doesn't really matter.
He's going to prison for the rest of his life. How is he going to pay that anyways?
Well, just to have it on record.
The motherfucker deserves way more than just those charges.
(44:45):
Yeah, not to mention he was 74 when he went to jail, so he's going to be in
jail for, what, 10 years before he dies? And he's still alive? Or is he dead now?
I'm sorry. I was eager to find out. Hopefully.
So Yosef is still alive. He's 88 years old right now. And yeah,
he's still alive. Look at this fucker.
Ew. I was just about to Google his nasty, dusty ass.
(45:06):
Can you? Yeah. Oh, let me show you. We'll have these in the show notes for you
guys to look at. I'm going to show you the pictures of the basement.
If you want to look at, there's this comprehensive map. Oh, my God. Yeah.
That looks like a lot. I mean, it's just like the first living area.
They had to dig the remainder out. So if you want to describe it for the listeners.
(45:29):
Oh, right, right. So it was just beginning those two bedrooms.
Yes. No, well, it was one bedroom first.
It was only one room. So one room and they had to dig kind of like an underground
tunnel that led into the second bedroom and then dug out from the first bedroom to the bathroom.
Or was that already there? The bathroom wasn't there.
(45:49):
Wow. They didn't even have that. Okay.
So then from the bathroom, dug another tunnel to the living room and then that
living room they had to dig upward to make.
The sexual abuse room. Yeah. And then from that living room, a workshop.
What is that workshop? That might be in the basement that's already there. Let me see.
(46:13):
Okay, yeah. So the workshop and the utility room, this is their actual basement.
So this comes from the house into this. There's this hidden door here,
and that leads into... So this is all the hidden stuff.
Wow. So the workshop and the utility room are his regular basement that they knew existed.
But were never allowed to roll in there. They were never allowed to.
No, so let me show you the door to get in.
(46:35):
Yeah, I can just tell by looking at him, he looks like a monster. Yeah.
So the door is this tiny ass panel down here behind this shelf with all this
stuff. So like you're like, oh, a radiator's back there or something.
I want to go back there. Yeah, no. So he had to like crawl through that to get
there. To get there every time.
If you mind, I'm doing that at 74 years old. So it also says here that he,
(46:58):
the motive behind all of this was to abuse, he abused her, his daughter to make
her pregnant so she can raise children in the Fitzell name.
I didn't even read that. But he had seven other children in the family upstairs.
I know. It doesn't make any fucking sense.
And it's like, that was a poor excuse. Just say you're a monster and enjoyed
incest. Well, he did basically. He said I was born to be an abuser.
(47:23):
That's insane. insane yeah and so did kristin she
finally awoke kirsten kirsten she finally woke yeah so
she was so she recovered okay she did well yeah i'm
trying to i'm trying to make sure that we get the whole happy ending you know
there's it's not really no happy ending to this but at least ultimately he was
(47:43):
captured charged and i guess she is still alive yes okay perfect that's good.
Yeah, she has woken up from a medically induced coma and has been reunited with
her mother, Elizabeth, and her siblings. That happened June 11th, 2008.
So, how long was that? June 11th. Yeah, hold on.
April? I think it was, yeah, April 29th. So, two months later.
(48:06):
Wow. She was in a coma for two months. Wow.
And then, all of a sudden, at that two months, she wakes up and she's like,
what the fuck? I guess. I couldn't even imagine.
Wow. Can you imagine how many detectives go into her room when she wakes up and explain?
Yeah like real quick before you know you
get out of bed and stuff this is what's happened your father grandfather has
(48:28):
been charged he's in trial and
your mother is waiting for you well also we don't know if the
basement children thought that was normal so
could you imagine her thinking oh so what
he was doing was wrong this isn't how normal people live
what we were experiencing is and
what was really what other people did yeah i
(48:49):
can't imagine all the questions that they had or really i mean
what would you tell your children in that case would
you tell them like this isn't real yeah you're
you are supposed to live a happy life but that would only make
things they'd make them upset i don't know if i would do that if i'd be because
you know there's no way your mother like you're the mother right you're elizabeth
and you're teaching them everything and you're you're telling he they're watching
(49:13):
things like other people play outside there's they can't just write it off as
this is an imaginary world yeah you know but how would But they know.
I mean, they grew their, lived their entire life in the basement.
They just thought that a normal life is like an imaginary beautiful world.
Maybe. You know, like Harry Potter.
Oh yeah, like it's not real. Yeah, it's just like kids playing outside and,
(49:37):
you know, throwing a ball with their dad and shit like that.
Like normal people activities and they're just like, wow, that's a thing?
Like, that's insane to me.
Well, thanks for ruining my day. I'm sorry.
Is it too early for this? It's only, it's only that early. It's only,
well, yeah, it's like afternoon time.
Thank you for listening to the Elizabeth Fritzl case on Twisted Truth,
(49:59):
a true crime podcast hosted by Emily and Alyssa.
Music.
Until next time, stay curious, stay vigilant, and never underestimate the power of the truth.
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