Monday, April 28, 2008

Police: Dad confesses to holding daughter captive 24 years

A photo taken by a forensic team and released by the Austrian police with permission of Austria's prosecution office on Monday, April 28, 2008 shows a view into a hidden room in a house in Amstetten, Austria, in which a woman is believed to have been held captive for 24 years. Austria's police on Monday, April 28, 2008 questioned a man identified in a police statement as Josef F., they say held his daughter captive for 24 years and sexually abused her in what stunned Austrians dubbed a 'house of horrors' in Amstetten, a high-tech, windowless cell where she allegedly gave birth to at least six children. Two police forensics teams arrived on the scene Monday morning and technicians in white suits entered the apartment block in Amstetten, a blue-collar town about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Vienna. (AP Photo/Police Niederoesterreich)

28 April 2008

By
VERONIKA OLEKSYN and WILLIAM J. KOLE

AMSTETTEN
, Austria -A man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children with her, police said Monday.

The man, now 73, also told investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died shortly after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

"We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime," Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.
The daughter, who is now 42, had been missing since 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip.

Police on Monday released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping from the cell, which was constructed of solid reinforced concrete.

The suspect, identified as Josef F., was expected to appear in court later in the day.

"He admitted that he locked his daughter, who was 18 at the time, in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children," Polzer told The Associated Press.

Austrians — still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a young woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement cell outside Vienna for more than eight years — expressed disbelief at the latest case.

"The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong," the newspaper Der Standard said Monday in a commentary.

Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street, told The Associated Press that the suspect and his wife would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.

"They appeared normal, just like any other family," Pramreiter said. "I'm totally shocked, this was next door. It's terrible."

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