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What’s amazing in this story is the mother’s reaction. Something here just doesn’t add up.
The man on the right is Josef Fritzl (Reuters Photo) who is accused of locking his daughter in a complex network of rooms under his basement. He fathered seven children with her.
Bad men have done bad things before, but that’s not the strangest part:
Fritzl then brought Elisabeth and her remaining two children out of the basement, telling his wife — who thought their “missing” daughter had chosen to return home, police said.
Something here just doesn’t pass the smell test. A daughter goes missing, and then reappears? The wife believed this? And this guy must have been quite the engineer that no one ever heard kids crying in the basement. I mean, it says there was one sound proof room, but all the rest weren’t.
I think that the wife probably knew or had suspicion of more than what she’s letting on. I mean, where do you find the time to build such a compound?
In any case, this is child abuse in the extreme, and this man should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. He robbed his children of their education, their innocence, and part of their lives.
Hopefully the family can come along side and help this girl with her children and show love and compassion that her father never showed her.
Update (04-30-2008):More info on the underground complex and what the house looked like.
This story made me absolutely sick. I’m sure if the father was abusing the daughter he had some control over the wife as well. Sick…absolutely sick. I feel so bad for the daughter and her children. I pray that they can be loved in a proper Godly way.
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The father forced the daughter to send his wife letters. I don’t know exactly what was in them, but they made it seem as if she ran away. Also, the only room that needed to be sound proofed is the one connecting to the house. After that, the dirt would dampen the noise enough that no one should be able to hear anything.
@Loc: Thanks for the added info, Loc. I hadn’t thought through which room would have been sound proofed. Good deduction. I still don’t know why the wife didn’t know that he was building the “lair”, though, or where the food went to. Now, if he didn’t work I could see it happening pretty easily. There’s still something that seems fishy to me.
All this is unspeakably horrific– but consider what could have happened if for some reason “Joseph” had rightfully breathed his last *before* the discovery of these poor people. The fate of the victims might have gone undiscovered and the horror that is “Joseph” could have passed through this world unpunished. Hopefully, this “child” and her children can reclaim the lives taken from them.