Josef Fritzl: The Monster of Amstetten
By: Wess Haubrich
Tags: Sexual Assault, True Crime, Metoo, Mental Health, Crime

Josef Fritzl: The Monster of Amstetten

The Monster of Amstetten kept his daughter as a basement sex slave for 24 years— fathering several children by her. But that’s only where the weirdness of this case begins. Wess Haubrich Follow Nov 21, 2020 · 17 min read

The darkest spawn of hell can sometimes be lurking in harmless, safe, innocent, social disguises. Such was the case of 17-year-old Elisabeth Friztl who was kidnapped, raped 3,000 times, and kept as a sex slave by her own father for 24 years. She would rear several “basement” children by him in the mean time.

Her harrowing escape from her private hell and the incredible gravitas she showed in the face of her abuser is something we can all learn from.

The 17-year old opened her eyes in the pitch black. Her head spun like the wheels on the bus she had hopped to Vienna some time ago. Pain coursed through every vein, muscle and neuron as she attempted to steady herself and get off the cold concrete floor; it’s grit soiling her beautiful rust-colored hair.

She could not see in the dark, humid cellar. When she blindly tried to get up, she was yanked back down with a tremendous force echoed by the cacophonous clank of chains attached to a metal loop in the floor. She heard the slow dripping of water in another room, and the scurry of rats and roaches somewhere close.

Then the cellar’s lock slowly started to turn. The sound of heavy steps on the creaking wooden stairs filled her with profound terror as a flash light beam blinded her… causing her adrenaline to pump 100 miles an hour, not knowing exactly what to expect.

Little did Elisabeth know what happened next was but the start of her 24 year personal hell at the hands of the man she loathed most in the whole world: her own father, the Monster of Amstetten, Josef Fritzl.

Elisabeth Fritzl around age 17. Source: Newshub.

I. The Monster is Born

Josef Fritzl Jr. was born in 1935 in the small city of Amstetten in lower Austria. His mother, Maria, was the illegitimate child of a miller. Josef’s grandmother (who was very authoritarian over the young man) was sterile.

The miller began many sexual liaisons with the maids in their home for the express purpose of having children. Maria was one of these. That is to say, she was technically an illegitimate child.

Maria met a penniless drifter in 1934 named Josef Fritzl Sr. and soon after Josef Jr. was born. They lived at 40 Ybbstraße (pronounced EEB-strassuh) in Amstetten at this time, about 90 miles from where Hitler was born.

Fast forward to Anschluss in March of 1938, when the Nazis annexed Austria — this would bring a lot of trouble for the Fritzls and not just for Josef Sr. who was fighting on the Eastern Front during the War. He was also booted by Maria from 40 Ybbstraße in 1939.

Josef Jr. saw Hitler on March 7 of 1938. He would go on to blame the Dictator and Nazism (among many other things) for his deranged behavior towards his daughter in the coming years.

Josef Sr. was a POW in a Soviet gulag until 1948. Upon returning to Amstetten, he was shunned by his wife and son as a gutless and shameful coward. Fritzl’s hatred of his father would simmer below the surface for the rest of his miserable life.

Josef Fritzl at the high security mental hospital where he is serving his life sentence. Source: Daily Mail.

I. Mother Dearest

Maria was rather off-balance before WWII — many who knew her said she wanted a child but not the associated responsibilities of having one. She would often beat, berate, and neglect the young Josef.

Her fiery temper got her arrested by the Third Reich in Austria in 1945 and sent to a concentration camp. She would subsequently be freed by the Allies after the war.

Then 10-year old Josef was left alone for this huge stretch of time. It is truly astounding how the symbolism of this episode in his then young life would become very relevant later on in our story — but, more on that below.

Fritzl ended up in an orphanage where he was told his mother was dead. Maria did manage to get him back after the war, however. Yet, the abuse didn’t stop. It only got more intense after her stint in a concentration camp.

Fritzl stood up to her when he was 15. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally considering the huge amount of pathological symbolism in this case), it was at age 15 that Fritzl also began developing a few deviant sexual habits (paraphilias).

He began with voyeurism in wandering around his corner of Amstetten listening for the noises of young couples having sex.

This escalated to the ultimate act of revenge against his mother. Fritzl locked the bedridden Maria up in her own attic with the windows bricked up, where she died in 1980.

The motivation, Fritzl said in an interview with a forensic psychiatrist, was simple: revenge for all she’d done to him.

That voyeurism would escalate — as these behaviors tend to do in the case of sexual psychopaths like Josef Fritzl — from “nuisance” type behaviors (like being a “peeping tom”) to more serious ones like exposing himself to young women and getting violent with the prostitutes in the red light district of Linz.

III. The Monster Marries

In 1951, at the age of 16, Fritzl headed to Linz to begin his studies and on-the-job learning to become an engineer. Engineers were in very high demand after the War.

Five years later, he would meet his wife — 17-year old Rosemarie Byers — at the firm where he was working as a technical assistant. Byers’ father also worked there.

Fritzl told his friends he was very impressed by her and that she would make an exceptional housewife because she shows incredible “obedience” — a quality Fritzl would prize at an absolutely pathological level, as we will see.

By 1963, Josef and Rosemarie were married with three children: two daughters and one son. That year Josef is sent by his employer on what turns out to be a two year business trip to Ghana.

In true narcissistic psychopath form, Fritzl would divorce Rosemarie in 2012 for “failing to see… [him] in prison”.

Josef Fritzl and Rosemarie shortly before his 2008 arrest. Source: The Telegraph.

IV. Elisabeth is Born

Upon coming back to Linz and Amstetten, Fritzl’s authoritarianism over his family hit a new fevered pitch; likely, as a reaction to his children growing and having to manage the resultant stress.

On April 8, 1966, his fourth child, Elisabeth, is born.

The birth of Elisabeth only added more stress to Fritzl’s life. So, he reverted to his old, predatory sexual habits which were dormant (as far as we know) when he was overseas, likely because he had intense direction in his work.

Fritzl escaped to Linz — where he worked — to get away from the “small town scrutiny” of Amstetten.

No one in Linz would question him or view him with suspicion; he would not have to worry there about anything getting back to his wife’s ears—although, there are real questions regarding what Frau Fritzl knew when her daughter was enslaved in the cellar; nor would he have to worry about the prying eyes of law enforcement in his hometown.

V. The Monster Escalates to Violent Crime for the First Time

Fritzl escalated in Linz in 1967 when he followed a mother home from the grocery store and raped her at knife point in her bed while her infant child slept in a cot next to it.

A court gave him 18 months in prison for the crime.

Another bonus Fritzl got — besides this feather-light sentence for a heinous crime — was the Austrian justice system effectively expunging his rape conviction from his record after 10 years. This was done with most all crime, regardless of severity.

It was the Fritzl case and the Kampusch case which happened before Fritzl’s (where Natascha Kampusch was imprisoned by a sexual psychopath in a cellar for eight years) — both in Austria — that would finally get the legislature to change this patently absurd law in 2008 after Fritzl’s trial.

By the time 1972 comes around, the Fritzl’s have their seventh and last child, for a final tally of three girls and four boys. Fritzl’s reputation as an independently-wealthy engineer was growing fast. So, he decides to invest in property by buying guesthouses, restaurants, and a 40 bedroom, three story hotel.

Fritzl turned a profit for a while. Yet, when business went south, the hotel mysteriously caught fire. Authorities never proved it was arson or insurance fraud.

Yet, it would make news again in 2017 when the new owner of one of Fritzl’s old properties found a “staircase to nowhere” and various “hidden rooms” in the structure.

There’s nothing definitive linking Fritzl and his property to the 1986 murder of 17-year old “Martina P.” (essentially all the information local authorities have released) that came next, though.

Her body was found that year wrapped in plastic and dumped on the beach at nearby Lake Mondsee. Martina P. did look astonishingly like Elisabeth Fritzl, though, and was her age.

Still, short of a deathbed confession from Josef Fritzl himself, we will likely never know with certainty if the Monster was involved in her death too.

During this time, Fritzl very much exemplified the “family man” in the minds of the people of Amstetten — as other socially-competent killers like BTK or Ted Bundy did.

Moors Murderer Ian Brady aptly called this phenomenon “a house divided.” In my correspondence with him from prison, Dennis Rader (BTK) called it “compartmentalization”.

Original drawing by Dennis Rader, BTK, titled “Der Fuhrer’s Ghost.” Source: The Author.

VI. 40 Ybbstraße Expands

Six years later, Fritzl started a massive expansion to 40 Ybbstraße — including a huge, labyrinthine cellar under the outside rear of the house. Several flats to be rented out were to be built on top.

These flats had a very high turnover rate, which, in turn contributed to the unquestioning demeanor of the folks in that part of Amstetten. DIY building also came naturally with being an engineer, so no one in Amstetten thought twice about it.

Around this time, Fritzl begun showing extraordinarily-obsessive tendencies (some might call it “grooming”) around the then-twelve-year old Elisabeth. He demanded to know where she was at all times, and often spied on her. These behaviors would ultimately escalate, just as the ones earlier in Fritzl’s psychosexual life.

In 1981, Elisabeth started a gastronomy and tourism course out of town and begun waiting tables to support herself. This only got under her dad’s skin and added fuel to the fire of his obsession.

The gastronomy class was also the figurative straw that broke the camel’s back. Fritzl escalated starting that year by exposing himself to Elisabeth, leaving pornographic literature under her pillow, and all-around sexually abusing her.

Elisabeth’s friends during this time report an intensely-introverted girl at school who they nevertheless knew liked school better than home. Still, no one ever inquired why that was the case.

In 1983, Fritzl finished his cellar, which he said was to be used for storage and as a workshop.

Fritzl being the controlling-psychopath that he was, built the space to give him maximum-possible physical control of it (see a map of it below); it had lighting and many interconnected rooms.

Elisabeth ran away to Vienna on January 28 to escape her increasingly-scary and controlling father. Vienna police picked her up and held her until Fritzl made the drive from Amstetten to pick her up himself, as she was technically still a minor.

On the drive back, Fritzl ominously said, “I’ll never let you run away again.” Elisabeth could have had no idea just how terrifyingly-true that statement would turn out to be a little over a year later.

Detailed map of Fritzl’s cellar. Source: All That’s Interesting.

40 Ybbstraße view from the rear. Source: BBC.

VII. The Imprisonment Begins

In May of 1984 Elisabeth made the mistake of telling her father she was moving to Linz to live with her sister. This percolated in the psychopath’s mind: increasing his obsession and fertilizing the seed of desperation in his unconscious.

He would not let it happen again. He COULD NOT let it happen again. He would NOT be left alone again by the woman who got the entirety of his psychosexual mental energy; not after what his mother did by leaving him alone so many years earlier.

Fritzl would later admit to the psychiatrist from prison that he often fantasized about sexual intercourse (and domination) of his mother. This was very likely reflected in Elisabeth as a surrogate for his the Monster’s mother.

So, yes, this was very Oedipal: arguably a replaying of Josef Fritzl’s own abuse and neglect by his mother for months during the War.

It was as if Fritzl displaced that anger and loneliness into total control over his daughter; all in a vain, unconscious attempt to right his own sordid past history.

More on the Oedipal root of rape/murder fantasies can be found in sources from Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Erich Fromm (who also argued for the importance of psychic necrophilia — or “love of death and death of love” — as a vital causative agent there) in the “further reading” below.

VIII. August 28, 1984

He had to do something.

On August 28, 1984 Fritzl called Elisabeth to the garage of 40 Ybbstraße with the seemingly innocuous request of helping him lift a door.

After this is done, he asked her to join him in his study for a private talk. She did, and when her back was to him, he knocked her out with an ether-soaked rag to her face, then carried her into the cellar and handcuffed and chained her to a ring in the floor.

Elisabeth had no way of knowing she would be in that dank, humid, bug and rodent-infested place — with just a bed, toilet, and TV — for 24 years.

Fritzl made her write a letter to the family saying she ran away and joined a (satanic — The Satanic Panic was big back then) cult; he then drove 100 miles away to post the letter.

Elisabeth would be raped an estimated 3,000 times by her father over 24 years in that cellar. With that frequency of coitus happening, it was impossible to avoid pregnancy. Her first was a miscarriage.

Her first live birth was in 1988: a girl named Kerstin. From here on out when the births occurred, her father gave her a book on child birth, a rag, a pair of scissors, and a few wet wipes.

She gave birth a total of seven times while being totally alone in that pitch-dark place, totally devoid of any sunlight.

View of the Cellar 1. Source: The Mirror.

View from the Cellar 2. Source: All That’s Interesting.

View from the Cellar 3. Source: All That’s Interesting.

IX. The Children in the Cellar

Elisabeth’s second child, Stefan, was born in 1990 — he would go on to have horrible back pain and misalignment because he was 5’8” and had to always lean in the cellar.

In August of 1992, her third child, Lisa, was born with a heart defect. Fritzl did not want to take the gamble of his upstairs family hearing a constantly-crying, in-pain, baby coming from downstairs — thus far though they hadn’t noticed a thing, and they wouldn’t until 2008 when this case breaks wide open.

So, Fritzl takes Lisa, puts her in a basket and literally leaves her on the doorstep of 40 Ybbstraße with another phony note from Elisabeth. The infant got emergency surgery and by all accounts lived a (somewhat) normal life with the upstairs family she thought were just her grandparents.

The Fritzl Family Tree. Source: Reader.

X. “Normalcy”

Meanwhile downstairs was getting cramped. So Fritzl opened up more space among the rooms and brought in things like a refrigerator (which he kept stocked), toys the children would like, and even a pet goldfish and canary. In short: he tries to normalize the hellish situation he’s created.

Elisabeth attempted her own normalcy for her kids as well: getting them up at the same time every day, cooking them breakfast in the tiny kitchen, and even teaching them how to read. All this while her dad is still brutally abusing and raping her in front of them.

December 16, 1994 sees the arrival of Monika. She is taken upstairs in the same manner as Lisa with another bogus note Elisabeth was forced to write.

Ybbstraße is a main thoroughfare in Amstetten, so it kind of defies belief that Fritzl was able to drop all these infants off with absolutely no one noticing.

Throughout all this, by the way, Fritzl was getting financial assistance from Austrian social services because they never thought to probe deeper as his 1967 rape conviction was no longer on his record.

XI. The Monster Murders One

In April of 1996, Elisabeth gave birth to twins Michael and Alexander. Michael had horrible breathing problems, so Fritzl allows the infant to die and hurls his corpse into 40 Ybbstraße’s furnace.

Alexander is taken upstairs in the manner of his older sisters, likely because Fritzl thought it too risky to kill him too. Michael would later constitute Fritzl’s only murder conviction.

Around this time, Fritzl started going on a lot of business trips for weeks at a time. He would leave plenty of food, water, and vitamin supplements for his “downstairs family” when he would be gone.

In 2002, Elisabeth gives birth to her seventh and last child by her father: a boy named Felix.

Number seven effectively made his “downstairs family” a grotesque mirrored image of his upstairs family, which is interesting again from a symbolic point of view.

It’s as if the upstairs family (properly integrated into their community) just weren’t enough and only stirred Fritzl’s anger, much like how he stirred his mother’s — he was by all accounts a strict, angry man anyway. The unconscious way he saw to remedy this was to have his second family downstairs and controlled exactly how he believes all women and children should be controlled.

XII. A Plan to End the Hell

Fritzl was very fond of Felix. He wanted to get him upstairs and basically integrate both families.

So to do that, he begun planning to release Elisabeth in 2008, about the time Felix would need to start school. He believed the gas-lighting he did on Elisabeth (telling her there were subterranean gas traps, electrified doors and the like, should she try to escape) was effective enough to deter her from telling the authorities.

As tends to happen, reality foiled best laid plans. Before Fritzl could put his plan in motion, 19-year old Kerstin became deathly ill and almost comatose. All they had in the cellar to treat her vague symptoms (profuse sweating, unusually white skin, and all the symptoms of kidney failure) was aspirin.

Elisabeth begs her father to get medical help for her. She stood steadfast and refused to go on herself if Fritzl let Kerstin die.

So, he takes her to the hospital.

The doctors are rather confounded by Kerstin’s constellation of symptoms — which turned out to be severe Vitamin D deficiency, despite the lamps Fritzl installed in the cellar and the vitamin supplements he gave all four of its inhabitants.

Kerstin had lost most of her teeth and had developed the habit of tearing her hair out in clumps, shredding her dresses and stuffing them down the toilet in the cellar.

XIII. The Hospital

Fritzl introduced himself as Kerstin’s grandfather yet the doctors kept asking him to get the mother in there that they may take an even more thorough history and get a handle on what’s happening.

The police search for her and after about a week put out a nationally-televised appeal for Elisabeth to come home. Their plan was to charge her with severe neglect.

Elisabeth saw the televised appeal on her tiny TV in the cellar. When her dad came back, she said to him, you’re going to take me in there or I will kill myself down here. Fritzl acquiesces.

Upon getting to the hospital, the police immediately arrest and begin interrogating Elisabeth. It is only when they threaten to take her children away that she finally tells them what her father had done to her for 24 years. They immediately arrest Josef Fritzl and free the other children in the cellar.

XIV. The Monster is Arrested

Fritzl pled not guilty to crimes including rape, false imprisonment, and deprivation of liberty.

Elisabeth and the children, meanwhile, started intense therapy and acclimation to the outside world. Elisabeth also prepared a taped deposition at her father’s trial where no press or members of the public are allowed in.

As a final surprise, Elisabeth showed up at the trial and confronted the monster, the terror which lorded over literally every aspect of her life for such a long time. When Fritzl saw his daughter, he allegedly changed his plea to guilty and wept uncontrollably.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole possible after 15 years.

Josef Fritzl arrested. Source: The Independent.’

XV. Post Script

Fritzl is still alive as of this writing and reportedly suffering from dementia behind prison walls.

Elisabeth and the children are still undergoing intensive therapy — they reportedly suffer intense anxiety and panic attacks from the sound of a door closing or the turning of a lock, not to mention Elisabeth’s profound ambivalence toward her mother.

They live in a location designated by Austrians as “Village X” so the family can live a normal life, supported by the Austrian state and relatively-free of public scrutiny.

Elisabeth has also reportedly found love in the bodyguard hired by the government to protect her — if anyone deserves happiness after such a life, it’s her.

Elisabeth Fritzl is a potent symbol of strength. She is the embodiment of a positive life after decades of abuse.

Josef Fritzl will not have the last word in this as he rots in hell where he belongs. No, that last word will go to Kerstin, who upon waking from her coma said, “…A new life is starting for all of us. Let us be happy!”

Check out the Real Monsters episode on Josef Fritzl embedded below:

Further Reading:

Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1993.

2. Erikson, Erik H., and Robert Coles. The Erik Erikson Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.

3. Freud, Anna. Normality and Pathology in Childhood: Assessments of Development. London: Karnac Books, 1989.

4. Freud, Anna. Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: H. Karnac, 1993.

5. Freud, Sigmund, and James Strachey. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Norton, 1989.

6. Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.

7. Freud, Sigmund, and A. A. Brill. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud: Psychopathology of Everyday Life/the Interpretation of Dreams/Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex/Wit and Its Relations to the Unconscious. New York: Modern Library, 1995.

8. Freud, Sigmund, and A. A. Brill. The Interpretation of Dreams. Overland Park, KS: Digireads.com Publishing, 2017.

9. Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: H. Holt, 1992.

10. Holmes, Stephen T., and Ronald M. Holmes. Sex Crimes: Patterns and Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002.

11. Stone, Michael H. The Anatomy of Evil. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2017.

12. Stone, Michael H., and Gary Brucato. The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2019.

Wess Haubrich is a staff writer at CitizenTruth.org, the former editor of the 405 Film, writer at News Break, and half of the weekly True Crime podcast Real Monsters. Follow him on Twitter, and email him haubr.wess@gmail.com.