Fritzl pleads guilty to house of horror rapes

Josef Fritzl used his daughter as a "toy", an Austrian court heard Monday after the 73-year-old admitted imprisoning her in an underground bunker for 24 years and forcing her to bear seven children.

But the Austrian engineer, who set up a house of horror with electrically controlled doors to stop Elisabeth Fritzl and her children from escaping, denied slavery and a murder charge over the death of one of the incest babies.

The white-haired defendant, dressed in a grey suit, hid his face behind a blue document folder as he entered the court.

It was his first appearance in public since the shocking case broke last April when the eldest child, Kerstin, 19, who had lived her entire life underground with two brothers and her mother, fell severely ill and had to be hospitalised.

He admitted rape, incest, sequestration and coercion, replying with a simple "yes" when asked whether he pleaded guilty when the charges were read. For these, he faces a prison term of up to 15 years.

But he pleaded not guilty to a murder charge which carries a life sentence. Prosecutors accuse him of letting one of the babies die shortly after birth in 1996 by failing to seek medical aid for the newborn.

Fritzl told police the baby was stillborn and he burnt the body in a boiler in the cellar.

He also pleaded not guilty to a charge of enslavement -- the first time such a charge has been brought in Austria -- as the trial started in Sankt Poelten, some 60 kilometres 35 miles from the family home in Amstetten.

And he denied telling Elisabeth and the children they would be gassed if they tried to escape, which, according to the 27-page charge sheet, constitutes grievous assault.

"No, I didn't say that," Fritzl said.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said Fritzl used his daughter "as a toy" during the 24 years he held her captive in a narrow cellar with no hot water, no heating, no fresh air or sunlight, describing his crimes as "inconceivable".

"He came to the cellar. Lights out. Rape. Lights on," she said, describing the bunker's "morbid atmosphere".

"It's damp, it's musty, it's mouldy."

Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer, who has argued his client was only trying to create a second family, maintained that he was no monster.

"If you only lock up your daughter to have sex with her, you're not going to have any children, you're not going to get schoolbooks for them or a Christmas tree."

Fritzl "had feelings of guilt for 24 years," he added, citing from the psychiatric expertise.

Burkheiser noted however that Fritzl had raped his daughter in front of her own children and the defendant "showed no sign of regret or any consciousness of wrongdoing".

"I just want to be left alone," she said.





Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. AP Photo/Las Vegas News Bureau, Brian Jones