“My drive to have sex with Elisabeth grew stronger and stronger,” Fritzl was quoted as saying.
“I knew Elisabeth didn’t want me to do what I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her. … It was like an addiction … In reality, I wanted children with her.”
Elisabeth, 42, spent nearly a quarter of a century in a windowless cell in the basement of Fritzl’s house, giving birth to seven of his children, now aged between 19 and 5 years.
Three of the children remained locked up with their mother in the basement and never saw sunlight until their fate was revealed nearly two weeks ago. Elisabeth has told police that Josef started sexually abusing her when she was 11.
Fritzl, who also has seven children with his wife Rosemarie, said he had locked up Elisabeth after she started to “break all the rules” following the onset of puberty.
She went to bars, drank alcohol and smoked, and ran away a couple of times, the 73-year-old said.
“I tried to get her out of that swamp, organised her an apprenticeship to become a waitress.
“I needed to take precautions, I needed to create a place in which I could at some point keep her away from the outside world, by force if necessary.”
Fritzl said he found himself trapped in a inescapable cycle once he had locked up Elisabeth. He told his wife their daughter had joined a sect.
“I knew all the time, during the whole 24 years, that what I did was not right, that I must be crazy to do something like that,” he said, referring to Elisabeth’s underground world as his “empire”.
“But nonetheless, it became a matter of course for me to lead a second life in the basement of my house.”
Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, has said his client should have psychiatric tests to evaluate whether he is fit to stand trial. Mayer said he might ask for a second assessment should the official court opinion not reflect his client’s personality.
Fritzl described himself as a man who valued decency and good manners, and said the emphasis on discipline in Nazi times, when he grew up, might have influenced him.
“Nonetheless, I am not the beast the media depicts me as.
“When I went into the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter, and books and toys for the children, and I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth was cooking our favourite dish,” he said.
Fritzl has been remanded in custody in the city of St Poelten. Mayer confirmed to Reuters that Fritzl’s comments were authentic.
In a bizarre attempt to defend his conduct he said Hitler’s Germany had instilled “a high regard for decency and uprightness” in him.
He claimed he had “rescued” Elisabeth, who was then 18, to keep her from “going out to seedy bars” and “drinking and smoking”.
Fritzl said he had never intended to rape her - as he was “not a man to abuse children” - but felt an “overpowering” desire for “a taste of the forbidden”.
The Austrian added he had raped her while thinking of his own “lonely” childhood and said he “wanted them [the other children] to always have someone to play with”.
He said he knew his daughter, who he described as a “superb housewife and mother” was suffering as he raped her but could not stop himself.
Fritzl also admitted incestuous feelings for his mother - who he described as “the greatest woman in the world”.
The claims came in notes written from his cell and released through Fritzl’s lawyer Rudolf Mayer, who claimed they revealed the extent of his client’s insanity.
Fritzl wrote: “I have always had high regard for decency and uprightness. I was growing up in Nazi times, when hard discipline was a very important thing.
“I belong to an old school of thinking that just does not exist today.
“I grew up in the Nazi times and that meant there needed to be control and the respect of authority. I suppose I took on some of these old values with me into later life, all subconsciously, of course.”
He claimed he kidnapped the teenage Elisabeth to keep her away from alcohol and bad company.
“When she got into puberty she stopped obeying any rules,” he said. “She was going out to seedy bars and would spend whole nights there drinking and smoking.
“I only tried to rescue her from that life. She even ran away from home twice and associated herself with some bad people that were not right for her. I would bring her back home each time, but she would run away again each time.
“I tried to rescue her from the swamp and I organised her a trainee job as a waitress, but sometimes there were days when she would not go to work.
“I was forced to act and do something about it. I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth separated from that world, and I was ready to use force.”
In letters written by Elisabeth, who was then 18, in the weeks before she was imprisoned, she spoke of enjoying going to nightclubs with friends and getting drunk.
She wrote to a friend about going out one weekend.
“Of course I went out on Saturday. Can you imagine how hammered I was? At first we went to a couple of clubs. At about 5am we all went to my place to get a coffee because we’d had so much fun, and they all slept at my place.
“That was a mess. It took me half a day to clean up the flat.”
It now appears that such typical behaviour was condemning her to her imprisonment.
It emerged today that Fritzl is known as ‘Satan’ among the other inmates of the remand jail where he is being held.
He described the complicated electronic devices used to seal the concrete walls of her underground prison and said he began building the cells in 1981 - three years before he locked her in them.
He also confirmed the lies he told to police and social workers to mask his acts and mentioned travelling hundreds of miles in order not to be recognised when he was buying groceries, medicines and clothes for Elisabeth and her children.
According to Mr Mayer, who was speaking to an Austrian magazine, Fritzl said: “I wanted to have children with her.
“I was my dream to have another normal family, in the cellar, with her as a good wife and several children.
“I knew she didn’t want me to do the things I did to her. I knew she was in pain.
“But the urge to have a taste of the forbidden was overpowering. It was an obsession.”
Fritzl locked up Elisabeth in 1984, but claims he never abused her before that, as he was “no a man to abuse children”.
He admitted he first raped her in early 1985, which continued until her release.
He said: “The urge to have sex with Elisabeth was only increasing. There was no way out; not for Elisabeth, but also not for me.
“At first I was thinking about whether I should release her. But I kept delaying that decision, for fears that I would be arrested and that my crime would be exposed to my family and to the whole world.”
He said he saw himself as a father figure to the captive family in the dungeon.
He said: “I always wanted to have many children and I dreamed about a large family since I was a little boy. I didn’t want my children to grow up alone like I did, but I wanted them to always have someone to play with.”
Fritzl admitted to having had incestuous fantasies about his mother, who is said to have been a strict woman who separated from his father in 1939 and raised their son on her own.
“She was the greatest woman in the world. She was in charge at home, but I was the only man in the house. In a way, I was like a husband to her,” he said.
“I loved her across all boundaries. I was totally in awe of her. Completely and totally in awe.
“That did not mean there was anything else between us though, there never was and there never would have been.
“I was able to keep my desires under control.”
Mr Mayer, Fritzl’s lawyer, claimed that the account proved that his client was suffering from a mental illness and was not accountable for his actions.
Mr Mayer said: “Someone who is able to imprison their own daughter in a cellar for 24 years and have children with her cannot be counted as a normal person.
“But even though the crimes of my client are monstrous, he is not a monster. He could have killed his hostages and sealed the dungeon, but he didn’t. He never intended to hurt them”
But according to police and relatives, Fritzl was a “despot”.
Austrian police spokesman Colonel Franz Polzer said: “The whole was subjected to his domineering authority. Members of the family have described him as a tyrant.”
Fritzl will go to court tomorrow where a judge will consider whether to keep him in detention as the first 14 days of investigative custody expire.
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Josef Fritzl has broken his silence about why he kept his daughter as a sex slave in a dungeon for 24 years.
Mr Fritzl, who fathered seven children by his daughter after abusing her in the cellar of his house in eastern Austria, claimed that he was obsessed with a desire to have a family with her because she was a “great housewife and a mother”.
The retired electrical engineer, who is currently on remand facing a range of possible charges including manslaughter and rape, also revealed that he projected on to Elisabeth, now 42, the incestuous desires he had for his own mother.
“I knew that Elisabeth did not want the things I did to her. I knew that I was hurting her,” Mr Fritzl said in notes given by his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, to an Austrian magazine.
“But the urge to finally be able to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong. It was like an addiction.”
Mr Fritzl also admitted he did not use contraception while sexually abusing his daughter and said that he planned to have a “proper family” with her.
“In reality I wanted to have children with her. I was looking forward to the offspring. It was a beautiful idea for me — to have a proper family, also down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children.
“I always wanted to have many children. Not children that would have to, like I had, grow up alone but children that would always have someone to play with. I had a dream about a large family ever since I was a little boy.”
He also confessed to having lured his daughter to the underground dungeon he secretly constructed in the cellar of his home in Amstetten and admitted that he designed and equipped the underground chamber solely for that purpose – claiming to have wanted to protect his daughter from “bad people”.
But he denied having abused Elisabeth sexually at the age of 11 – as she reportedly told police – claiming that he was not a man “that would molest children”.
“Ever since she entered puberty she did not adhere to rules anymore. She would spend whole nights in dingy bars, drinking alcohol and smoking. I only tried to pull her out of that misery,” he said.
“I got her a job as a waitress but she would not go to work for days. She even escaped twice and hung out with bad people during this time and they were not good company for her. I would bring her back home each time but she would try to escape again.
“That is why I had to do something. I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world.”
According to Mr Fritzl, he kept his daughter hostage for several months without sexually assaulting her but gradually started to “lose control” and went to the cellar one night to rape her.
“The urge to have sex with Elisabeth was getting stronger and stronger. It was a vicious circle, a circle from which there was no exit — not only for Elisabeth but also for myself.
“With every passing week in which I kept my daughter captive my situation was getting crazier. I really was thinking about whether I should let her go or not. But I was not able to make that decision, although — or maybe exactly because of that — I knew that with every passing day what I had done would be more severely judged.
“But I was afraid of being arrested and of having my family and everyone out there find out about my crime — and so I postponed my decision again and again. Until one day it was really too late to free Elisabeth and take her upstairs.”
Fritzl also revealed that he had incestuous desires for his mother, Maria, since early childhood but managed to suppress them. His mother raised him on her own and had to take several jobs in order to support them in the years after the Second World War after she separated from her husband, who, according to Fritzl, “was a no-good scoundrel who was cheating on her”.
“She was as strict as it was necessary. She was the best woman in the world. And I was her husband in some way. She was the boss at home but I was the only man in the house.
“But I was strong, almost as strong as she was, and I have succeeded in suppressing my desires.”
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