An Austrian man came up with the idea for a windowless warren under his apartment building years before locking his daughter in a cell secured by sophisticated electronics, locks and a half-tonne door, authorities say.
Josef Fritzl may have been plotting the design of the basement dungeon six years before authorities say he took his daughter Elisabeth captive in 1984 when she was 18, investigators said Monday. He is accused of detaining and raping her for 24 years, and fathering seven children with her.
“We can’t just look back to 1984,” Police Colonel Franz Polzer said. “The logic says the idea was already there, or an obsessive thought played a role, to build this jail, dig out these rooms and later to equip them and imprison the daughter there. Local building authorities by 1978 had approved expansion plans for the apartment building Fritzl owned in Amstetten, 120km west of Vienna.
“We are working with certainty on the idea that already in the planning phase he had the intention to build a small space, a small secret, a small dungeon unknown to the building authorities,” Polzer said.
The half-tonne door guarded the main entry. Investigators uncovered a second entry involving multiple doors, including one protected by an electronic code, he said.
The underground area was enlarged after Elisabeth had her fourth child, Polzer said.
Police claim Fritzl, 73, has confessed. He has not yet been charged and remains in pretrial detention. Prosecutors said they planned to meet with him for the first time today or tomorrow.
Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, indicated he is preparing an insanity defense.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS