A DNA test has confirmed that Josef Fritzl, 73, is the father of six surviving children by his daughter Elisabeth while she was held captive in a cellar for 24 years.

At a press conference yesterday, police also reiterated their belief that Mr Fritzl acted entirely on his own and that no other family member was suspected of involvement. Mr Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, described by neighbours and school authorities as the “perfect grandmother”, has not been questioned as a suspect.

Forensic science teams are gathering evidence from the dungeon. They are also trying to determine whether a single person could have built it and installed the steel door that is said to weigh more than 300kg (660lb).

The family

Commentary: a society that nurtures secrets

What society would accept the probability of three children being left on the doorstep of Josef F and grant him adoption?

Multimedia

• Pictures: house of horror

Background

• Why are child abuse scandals happening in Austria?

• Analysis: damage caused may never be healed

• Austria: sedate town is stunned by news

• Police search other Fritzl properties in Austria

Related Links

• Fritzl's victims: the scale of the damage emerges

Police have only questioned Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, on one occasion, between midnight and 2am immediately after she was freed by her father on April 19. Her mother has only been briefly quizzed as a witness, as have Elisabeth’s six siblings, all of whom deny knowledge of what went on in the cellar of their family house.

When pressed on whether it was sensible to dismiss the wife as possible suspect at such an early stage of the investigation, Colonel Franz Polzer told reporters: “It defies logical thinking that a woman who has had seven children with her husband would make it possible for him to have anther relationship with his daughter and have another seven children.” Tenants in the first floor of the house had not noticed anything suspicious over the years, he added.

The tenants

Franz Atschreiter, who lived in a rented flat in the Fritzl house in the late 1980s, said that he had heard rumours that Mr Fritzl beat his children but had never witnessed that himself.

Mr Atschreiter said: “We would never have thought that a woman was locked up in the cellar. [Rosemarie] Fritzl was so friendly and chatty. We spoke to [Josef Fritzl] only a few times. I never went to the cellar, as I had no business there. However, I remember he banned me from going into the garden with my dog.

“Looking back, the thought that I lived in that house while such crimes went on in the cellar is horrifying.”

Foreign travel

Mr Fritzl went on lengthy holidays abroad and was absent for weeks on end. Pictures of him on holiday in Thailand in 1998 were published in a German newspaper, which deemed the trip “a gentlemen’s holiday”, claiming that Mr Fritzl had gone there with a male friend from Germany.

Asked if the police were investigating his trips abroad, Colonel Polzer said: “His holidays are none of our concern.” He added that there was enough space to store enough food in the dungeon for the captive family to survive in their father’s absence.

Previous convictions

Even though Mr Fritzl’s former employers and neighbours – as well as newspaper investigations – revealed that he had previous convictions for sex offences and arson in the 1970s and the 1980s, the authorities claimed that it would probably be impossible to recover the original criminal records because such documents were not kept in Austria after a certain time.

A local newspaper published a picture of Mr Fritzl taken at a court hearing in 1982, when he allegedly faced an arson charge.

Asked why social services had allowed Mr Fritzl to adopt the three children despite his alleged criminal record – and with no evidence that he was, in fact, their grandfather – Hans-Heinz Lenze, the Amstetten Mayor, told the press conference that in 1994, when the first child was adopted, neither Mr Fritzl nor his wife apparently had any conviction.

“In such cases, giving a the child to members of the family is always preferred to committing it to a foster home,” Mr Lenze said, claiming that social services had not broken with the standard procedures.

Asked how it was possible that records of such serious offences as sexual assault and arson had not been kept, he replied: “I am only a civil servant and not a lawmaker.”

National news

“As usual the neighbours knew nothing and are stunned because the perpetrator next door was ‘friendly’ and ‘unremarkable’. But the almost daily experience is that the institution of the family can be a deep, dark place with terrible secrets” Der Standard, Vienna

“How was it possible? It is possible because one is capable of imagining the act and humans have a talent for putting into practice everything that they can imagine in their brains.” Der Kurier

“Abused at the age of 11. Then it took another seven years before this abused child was thrown by her father into a dungeon. Seven years in which not a single person recognised the distress of this child. Until this point the fate of this child was a normal one, the fate that befalls thousands of children every day: sexual assault, sexual violence in the family . . . now the small stories of abuse will seem even less spectacular. Those small stories about small children who are abused by their fathers, uncles or stepdads . . . Children, cry out. Shout for your lives. Tell your teacher or your big sister or the nearest policeman” Kronen Zeitung

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