Josef Fritzl, the Austrian electrician who raped and incarcerated his daughter in his cellar and fathered seven children by her, will plead not guilty to charges of murder and slavery.

Fritzl, 73, is accused of causing the death of his son, who died for lack of medical attention, and enslaving his captive family in the adapted nuclear bunker beneath his house in the town of Amstetten.

He is expected to claim his secret offspring were “just like other children” because he brought them an aquarium with goldfish and pet budgerigar in their windowless underground dungeon.

The retired electrical engineer and property developer was charged last week of murdering one of his children, a baby boy that died three days after falling ill immediately after birth because, prosecutors claim, Fritzl refused to take him to the hospital.

Fritzl also became the first person in Austrian history to be charged with slavery in a court of law for imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Elisabeth, 42, for 24 years.

Speaking though his lawyer in an interview for the Austrian magazine News, Fritzl denied being present at the birth of the baby that died and said: “When I saw the child for the first time, he was already dead. Elisabeth and me have then performed an emergency baptism and decided to cremate him because we did not want his body to be buried in earth and eaten by worms.

“I then burned the little body in the oven and later I spread his ashes in the garden.”

According to the charges, which are based on the testimony of his daughter Elisabeth, Fritzl was present at the birth and saw that the child had severe breathing difficulties and became swollen and blue in the face, but refused to get a proper medical attention.

“Of course I was aware that Elisabeth was suffering. But the children were not doing badly there. Like other children, they had an aquarium and a budgerigar; whom they trained and he was flying around the cellar in a frolicsome way.

“They would rejoice when I would come down to the bunker. Because I truly tried to make their cellar existence as pleasant as possible and I brought them toys books, video tapes and other small presents,” Fritzl is reported to have said.

Fritzl reportedly accepted the other charges, which include rape, false imprisonment, coercion and incest and is expected to plead guilty at the trial which is due to begin in March 2009. However, he challenged his daughter’s claim that he kept her chained to her bed during the first months of her captivity and that he would sometimes turn off the electricity in the dank dungeon and leave his family in complete darkness as a form of punishment.

He also claimed to want to receive psychological therapy and said: “I know I am not normal. I have the threatened her and the children with murder. But I want to know the reasons for my actions, I want to get therapy and become healthy one day.”

According the magazine, Fritzl was writing letters to his family, but only regarding financial issues, as they, in his words, “desired no other communication” with their father.

Elisabeth Fritzl and her six surviving children are living at a secret location where they are attempting to recover from their ordeal with the help of therapist provided by the state.

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