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Austrian incest case

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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Wed 30 Apr , 2008 12:39 pm
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vison
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Posted: Wed 30 Apr , 2008 2:42 pm
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Oh, I know the poor things were unable to escape. I was just venting, it was so awful. My god. What a horror story. What if he'd died? What if the monstrous old brute had been hit by a bus? They would have died down there and would anyone ever have known?

I still think his wife knew something. How could she not guess there was something very weird? Too afraid to say or do anything, poor woman. But I bet she suspected.

Years ago a 12 year old girl went missing in Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver. 6 months later she was found alive in a room that a neighbour had built beneath his garage. The police always suspected the man of having something to do with her disappearance and at this date I don't recall why they finally did a thorough search, but I think it was the man's wife who informed them that she thought there was something going on. It was a dreadful story. The girl is now a grown up woman with kids of her own and she came out in public when her abductor had a parole hearing, very courageous of her, she was of course instrumental in him not getting parole.

But this story from Austria is even worse. Unbelievable.

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Crucifer
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Posted: Wed 30 Apr , 2008 7:25 pm
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The whole issue of his holidays confuses me.

He used to go to Thailand for weeks and months on end. Who provided for the "basement" family?

I hadn't heard about the twin. :(

And the thing about tenants etc. is this: If something is unbelievable, most 'normal' people won't believe it until it's shoved in their faces. How many people would believe a story like this without evidence? I wouldn't. And as Terry Pratchett often says in his Discworld novels "If people don't want to see something, their brain fills something nicer in instead." (Paraphrase.)

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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Wed 30 Apr , 2008 7:52 pm
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What I find really scary, is how... premeditated it was. The whole thing. From even before he kidnapped his daughter; the basement was ready and waiting. All planned. Kept up through 24 years. Every little detail. He's not a raving lunatic. It's... really, really scary.
Crucifer wrote:
The whole issue of his holidays confuses me.

He used to go to Thailand for weeks and months on end. Who provided for the "basement" family?
Apparently, they had a food storage that could last for weeks. (Months on end? I haven't read anywhere that he'd be gone for more than three weeks at the time.) So they had food. But if anything else had happened...

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Crucifer
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Posted: Wed 30 Apr , 2008 8:19 pm
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I read that at one point he was gone for 8 weeks...

Maybe it was a typo.

What worries me is how the "Basement" family will cope with life now. I mean, the three kids have no human experience other than each other and their father. They've never seen the sun or anything.

I only hope they'll be allowed to live in peace.

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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Fri 02 May , 2008 3:14 pm
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The police is having trouble getting enough oxygen down in the basement...

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 3:43 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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The Guardian, Thursday May 8 2008
(edited for numerous spelling mistakes)

The Austrian pensioner who has admitted locking his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and fathering seven children with her broke his silence from his prison cell yesterday to protest against being "treated like a monster" by the media.

"I'm not a monster," Josef Fritzl, 73, told the German newspaper Bild, via his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer.

He condemned as "totally biased" media coverage of what Austrian authorities have referred to as "the worst such crime in history", adding that his treatment of his 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and her children could have been worse. Three of the children were brought up by her in their windowless dungeon, while three grew up in the family house with Fritzl and his wife. The seventh died.

Fritzl, who has been in custody in the town of St Pölten since his arrest nearly two weeks ago, sharing a 12-square-metre cell with a man accused of gun crime, said he deserved credit for the mercy he had shown towards his 19-year-old daughter by Elisabeth, Kerstin. He claimed he had saved her life by taking her from the cellar to hospital. "Without me, Kerstin would not still be alive today," he said. "I made sure she got to hospital."

He stressed he could have easily killed the inhabitants of the cellar. "Then there would have been none of this fuss."

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Crucifer
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 7:00 pm
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Mad. Actually mad. Arguably, death could have been better than that quasi-existence in someones windowless basement.

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 7:22 pm
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That is absolutely sickening. :sick:

But it shows how a monster justifies such actions.


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The Watcher
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 7:45 pm
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One wonders. This "human being" receives better care and more privileges while in jail than he ever provided to his daughter and his three kids/grandkids so horrifyingly confined, and he is protesting about his portrayal in the media as a monster? His justification for "not" being that is that he did not kill them all and burn or hide the bodies?

Okay...

Did anyone here read the stories about the elaborate lengths he went to to construct this underground confinement chamber? Something like eight doors and several narrow cramped passages had to be negotiated to even gain access to the main space, a whopping 35 square meters in total. He started it well before his daughter went "missing." He even "expanded it" for her to accomodate the children whom he was afraid would make too much noise otherwise. The three kids removed to the upstairs were a result of his paranoia about them causing too much of a problem (I guess it was number 3, 4, and 5 of the children.) Number one and two and the surviving twin of number six and seven never saw daylight, never saw anything of the outside world at all but for what a small tv and radio would bring news of. He told them all if they tried to escape or cause undue noise he would kill them.

If I could, I would confine this guy down in his own horror chamber, but reduce the overall space by one quarter, and then leave him there with a daily food/supply ration until he died. :rage:

Last edited by The Watcher on Thu 08 May , 2008 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Crucifer
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 7:47 pm
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Unfortunately, TW, that wouldn't solve anything...

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The Watcher
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 7:55 pm
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Crucifer wrote:
Unfortunately, TW, that wouldn't solve anything...
Oh yes it would - he never gets out, and the world will learn that maybe sometimes the heinous acts of the perpetrator may come back to revisit them. I did not say kill him, I did not say deprive him of basic survival. Give him food, clothing, his own shelter, he claims he is not a monster, so, he should have no issues dealing with the lifestyle he imposed on others because according to him, it is "not monstrous." Let his own words condemn him. I am 100% serious.


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Riverthalos
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 9:07 pm
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Okay...

He imprisons his daughter for 24 years in a basement. He gets SEVEN children on her. Three he allows to live in the upstairs world; three he leaves in the basement. One dies at birth and is cremated. But he's not a monster because he "allowed" them all to live and took his sick, basement-dwelling daughter to a hospital after she became severely ill due in part to her living conditions.

And he really thinks these arguments are persuasive?

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 08 May , 2008 10:28 pm
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Jen and I were talking about this and she came up with a good point:

Obviously the proposed insanity plea is going to be an uphill battle, given the elaborate, thought-out plans he had plus the fact he said he was sorry when arrested, thus knowing it was wrong what he did.

Perhaps this statement is part of the plan to convince a jury that he is insane.

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Axordil
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Posted: Fri 09 May , 2008 12:26 am
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The monster is always that way---->

And never in the mirror.

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LalaithUrwen
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Posted: Fri 09 May , 2008 12:09 pm
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I never said that, Ax.

I'm well aware of the lurking monster in all of us, myself included. As Sufjan Stevens puts it in his song John Wayne Gacy, Jr.:
Quote:
His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed he kissed them all
He'd kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took of all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands, quiet kiss
On the mouth

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

:(

(It really is a very sad song. You warned me, yovi!)


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Axordil
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Posted: Fri 09 May , 2008 3:06 pm
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Lally--
Wasn't responding to you or anyone in particular, merely making an observation. Everyone is the hero of the story in their head...unless they are its victim.

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ToshoftheWuffingas
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Posted: Fri 09 May , 2008 3:35 pm
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The failings and psychologies of villains don't really interest me although I know it is a legitimate area of study. I accept that we need to understand how their minds work in order to both protect ourselves and to understand human nature better. What I have gathered by reading about such people reinforces my belief in the Boethian view of evil; in that is an absence of good rather than a positive independent force. These people seem to have something lacking in their pyches; empathy, a sense of right and wrong, self-esteem, whatever.
My thoughts are usually with the victims rather than the perpetrators.

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vison
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Posted: Fri 09 May , 2008 4:29 pm
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I agree with you, Tosh.

I don't know that there is much point doing anything to the old monster. Maybe hang a sign around his neck, give him a begging basket, and turn him loose. But, really, I don't truly think there's any point. We might all feel a bit of some kind of satisfaction if we punish him, but there is NOTHING that will make him like us and nothing can undo what he did.

Is he "insane"? I don't know what the legal definition of insanity is in Austria. The elaborate plans, etc., do not make me think he's "not" insane. In some ways they prove he's as loony as can be. In other ways, he's "sane", in that he is acting out of what he is and undoubtedly always has. Some people seem to be born that way, and some of those people are brought up in ways that exacerbate their sociopathy. This man lived through WW II. Who knows what he might have seen or done, maybe worse things. Maybe awful things happened to him. I'm not "excusing" him, but trying to understand.

I don't want to sound callous, but in all honesty it would have been better if the whole clan had died. Who knows what monstrous things he's created? I know that's a dreadful thing to say and now that they are out and trying to live in the world I think everything should be done to help them.

The only thing we can do, as decent people, is to keep him locked up and to treat him humanely. To do otherwise is to let our side down. We are obligated to act properly and if that means that he lives in comfort, so be it. We can't possibly punish him in any meaningful way and we shouldn't even try.

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Crucifer
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Posted: Sat 10 May , 2008 9:21 am
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:yes:

Lets not lower ourselves here.

As others before me, I am not trying to condone what he did. It was a horrible, evil thing to do.
But if he can't see the wrong in it himself, then punishing him in kind will have no effect whatsoever. Give him a prison sentence. A long one. But don't treat him as anything less than human.

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