RedHanded - Episode 177 - Josef Fritzl & His Cellar of Horror - Part 2

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Elisabeth Fritzl had spent her childhood being relentlessly sexually tormented by her father, Josef. But on 29th of August 1984 things escalated to a level of horror she could never have imagined, when she woke up chained to a bed in the cellar of his house... Merch: www.redhandedshop.com Sources: www.redhandedthepodcast.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. That is, as of last week, the most popular true crime podcast in the United Kingdom. Thank you very much, Spotify, for letting us know.

It's such a smart marketing ploy by Spotify, isn't it? Genius. Genius. I love it. Thank you to everybody who listens to us on Spotify. What a nice way for us to wrap up 2020. But anyway, we've got a fucking massive case today, guys. So we're going to have to jump straight into it. If you want to hear us talk about other things, like

what are we talking about in this week's Under the Duvet? We talked about castles. Adolf Hitler getting elected in Namibia. That too. Adolf Hitler in Namibia. We talked about some other random things, like the monoliths that keep disappearing and turning up. And also... Rita Ora's birthday party? Rita Ora's birthday party, that is correct. Et cetera. So if you want to come hang out with us under the duvet,

you can do so immediately after this show goes out. It's on patreon.com slash redhanded. Though you should know by now, you shouldn't be listening on the platform. You should get your RSS link and be listening on your podcast player because it will change your life. So come do that after this because you're going to fucking need the light relief because this is horrific. This

particular episode. Prepare yourselves. It's rough. There's no way around it really. So without further ado prepare to be traumatized. My cousin actually texts me being like your Fritzl episode gave me Fritzl based nightmares and now I have to look at pictures of Florida to get over it. And I'm like, oh, mate, that was nothing. Yeah. Last week, we left off with Josef Fritzl reporting to the police that his 18-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, had run off and joined a cult. And they told him not to worry. And they were sure that she would be back very soon.

You'll be unsurprised to hear that Elisabeth had, of course, not run off to join a cult. On the 29th of August, 1984, the day Elisabeth went missing, only her and her father Josef were at home at Forti-Jibstrasse. Her mum and all of her siblings were out. Josef had asked Elisabeth if she'd help him carry a heavy door down to the garage. He then told her that he needed to speak to her about something important and asked her to join him in his workshop. If you were paying attention last week, you will know that nobody went into Josef Fritzl's workshop ever.

This was the first time that Elisabeth had ever set foot into the infamous cellar. Josef told Elisabeth to sit down at a chair opposite a desk and he quickly went into the garage to get something. As she sat there, Elizabeth's mind wandered back to the enormous falling out that she had had with her father just two days before. Elizabeth had finally told him that she planned to move out of the house and go live with her sister Rosemary in Linz the following weekend. In fact, at this point, more than half of Elizabeth's things had already been moved out of number 40 Yibstrasza and into Rosemary's spare room. Elizabeth was used to her father's rage. It was nothing new to her.

But when she told him about her plans to leave, he lost it in a way that even she had never seen before. His face was red and he was swearing and screaming at her, barely even making any sense, saying things like, you won't get out of it like this, and even accusing her of being a drug addict. Elizabeth pushed the memory to the back of her head and instead thought how amazing the next chapter of her life in Linz was going to be

and how it was just a week away. So immersed in this happy daydream, Elizabeth didn't notice Joseph quietly coming back into the workshop behind her. A large hand suddenly reached around her head and grabbed her by the face. Immediately, Elizabeth began kicking and struggling, but it was no use. Josef was more than twice her weight. She felt a rag being pushed across her mouth and nose, and a pungent solvent-like smell engulfed her. Almost immediately, Elizabeth found herself losing consciousness.

The next thing Elizabeth remembered was waking up in the darkness, still dizzy, from the chloroform, and there was a thick smell of mildew in the air. Despite her confusion, immediately she knew that something was terribly wrong. She tried to feel around, but to her horror, she realised that her hands were chained up behind her back. As her eyes adapted to the darkness, she noticed a television and a VCR in the corner and a small toilet and a basin in the other. She realised that she was on a king-sized bed with pillows and linen and the room seemed as if it had been waiting for her, prepared, ready for her arrival. She felt a ball gag around her neck and noticed the door to the room was actually slightly

open with the key still in the lock just meters away but the chain binding her was only about half a meter long and it barely allowed her to move and it was fixed to a metal bed post mounted to the concrete floor behind the bed and as she was taking all of this in suddenly as if he'd materialized out of nowhere, Josef was next to her, and without even looking at her, he tightened her chains. Elizabeth froze as the reality of the situation began to dawn on her. Josef said nothing to his daughter except, the picture that goes to the well too often gets broken.

And then he just got up and left, locking the door behind him, leaving Elizabeth there alone for the next 24 hours. Elizabeth lay there in the darkness, terrified, not knowing why her father had done this or how long he was going to keep her there. It was in this same 24 hour period that Yosef had gone to the police station to inform them that his daughter was missing. In this time, Elizabeth noticed the room had a stove in it. The room felt like some sort of sick imitation of what a home should be, almost like a dark reflection of her home above ground. And when we were reading this, we couldn't help but sort of draw a parallel between Josef Fritzl's mind and number 40 Hibstrasse. If you guys haven't listened to part one yet, we didn't say this yet, but please,

please go back and listen to part one. This episode isn't going to make any sense without that knowledge. So Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung had a theory about the conscious and unconscious mind and that there's the self that we're aware of and believe is our true self. Then there's what he called the shadow self. The shadow being the aspects of our personality that maybe we dislike, the aspects that we know society will dislike, so we push them down into our unconscious psyches. Jung's theory suggested that we psychologically distance ourselves from the behaviors, emotions, and thoughts that we find dangerous. Instead of confronting these aspects of our personality we dislike, our minds just pretend that they don't exist. These could be aggressive

impulses, taboo mental imagery, shameful experiences, immoral urges, fears, irrational wishes, and unacceptable sexual desires. And when we say we couldn't help but draw this comparison between Fritzl's mind and his home, you can almost think of it like Fritzl's home above ground represents his conscious mind, where he's this respectable engineer, a businessman, a loving father and husband, whilst the dark, cold cellar underneath, where Elizabeth was chained up, is symbolic of his unconscious mind, or his shadow self, where he's a vile predator and twisted child rapist. Yeah, you hear about people doing shadow work. Have you heard about that?

No. So shadow work is the idea that you confront your shadow rather than just pushing it down and waiting for it to eventually explode work have you heard about that no so shadow work is the idea that you confront your shadow rather than just pushing it down and waiting for it to eventually explode and you build a torture cellar for your daughters basically confronting the things you don't like about yourself and deciding what you're going to do about it rather than sitting on it when we said you know go back and listen to last week's episode you'll remember there we talked about how he's constantly working on number 40 yib strasser he's constantly like doing some sort of work to it.

The house itself is in like a constant state of construction. And this almost felt like it speaks to his mind's ability to never feel fully satisfied. It also shows that he was always compelled to take things further and further and push the limits as far as he possibly could, just as he had done with the abuse of his daughter. When Yosef finally returned to the cellar on the second day of Elisabeth's captivity,

he brought with him a large plastic bowl. And as he dropped it on the floor next to the bed, he mumbled, in case you need to answer the call of nature. What does he think she has been doing for two days? I don't know. We're going to come on to this. So much of Josef Fritzl's behaviour is just like

as and when he decides to address the glaring things that are obviously in front of him. He's very good at just compartmentalising, walking away from the cellar, locking the door and then pretending she's not down there. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really get more compartmentalised than a cellar that you lock behind you, does it? Yeah, literally. And I just had my own stupid thought is that there is a toilet in there, but obviously she's chained up so she can't use it. So I had to get there in my own head. Then Josef untied his daughter's wrists, but only to replace her chains with a larger, heavier one,

which he fastened around her waist. Josef then slapped Elizabeth across the face and began punching and kicking her relentlessly. This particular assault lasted about 40 minutes. He was breaking her down to build her back up into something that better suited his needs, just like he did with all of his properties. The heavy chains and her father's strength made it impossible for Elizabeth to move. And once he was done, Yosef told Elizabeth something that she would have repeated to her

for years to come. He said, no one can hear you scream and you can't get out of here. And Elizabeth knew he was right. Nobody ever came down to the cellar and her mother was a naive woman, incurious and terrified of her husband. She was just existing, getting through life one step at a time. And we'll talk about this later on, but basically everyone in this story just hears what they want to hear and believes what they want to believe. The more concerning thing, other than Fritzl's wife, is the Austrian police seemed equally as naive and incurious as Rosemary Fritzl did. And you'll remember that Josef went to the police to report Elisabeth's disappearance.

But after he did that, no rigorous investigation into the background of the Fritzls was conducted. And no one really seemed to be that bothered about finding out why a young daughter might have run away twice in the space of two years. If they had dug a little bit beneath the surface perhaps the police would have noticed that Elizabeth's father had been convicted of rape in 1967 and he'd served 18 months in jail for it. Not to mention he had two further sexual offences that year and a suspected arson charge in 1982. And famously, this case led to a change in the law in Austria about this, but it's not, maybe it's not entirely down to the police being lazy. Some of the information about Josef's previous convictions would have been on his file, but his rape conviction would not have been because in Austria at the time after 15 years a

convicted rapist would have their records wiped clean what I don't know is like how clean is clean can anyone look it up can the king of Austria look it up can the king of the police look it up or is it literally just nowhere this is the thing it seems kind of unclear in some places it seems to say that it's like completely expunged from your record gone gone gone and if it's expunged it's removed for everybody it's like it just never existed but in some places it seems to say that law enforcement could have seen this so you know i don't want to like let the austrian police off the hook because even though it wouldn't have been in the official police records possibly it still would have been in newspaper articles and things like that and

locals in Amstetten knew because he'd never moved anywhere else he'd lived at Fort Yibstrasse for the majority of the time yes the rape he did happened in Linz but he moved back immediately after he came out of prison so if the police had just gone to Amstetten spoken to some locals inquired a bit about why this young girl had run away twice, they would have found out. But they don't do that. And some people do wonder, and I do wonder this as well, is if Ritzel actually had waited until the perfect combination of things happening. So Elizabeth turning 18, and so at that point, she wouldn't have any longer been a high priority for the police as

a missing person and until his records had been wiped before he took her into the cellar. So you know that when she went missing when she was 16 the police went and found her and also just two years before he took Elizabeth his records would have still had the rape conviction on them. So is it just very convenient or did he actually wait until this was the situation? We don't know. But whatever the case was, the police, like we said, didn't ever even question Yosef. They didn't even view him with any suspicion whatsoever. They simply accepted Elizabeth's father's version of events that she must have run off and joined a cult. So let's get back to Elizabeth in the cellar. After Yosef had finished

brutalizing her on the second day of her captivity, he then raped her. After this, he left to attend to whatever daily business he needed to and then returned once again to rape Elizabeth for a second time. Both rapes that day lasted for over four hours each. During this time, Josef wouldn't speak to Elisabeth at all. He was in complete control. He knew he could do anything he wanted. And it was like he was releasing all of the sick, pent-up sexual desires he had built up in the two-year period since Elisabeth's escape attempt to Vienna. Because if you remember from part one, after he brought Elisabeth back from Vienna, he hadn't laid a hand on her for fear of her exposing him. Now, he no longer needed to hold himself back.

And so, the same thing happened the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. And the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months. Twice daily, he raped Elizabeth, telling her, quote, If you don't do what I say, it will only get worse. Elizabeth fought him every time. She'd kick, she'd scream, she scratched his face, but it made no difference. Not long into her imprisonment, Yosef showed her what the television and VCR were for. He'd force Elizabeth to watch pornographic videos with him

and then make her reenact his favourite scenes. He even brought sex toys and whips with him. Yosef would spend hours at a time in the cellar with Elizabeth and in the mornings and evenings he would eat breakfast and dinner upstairs with his wife Rosemary. For the first few months their dinner conversation would solely be about Elizabeth's whereabouts. Why would she run away? Why did she have to be such a problem child? And knowing that he had to at least look like he was trying to find a way to answer these questions, about a month into her imprisonment, Yosef forced Elizabeth to write a letter. And this letter was written in Elizabeth's hand, but it was definitely Yosef's words. It was addressed to Forti Yibstrasse and it informed

Elizabeth's family that she had joined a cult and that she was very happy where she was. Yosef drove this letter 100 miles away and dropped it into a postbox. The letter arrived the following day and Yosef immediately showed it to Rosemary and the police who poured over it searching for clues but spotted absolutely nothing. And as the months passed, Elizabeth still fought like hell every time Fritzl approached her. And as a punishment, he would starve her. As winter arrived, the outside temperature dropped to minus 10 degrees Celsius, and he would also

take her clothes and leave her naked in the freezing cellar, with all of the lights off for weeks at a time. Over Christmas, just a few metres underground from where her family were sat round a table in a warm house enjoying a large roast turkey, Elizabeth was sat in the darkness, chained to a bed wearing a smock, improvised from the dirty bed linen, trying to stay warm. That first Christmas without Elizabeth, comments were made at the dinner table about how selfish she was to have not even phoned them that day. It was spring 1985 when Yosef decided that the large chain around his daughter's waist was making it just far too difficult for him to rape her. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you

get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.

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From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time if all goes to plan, we'll be

finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. He knew he wanted to remove it, but he also knew that it was a security risk. So Yosef had an idea. He removed the chain and installed a heavy steel door to the entrance of the room, which was secured with a combination pad. Just for safe measure, Yosef also added

additional manual locks and bolts to the door, and then told Elizabeth that the doors were rigged with photosensitive alarms, which would electrocute and gas her if she ever attempted to open them. From then on, in her mind, any attempt to escape was suicide. And it's really similar, like, in some ways to, like like the Colleen Stan case and with other cases of abduction and captivity that we've seen, where the captor has all of the safeguards in place, like the locks and the chains and the keys, but they also have to have the psychological fear instilled in their captor. Something that is, if you get out there, if you even try, this horrendous thing, much worse than I,

is going to happen to you. And that's what he's doing his best to make Elizabeth believe. And it's also pretty, I don't even know if ironic's the right word because I, like most people, I'm never really sure when to use it. But like the fact that he said that she's well enough to join a cult, like a lot of the stuff that's happening to her

is stuff that happens to people in cults and the reason why cult members can turn on each other and just kill each other at the drop of a hat sometimes not all the time there's a theory if you use like the most culty cult ever like cult 101 that what that can do to your brain according to this article they call it like personality organization so and it reduces your ego so much that you have the same personality organization as someone with borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder where you have everything is super black and white and you are much more likely to make very impulsive fear-driven decisions because you have been broken down so much and it's what's going to happen as well if you're kept in a cellar by your dad

the way her brain is working now could be the same as someone who's in a cult. That is interesting because, yeah, I think we often talk about people's personalities being broken or people being broken down in captivity. But what does that actually mean? The idea that it totally transforms your personality or like the way in which your personality is organized and transforms your decision making capabilities. I think that is one of the hardest things for people who aren't in cults or who aren't locked in cellars by their fathers to wrap our heads around is why would they make X, Y, Z decisions?

And you're right. It's because of how fundamentally her personality is being transformed. Ironically, I reckon it's an ironically, ironically like she was in a cult. Interestingly, still not a non-morbid example of irony. So I'm still waiting for one of those guys. You don't know what I'm talking about. You should come listen to Under the Duvet. So Elizabeth remained trapped in this torture cellar for two years

when suddenly, in August 1986, she woke up one day and her body felt different. And when her period didn't come, she knew she was pregnant. And despite her best efforts, she was only able to keep it a secret from Yosef for a few weeks. He said that he had been able to tell that she was pregnant because her temperature was up, just as Rosemary's had been when she was pregnant. Oh, she's just such a freaky thing. Like, is that really how he knew?

I mean, we don't know at this point if she was showing or Oh, she's just such a freaky thing. Like, is that really how he knew? I mean, we don't know at this point if she was showing or anything like that. But I'm like, this man is so it would have further compounded every fear that Elizabeth had, because it's this idea that this man knows everything. It's almost like he can read her mind. She can't even keep this a secret from him. I don't know if I believe him that he knew because her temperature was up, because she's also trapped in a cold cellar. I'm guessing that fevers and temperatures were a regular occurrence for Elizabeth at this point. But however he knew, he knew. And he told Elizabeth, quote,

You should be happy. I've given you the gift of a child. But ten weeks into her pregnancy, in November 1986, at the age of 20, Elizabeth miscarried. She was scared, filthy, and alone. And although she survived the harrowing experience, she later described how that miscarriage changed her forever. Again, winter came and the cellar was now flooded with rats. And it was during this winter that Elizabeth

began to lapse into total hopelessness. She began thinking, how many cellars are there in Austria? Who would ever come looking for me here? She also describes having lost the ability to even cry and just said that any day that went by in the cellar where she wasn't beaten was just more than enough for Elizabeth by now. She also slept a lot and woke up not caring what time it was. As far as she was concerned by this point, what difference did it make anyway? She would grow older, but the cellar would always remain the same. Elizabeth dreamt daily of suicide and the fear of another pregnancy consumed her, but she knew it was inevitable because her father refused to use contraception. And she was right.

By January 1988, Elizabeth was pregnant again. Seven months into her pregnancy, after begging him for weeks, Yosef relented and gave his pregnant daughter a book on childbirth. It was from this book that Elizabeth learnt the basics of delivering a baby, how it would feel when her water broke, and how to push and breathe during contractions. And it's this bit that just like really, really fucking got to me. I feel like we've obviously talked about a lot of victims on this show before,

a lot of unbelievably, unimaginably horrific things. But there's something about Elizabeth that I don't know, I just fucking, I don't even know what the right words are. I rate her, I don't know. She's incredible. She is an incredible, incredible woman. She gets locked in this fucking cell at 18 years old after being abused by her father her entire life and when you go on to hear like how incredibly strong she is i don't know it just blew me away she's phenomenal poor elizabeth i can't think of many things that are scarier than giving birth on your own when you don't know what's happening in a concrete box no but it's the way she like i mean obviously you have no choice it's happening one way or another but it's the way she like, I mean, obviously you have no choice. It's happening one way or another, but it's the way she gets on with it. It's the way she prepares for it and the way she gets it done.

She is truly remarkable. On the 10th of August 1988, a child was born into the cellar of Forty Yibstresser. The child was born in the dark without any medical assistance and thankfully without any complications. But it was a terrifying ordeal for Elizabeth because, of course, she had to do it alone. Yosef had only given her a pair of scissors, an extra blanket and a pack of nappies, which he'd driven 10 miles out of Amstetten to a supermarket in Linz to purchase because he was scared of getting spotted. The pregnancy and childbirth book told Elizabeth how cutting the umbilical cord

might seem straightforward, but it could have deadly consequences if it's not kept clean. The cellar was filthy, so Elizabeth boiled water on the stove in the dark to sterilise the kitchen scissors. Umbilical cords are, like, fucking gross at the best of times. Have you seen one fall off? No. It is gross.

My brother is ten years younger than me, so, like, I I remember him I remember his entire birth to like five years the like umbilical cord use a little peg to like tie it in a knot and peg it to the baby and then it goes black and falls off oh god I just know I've seen like pictures of it but never had the pleasure of viewing it up close and personally. I don't think I'm ready. This is the thing, all of this just sounds so like precarious and dangerous and absolutely fucking terrifying and Elizabeth is just teaching herself how to do all of this from a fucking book that she sits around and reads in the dark. I mean I just can't get my head around it. It is mind-boggling what happens

to Elizabeth. Once the birth was over, Elizabeth cradled her newborn baby daughter in her arms and looked down and thought about how it was almost four years ago that day she'd woken up in the dark cellar for the first time and now it was her daughter's turn. Elizabeth named her baby Kirsten. Yosef was not only absent for the birth of his eighth child, he was absent for the following 10 days. Day after day, mother and daughter waited in the darkness for their jailer to return, but nothing. During these 10 days, Josef just went about his daily errands and his usual life above ground, completely unfettered by the ordeal his daughter was going through beneath his

feet. For all he knew, Elizabeth could have died during childbirth. And that's just a testament to his capacity to disconnect himself from his actions and their consequences. After Kirsten was born, something changed in Elizabeth. Up until now, she had been going through life in the cellar, almost like she was in a trance-like state, just finding a way to try and cope with her imprisonment, the violence and the frequent rapes. But now she had a purpose. She had a life she cared about more than her own.

She had a reason to live again, a reason not to fall apart, to not commit suicide. Motherhood in many ways saved Elizabeth's life in the cellar. And because her priorities had changed so drastically now, Elizabeth, in a way, began to settle into her life in the cellar. She accepted the way it was and focused completely on her child. And you've seen the movie Room with Brie Larson and that little kid, Jacob, is that right? Yes, I also read the book when it came out.

Ah, see, I haven't read the book and I've heard that the book is even better than the film. I thought the film was good, I enjoyed it. But yeah, if you haven't seen Room, or is it The Room? I've forgotten, one or the other. The other one that the book is even better than the film I thought the film was good I enjoyed it but yeah if you haven't seen room or is it the room I've forgotten one or the other the other one's the shit movie right tell you what I fucking re-watched the grudge I had to turn it off really fucking shit mate oh it's shit not scared you I was so not interested yeah could not give less of a shit that's fair you know some of these things they haven't aged well have they but room is good go watch it if you haven And basically, it's very similar story to this. And just how like, if you are a mother down there with this child, how that would become this all consuming thing that would distract you from the pain and the horror you're going through because you're so desperately trying to protect your child now from having to endure it. Whoever wrote Room is so clever because they brought it out like just after this had happened and there'd been another case

of a similar thing. Yeah. Everyone was talking about it. I can't remember the author's name, but I really hope they watched the news and then knocked it out in a week and published it and made their millions because that is genius.

It was a very well-written book as well. And I think that they did, I don't know like what their research process was, but it does feel like it sounds exactly on par with what Elizabeth says after all this happens. and I think maybe the other case that you're referring to is the one we talked about in the first part of this which was Natasha Kampush because she was found just two years before Elizabeth was. So anyway back to the case in his ordinary life upstairs

with his wife Rosemary things you know aren't going great between them. They drift further and farther apart. And Joseph weirdly began to sort of confide in Elizabeth more and more. He felt that he didn't need to hide who he truly was with her. And in some ways, that's the truth, because no one else in the world, apart from Elizabeth, knew who he really was. Rosemary hasn't got a clue. No one else has got a clue. Everyone else thinks he's somebody completely different. She is the only one who really knows him. And Josef weirdly started to think of Elisabeth as more of a wife to him than Rosemary. And he even told himself that she loved him back in the same way. And we've talked about this time and time again on the show. No one is a monster in their own mind. Even like joseph fritzl can't let himself allow himself to think about what he's really doing to his daughter

he has to tell himself she wants this too she loves me too because it's easier to digest that way this next bit is so fucking weird i genuinely got goosebumps when I read it. Yosef started to regularly bring down photographs to the cellar to show Elizabeth how her family above ground were doing, how her brothers and her sisters had grown and had children, showing her her new nephews and nieces that she'd never met. And the police one day would find a large photo album, the first half of which showed life of a happy family above ground bright and smiling the second half of the photo album however showed photos of joseph's underground family dimly lit with expressionless faces as white as chalk two polar opposite realities living just meters away from one another, connected only by Yosef.

That's just so sick. It's like a horror movie. It's so unbelievable that this was happening. I can't cope with it, to be honest. I think he's just, obviously his brain isn't functioning normally. He's a fantasist. He's a fantasist, isn't he? I know this is really sick, but I really want to see those pictures. I really do. I know, I know.

Because it is like this idea that he would like get a photo album and fill it with pictures of his children and his grandchildren from upstairs and then take pictures of his captive quote-unquote family downstairs and put it in a fucking photo album I mean I don know. Delusional doesn't even feel like the word. I don't know what to say. But whatever was going on with Yosef, however delusionally was, this family downstairs was about to grow. Because in 1989, a few weeks before Kirsten's first birthday, Elizabeth conceived for a third time. This time it was a boy. She named him Stefan. And just like his sister, he was also born in the darkness without any medical assistance or the presence of his father.

And again, miraculously, he survived. Then, two years after Stefan arrived in the cellar, in August 1992, Elizabeth gave birth to another girl. She named her Lisa. Now, Lisa was born healthy, but for some reason, when she was eight months old, she started crying constantly. And no matter how hard her terrified mother tried, she couldn't get Lisa to stop. Elizabeth was terrified her loud crying would enrage Joseph. He had already punched a two-year-old Stefan in the face for making too much noise. Finally, Joseph took drastic action.

He decided to take Lisa from the cellar and lay her in a cardboard box and left her on the doorstep of Forti Yibstrasse. He made Elisabeth write a note addressed to him and Rosemary saying that she was incapable of caring for Lisa and that she wanted for them to take her in. It was Elisabeth's 10-year-old sister Doris who found Lisa on the doorstep and Josef took the baby straight into the child welfare service. He explained to them how his runaway cult member daughter had abandoned her baby on the doorstep.

He then suggested the best way to prove that this baby was Elizabeth's would to be have a graphologist analyse the handwriting on the letter. And amazingly, they agreed. Why they wouldn't have requested DNA test? Like, not that they can prove it's Yosef's, but obviously it's going to have Yosef's DNA in it anyway, even if it was not his child because he's the grandfather. But surely they can prove, oh, this baby is related to... Actually, you know what, though? Maybe they could have because it would have been so much of his DNA.

Maybe they would have known that he was the father and not the grandfather. Yeah, I think they definitely would have. I think you can tell the difference between whether someone is the father or the grandfather in a DNA test. And just to like put this into context, we're not still like stuck in the 70s or 80s, guys. This is 1992 that this is happening. I think they could have done a DNA test. I don't know why they didn't. I don't know why fucking Josef Fritzl, the man who turns up with this baby, is being allowed to be the one in charge of how they determine that it is actually Elizabeth's baby. Because as far as they know, he's just turned up with a random baby with like a very weak explanation for how he got it. It's so strange. Josef also suggested that the baby be

looked at by a doctor. Again, why is that only him saying that? Like everyone else is totally chill to be like, yeah, you can take this mystery baby home with you and we definitely don't need to take it to a medical professional. Finally, Lisa was taken to a doctor who diagnosed her with a heart defect. Lisa was also unusually small, around 5.5 kilograms. But the doctor did note that even though this child is supposed to have come from a cult in the middle of nowhere,

that she must have been born in a hospital based on how expertly cut and clamped her umbilical cord appeared to be. And whilst the police searched for the baby's mother, the child welfare office decided it was best for Lisa to be with her grandparents, so they allowed the Fritzls to foster her. And for this fostering, the Fritzl family received 400 euros a month. Around a year after Lisa appeared on the doorstep on the 16th of December 1994, another baby was left on the doorstep of Forti Yibstrasse.

This time, it was Rosemary who discovered it, and seeing as it was December, it is a miracle that baby didn't freeze to death. Again, there was a note written by Elizabeth apologising for her absence and telling them that this baby's name was Monica. Strangely, just minutes after Rosemary had brought the baby into the house, the phone rang. It was a recorded voice message from Elizabeth explaining that she was the mother of the baby and that they needed to look after it. The thing Rosemary found inexplicable was that Fritzl had recently changed their home phone number and only she and Josef were aware of that at this particular point. But still nobody put two and two together and these curious circumstances didn't seem curious to the authorities anymore at all. I think if there's

one thing I've learned as a podcaster, it's that people hear what they want to hear. And I think that's all Rosemary is doing because I think she must have been scared of him. Like she knows he's a convicted rapist. Oh, yeah, this is the thing. We'll talk about sort of Rosemary and there's lots of like, did she know? How much did she know? Was she even suspicious? It's really hard to tell, to be honest with you, for reasons that will become clear later. But the one thing we can say about Rosemary is that she was a victim of Josef Fritzl. There is no doubt about that. He was incredibly violent towards her their entire marriage. It's very, very clear that she is terrified of him. But how much she actually knew about what was going on with regards to Elizabeth, I don't know. So having now proven themselves apparently to be devoted,

loving parents because they had already taken in the first baby, Lisa, Amstetten Council just gave Rosemary and Yosef permission to foster Monica too. The police and the social services still remain convinced of Yosef's cult theory and nobody questioned how Elizabeth could have dropped a baby off on the doorstep of number 40 Yibstrasza which is one of the busiest streets in town twice without ever having been seen once by anybody. So Josef at this point was pretty ecstatic about how successfully he had fooled everybody and also with how he had managed to integrate both Monica and Lisa into his upstairs family. He also knew that it was inevitable he would father more

children with Elizabeth so he decided it was time he expanded the cellar. And you do have to wonder at this point like he realizes what a hassle it is that these kids are being born. He's having to either account for them in the cellar and look after them there and make room for them, or he's having to sort of take them upstairs and quote-unquote integrate them into his upstairs family. Why doesn't he just stop having the children? Like, why doesn't he go get the snip or start taking contraception to at least prevent more pregnancies?

I don't know if it starts to become this fascination with just having a big family, but also with the money. He's getting 400 euros for every child he delivers to his own doorstep. I feel like we can't overlook that that must be some form of motivator, surely. I mean, possibly, but he's not short of a few quid, is he?

That's what I mean. He's so obsessed with it. He's so obsessed with money and growing this business and starting this and having these rooms to tenant. And I'm like, is it just he's obsessed with growing this family bigger? But why? At great personal risk of being discovered. Is it for the money or is it just because he wants this?

I don't know. It's a very weird decision that he's just like, it's inevitable that it's going to happen. I better expand the cellar, which is what he does. So at the time that Monica was born, Elizabeth was occupying just one single room in the cellar with two growing children. Because at this point, Kirsten was about five and Stefan was three. So Yosef had to expand. And when he finished the expansion of the cellar, Yosef generously gifted his subterranean family hot running water for the first time. He also turned the original bedroom into twin rooms

and kept a separate room as a quote-unquote parental bedroom for himself and Elizabeth. In order to give the place a more homely feel, he even fitted wall lights and furnished the third room with a dining table and chairs. But obviously, there is nothing that Fritzl could do that would ever convert the dark, dank, windowless dungeon into a home. But again, Elizabeth is just getting on with things. She was also thankful to hear that Lisa's heart defect had been spotted by doctors so quickly and that the surgery was successful. But the problem was that down in the cellar, Kirsten and Stefan constantly

battled with health issues of their own. One or both of them were always ill, either with the flu or epileptic-like symptoms. But all Josef could be bothered to do was just give them an aspirin. Over the next few months, sometimes Josef would bring Lisa and Monica down to the cellar for Elizabeth to babysit whilst he was busy with work. But when Lisa began learning to talk, he stopped bringing her and only brought Monica with him. Even though Elizabeth loved seeing her children, she had to insist that he stop doing it because it was painful for Kirsten and Stefan to see their siblings disappear into the world upstairs where they were never allowed to go. Even trying to explain that to a child seems unbearable.

The whole thing is just completely fucking heartbreaking. And how much this man just doesn't give a fuck. Obviously he doesn't because of what he's doing, but like, I'm just going to bring him down here because that's what I want to do because I have to go to work and it's really inconvenient for me to have them up there. Do I give a shit that the other kids get really upset when their siblings get taken back upstairs into a secret upstairs world? Not really. You can deal

with that, right, Elizabeth? Since the addition of the two extra rooms and some basic household electrical appliances, life in the cellar improved slightly for Elizabeth and her children. But it was still covered in mould and the air was disgusting due to the lack of adequate ventilation. But Elizabeth managed to establish some order and due to the lack of adequate ventilation. But Elizabeth managed to establish some order and routine into the lives of her children. The television was now constantly on and was a window to the outside world that the children were all too aware of. They watched the news, they watched films and they watched documentaries. Nature documentaries were the children's particular favourite. They knew what sunshine and rain

looked like but it would be many years until they would ever feel it for real because i was thinking about this this week like when i was a kid or like kids in general like if you listen to songs that you used to listen to when you're a kid as an adult you realize that you were just making up the words you were just making sounds that sounded like the words but weren't actual words chichi bang bang i just fucking made that shit up it was on strictly arictly, a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang song. And I was like, oh, I was literally just making sounds. Now as an adult, I understand that I was not actually singing the words at all. But like for children in general, like the world is mad. Trying to explain like the most basic stuff is almost impossible. So having to explain to children that not only is the world mad in the

first place, but you can't see any of it because you're in this concrete dungeon for no reason. This is the thing again. It just comes back to how incredible Elizabeth was because she did everything she could to give them normalcy, give them routine, look after them in these horrendous circumstances. But she doesn't want them to be resigned to the fact that this is normal, which is quite interesting. Did you have any of those experiences when you were learning English?

I can't really remember, to be honest. I feel like, no. I thought it was a very uninsightful answer, but I can't really remember. I think when you're that young, you're just like, oh, okay, this is happening now. People are speaking to me in a different language. And then I just remember like a few years of just feeling very isolated because I didn't really understand what anyone was saying to me or like the context with which it was being discussed but then I guess you just get over it which is which is my top tip just get over it lads don't worry about it just got

over it that was it but yeah no I can't remember I think it is to Elizabeth's credit though because she could have lied and she could have said that a they were the only people in the world or b everyone lived like this or you know she could have done all of those things but she doesn't she makes sure that her children are almost painfully aware that the circumstances into which they were born were not normal obviously she did that when Joseph wasn't around and she made sure that her children knew that Joseph was the reason for their imprisonment so in the cellar the days would begin with the sound of an alarm clock at 6am. Elizabeth would make the breakfast and then they'd shower and then they would have some lessons. Elizabeth, after a lot of pleading and begging,

had convinced Yosef to occasionally bring the children educational books and newspapers and she'd use these to homeschool them. She taught her kids how to read and write. She taught them basic numeracy as well and she'd regularly make them sit exams to track their progress and in their free time the children were glued to the television set. Again like anyone who forgets the situation in which this happened, Elizabeth was 18 when she was taken captive and she is like getting her children to sit exams and like teaching them all of this stuff it is i don't know it's remarkable to me like what she does but i guess

it was a way also for her to cope because it structures a day it gives her a purpose it gives her something to drive for and you do almost get a feeling that with the fact she tells the children this isn't normal yosef is to blame i'm teaching you to read and write and do all of this she secretly has this hope that one day they will escape. Because why else would she do this? She has hope. You can definitely see that at this point. And that is where we are going to leave things this week. Now I know what you guys are wondering. I know last week we told you that Yosef Fritzl was going to be a two-parter but there is so much to this story it's going to have to be a three-parter so tune in next week for the third and final part of joseph

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