The world was horrified when details of Elisabeth Fritzl’s horrific tragedy surfaced in 2008 in a village in Lower Austria. Her father regularly attacked, tormented, humiliated, and raped the young lady as she was imprisoned in the windowless basement under the boarding house where she was raised. Millions were shocked by the “abominable events” that occurred in that subterranean jail, prompting many to doubt humanity’s potential for cruelty and survival.
The subjects of Elisabeth’s coercion, incarceration, and incestuous rape, as well as her years of captivity with her children and the circumstances of her ultimate escape after decades of misery, are the subjects of Lifetime’s new feature film, “Girl in the Basement,” which premieres on Saturday. The new film relocates the heinous Fritzl tale to the American suburbs while changing, ignoring, and elaborating on aspects of what occurred in the sleepy hamlet of Amstetten between 1984 and 2008.
On Aug. 28, 1984, Elisabeth, an 18-year-old waitress, was living with her mother, Rosemarie, and father, Josef, when he persuaded her to help him install a door for an ongoing house renovation in the basement of their home. Josef Fritzl, a 49-year-old engineer and property developer at the time, had spent years working on a basement conversion project. Nevertheless, putting that door in place was the last step in constructing the jail where the young lady would be tormented for decades. Josef Fritzl held an ether-soaked rag on Elisabeth’s face until she passed out, handcuffed her, and locked her in the dark subterranean prison, according to Allan Hall’s book “Monster.” While his daughter held the door in place, Josef Fritzl held an ether-soaked rag on Elisabeth’s face until she passed out, handcuffed her, and locked her in the dark subterranean prison.
Rosemarie Fritzl was shortly given a handwritten note from her daughter, stamped from Braunau, Upper Austria, in which she said that she had abandoned her parents and the town and that she should not be found, or she would leave the country. Elisabeth remained on the Interpol missing person list after a police complaint was made, although it was assumed that she had joined a religious cult, as her father had recommended to authorities.
The following years were just the start of Elisabeth’s horror, which lasted almost a generation. Her father came to the basement room almost every day, rapping and assaulting her repeatedly throughout the years. Elisabeth gave birth to her first child, Kerstin, in 1988, four years into her struggle and two years following a miscarriage. She had six additional children over the following 14 years: Stefan, Lisa, Monika, Alexander, Michael, and Felix. He died three days after being born with respiratory difficulties, allegedly due to Josef Fritzl’s carelessness; his father took the newborn’s corpse and cremated it.
Josef Fritzl chose to take Lisa, Monika, and Alexander from the basement when they were babies and bring them upstairs to be raised by him and his wife, giving birth to the “upstairs family.” Rosemarie believed her husband when he claimed that each of the children had arrived outside the house with a letter from Elisabeth requesting that they be brought in.
Officials deemed Josef Fritzl’s explanation “extremely credible,” and the couple was permitted to nurture the children as foundlings. Rosemarie claimed she received a call from a woman who sounded like Elisabeth asking her to look after the baby after Monika appeared in 1994, according to Der Spiegel in 2008. The grandmother reported the call to the police, saying she was perplexed as to how her daughter got their new, unlisted number.
Elisabeth and the children were imprisoned in a basement jail with a television, radio, video cassette player, refrigerator, and a hot plate to cook food, which was withheld for days at a time as punishment. She was able to raise her children and teach them to read and write, but she was routinely tortured by her father over the years. She claimed she was forced to watch porn videos he brought downstairs and then forced to re-enact their scenes with him in front of her children, as reported in Der Spiegel.
Elisabeth requested her father for an expansion of the underground jail following the birth of her fourth child, Monika. He concurred. She and the kids then scooped the dirt out with their own hands, expanding the area from 380 to 590 square feet. When Felix, Elisabeth’s sixth child by her father, was born in 2002, Josef chose to keep him in the basement jail with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, Kerstin, and Stefan, since his wife couldn’t care for another kid, he later claimed, according to Der Spiegel.
Elisabeth glimpsed the world outside her subterranean jail for the first time in 24 years on April 19, 2008 — but under terrible circumstances since her oldest daughter, Kerstin had lost consciousness. She and her father hurried the 19-year-old upstairs, where she was diagnosed with renal failure and transported to Landesklinikum Amstetten hospital. Elisabeth was rushed back to the basement, only to be let out again a week later, along with Stefan and Felix, when medical officials grew suspicious of the letter Josef Fritzl gave them, claiming to be from Kerstin’s mother. Josef and Elisabeth were both arrested and taken to the police station for interrogation.
It took hours and a promise that Elisabeth would never have to see her father again before she was ready to tell Austrian authorities about her ordeal. On April 26, 2008, Josef Fritzl, aged 73, was detained. Elisabeth and her children were removed from their home the next day and placed in state custody.
According to interview excerpts provided to the Australian weekly News, Josef Fritzl claimed after his arrest that he had mistreated Elisabeth since she was 12 years old and chose to jail her because she “did not conform to any regulations.” In “Girl in the Basement,” the logic of a disturbed, domineering father is reflected. Fritzl also attributed his conduct to a strict upbringing during the Nazi period until he was ten years old, as well as to his mother’s treatment of him. Fritzl confined his mother to the attic of her own house and bricked up the windows before her death in 1980, according to court records.
Josef Fritzl pled guilty to murder charges stemming from the neglect of his newborn son and grandson, Michael, as well as Elisabeth’s decades of slavery, incest, rape, coercion, and false imprisonment. He was imprisoned for the rest of his life at Garsten Abbey, a converted monastery in Upper Austria, where he still resides today.
Fritzl had been imprisoned for the rape of a young nurse at knifepoint in 1964 and had been a suspect in the attempted rape of another young lady, according to his sister-in-law, as word of his heinous crimes swept the globe. According to reports, he told psychotherapist Adelheid Kastner, “I was born to rape, and it took me a long time to break free. I could have done much worse than imprisoning my daughter. “
After her father’s trial, Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were reunited and sent to a hamlet in northern Austria, where they started treatment. Given how readily she had accepted her husband’s falsehoods regarding her abduction, she allegedly had a difficult relationship with her mother at first. However, their relationship has improved with time, according to an article in The Independent, and Rosemarie has even become closer to her children.
In May 2008, all of the survivors and Rosemarie Fritzl collaborated on a handmade poster that was displayed in Amstetten’s town centre. After the tragedy of what had happened in the tiny village became public, it thanked the people for their support.
“We, the whole family, would want to use this occasion to express our gratitude to all of you for your compassion in our unfortunate situation,” they wrote. “Your kindness is assisting us tremendously in overcoming these tough circumstances, and it demonstrates that there are decent and honest individuals here who care about us. We want to be able to return to regular life as soon as possible. “
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