Austrian incest dad charged with murder

14 Nov 2008, 6:24 am   -   Source: AAP
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Josef Fritzl, 73, has told police that he held his daughter captive for 24 years. (AAP)

Josef Fritzl, 73, has told police that he held his daughter captive for 24 years. (AAP)

Josef Fritzl who held his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years, has been charged with murdering one of their children, according to a charge sheet.

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Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children has been charged with murder, prosecutors said, contending one of the offspring who died in infancy might have survived if treated.

Josef Fritzl, 73, also was charged with rape, incest, false imprisonment and slavery, said the state attorney's office in St Poelten, west of Vienna.

"Despite recognising the baby's life-threatening situation, he deliberately decided not to intervene," and get the ailing infant to a doctor, prosecutors said in their 27-page indictment.

Investigators say Fritzl has confessed to imprisoning and repeatedly raping his daughter Elisabeth - now aged 42 - in a warren of windowless cellar rooms he built beneath his home starting in 1984, shortly after she turned 18.

Police say Fritzl told them he tossed the body of the infant who died into a furnace in 1996. They say DNA tests have confirmed he is the biological father of the six surviving children.

The retired electrician is expected to go on trial early in 2009.

If convicted of the murder charge, Fritzl would face life imprisonment. Austria, like other European countries, has no death penalty.

Prosecutors have said a psychiatric evaluation showed that Fritzl is mentally competent to stand trial. They reiterated that stance but recommended that Fritzl be moved to a special facility for mentally disturbed offenders so he can get counselling.

Under Austrian law, Fritzl has 14 days to appeal the charges. His lawyer, Rudolf Meyer, declined to say whether Fritzl would challenge the indictment and refused further comment.

Prosecutors also said it will be the first time that an Austrian is tried on a slavery charge.

Fritzl imprisoned his daughter and the children beneath his apartment building in Amstetten, west of Vienna.

Authorities say Fritzl brought three of the surviving six children upstairs to live otherwise normal lives, and claimed to neighbours that his daughter - who he said had run away to join a religious cult - had left them on the family's doorstep.

The three other children remained imprisoned along with their mother until last April, when one of them - a teenage girl - became ill and was taken to a hospital.

Officials said it was the first time the three imprisoned children had ever been outside.

Fritzl, the indictment alleges, subjected his daughter to "multiple attacks" and terrorised her with threats that the cramped underground cell was rigged with booby traps to foil any attempt to escape.

Fritzl also threatened to release poisonous gas into the homemade prison, the indictment said.

It said the daughter was completely dependent upon Fritzl for her survival and had no choice but to provide "sexual services," the indictment added.

Police say they have no evidence to suggest that his wife was complicit.

His daughter, the children and Fritzl's wife have been getting counselling at an undisclosed
 

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