Rotten Mango - #53: Captive For 24 Years/ Girl In The Basement (Case-Elizabeth Fritzl)

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

She was held captive for 24 years in the secret basement of the house that she grew up in. During her captivity she gave birth to 7 children - all in the dark with nothing but a pack of diapers and a pair of scissors.  For 24 years there were two families residing in one house.  The “family above” lived a normal life. Celebrating holidays. Taking pictures.  The “family below” lived a life with no sunlight, mold on the walls, and torment beyond imagine. Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What do you mean you don't know? You have one line. But a being but a boom. He said, I don't know. Hold on, hold on. So this week's episode, I'm trying really hard not to make this three hours long. It's going to be an intense one. And maybe three years ago, you heard me talk about it very briefly. And I want to mention, I never did a deep dive on this.

I never got into the craziness that is this case. I think a lot of the times this case is overlooked. This case is kind of summarized in a way that's very simple, straight, straight to the point because the crime itself is so insane. The crime itself is so insane that people don't really do a deep dive on this one. I mean, it's already, it's got so much shock value, there's so much like what the fork is happening, and then the whole trial happens, and it's just an absolute shit show. And this weekend I picked up a book called I'm No Monster by Stephanie Marsh and Bojan Penchevsky. I think I'm saying his name right, but it was such a good book and I got hooked on this because there is this new movie that just came out 2021 called The Girl in the Basement.

And I got a lot of YouTube comments that were like, hey you need to watch this movie, it's based off of like a true crime, like you need to watch it, it's so good, it's so good. I haven't watched it, maybe I will after I tell you this story and we can watch it together because I didn't want you to like you know have it all spoiled. Is the movie or it's a movie movie? Yeah it's like a documentary. No it's like a real-life lifetime dramatization.

Honestly I don't think we're gonna like it. I usually don't like dramatizations of true crime because it just it feels odd Feels a little strange, but I guess we'll give it a chance I am just gonna drop you into the middle of the story because April 19th 2008 is the day that a 24-year-long secret Unravels and I feel like the world was never the same again and I never really say that about cases But this one it's just so unprecedented

on so many levels of just the depravity of everything. It's just weird. So April 19th, 2008, man calls 911 in Austria, right? He lives in this small town in Austria, just maybe about 30 minutes outside of Vienna. And he says, help, help, my family member, she's seriously ill, please calm, bring an bring an ambulance it's urgent like she's unconscious right now please please please the ambulance arrive and they see a young woman by

the name of Kirsten lying on a bed I mean she is unnaturally pale she looks incredibly sick she has a bloody lip it looks like she has kept abiding her lip she's got many teeth that are missing she's got clumps of her hair torn out of her head. It looks like maybe she was in a situation where she had pulled out her own hair. For whatever reason, maybe it was the pain of whatever sickness that she has right now. So they immediately rushed her into the hospital.

This was a life-threatening kidney failure situation. She had to have emergency surgery. So she's in the hospital. Her grandpa shows up. He's like this older man He's got on this nice little collared shirt these trousers. He's got a shirt tucked in You see the one who called yeah, and there's explaining like what's going on We need to know all of the details. We need to make a diagnosis. Does she have a history of kidney failure?

Does she have kidney issues and the grandpa says well, listen? That's that's a problem You can talk to the police. I have been working with the police for the past 24 years and it's incredibly odd, but my daughter Elizabeth, she ran away from our home 24 years ago and she joined this cult. And so over the past 24 years, randomly, she'll stop by the house and drop off one of her kids. We have three babies that have shown up on our doorstep that we have raised ourselves, you know, as these older grandparents, we've raised these kids

because she just drops them off with a note that says, hey, sorry, had another kid, the cult doesn't want it, so I'm dropping her off with you, mom and dad. Like Harry Potter. Like straight up Harry Potter. And then he said that today, there was a young woman just laying unconscious, sick on his front doorstep and there was a young woman just laying unconscious sick on his front doorstep.

And there was a note from his daughter Elizabeth, who is Kirsten's mother. And he shows the note to the medical staff. And it says, please help save her. She's very scared of strangers. She's never been to a hospital before. I asked my dad for help. He's the only person that she knows. And it also ended the note with Kirsten, please stay strong until we see each other again.

We will come back to you soon. So the staff. So the grandpa never met her. Yeah, but the mom usually drop off a newborn baby. Yeah, and then just they never even see them. Just they'll open the front door the next day. And there's a baby, but this time 19. So he's like, this is weird.

I mean, she ran away 24 years ago drops off kids now this kid is sick I don't really know what to do. He's like freaking out. So the medical staff the police get involved now The police were very intrigued by this because this can be a situation of criminal child neglect I mean they need to find this mom They need to question the mom was she poisoned? Do she have epilepsy? How do you just leave your child to die on your parents front doorstep? Like none of this makes sense they start searching the social security database school registries everything and they cannot find any Record of Kirsten being born like Kirsten does how it doesn't have an identity. She never went to a public school or any school

She never she never went to a hospital. She doesn't have like a birth certificate. I mean this is 2008 This is wild. It's almost like she doesn't have like a birth certificate. I mean, this is 2008. This is wild It's almost like she doesn't have an identity and the police are freaking out about that the doctors themselves They're freaking out because Kirsten she is in a life or death situation and they have no idea what her diagnosis is I mean, they're completely puzzled. They want to ask the mom to contact them because they're like we need to find out Does she have epilepsy? Was she poisoned? I mean, she, what they do know is she's got this insane severe vitamin D deficiency. She was this deathly white pale color.

She's severely anemic. I mean, there's so many reasons why this could be happening and they need to know all of this information right away. So the doctors go on TV. Yeah. And they plead for Elizabeth to contact them. They say, we know that you care about her. We read the note. It says, you know, I can't wait for you to get better. See you soon. Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, please call us. We're not going to tell the police. We will treat this

with discretion. We need to save your daughter's life. Except the police might be watching too, but but like don't tell them. Yeah, exactly, exactly. The police then go into the grandpa's house. His name's Joseph, by the way. They go into the grandpa's house and they get the rest of the kids. They're like, all right, so you said that you had three babies show up. Yeah, we have that on record. We need all of their DNA.

We need Cureston's DNA because if we can't find the mom, if we can't find Elizabeth, maybe we can find the dad's, right? Maybe we can figure out where they are. And if they have medical conditions, if they know anything about this and the whole family They were kind of evasive about the DNA testing and then one week later Elizabeth came to the hospital the missing mom of 24 years walked into the hospital with her father Joseph So she walks into the hospital and she says hey I'm out of the cult right now. I need to see my daughter and she walks into the hospital and she says, Hey, I'm out of the cult right now. I need to see my daughter. And the police and the hospital staff, they

knew that whatever culture she had joined, life had not been good to her. She looked severely malnourished. She looks sick herself. I mean, what the fork is going on. So the doctors, they're like, All right, well, you can see your daughter. They let her sit with Kirsten. They try to ask her about her medical history. She's very evasive, she doesn't want to talk to them for some reason. And they're like, all right, then if you don't want to talk to me, I'll call the police. The doctors call the police, the police show up,

and they start- Why, why they calling police? Because this is child neglect. I mean, there's probably some laws that were broken here. There's no way that this 19 year old just shows up without any identity. Now she's about to die. Like there's something that was brought,

like a lot that was brought back. So you feel like the doctors and the police feels like are treating her like a criminal? A criminal for sure. Because I mean, whether it's her or the cold. They're investigating what happened to the daughter. Yeah, did the cold poison her? Was this like a Jonestown situation

where you like drink this cool aid? Let's just try it, you know? We need to know all of that. Okay. So finally, the police get her. And they sit down with her and they start questioning And she has the story of listen, I wasn't a cult. It's a lot of religious stuff going on But I'm I'm here to make sure that my daughter is okay Well, what's the cult's name? She's like I'm not allowed to talk about it, you know, it's like very secretive cult

So they keep questioning her for the next couple of hours and then finally there was like a tipping point because the police say listen, we're going to take Kirsten away from you. Like we're not, when she's okay, if she does recover, we're not giving her back to you. You do know that right because you have been breaking some laws and we need to know what the fork's going on. So finally around midnight that day, she told them, I will tell you everything that's happened to me if you promise if the police promises to protect me protect my mother protect my children and if I never have to see my father again Joseph Joseph the grandpa who called 911 and they said what oh shit I never joined a cult. I never abandoned my children. I have been held captive for 24 years. I've been incarcerated for 24 years.

They said, well, that does make sense. Like you have never been a prison in our records. What are you talking about? No, no. I have been held in an underground dungeon for 24 years. and this is my first time outside. And they're just sitting there like, what? Oh my God. So let's start from the beginning. Joseph, Joseph Fritzel. I got to get into his background, which I know some people aren't going to like this because why the fork do we care about his background?

And I want to make sure that none of his childhood make it seem like, oh, this isn't pathetic. Like, we need to, this is why he is the way he is. No, I just think that his background is a little bit fascinating, okay? Now, his grandma's name is Anna Fritzel, and the story gets real wild in the Fritzel family. So Anna Fritzel, she's always been young and pretty.

She was born into this very, very nice well-off family, and all of a sudden, one day, the owner of a local mill offered her his handed marriage. He was like, you want to marry me? And a fritzel? And because this was back in the day, she was like, sure, why not? You come from a good family. You've got a cottage. You've got this nice piece of land. You employ several servants inside of your house. Like, this is exciting. And a fritzel's parents even got excited. So they get married. And a moves into the cottage. And they started having marriage issues immediately. This is Joe's subscribe, right? And I cannot bear children. That's So they get married and a moves into the cottage and they started having marriage issues

Immediately this is Joseph's grandma, right? And I cannot bear children. That's like the whole thing They keep trying to get pregnant He wants little offspring. He wants air to his cottage and she won't get pregnant And he starts violently beating her because of it and he starts also raping a bunch of his servants Because he's like, you know what if you can't bring me an error I will go find myself a child. Now one of the servants gets pregnant and he believes that this is proof that this is all Anna's problem. It's not that something is wrong with his weeby or his sperm.

It's Anna's problem. I hate people. So the child gets born by the servant and they fire the servant. They just like pay her off and are like, bye, don't ever act like this is your baby ever again. And he forces Anna Fritzell to raise the kid as if it's her own So then afterwards years after he has two more maids give birth to two more children So now we have a total of three different children with three different women all living in the same house with Anna

Pretending to the public that they are all her children now you would think that okay Fine, this is a really weird setup setup but maybe they're making it work. Maybe Anna loves the kids. Maybe everyone's getting along to the outside. They're like this perfect conservative rule rich family. They're religious but behind closed doors. The dude he was evil. He loved taunting his wife. He would constantly sit there with his children and Anna and he would say, well you know you're a bastard And you know your mom's infertile and she's not even your mom Like he would tell them straight up

Okay, like I raped your mom and your mom is probably out there just like working the streets now and This ain't even your mom. You're just a bastard kid and then to Anna He'd be like look how does it feel raising bastards when you can't even have your own kid like he was evil he was truly truly truly evil now Maria she was one of the daughters that was conceived by one of the maids and eventually she grows up she's like I can't do this anymore like I freaking hate dad or quote unquote dad I want to move out she actually moves out with her mom Anna and they completely walk out together now Maria's main thing in life is she wants to get pregnant. She wants to raise her own children.

I think it was like this weird dynamic in the house of, well, you're not even the children of this woman. I don't know, something about it. She just wants to grow up and she just wants to get pregnant. That's it. So she meets a poor man by the name of Joseph and she becomes pregnant. Some say it was love.

Some say it was. Yeah, so she names the son after him. So some say it was love. Some say it was. Yeah. So she names the son after him. So some say it was love, not really most say that it was her trying to prove like her own womanhood to herself. So Joseph's dad's last name is actually nenning, but Joseph takes on his mom's last name. So he's Joseph Fritzel, right? And he grows up in the Nazi area of Austria. So I'm talking in the middle of a war everything is strictness everything's about discipline and he claims that he's subconsciously picked up on all of this.

People were dead at this point joining the army to not starve to death. They weren't even joining it because they cared. They weren't even like, oh yeah, I love this country. Or like, oh yeah, this is the side that I like. They were just like, they're gonna feed me. So I'm just gonna join the army now Maria She pretty much became a single mom because of the war and she's raising Joseph and she would beat up Joseph Non-stop she would punch him until his face was completely bloody She would keep telling him I only got pregnant to prove a point like I don't even want you I only got pregnant to prove to people that I can get pregnant and a boy I had to get pregnant with a boy.

Not only that, you're the very image of your useless father. She would say these really nasty things to him. She also inflicted a lot of these strange punishments. She would make him stand on a very angled piece of wood, like a wooden block, but she would have him kneel straight on the angle part. Like the corner, the pointy corner. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you mean, yeah, yeah, yeah? I mean, it's kind of like the The Chinese punishment you need on the scrubbing board.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she would also tie him to his bed so he couldn't bother her. And that's where the relationship just got weird. People said that their relationship was more of a toxic couple than a toxic family. She would like slap him and beat him and punch him. And then she would suddenly cry on the ground and be like, promise Joseph, you'll never leave me. Promise, I'm the only one in your life. So it was very, very odd. She just seemed really, really jealous.

Now, Joseph himself claims that he was the man in the house. He loved everything, he loved everything about his mom Did he I fantasize about my mother probably but I was strong and I managed to suppress my urges That's what Joseph said he fantasized. Yeah when he was young about his own mother I'm telling you they had a weird relationship now during all of this the backdrop of their weird toxic couple Possibly insatouist relationship during a period of six months there were 12,000 bombs dropped on the town that they were living in 12,000 bombs dropped in six months Sirens would be blaring non-stop

So the entire town had these underground bunkers that people would just the entire Population which is go underground for days you would not even see one single soul. The sirens would be blazing. Everyone's living underground but oddly Maria Joseph's mom didn't like it. She just like wanted to die in her house. So she would say fuck the underground bunkers. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die in my kitchen. She would sit in the kitchen, listen to the sirens for days, and did not care about her son's safety at all. So the neighbors would be like, hey young kid, Joseph, why don't you come with us to go

to the underground bunkers because your mom is bonkers. And I don't know what her deal is, but you shouldn't have to die because she's an idiot. He would go underground with all of these neighbors, and he felt strange down there. He felt rejected by his mom, but at the same time he had friends, and he felt safe in the bunker. Now around this time, Maria was taken into one of the worst Nazi's extermination camps. This one was probably one of the worst, I think there was a life expectancy of, I think it was like six weeks or something of that sort. I mean, incredibly low.

So he was told that she died there when he was ten years old. He's fine He's like, oh my god. This isn't saying the war is still going on people are still starving I've got no parents. I mean my dad's in an extermination camp. So is my mom and now she's dead with the fork Now eventually the war ends. He was like being taken care of by foster care his neighbors and his mom comes home And she's like I survived and's like, I thought you were dead. But this time she came back a completely different person. I mean, she'd probably been raped, tortured, starved.

People described her as a small, unsmiling, friendless woman who'd never opened up or talked about herself. Like, she just always wore the same dark black clothing. Doesn't matter if it's like 90 degrees outside. She will wear thick black, just heavy coats and long sleeves and long dresses Like she just did not care. She hated everything the only thing when she got back She wasn't obsessed with Joseph. She wasn't obsessed with anything She had this little garden in the back of her house and she stayed out there for hours if anyone if Joseph

If her friends if anyone ever tried to come and talk to her in that garden, she would fly into a violent rage. What is she doing just sitting there? Just sitting there, staring into space. So he starts going to school finally. The war is over, people are going back to school and he was in a class with people who were two years younger than him. So now he's two years older than everyone and he just felt like he was the baddest bitch on the block.

Are you kidding me? I've got a superiority complex. Why are you all so short? Why are you all so little? I'm so tall now. Ha ha. And he starts doing really good in his academics. He's super intelligent. His mom had taught him discipline at a really young age. So he, he applied that to studying. He starts getting really, really good grades. And around this time, their relationship had another massive shift. So Maria hated the fact that he was doing well in school.

She actually tried to sabotage his academics. She didn't like that. She was like, you're gonna get smart. You're gonna get a job. And then you're gonna leave me. And I don't want that. I don't want anyone to leave me ever again. And he was like, you're kind of crazy.

And he was getting to that age where he was like, well, I'm kind of embarrassed about you. Like, why are you looking like that? Like, can you please change? I mean, my friends think you look weird. Everyone in the community thinks you're just kind of like this creepo mom do better. So one day she hit him because for whatever reason, she like threw a fist up and hit him in the face

and he hit his mom back. And that day, the dynamic completely changed. She then became terrified of him and he was running the house. How old was he? Do you know? Like 16. Super young, teenagers. He starts spending a great deal of time snooping. That's his favorite activity. Other than school, he loves to snoop. He likes looking through his neighbor's windows at night. He likes to learn people's routines, particularly when someone gets home to undress for bed, with time they're weakly bathed in so he could watch them.

And he was just overall a freaking weirdo. He was like a sexual freak. He's a voy- he's into voyeurism. His first sexual experience was at 16 years old. He sees a woman in the park, he's like, wow, she's attractive. So he starts following her and following her, and then finally he jumps out right in front of her, pulls down his pants, and exposes his wee wee straight in front of her.

And she screams and she's like, what the fork? So this can be categorized obviously as exhibitionism. Now, maybe it's not necessarily the scariest sex crime, right? Because you have some genitals that you look at, but it's not necessarily the most physically invasive or the most maybe mentally traumatizing, but psychology today says that the risk factors for the development of exhibitionistic disorder in males include antisocial personality disorder, alcohol abuse and interest in pedophilia. Yeah, because I don't know what are normal people get, like anybody get out of this, right? Exactly. I don't know what our normal people get like anybody get out of this right exactly some people think that These people they think that your shock to scream is your sexual interest

They think it's kind of like flirting. They think it's a variation of flirting That's alarming and you're having this flirtatious Koi, you know response to their genitals when in reality You're just screaming your lungs out because what the fork I'm just walking through the park minding my own business and the audacity of this penis to just show up out of nowhere what the fork so he gets a little warning from the police that's it they were just like hey don't do that again now he goes up he gets married to a woman by the name of Rosemary he's like 19 at the time she's 17 they meet at a party and it was just a weird weird relationship he had never been on a date, she had never really

been on a date, and they were like, let's do it together. Rosemary is described to be an incredibly shy person. That's how everyone describes her. Silent and quiet are her sister's exact words to describe her. She never stood out from the crowd, she never really wanted to be different, like a lot of other teenagers. She just did what she was told and she was quiet. I mean she followed the rules, right? So they start going to these coffee shops and a week later she introduced rosemary introduced Joseph to her parents She was like this my first boyfriend and I think we're gonna get married and Within like a year they got married like less than a year So they were moving fast now Now Rosemary's family,

they initially they were really impressed. They were like he's young, he's friendly, he's nice. I mean he seems super sweet, he's doing well academically, he's gonna, he wants to be an engineer when he grows up, that's insane. This is the perfect catch. So at one point Joseph and Rosemary even live with Rosemary's family and he starts working at this local factory and eventually all of their perceptions of Joseph completely changed. They said that he went from being this nice caring person to just putting rosemary down non-stop. She would be eating something and he would say, oh my god, you're getting fat, why do you want to eat that? Stop eating, you're already too fat.

His one thing, he hated quote unquote fat women. He hated that. Like, he didn't even think that they deserved to walk around. If there was a fat person walking around, he would scoff. He would huff, and he would puff. Like, just, they didn't even talk to him. No one's trying to, and it's weird because he would be categorized as obese himself.

Shut up. So he's not like this skinny legend. I mean, not that that excuses his behavior, but he just was a vile human. So he really, really hated fat woman. And in front of his behavior, but he just was a vile human. So he really, really hated fat woman. And in front of her family, he would just constantly like stop eating. You're so fat, you're so fat. So he tells her you're fat. In the night time, he would just be out working super late. I mean, is he a hard worker? Is he doing long hours at the factory? No!

Later, they find out that he's riding around in his bike, looking through people's windows. He starts doing the thing that he did when he was 16. He starts going to the parks, finding cute women, jumping out in front of them and just exposing his genitals to them. The police find out about it and they give him yet again another warning. They say, hey, stop, stop pulling out your wee wee, don't do that anymore. Then there was the attempted rape of Maria, not his mom, another woman named Maria. So one day he's writing his bicome

and he sees this really nice woman who works at the factory and she's really, really pretty. So he starts biking after her, follows her home and as she's putting her house key into the keyhole to enter her house, suddenly she feels this arm grab her and he's like trying to throw her down onto the ground and she starts fighting back. She's screaming bloody murder. She's trying to throw her down onto the ground and she starts fighting back. She's screaming bloody murder. She's trying to punch him and he's just trying to get her on the ground into our apartment so that he can rape her

I mean, it's very very clear what's going on and after enough screaming He finally got frustrated and he started rushing up like trying to like drag his pants back on because during the scuffle He's like pulling down his pants and trying to put her on ground and he tells her one day I'll get you and he runs away on his bike so she calls the police and they find him and they say hey don't do that again and that's it that's it so his say first but I don't know for sure a couple months later was his first rape, his first like full on rape of a nurse. So he starts stalking this young woman that he finds to be pretty. He finds out that she works as a nurse where she lives, found out that she's married to

a railway worker. They have this young child. She lives in a ground floor apartment. Her bedroom window looks out onto the streets and he starts watching to learn her entire routine. After work she comes home feeds her kids, she goes to bed, turns off the lamp in the bedside table and falls asleep. And every single night, even if her husband was working later, was working the night shift, she would sleep with the window open because this isn't really a crime-centric area.

This is not a place where people crawl in through the window. There was no, you know, the night stalker. There was no golden state killer. So she had her windows open. And one day he waits until the light goes off, waits another hour, creeps into the bedroom window, stands there in the dark, and just watches her sleep for a good minute. Finally, decides, you know what, I'm going to go into the kitchen. He goes into the kitchen, grabs a carving knife, walks back into the bedroom.

She still is sleep during all of this, and her baby is is in the same room sleeping in like a little crit, right? He removes his shoes his trousers his underwear He's completely naked from the waist down, but he kept his socks on and like his um collared shirt on like a shirt Entire that he would wear to work, but completely naked otherwise and he wakes her up puts the knife to her face and says if you don't do it I say I'll kill you and he wakes her up, puts the knife to her face and says, if you don't do what I say, I'll kill you." And he raped her. Now, after the rape, he calmly takes his time putting back on his clothes and he kind of lingered for a while, then he jumped back out the window and biked his way home. And immediately the nurse calls the police. He's arrested, he confesses, and he

appears in court, and he says, I plead guilty. I did it. Oops, my bad. He was given an 18-month sentence, and he would only serve 12 months. He would only serve one year for the brutal rape at knife point of a young nurse, just one year. I know that you can't see my face,

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and get 20% off your order. That's functionabuity.com slash rotten for the people in the back. Now it's crazy because the police knew that this was a string of sexual offenses. This was a string of him stalking woman, trying to rape woman, exposing himself in public. But they said, it's your first official crime and you're a family man. You've got kids. You've got this nice job at the factory. We don't want to ruin your life.

We just want to give you a little slap on the wrist so hopefully you won't write people anymore. So he serves 12 months. Now you think it okay, Rosemary, you got to do something. This is your husband. He just raped a woman. I mean how, as a woman, can you stand by your husband? After all of that, will she visit him in prison?

And she never once mentioned the rape. She never asked about it. She never asked why did you do it. She never said, are you gonna do it again? Anything of that sort. She didn't want to, and I quote, embarrass her husband. So she just kind of forgave him. Now, her family says that she was painfully in love with him.

Like, this was the only man for her, and she was madly in love with him. She forgave him all the time. I mean, she seems like a very weak person. I don't know if that's an excuse, but that's kind of the one that her sisters give her. So she's incredibly weak, and she just lets him dominate her.

Now, he gets out after a year, and it's straight up back to business with very little repercussions. I mean, he's still getting business opportunities, amazing jobs, and he actually becomes a relatively successful person. He owns multiple properties, he owns a vacation home, he owns like this cute little bread and bread and breakfast. I always say bread and breakfast, I don't know why. I like a little bread and breakfast,. He's got all of these children.

So he's gonna end up having seven kids with Rosemary, seven children. And Joseph was the leader of the house, his wife, his children, they're all super submissive to him. He makes the rules. He's the dominant person. He has five girls, two boys, and Elizabeth, she's gonna be very pivotal in this story.

She is the fourth child and she was never his favorite child, if anything she was probably his least favorite child. And it was just a super strict family situation. Rosemary did everything so she was constantly cooking, cleaning, um, living in fear of him really, he was never nicer, never bought or anything, never really did anything for her, just, just always beater up and the kids, they lived in constant fear. He would do these things where he would go into their rooms when they were at school and make detailed inspections of the room and just like write down some weird shit. He would steal things from their room and put them into like file folders inside

of his office for future evidence. He would make them sit down and write down all of the names of all their classmates and where they sat in class So who sits on your right? Okay, who sits directly in front of you? What about behind you? What is he doing with that information? Just he wants to know everything. He wants none of his seven kids or his wife to have any sort of privacy any sort of private life He needs to know everything His favorite expressions where if you don't do what I say it will only get worse. That's what he would constantly tell his kids.

They always felt watched. They said it was really weird. He's always out on these business trips, but he would also always know everything. Like things that didn't even happen in the house. He would somehow know them. He was overbearing. It was just a lot. They were never allowed to have friends or visitors.

I mean, it was miserable. The result of this is that the kids all seven of them, they only had one dream. It wasn't the dream to become successful and have kids of their own or, you know, take care of their parents when they get old, but they said, I'm going to turn 18 and I'm going to move the fork out. That's my only goal in life. I don't care if I don't have a job. I'm going to make it work. I will be a waitress all day every day. If that means I never have to live here again. So slow. Isn't that a common goal for? Yes.

Overbearing parents. Yeah. It's like the saddest thing because, I mean, other than Joseph, most overbearing parents, you're doing it out of love and you're just like, oh man, your kids are gonna hate you. That's so sad. Yeah.

And they're gonna end up never wanting to talk to you. So slowly, one by one, all of their kids start moving out. The oldest three had moved out immediately when they became 18 years old or just shy of 18, like 17. They were like, bye now, I'm leaving forever. And finally, Elizabeth was the eldest in the house. Now, I'm gonna give you some details about their home life that get even weirder. Joseph had a lot of strange things going on.

Joseph had a very, very strange, like, sex life, but never with his wife. He didn't really like having sex with his wife. He would constantly go to brothels. He would go on vacations without his wife, and he would go to brothels on these foreign countries. And Joseph also kept his mom in the family home. Maria, remember her, the one that always dresses in black, and she would just lurk around the house. I mean, sometimes he would be really upset with her that he wouldn't talk to her for years. He would only communicate with his mother through his wife. He'd be like, Rosemary, tell my mom dinner's ready.

And she would just like, sneak up stairs and be like, hello, dinner's ready. I mean, she was very like weak, right? If he was super pissed, he would turn the attic room into her little prison. He boarded up the windows so there was no daylight coming in. And he would just shove his mom up there, and his mom was just forced to stay in there for years. She never talked because the woman lost all of her teeth,

and he never got like dentures or anything, so she barely ever spoke. It's almost like she didn't even exist. I mean, she definitely wasn't even close to the kids. Like, it wasn't like a grandmire-loving situation. It was just odd. She was just like this presence that was, I mean, quite depressing. I don't like to say that, but quite depressing around the house and she would just kind of float around.

Now Elizabeth, let me tell you a bit about her childhood. Now, when she went to school, some of her friends said that she seemed a lot more comfortable at school than at home. When it was actually time that the school day was ending and it's time for everyone to go back home, she would get quiet and kind of anxious and, oh man, I don't really want to go home. She was incredibly shy. Some people said she almost seemed afraid. Like it wasn't shy as an, oh I'm just an introvert. I don't really like people. But almost afraid of people. She wasn't like the other kids, not like in the, like a pick me growl way, but she really wasn't like the other kids. She never visited kids

after school. She never hung out with people. She never went out on the weekends. She didn't come to like the local carnivals that were coming through town. Never invited kids to her house. She was considered a very serious girl so not a lot of people wanted to be her friend. I mean they were like whoa what's so serious like take it easy we're just all young kids what's going on. Now she did have two friends, two twin sisters, and they didn't live far away, so they had this routine where every single day, they would walk two and from school together. Now, the twins' parents were also physically abusive, so they never spoke about it, but they would kind of, you know, the three girls knew what was going on at home.

They never set it out right, but they all bonded over it, and they always talked about, we're gonna freaking get out of this town when we turn 18. There is nothing stopping us. I cannot wait till we turn 18. Now one of the twins she was like yeah when I turn 18 I'm gonna start training as a nurse, I'm gonna marry a handsome doctor and I'm gonna get the fork out of town. The other twin was like oh I'm gonna train as a chef and I'm gonna go to Vienna and I'm gonna work at like Michelin star restaurants. You heard beats. No, Elizabeth, they're like,

what do you wanna do Elizabeth? And she says, I don't know. I guess I would do anything just to get out. So Elizabeth had incredibly modest streams. And I think a lot of it comes from the fact that she was beaten often. And Rosemary, she would tell her friends, I don't know what it is about my husband.

I don't know what it is about Elizabeth's dad, but he just doesn't like her. He just always beats her. I don't know what it is about my husband, I don't know what it is about Elizabeth's dad, but he just doesn't like her. He just always beats her. I don't know what she did wrong, just every little thing that she does pisses him off and he beats her. Some people would report that there was a coldness between Elizabeth and Rosemary, the mom and the daughter. That there was just some weird vibes.

I don't know if this has anything to do with hindsight later, but I'm just going to put that out there. Okay, why the fork does he not like Elizabeth? None of this makes sense. Well, it's claimed that if you get to know Elizabeth, she's actually pretty assertive. Like she knows what she wants in life, she tries to get it. She doesn't have like these big ambitious dreams, but she knows from right and wrong, and she'll stand up for it when she has to.

And he saw himself in her. Joseph said he saw himself in Elizabeth and he hated it but he also really liked it and it's really really odd. So when Elizabeth is 11 years old this is where the abuse gets even crazier. So when Elizabeth turns 11 he starts doing really creepy things. He starts spying on his daughter no longer is he spying on his neighbors but he's spying on his own daughter and he does things that he calls a practical joke. He would leave these porn magazines underneath her pillow as a surprise for her to discover in the middle of the night.

She would be scared, she would be defenseless, she would be like, oh my god, I know my dad left this under my pillow, like what does this mean? This is really creepy, I don't like this and she's already scared of her dad. And then he would keep hiding more and more porn magazines. And he kept telling himself, not only is is it a joke but it's an initiation. Elizabeth's initiation into the world of sex by a real man, me, her dad, very creepy. Now when Elizabeth turns 14, there's more abuse. He starts touching her.

He starts physically abusing her. He starts molesting her and he starts masturbating in front of her. So typically this would happen when they are alone in the car or if Rosemary was busy in the kitchen He would take her into a room alone and he would constantly touch her and masturbate and then he would tell her that the police Were all idiots and then nobody would take her word against his so there you go Don't don't dare try to tell anyone He would also claim that I can always kill you if you don't do as I say. He's the type of parent that would say,

I brought you into this world and I can take you out if I want to, which legally doesn't make any sense. So if you're a parent who has ever said that, that's not how it works in the court of law, okay? That's not how any of this works. Now his spying and peeping started to get more intense. He actually kept special folders in his office to keep any letters that were sent to and from her. Anything in kept special folders in his office to keep any letters

that were sent to and from her. Anything in the room that he saw that he likes, he would take it out of Elizabeth's room and put it into these folders. It seemed like his entire goal was to get to know everything about her in her private life. She wrote a letter to one of the brothers that had moved out one of her older brothers about the abuse. So she writes him like, this is what's going on inside the house and I don't know what to do. Now, she probably was hoping that he was gonna help her move out. Maybe he'd be like, you can come live with me. I've got a spare room. Maybe any of that. Maybe he can find her a job. He wrote a 10 page response saying like, I do not agree with this.

This is absolutely disgusting. I can't believe he did this to you. Like, how can I help you? He wrote all of that. He sent that letter to the family home. And Elizabeth would never see it. The police would later discover it because Joseph took it into his office and filed it away. So she secretly sent it to the brother.

Wow. And the dad read the letter back from the brother and never showed it to her. I think maybe if she knew that some people were believing her, some people were supporting her, maybe she would have more of the courage to like tell the police because I mean, you're talking about a lifetime of abuse. She's probably so terrified of her dad even sending a letter to even her own sibling. Must have been such a big, brave act.

So that's going on with Elizabeth. Joseph meanwhile is financially and career-wise doing Freakin well. I mean, he's killing it. He's like an engineer working for all these nice firms He's getting poached by other firms. They're like, we want you. You're so good at this and he really loved to DIY shit He's super meticulous. He's very detail-oriented great in business and he's the type of man It this is what they say if he gives you his word you can count on it So people really like him employers really like him and he applied for a permit So he goes to the little court and he's like listen, I want to permit because I kind of want to make money from home

I've been working too many hours You know, I want to make my money work for me So he gets us permit to build an extension outside in the backyard of his house. So the whole extension, he was going to house a bunch of tenants upstairs downstairs. He was going to have a seven room seller where he was going to have his work quarters, kind of like underground, right? He's going to have his tool shop, his workshop, his own little private office, maybe, maybe like a man cave, all of that jazz.

Now the city, they grant him the permits. They said, yeah, you're a nice respectable businessman. And this checks off. You just want some tenants, and you want a man cave. Makes a lot of sense to us. And the entire seller, the entire extension, it was mainly him building it from the ground up. Like, he was that meticulous.

He was incredibly into remodeling, and in reality he was trying to build a bunker to hold his own daughter captive. So the seller construction, there would be seven rooms underground in total. Each room had a specific person. One of the rooms were for tools, a room for which Joseph would have a workshop, another room to install a furnace to heat the entire place. So there was going to be power, there was gonna be heat, there was gonna be running water, it wasn't just like this bunker. Now that's still these four rooms.

What are you doing with the four rooms? The neighbors said it was a little strange, okay? Everyone in this neighborhood, they had cute little gardens, they had cute landscaping, like a bush here, a bush there. But Joseph had like a fucking forest around the perimeter of his house. Like he liked to plant dense ass privacy trees. And what did the neighbors gonna do? They can't say, hey, excuse me, I would like to look into your backyard, please cut down the trees. There was no, he wasn't obstructing any light.

There was none of that. They just thought he was a little bit strange. He kept to himself, they would have these garden parties, and he would get invited, and he never came. He spends years building this cellar, and officially when Elizabeth turned 16 years old, her and her friend run away to Vienna. They're like, bye, we're not doing this anymore. They get on to a train to Vienna, and they slept on the benches of that station the first

night. They had no plan, they had no jobs, they had nothing, they literally had nothing. They're in Vienna, this huge city, the capital of Austria. And they find a friend that would finally house them. So they start staying with that friend for a couple of days and five days later, Joseph calls up the police and says, listen, I'm really worried about my 16 year old daughter. She ran away, I think she's in Vienna and her whole life, she's been living in this small town in the suburbs, in the outskirts of these big cities, she's sheltered, you know, she's innocent, you know, and I just need you guys to find her. So the police are like, we're

right on it. And they agreed. Vienna's got predators. They've got, they've got a lot of sex work and pimps over there. No, no, no, no, we need to, we need to get this young girl home. So they start airing her photos all over the local news, all over Vienna. The Vienna police are trying to find them. Finally, they were found at their friends place in Vienna. And the police were really proud of find them. Finally, they were found at their friend's place in Vienna, and the police were really proud of themselves for this one. They were patting themselves on the back. They were like, can you believe we found these missing girls so quickly?

Uh-huh. So when she gets back, she says buy to her friend, and that's the last time she would see any of her friends. So for the next two years, she's living inside the house. He did not sexually abuse her during this time for the next two years, and I'll get into why. And she's just inside the house. He did not sexually abuse her during this time for the next two years And I'll get into why and she's just waiting to leave the minute that she turns 18 She already had plans to go live with one of her older sisters the older sisters okay to it They said yeah, you're gonna come live with me. She had this job as a waitress

She was you know saving up all of this money She's packing up all of her things and two years just kind of goes by and then finally she her dad, hey, I'm gonna go live with my older sister and I'm moving out in two days. And he explodes. This was probably one of the worst fights that they've ever had. He's just right in the face screaming at her like you're never gonna get away with this and she's like, well, that doesn't even make sense in this situation. I'm not getting away with anything. I'm literally gonna go live with my sister, your other daughter, and I'm gonna be 18, so bye. And then sure enough, two days later,

Elizabeth had disappeared. August 1984, Elizabeth was gone, and Joseph seemed heartbroken. He was very forthcoming to his friends and business partners, which you might not think that he would be, because it's kind of embarrassing, like your daughter ran away, your daughter disappeared, doesn't want you in your life.

What did you do as a parent that made this happen? But he sat there and he was crying and he said, she joined this cult. I mean, she's completely off the rails. She's addicted to drugs. The cult is giving her more drugs and, God, I don't know what to do with this kid. And then the letters started coming. They started receiving letters. Rosemary, the mom, she would get a letter in the mail and she

Read it and it'd be Elizabeth talking about hey, I'm fine in the cult Like don't come looking for me like I don't want to be a part of this family. I'm a part of this cult now The cult is my family and she's like wow. This is this is crazy So they start crying together as a couple and they're like wow our daughter left us our daughter no longer wants to be our daughter She's she's never coming back home. Joseph reports the disappearance to the police. Interpol even gets involved. I mean, she's 18 at the time. And the police felt really bad for Joseph. So they start sitting down with him and they say, you're a nice family man. You're a business man. You have no criminal record at this point. Because in Austria, a rape conviction only

lasts on your record for 10 years. So they look into his record. No criminal record. Just a law abiding family dad, and they say, can we just ask you some questions about your daughter? He's like, yeah, what do you need to know? Well, this has Elizabeth been in trouble recently? Oh God, I'm so embarrassed. So Joseph gets embarrassed and he says, Oh God, I'm so embarrassed. So Joseph gets embarrassed and he says, oh man, I don't like to air our family's dirty laundry, but she has been drinking and smoking and sometimes she'll come home really late,

like five in the morning and I would say, well what were you doing out so late and she wouldn't respond? I think she's involved with the wrong crowd. She keeps talking about some religious stuff. I don't know, some alternative religion. I think maybe a cult, I think she joined a cult. And it's just been really hard for us to keep track of her. We've got seven kids. I have this business and she just has no respect for authority. She has no respect about our rules. I don't know what to do.

So the officer, he's silently taking these notes and he doesn't say it. But he believes at that point Elizabeth is just an unreliable runaway and she's gonna turn up eventually. Now a year passes, she doesn't turn up. Now when she turns 19, the police officially close her case because even if they find her, they cannot legally bring her back home. But the truth is, she never left home. So here's what actually happened.

August 29th, 1984, Elizabeth was the only one home with Joseph. So Joseph goes up to her room and is like, hey, can you help me with something? I need a, I need to live for all of these bags of cement. I need to bring them into the garage. Nobody else is home. You're the only one and I can't live to buy myself. I'm getting old. So she's like, all right, whatever, fine. So she stops her packing because she's literally about to go moving with her sister. She stops packing, goes with her dad to help him and as they're moving this man he says oh shit I forgot I wanted to talk to you about something Elizabeth do you mind meeting me in the cellar I want to do it in

private so he unlocks the cellar door leads her down the stairs there's another door that he has to unlock and she has never been down these stairs she's never even known that there's stairs behind this door. The family was never allowed. The mom has never been down there, the siblings have never been down there, and nobody was really interested. Nobody wanted to spend any extra time with the dad. They hated Joseph, so why would they be like, hey, let us interior man, cave, they were

like, we don't even want you in our regular house, but now we're not going to go underground with you, you crazy. So he unlocks the door. They go down the stairs, unlocks another door and a couple doors later. And now she's sitting in like this makeshift office. So she's sitting on a chair and he says that he needs to go grab something from the garage. And she's thinking to herself, geez Louise, this is going to be another lecture. Like two days ago, we just had that big fight about me moving out.

I mean, that was one of the worst fights ever. And now he's gonna be like, oh, I can't believe you're doing this. Bla, ba, ba, ba, ba. Okay, it's okay. I'm just gonna sit here. I'm gonna be more useful. I'm gonna say sorry.

And I'm gonna go back upstairs and I'm gonna get back to packing. And she's thinking about all of this when he comes up behind her and places a damp cloth on her face. And she's trying about all of this when he comes up behind her and places a damp cloth on her face. And she's trying to fight it off, but she's tiny. I mean, she was weighing only about 80 pounds. He's a large, heavy man.

And the rag was soaked in chloroform, so she starts passing out. He drags her into the deepest corner of the cellar that was outfitted for her. So, in order to get there, you had to pass through eight different locked rooms that only he had the keys. Like locked doors. That only he had the keys to. Eight doors? Yeah, eight doors. And then it was behind a fake door, a fake bookshelf.

You would move the bookshelf, and it was this tiny little hole that you had to crawl through. So it wasn't even like a walkway. It wasn't even like that. Then later there would be two electronic remote control doors that he would only have the code to so that she could never leave. I mean this was completely bulletproof. So he went through all of those doors, dragged her into the deepest part and when she starts waking up I mean she can hardly see anything she can hardly move. I mean theoform, it's strong. And this is her first time in the cellar, so it takes her a hot minute to realize, I'm in the cellar, like I'm not in my room, what the fork? Her hands were tied behind her back with a chain that was then tied to the floor. So she can't move, she can't even reach that little hole that she came in through. And the scariest part of all of this is that the room was so obviously prepared for her arrival.

She was laying on a king-size mattress that had a bed frame. There were pillows and linens on the bed. It was screwed to the concrete floor. There was a sink, there was an electric stove, there was a toilet. I don't know what's scarier. I think it's scarier knowing that this wasn't like an impulse, you know, decision. So for the first 24 hours, she's just left in the dark. She has no idea where her dad is, why he would do this when

this is going to be over. What's happening even? And for the next 24 years, she would be raped over 3,000 times and she would give birth to seven children alone in that cellar. This is a perfectly concealed bunker to get to the cellar. Like I said, eight locked doors, then the final door concealed behind a bookshelf, incredibly claustrophobic. There is no natural light coming in. There's very little air. There's no like crazy ventilation system.

There's no AC system. I mean, she's inside this tiny little box room and it no like crazy ventilation system. There's no AC system. I mean, she's inside this tiny little box room and it's underground. It smells. It's very, very stinky. It's dank. It has this tiny, tiny little kitchenette almost with this portable electric stove. It's got this tiny little sink, this tiny little toilet. The highest point in the ceiling was six feet high and the rest were like very, very, but she would have to in most parts of this room she would have to stoop to walk she couldn't walk fully standing up the level of humidity inside of here was incredibly unpleasant there was no ventilation so in the winter the walls

furthest from the boiler room which is around where she was they would be slimy the walls would be slimy. The walls would be slimy. That's how dank it was. There was mold on practically every surface of the place because of how just humid and dank this situation was. It was incredibly smelly. The smell of mildew just penetrated everything. I mean, I can't believe that this has to be incredibly unhealthy

for your lungs, for your health, to just be breathing that same error. The room that she's held in had just this enormous bed that takes up most of the space, which is very creepy and in itself. Also, how gross is that? Yeah. After all these years, just, yeah. So just this bed, it has a TV, not because he wants to keep her entertained, but because

he wants to watch porn with her. So he brought a TV in there. Eventually near the end of her captivity, he will expand the quarters to have two more rooms for the kids, because she's going to give birth seven times. They would install a shower later, but that would be way later. The sink itself, so for years she didn't have a shower. She just has a tiny little sink and it has only cold water. In the winter, it would just stop working because the pipes would freeze, so she would have

no water. That was her drinking water, cooking water, showering water, everything water. That was her only source of water. He's not lugging little water bottles down there for her. The only light was a bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling, and it could only be turned on and off from a switch on the wall that was several rooms away that she couldn't reach, that she could never get to. She doesn't have access to it, so he could leave her completely in the dark for as long

as he wanted to, for whatever reason he wanted, and he would, he would do these scheduled blackouts to throw her off. So for weeks at a time she would just be in complete darkness. What kind of fucking monster is that? Like why would you do that to your daughter? He has this whole spiel about it. These days after all of this day filled with true crime, the last thing that I want to do is hop onto Netflix and binge watch another true crime series, which by the way, that's like my guilty pleasure, okay?

But you know what I feel exactly zero guilt about, how much I love playing best fiends. This is my nighttime go-to now. I lay in bed, I wanna turn off my brain, but not completely, like I still wanna be engaged, I wanna be stimulated, I play this game because it's just so relaxing, but challenging at the same time. It's like the perfect mix. Best Fiends is a free to

download match 3 puzzle game like none other, with literally thousands of levels and new content added all the time. They have over a hundred million downloads, so you know that it's not just me. And I'm already on level 86, which I'm kind of proud of. I've been having this little friendly competition with my fiancee, he's like on level 50 something, so I just have to which I'm kind of proud of. I've been having this little friendly competition with my fiance. He's on level 50 something. So I just have to say I'm a little bit better than he is. And my favorite part is just how fun the design is. I think the last thing I need is another serious thing in my life.

And I'm someone that has to have 25 things happening at once. So I love the fact that I can put on a show, turn on the news, and just play. With Best Vines, there's something today, and tomorrow, and practically every day after that. There's literally thousands of levels to play, and counting plus tons of cute characters to collect. So if you ever get tired of solving puzzles, good news.

With Best Fiends, the fun never ends. I mean, just don't blame me if you become slightly obsessed. Download Best Fiends for you today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That's Friends Without the R. Best Fiends for you today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That's friends without the R best fiends. The detectives immediately said it felt like life probably lasted at least 10 times longer when you're down there. It was rat infested, the smell is intense, but Joseph called it and I quote my kingdom in which only I have access. No one would have dared to enter my realm or even ask me what was going on down there. So the second day she finally wakes up and he's down there and he full-on starts beating her for 40 minutes straight,

just so that he can assert dominance not because she said anything, not because she did anything, he just starts hitting her in the face, the chest suffocating her. I mean she's chained to the bed, she's tiny, he's larger, she tries fighting back, but it doesn't work, and he flatly just tells her they can't hear you, so there's no point. If you don't do what I say, it will only get worse. You can't get out of here anyway. These were his favorite things to say to her, and then he proceeded to rape her on her second day of captivity, and it would go on for hours. He would rape her about twice a day. He would leave to shower because he strangely and to personal hygiene and then he would come back at night and he would rape her again for hours. Initially during all of this he wouldn't even talk while he was raping her. He never even

said one word to her. He would just come in and rape her for hours and Elizabeth told her attorneys later that it seemed like he could do whatever he wanted. He was acting out sexually everything that he had built up in him because remember when she ran away to Vienna when she was 16 this proved him oh shit I thought I had complete control over this girl and I don't. She pulled a wild card. He never in his wildest dreams expected that his daughter would run away. So for the next two years he quietly built that seller and never touched her, because he was waiting. Once the seller was complete, he would take it all out on her.

With the television, he would turn on these really graphic porn videos and bring in props, like the toys that were used in those videos, and made her not only watch these videos with him, but made her use the props in the way that the actors did in the scenes. And this would again go on for hours at a time. Now what's crazy is for the next 24 years, nobody upstairs suspected anything. I think that's even scarier, the fact that he could have regular relationships with neighbors, community members, business partners, his family, and nobody thought, oh, he's got some dark secrets. Nobody thought, oh, he just got some dark secrets. Nobody thought, oh, he just got done

riping his own daughter for hours. So Elizabeth, I mean, she's trying to fight back. Every chance she gets, she's looking for something. She's trying to like think, can I overpower him? Can I use the plastic spoons I used to eat to like dig a secret hole? I mean, I saw some movies about it. Maybe I could do some crazy prison break.

Maybe, you know, when I'm sick, sometimes he brings down this bottle of Advil. Maybe I can try to steal it, and I can crush up all the Advil, put it in his water, and hopefully he passes out somehow, and I can leave. Maybe that's how, but none of it really worked. I mean, he was really, really evil. He would break her spirits.

He starved her for days, left her in complete darkness. When it would get freezing in the cellars, he would take away her clothes. and she would just be left completely naked for weeks even having clothes was a luxury. Here's where it gets even more sad so the first Christmas without Elizabeth her entire family believed that she ran away so she spent her first Christmas in the cellar alone in the dark while above her her family were celebrating Christmas and her siblings they were resentful.

I mean, all of her sisters and brothers, they hated their dad. They all wanted to leave. And they understood Elizabeth, and she finally escaped, but she didn't even bother to try to call them. They were pissed. They were like, yeah, we all hate our dad. But how are you going to run away and not even call us? I thought you cared about us.

I thought we were all in this together as siblings. I thought it was us against dad, but the minute that you get out, you you going to run away and not even call us? I thought you cared about us. I thought we were all in this together as siblings. I thought it was us against dad, but the minute that you get out, you don't even care about me, huh? They were pissed at her. They were mad. They were resentful of her. Now, the winter itself was really hard. Rats were wild during the winter.

They were always scuttling around. The noise was so stressful to listen to. She said one day she would get a broom, and she could not stop listening to this noise Imagine being in the dark and all you just hear is the are these rats moving around So she grabs a broom and she slams it down on a rat and it was killed she kills the rat and for some reason She felt like she needed to measure it out and it measured to be eight inches long So this terrifies her and she just wants to stop hearing this rat noise because she just just killed a rat and she's like, oh my god, these are all there.

They're everywhere. The every little noise of this rat. So she starts running around banging her body onto the walls to try to get the noise to stop. And finally, once she collapsed onto the bed completely exhausted, probably bruised up. Nobody came to help her and the rat started scuffling again. So I'm just saying, like that's just how painful these winters were. Here's the crazy thing. During all of this, there were tenets living directly above her.

Right above where she was kept, was where they were renting out their room for tenets. Over 24 years, over 100 different tenets would live there, renting the space above where Elizabeth was held. But she couldn't make a noise. No. And they had rules. They weren't allowed to go near the cellar or Elizabeth was held. But she couldn't make a noise. No. And they had rules. They weren't allowed to go near the cellar or the garden area. Nobody heard anything or questioned it really. They were just all living their normal lives.

No, the tenants thought it was weird. They had these house parties too. Like the tenants would invite all of their friends over. There was actually a video of one of these parties where the tenants were hanging out with each other. They were drinking some beer. They were playing with their guitars. And they said that it still haunts them to this day, knowing that they were partying, while someone was locked up right below them, and it's like this incredibly frustrating feeling.

The only strange thing that has ever happened is one of the tenants had this labrador named Sam, this really smart dog, and an absolutely amazing dog never does anything bad, never barks, never peas, just completely follows all the rules well behaved, well tempered. But sometimes it would just look at the carpet and just bark and scratch at the floor as if it's trying to dig something and growl. Randomly, it'll wake up at 3 in the morning and start growling at the ground. On random days, the dog would lay quietly, on its side with its ear pressed up to the ground and then it would start growling. While it's just laying on the ground.

There was no other sound, there was no one approaching the tenant's space and the tenant would just be like, that's weird. Huh. But never really did anything because you're never going to think, oh my dog's acting weird, that means someone's living underground me. Someone's being held captive underground. You would never really think that, right? So the tenants are just living their lives, have no idea. Maybe the dog is the only one that had any sort of inkling that something weird was going on. Listen to your dogs, folks.

Listen to your dogs investigate everything your weirdo dog does. Okay, sometimes my dog will stare out into space for like five minutes and I'm like, that's a fucking ghost for sure. Try and add some lightness into this darkness and it's not working. So during the winter, she would wrap herself in these blankets. Her entire feet in her hands would constantly be numb. The pipes would freeze. Would have no running water.

And her father liked her best when she was helpless. That's what Elizabeth said. That's when he liked her the most, his own daughter when she was helpless. That's what Elizabeth said. That's when he liked her the most, his own daughter, when she's helpless. So he refused her request, her multiple requests for a clock. She said, I just want some sense of time. I just want something I'm going crazy. And he said, no. And in top of that, he would stage weak long blackouts in the cellar just to throw her off. Just to throw her off. keep her in complete darkness, disrupt her rhythm. For the first couple of months, she couldn't even watch TV.

I mean, he allowed her to, when he left, he said, you could watch the TV, turn on the news or something, and she just said it was so alienating to sit there and watch like normal life go on. She just couldn't do it for months. Now, he hated the chain on her waist. So at any time that he wasn't in the room with her, he had her chained up because he didn't want her getting even close to the door, right?

So the chain around her waist, he hates it because while he's raping her, he would get tangled up in the chain. So he doesn't like the fact that he's getting tangled around the chain around her waist, that he put on her so that she can be shackled to the ground. So that's when he starts implementing this remote control system for the doors. The door closes to the cellar, so the two doors, they were electronic now. So he has this remote, anytime he's in there, she can't run out. He can click the button and start, like she can't leave.

So all of them become more like tech savvy. He also tells her that the doors are fitted with alarms. If she somehow is able to get the door open from the inside She will be not only electrocuted, but there will be a gas released into the room and any attempt to run will be absolute suicide That's not necessarily true, but she had every reason to believe it was I mean even if that didn't happen she couldn't really get out there had to be a coach She didn't have any of the keys So she would really never get that far, but even if she could he was like, you're gonna die

So she started for the next like four years of her captivity So the first four years she's contemplating suicide. She's contemplating how to kill him She's thinking about all of these things and then she finds out that she's pregnant She has been missing her periods and this is Joseph's disgusting response. She finally tells him, and he said, well, that's great, because some of my happiest years with my wife, your mom, was when she was pregnant. A new child is a great source of joy,

and it's a new beginning. Why would it not be the same down here in the cellar? And so he was excited, and he told her straight up, you should be grateful. A baby is what every woman wants. And I have given you the gift of a child. Yeah, he looks, my fiance is looking at me like, this is the crazier shit he's ever heard. Like I feel right now, like everything he say, you know, a lot of tiny like criminals, I can kind of think, oh, this is why they say or act this way. But this person, I just couldn't, everything is so odd.

He's like a walking contradiction. Yeah, it's just so evil, but you don't know where that came from. Yeah, you're also like, oh no, having a kid is an amazing thing. Also, rapes his kids. Like, what is happening? Like, it's just a walking confusion so she has a

miscarriage for her first pregnancy and very soon after she gets pregnant again and she's terrified I mean she never wanted to be pregnant she doesn't want to have kids with her own father first of all second of all I mean imagine the situation you don't even want to live here how are you gonna take care of a child she's only 22 at this point She's been living in captivity for four years. She's trying to escape. She's not trying to be a mom And she's terrified. Now the rest of the pregnancy for her second pregnancy. They are healthy. She is growing She doesn't have a miscarriage and finally it's coming around time to the time that she gives birth and she's freaking around time to the time that she gives birth. And she's freaking terrified. This is not only a painful process, but it's a process where even with the help of modern medicine, midwives, doctors,

nurses, you could still die in childbirth. It's not even to this day you're not like guaranteed, oh yeah, you're still gonna live after you give birth to a child. So he buys her this lousy ass book that's the only thing he really buys her and she starts preparing. It's about giving birth, it's about parenthood, all of that jazz. And she starts panicking. I mean, what, like, even if this is successful, how am I going to raise a kid in here with these conditions? Like, will their life be, am I ruining this kid's life? What's happening?

So finally, she's approaching her due date and Joseph gives her for her birthing experience. A pack of diapers, one extra blanket, and scissors to cut the umbilical cord. No pain killers. Was he there too? Nope. And he left. Oh my goodness. He stayed away from the seller for about two weeks.

So he didn't come back for two weeks? Because yeah, we'll get into it, you know, because he doesn't know. Is the mom gonna live? Is the kid gonna live? Are they both gonna be dead'll get into it, you know, because he doesn't know. Is the mom gonna live? Is the kid gonna live? Are they both gonna be dead? So he decide, you know what? I'm just gonna stay away for two weeks and whatever happens happens down there.

So using only this one book, she tried to learn everything about what it feels like when your contractions start hitting, what happens when your water breaks, she kept reading about how to cut an umbilical cord. That was the scariest part for her because it's a super straight forward procedure. You snip it, but it can have deadly consequences if you do it wrong.

Like it's one of those things where you think it's so simple, but so many people die from it. Another problem is that so many new moms die from infections. The seller conditions are beyond filthy. Beyond filthy. How is she not going to get infected? How is the baby going to be healthy? I mean, these are all questions that's freaking her out.

So her water breaks, and the baby's ready to come. The baby is like, I'm here, Mom. Like, let's get this party started. She panics. She's all alone. All she has is this one little light bulb on. Like, it's pretty dark in there, in the filth. So she rushes heavily pregnant contractions.

She boils water on a portable stove. This is how smart she is. and she boils the pair of scissors. Now, she waits for it to air dry, because she can't dry them on the filthy sheets or the clothes, because that's an infection. And she gives birth all by herself. And she cuts the cord all by herself and a tiny baby girl by the name of Kirsten was born.

Almost to the day of the four-year anniversary of her capture, captivity, should I say. She was 22 years old and she just gave birth to her first child who will ultimately later save her life because when Kirsten is 19, Joseph calls for the ambulance to come. Curson was 19. Is that not insane? Insane. So Elizabeth has changed. You know, her goal is no longer to find a way to die, find a way to kill him. Her goal is completely different now.

It's to stay alive, stay alive, and make sure this baby stays alive. That's it. She has no other goal. She can no longer have the luxury of contemplating if she wants to end her life even. That's not something she can do. So for the next 10 days, she just breastfeeds in the dark. Like, she's just all alone. She's in so much pain. I mean, usually he's down there every single day to rape her, but now just for like two weeks he doesn't show up.

Insane. So he doesn't even give a reason later in trial, but a lot of people think it's because he's trying to rid himself of the responsibility in case something goes wrong. The death of a mother, the death of a child, the death of both. He just doesn't want to be there in case any of those happen. So he's like, whatever, I'll just come back later

and deal with the consequences later. So life with Kristen was, uh, Kirsten is the pronunciation was hard. I mean, she had a warm up her food with only her body heat. So, eventually she couldn't even breastfeed well because, I mean, with those conditions, her health was deteriorating. She would have to get the baby formula and it has to be a certain temperature. My sister has a newborn baby.

It has to be a very specific temperature. It has to be warm and she would have to use her body heat in the cold winters to heat up the baby food. Then she would later have to chew up food for Kirsten with sink water, if there was water at the time, because he wouldn't buy baby food. He was really cautious about it. He never bought anything for the underground family as what he called it and any of the local stores.

He would drive an hour and a half to the next town over to buy diapers to buy all of these other things. So he was trying so hard to not raise any eyebrows, but here's the crazy thing. He would go on vacation randomly for two weeks at a time. And one time the electricity went out while he was on vacation, and it was freezing down there. There's 10 days in the dark with a newborn infant under a moldy blanket. She had to remove a tick from Kirsten's belly with a pair of tweezers. Meanwhile, he would still visit her every single day to beat her rape her and force her to watch porn with him. So finally he gives her a gift. He says, you know what, you've been such a good mom. Here's a gift. And she was so happy about this gift.

It was a free notepad from a bank. It was the first writing utensil she's ever received since she's been down there. Just pen and paper? Free, not even like a journal, like a free one that had like all the bank logos on it. Or like thanks for being a valuable customer. And so she started writing a diary. She never wrote about the abuse, never tried to document it because she was scared to send him into a murderous rage She just kept a log of random things that would happen in there

The first thing that she wrote down immediately were the names and birthdays of all of her siblings upstairs Because she didn't want to forget and she didn't know how long she would ever be in there And she was even scared that remembering her siblings would piss off her dad. So she would hide that She would try to hide that she that remembering her siblings would piss off her dad, so she would hide that. She would try to hide that she cared about her siblings still. Prior to this, she was using old receipts and scraps of paper and strips of torn bed sheets to like try to scribble down something and to like try to wad them into little balls and hide them.

I can only imagine even the fear of losing what you used to have, like losing the memories I think would be so terrifying. I'm like, oh, one day, what if I forget what my brother looks like? What if one day I forget with the smell of grasses, right? I'll just be terrified of these things. I would wanna write all of it down. And a lot of what she used,

her wrote down would later be used in court against her father, even though it wasn't necessarily, oh, this is the assault that happened. And she said that she never, never wanted to incriminate him with this journal. That wasn't the point of this journal. Because she said, by the time she started writing these diaries, she had already given up all hope of escaping. She never thought that she would escape and some lawyer would look over these journals

and use it against him. So every Christmas, her new gift would be a free diary, usually from a bank or something. And she would be so happy. The happiest moments that she would write down in the diary were her siblings birthdays from upstairs. She would, those days she would always write. It's my brother's birthday, like with exclamation points. One time Joseph bought the micecreme, she would write that down.

Kirsten learns how to walk, she would write that down. And during the fifth year of imprisonment, Joseph claimed to everyone that he believed that she was and I quote, my wife. So he tells the upstairs family, Rosemary and all of Elizabeth siblings, going on more business trips, guys on more business man, when in reality, he wouldn't even leave the house. He would go underground into the cellar and he would just spend a week with his underground

family is what he called it. With Elizabeth and the kid. It's just crazy. Joseph would lay in bed with Elizabeth and tell her stories of upstairs. He would brag about it. He would say, I'm installing our second pool upstairs. It's gonna be salt water. It's gonna be heated. Oh

During the summer months, I love sunbathing up there before I come down here. Here's the messed up part in the summer. The seller would be upwards of 86 degrees Fahrenheit. So he's sitting there bragging about taking a dip in the pool right above and she's just like, yay! So happy that the second pool is going great for you. He would later claim to the prosecutors that he was a good father, because one time the mold in the cellar got so bad that the TV broke, because of the humidity, because of the mold. The entire thing was molding.

Everything inside of that cellar was molded. And eventually he replaced the TV with a new one. And he says, I'm a good father. I provided for my family. That's what he said to the prosecutors because you replaced a TV in the jail cell that he created. Sinsane. I mean, she hated him so much. But at the same time, like imagine this crazy feeling of she hates this man so much, but she's also so scared if anything happens to him. They already were having so much food shortages. If he's injured, if he's hospitalized, if he's killed, if he dies, her daughter will die.

Her kid's gonna die in her arms and there's nothing she can do about it. So when Kirsten is two years old, Elizabeth gives birth to the second baby, Stefan. Born in the darkness again with only Elizabeth, and this was another miracle baby. And she was finally gifted an alarm. For the birth of the second child, he gave her an alarm. And he says, listen, you want some like normalness in your life, here you go, he is an alarm. And so she would set it every morning to wake up at 6 in the morning, she would be in bed by 10 pm, and during all of the day time she would take care of the kids. This was one of her very few possessions, her little free notebooks and an alarm.

And then the next Christmas, he got her, like, think about it, you only own like four things. And this, you have to beg for these things. He bought her a scale for her weight. What? Because he doesn't like fat women. And when his wife upstairs, Elizabeth's mom Rosemary was pregnant, she would get fat. In his words, those are his words, not mine. And so he didn't want the same to happen to Elizabeth.

And how did Elizabeth fail about the scale? I'm sure disgusted. Like what the... Oh, she never asked for it. I mean, yeah, I understand that. but with someone who doesn't have anything, do you think she treasures it? I think she treasured it in the sense that, I mean, I'm trying to think in her shoes which I can never do, but I would think maybe in the growth and development of her kids, it

would be good. Right, right, right. Like, she'd be like, this is good, nice. To, you know, make sure that not malnourished. I mean, they were really unhealthy. And and then two years again another baby is born So this is baby number three because she's raising like multiple kids underground So she has she's raising two kids at this point and she has the third baby by the way Elizabeth never wanted to give birth to any babies I mean can you can you blame her in this situation?

But Joseph says cond condoms, and I quote, are immasculating. Hey, hey, people. So she gives birth to Lisa, baby number three. And the birth went well. She was born a healthy baby, a miracle baby. This is the third miracle baby. And for the next eight months, everything goes well. But then all of a sudden, Lisa is eight months old and she just won't stop crying. Like no matter what anybody does, no matter what Elizabeth does, no matter what Joseph does, not that he does anything,

he's a piece of shit. No matter what anybody does, she just won't stop crying. So Joseph gets annoyed. He's like, listen, the upstairs tenants, they're eventually gonna hear something because she's just crying her little soul out. We need to stop this. And it was very obvious to both of them that Lisa something was wrong with Lisa.

This wasn't just a baby crying because she didn't like the seller. This wasn't a baby that was like, I'm just gonna cry. Like something was wrong with the baby. So Joseph takes Lisa in a cardboard box and forces Elizabeth to write a note. And places that note and that cardboard box on his front doorstep, and pretends that he discovered this quote-unquote abandoned baby on the doorstep,

and she's immediately rushed to the hospital and she had to have emergency heart surgery. Now, the letter that was written by Elizabeth was heartbreaking because these are her children, and as much as she wants her children to live a normal life, this is her child. And she's never going to see this child again. And she knows that once that child is upstairs, that's it. That's not her child anymore, technically, in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of Joseph.

Like her baby's gone. Her baby's been kidnapped by Joseph. So she wrote, dear parent, like her parents. I passed on my little daughter, Lisa, to you. Look after her carefully. You're probably wondering why you're hearing from me only now, since this letter comes along with a human surprise. I'm incapable of caring for her.

Hope she won't be too much trouble for you. I'm alright, don't look for me. So they give this to the doctors, they give this to the police. You would think that the police would be like, that's a very suspicious letter. What kind of letter is that? But they're not. They get handwriting experts and they say,

it matches Elizabeth's schoolwork. Like it matches her handwriting from her school papers. It seems like, oh, didn't you say that she disappeared a couple years ago, like six years ago? And she disappeared into like a cult. Well, at this point, it'd be like eight years ago. Disappeared into a cult. That would make sense. She has baby. The cult drives her here in the middle of the

night. She drops off the baby. She gets back into the car, drives away with the cult. It makes sense. Lisa also looked just like Elizabeth. So the Fritzel parents, Joseph and Rosemary, they provided pictures of Elizabeth and they're like, they look the same. So it's definitely her baby. And here's the crazy thing. The hospital said, this baby was probably born in a hospital. We just don't find the records because her umbilical cord had been cut and clamped with expert precision. So we just, we think that she was definitely born in a hospital. We just don't know which one.

There's no record of it. I don't know if the cult paid them off or something. But she had to have been born in a hospital. Wow. So gathering all of this information, I mean, rosemary, the mom of Elizabeth, she seemed shocked, she was like, does my grandkids just like dropped off on my doorstep? And Lisa was legally allowed to be fostered by rosemary and Joseph Fritzel, not only would they allow them to foster their grandchild, but the state would give them 400 euros a month to support the

fostering of this child. and everyone in the town believed Elizabeth was and I quote a slut and brought shame to her family. Good thing that she had some caring parents to fall back on that was the only fortunate thing in this situation. Imagine if she didn't have amazing rosemary and Joseph Fritzel what would happen to her baby then. So after years of begging Joseph allows Elizabeth to enlarge the room. So they go from 380 square feet to finally, 600 square feet.

He forced Elizabeth and the kids to dig out soil using their own hands. He installed two new rooms, two tiny new rooms with little beds for the kids, and then a separate bed for Joseph and Elizabeth. And showers, he had some hot water installed, and everyone was really excited except for four-year-old Stefan because he was terrified. For four years he only knew 380 square feet and his mind could not comprehend that it just doubled. He was terrified of the news space. Oh my goodness. He was terrified of the news space. Oh my goodness. I Would say I'm a little imperfect. I've got some imperfections, right? We all have them. Yeah

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So two years after Elise has born, they have, well she has baby number four. Monica. And again, Monica is born this healthy baby, and the birth went as well as it can. And then around nine months, Monica just like wouldn't stop crying. So Joseph gets worried again, and Elizabeth's getting worried because Lisa needed life saving surgery. So what if Monica has the same problem? What if Monica needs life saving surgery? I mean, she's freaking out.

She gets forced to give up Monica again, and he took her outside and left her outside in the freezing cold on the front door step of their family home in the middle of a December night and just went inside and he did this because it would be very suspicious for him to find the baby twice. Because he found Lisa, so somebody else has got to find Monica, so Rosemary wakes up in the middle of the night to hear a baby crying. She's like, what the fork? She looks outside her window.

She sees like a pram, like one of those baby carriers outside her front door. She freaks out, goes to the front door, picks up this baby, the baby is crying. I mean, she's shocked that the baby's didn't freeze to death because it's like December. She finds a note from Elizabeth, pretty much saying, again, so sorry, how's Lisa? This is Monica. And then the phone rings. And there was a recording, like an audio recording of a female voice that sounded like Elizabeth. That was like, hey, parents, sorry, here's my baby. Later we find out that Joseph forced Elizabeth to do this audio recording to make it a little bit different from the first one and Called the family home.

Rosemary went to the police, she reported it, and the one thing she couldn't get over was, we recently changed our landline. We recently changed our number. I mean, it's crazy. These cults must have crazy connections because I did not tell anybody about this new home phone number. So the police were like, yeah, cults do be Colton. They do be crazy.

So Monica's pain Rosemary found. The grandma found the source of Monica's pain. She didn't need, you know, life saving surgery. She actually had this tiny hair somehow. Stuck into one of her toes. It would be invisible to Elizabeth in the dim light of the cellar, and it was ingrown. It was incredibly painful.

And they had to like get it removed. The little hair saved Monica from a life in the cellar. Wow. And perhaps her entire life, because I mean, the life in the cellar. Wow. And perhaps her entire life, because I mean, the kids in the cellar, they were not receiving any medical attention, no matter how sick they got. And they were getting sick often. So this would be the second child on the doorstep, and authorities, they were not concerned. Neither was CPS. They were just like, wow, this is insane. Like, I can't believe your daughter is snatched away from a four would say wow it's you guys are amazing parents I mean you already raised so

many kids like wow you do so much for your kids and they again received another 400 euros a month for Monica's care here's the really messed up part Joseph would bring down Lisa and Monica to the cellar. What? Randomly. And he said he could only do this until they start talking because once they start talking, they can never know about the cellar. We can only bring them down when they are not forming real memories yet. And eventually Elizabeth pulled Joseph aside and asked

if he could not bring them down. Because it was too much for Kirsten and Stefan to watch their siblings disappear upstairs where they were never allowed and where they would never go. So he eventually stopped bringing them. And there would be two families now, two families of life events. The children below knew that they had siblings, they knew that they lived upstairs, they knew that they would never see them again. Joseph would even bring down videos and pictures of them on vacation. And all the kids, Kirsten and Stefan,

they were just amazed at the world. They were amazed at the difference. And Elizabeth tried everything to raise these kids right. So she creates this routine. Six AM, breakfast, wash up. She would sit down, teach Kirsten and Stefan. She convinced Joseph to buy books and newspapers. They would learn reading, writing, math.

They would take routine exams. Their favorite thing to do was watch nature documentaries. They learned about grass, sunshine, and rain. They knew what it looked like. All of a sudden, she explained her to the kids that they can't leave. Oh, she explains it all. Yeah. But they didn't know what grass or sunshine or rain looked like,

smelt like, felt like. They wouldn't experience it until they were teenagers. Houston was 19, Stefan was 17, she would save up flour and butter and sugar so that on their birthdays she could bake them little cakes. Oh my. She attempted to throw these little birthday parties,

but they didn't have anything, so she would get like used paper, and she would make these paper chain links and hang them up to decorate for a party. They wanted to play dress up, you know, because they have a TV, they know what costumes are and stuff. So she started sewing patches of different materials that they could no longer use, even like packaging of bags and canned foods. She would like sew them up and make costumes for the kids so that

they could dress up and try to have a normal childhood. Sometimes Joseph would bring them small gifts. When I say small gifts, I'm talking a bucket of snow because it just snowed upstairs. And this would make their entire year to just have a bucket of snow. That would melt and like, you know, soon, but they would just die over the bucket of snow. The kids hated Joseph, by the way. He beat them non-stop. If it was something as small as you're not sitting up straight enough at the dinner table, he would just fly into a rage and beat the kids. The first present he ever got the children were a mirror and the kids sat for hours because

they had never seen a mirror before. Or they've never seen themselves. They've never seen themselves. They were just amazed. And I'd been like over a decade since, you know, Elizabeth had even seen a mirror. And the assaults continued. The only difference now was that Elizabeth stopped fighting

because of her children, not because she liked it, not because she consented, because of her children. Joseph would tell the prosecutors later that they were engaged in a, and I quote, proper relationship, that he would take her into another room, because they expanded, and they would have sex, and that the feelings that he had towards Elizabeth were not mutual. What? So two years after that, she had twins, baby number five, and baby number six. Identical twin boys Alexander and Michael. And Joseph and Joseph for the first time was there for the birth

He was present and Michael came out first and immediately They both noticed that his umbilical cord was suspiciously pale and he was laid out on the bed Alexander was a really hard birth like this is the type of birth when she's pushing out Alexander They would have called in like multiple doctors at this point in a hospital. But she gave birth to Alexander. She put up with that pain. And both of the babies seemed to find for a couple of hours until suddenly Michael had this difficulty breathing.

He's wheezing. He's refusing to feed. His legs are becoming stiff. So the next day he's alive, but he's getting worse and Elizabeth is like begging him for help. Please just take him upstairs, like take him to the hospital, do something. And Joseph told her and I quote, what will be will be and went back upstairs and didn't come back for days.

Michael died three days later. And Joseph still didn't come around for days. So she was just holding her dead baby's corpse in her arms for days. And he came back, picked up the body, incinerated Michael's little corpse, and spread the ashes in the yard. And Elizabeth, I mean, she was destroyed by this, and to comfort her Joseph said, perhaps he would have been disabled. Who knows, maybe this is a good thing.

Elizabeth started her own double life down in the cellar. Elizabeth would tell her children not to tell Joseph about anything that they talk about, but they would listen. And she told them straight up the cold, hard truth. The reality is, we're being held captive here. I was forced against my will. I'm down here. There is a life outside of this cellar.

That is way different. Normal families do not live like this. She told them everything. She told them the reality of everything. She told them the truth. But when Joseph came, they would plan to his fantasy. They would pretend like they're a normal family, a perfect family that they don't know.

They don't know that this is strange. They don't know that this is illegal and disgusting and horrendous. They just acted like this is life. So they had their own little double life going on. At one point Joseph goes on vacation with one of his friends Paul and he took videos of him while his entire family is like held underground. So he's got his upstairs family, his downstairs family. That's what everyone calls them. He's got a downstairs family and he goes on vacation with his friend Paul for like a week and a half and he took a bunch of videos and he's laughing

He's shirtless on the beach just giggling. He he ha ha He actually sold all of these videos to the highest bidders because he was like fuck my friend whatever He sold all those videos and in hindsight Why do you mean sold these videos these like home videos like imagine I go on vacation I start vlogging turns out the friend I went on vacation with turned out to be a murder So then I sell the videos. Oh, they're friends was selling the video. Yeah later after the crimes came out because he was like Really fucking odd, too. Yeah, he was really odd. He was like he's dead to me But he just kept saying look at him. He's laughing. He's laughing like what was he thinking?

What was going on in his head? So later they go into this like night market while they're on vacation and The friend Paul is like hey, you should buy a dress for a rosemary or something. I mean they've got everything here You should and they're so cheap just buy her a dress And he's like, nah, I shouldn't need anything and he starts looking around Paul is vlogging a little bit and He vlogs Joseph buying this really red small dress Really small and Paul is linking to himself. That's not gonna fit rosemary

small dress. Really small. And Paul is linking to himself, that's not going to fit Rosemary. This definitely not going to fit Rosemary. And he turns around, Joseph turns around, sees Paul vlogging and is like, put that camera down. Who are you trying to show that to? And he's like, whoa, it's not going to show anyone, why would I show anyone? He's like, delete the footage. He's like, all right, like what's the big deal? And he said, because this dress isn't for Rosemary, it's for my girlfriend. And Paul was like, alright, when you're treating on your wife, that's none of my business. But he didn't delete it. He didn't delete it.

And later he sold it to tabloids. And later we find out that dress was not for his girlfriend, it was for his daughter, that he was holding captive in the cellar. So Alexander, once he's a couple months old, one of the twins, the surviving twin, he is sent upstairs. So this is the third baby now that's going to live in the upstairs life. And people don't really bat an eye. Some people did mention that Alexander has an uncanny

resemblance to Joseph, and Joseph would confidently laugh this big belly laugh and say, you know those fritzel jeans. They're strong saying Elizabeth past it on yeah, and You know rosemary she tried to raise them like her own and she was praised for it by the community This is crazy. This is now you've got what like nine kids the three kids Elizabeth ran away I mean absolutely not she would try to host these parties for them. And another reason why people believe that Rosemary

had no idea is that she would actually have fellow neighbors and fellow parents come into the house. And they said, you would have to have nerves of steel to invite people over when there's a seller right underneath them with an entire family being held captive. Like Rosemary is like this naive. If anything, she's kind of dumb. That's how people describe her.

Like, she seems really not a lot's going through that head. So maybe that's her excuse. I don't really know. So the press even started talking about it. The local press, they said, this is the third baby. And they all talked about her in a very negative way. And it was almost like a teaching moment. Warning parents, don't let your kids join cults

because they're just going to drop off babies on your doorstep. Like please, child services, they believe this cult story. warning parents, don't let your kids join colts because they're just gonna drop off babies on your doorstep. Like, please. Child services, they believe this cold story. They just thought it was insane. You know, all the neighbors believed it. They just thought how bad of a mom can you be to just keep abandoning your kids. They felt bad for Joseph and Rosemary. They already have seven children.

Now they have more. In fact, people were so impressed because Elizabeth's three kids. So we've got Lisa Monica and Alexander. They were doing really well. They were adapting to life well. They did well in school. They were all top musical instruments.

So it seemed like even though they knew that their mom abandoned them, they were living okay with their grandparents. Alexander was Joseph's favorite child for a while upstairs, right? And eventually he started liking Rosemary more. He started liking grandma more than Grandpa, and Joseph got so pissed that he wanted another son. So Elizabeth gets pregnant again. And finally, in 2002 she has her last baby, and it was Felix, her youngest son, and he would be spending the next six years in the cellar, too. Around this time, around 2007, 2008,

Joseph starts planning an insane dream of his. He wants to merge the two families together. He wants to act like Elizabeth finally got away from the cult. She's bringing up her three kids, Kirsten, Stefan, and Felix. And they're just going to live in the space that tenants were living right above them.

So he's actually kind of want to bring Elizabeth back into the real world. It's insane. Now, nobody would know that Joseph is, well, in his eyes, her husband, plus the father of her children because, you know, technically they are all family, so nobody would think it's strange that he's the grandpa. So of course, he's going to love those kids like their his own. Why wouldn't he? He's the grandpa. When in

reality he's the father and the grandpa and the rapist and the fucking devil. Now the real reason that he wanted to merge the families is because he was eventually gonna be outnumbered. At this point, Kirsten's 14, Stefan's 12, there's gonna be a day where there's three adults maybe even four versus just him. So it's better to just kind of merge them and do it in a way that seems seamless. There was nothing in his brain for some reason that ever thought, that ever thought that any of the kids or that even Elizabeth herself would call the cops once they got up there. He just thought he had them wrapped around their fingers so well

that they just like truly loved him or something. I don't know. I don't know what his thought process was. So he starts buying up property because he says if I'm going to support this family upstairs, you know, they're gonna need to buy clothes because right now they were wearing rags. They were not, he was not spending any money on them. Most of the food that he was getting was really cheap, canned, or sometimes free.

Most of their gifts that he gave them were free. Like he just wasn't spending any money on them because people wouldn't look at them. They're in a cellar. So he needs money. So he buys up a bunch of property. He was loaned 3.5 million euros from a bank to buy more property.

And everyone, his plan was everyone's gonna have a job. Elizabeth is gonna be my secret wife and my secretary. Kiersten, she's gonna be my maid and my chef. She's gonna cook. Stefan, he's got this engineering talent. He's 12, he's really good at making little toys. So we're going to make him remodel some of these buildings where he's going to remodel them with me. Felix, who's young. He's only like a couple years old.

He's impressionable because he's so young. So I'm going to mold him to be the same as me. An amazing man, Joseph. And he's going to be the heir to my empire. What the fork is wrong with this dude? And this spectacular reunion was gonna happen near the Christmas of 2008. They were gonna show up on the doorstep, ready for the holidays. Hey mom, hey siblings, it's been a while,

24 years at the cult, but I'm back now. Here are my kids. So he's telling her this plan right now? Yeah, and she's like, you're fucking bonkers. She's not really even thinking anything is gonna happen. She's like, this is just him talking some nonsense. But then in March of 2008, towards April, Kirsten gets sick. So now we're caught up to speed. She gets admitted into the hospital. The doctors want to talk to them. So Kirsten got really sick. And the dad is like, I have to bring her up this time.

Yeah, because, you know, she's old. Or is he doing that because he also planning to merge the family? So it's a little bit of both. Oh, okay. It was a lot of persuading on Elizabeth's part. She was like, this is the time, what a perfect time.

You know, my kid goes to the hospital. I show up being like, oh, where's my kid? You know, that was original, original plan. That she's just gonna show up. Yeah, the original plan, not at the hospital, but it was gonna be like Christmas time. They were just gonna show up at the door, not police attention, no doctors attention.

No one was gonna be sick with the original plan. So nobody forced him to bring this child up. But Elizabeth doesn't think it's just about merging the families. She thinks it's because she, Joseph, sees every person as someone who can do something for him. Yeah. And he wanted to keep Kirsten alive because he kept her alive for 19 years. And he wanted his return on investment.

He wanted to merge into the real world and for her to be his never saying no chef slash maid. So she thinks it's really disgusting and selfish and I believe it. So the doctors, the police now get involved and when Elizabeth gets questioned by the police, they start finally taking a deeper look. Because like I said, you know, she finally confesses like I've been held captive and she talked for like hour straight just about everything. And once they start taking a deeper look, they realize, okay, that's a little weird. So first of all, the letters that were sent from Elizabeth saying that she's in a cold don't look for me.

There were no undertones of religion in them. There was like no, like soon the UFOs are going to come, don't worry guys, we're all safe. Area 51 love Elizabeth, like none of that was happening in the letters. Usually when cold members send letters, there's so much, you know, talking about an apocalypse, talking about their religious views. They can't stop, like they have to tell you about it. There was none of that.

All of it was also post marked from like five miles away, like really close by. Areas where Joseph had business in actually, like property and so what's happening? Second of all, Colts love children. They love having this army. If anything, they take away your children in a cult to raise it as the Colts child, like a little factory. So this doesn't make sense either. And after Elizabeth tells them everything,

Joseph Fritzel was arrested. And the officer who arrested him was the one that also helped him with some of the reports of Elizabeth being missing and said, I cannot believe it's you. And he said, yeah, well, I feel sorry for my family, but it can't be undone. It was just like matter of fact, Joseph was like, yeah, okay, sorry about it, but it can't be undone. And he denies being a monster. He said he was upset at the press coverage of how he could have done this to his family because he didn't kill them. He tried to raise the kids.

He also stated, I'm not a man that would molest my children. What? What? So he tells his version of events to the police. And it goes like this, it's freaking insane, okay? So just get ready, this is the part that your gut's gonna be just twisting in a bunch.

He tells them that he wanted to protect his daughter from people with questionable morals. You know, ever since Elizabeth had entered puberty, she's just been disobeying all of these rules and just really, really doing bad stuff, doing drugs. And it was all her fault. I'm just trying to be a good father. I had to trap her so that she wouldn't ruin her life

with drugs. Now, I never, the abuse before she was being held captive, she said that I raped her. No, no, no, no. Here's what happened. There's a man named Uncle Franz. They could not, the police could not confirm that this man never existed.

OK, we don't know who he is. We don't know if this is a nickname. Is this a family friend? They don't know. No one knows who this man is. Well, when Elizabeth was nine years old, Uncle Franz, this imaginary character was really interested in Elizabeth,

and they went on vacation and in secret away from Joseph Fritz, the loving father, Uncle Franz raped Elizabeth, and convinced her not to tell anyone. But that messed up Elizabeth so much in the head that from that point on, she would just have sex with anyone. Like, I would have builders at the house, you know, helping me work on some of the construction and she's 13 and she would just have non-stop sex with them she was

uncontrollable. Anyone who came near Elizabeth you know she just wanted to have sex with them. That's what he's... getting so mad. And he's like wait Elizabeth said I raped her. No she must be confused with uncle friends or she's making it up. Maybe she's confused me with one of her other sexual adventures. It's a total mystery to me why she's telling you that I threatened her life in order to rape her. No, that didn't happen. And also, I kept her in the cellar because she's doing drugs and I'm trying to keep her away from doing drugs. It wasn't until four or five months that she was in the cellar that I was trying to comfort her because I'm saying listen Elizabeth,

me being a good dad, I'm doing this for you, I'm doing this so that you can get it together and once you come out of the seller you'll never do drugs again, right? Right? And she was crying, she's unhappy, she's pale, and I'm comforting her and I realized for the first time that my daughter was a desirable woman. That's his quote. She didn't fight against it, she never said that she didn't want it. If she said no, I would have accepted it. There was no violence. There was no force. There was no threats. I treated her tenderly. So why did you keep her in there for so long? Like, that's one thing. What the fork is 24 years? Okay, like that doesn't make any sense. And he says, well, in my daughter, I found the ideal partner.

I desired her and she just like couldn't escape, you know? I had given her life and I think that she's my possession. So pretty much, she's literally saying that I gave her life and I can take it away. Because I gave birth to her, he didn't even give birth that fucker. Because I'm her dad, I can do whatever I want. A person all to myself, that's do whatever I want a person all to myself That's what he said a person all to myself I have always wanted someone there for me with whom I can exchange

Intimacies a person who wouldn't be influenced by other people What was important for me was that Elizabeth was at my disposal for all of my needs all of the time I mean for conversations as much as sexual contact He claimed that the relationship was mutual. He said that things started improving because Elizabeth convinced him to have children, and he became, and I quote, open to the idea of having children with Elizabeth. Because Elizabeth, he said, he said, Elizabeth hated using contents because it made her feel less than, it made her feel worthless. He said,

you think people buy these stories? Yes, and he told the press, I'm not the monster. The media depicts me as when I was in the bunker. I bought flowers for my daughter and books and toys for my children. I watched adventure videos with them while Elizabeth was cooking our favorite dish. We all sat around the table and ate together. The minute that he said that to the press, the next day, the newspapers were saying, is he making insanity plea? Because it was like this, I mean, he's,

this fucker's insane. Like, if he, is he trying to be more insane because this is absolutely insane. He also stated the press. Is there photos of the bunker? Yeah, I'll put it in my source notes. It's really bad. Kirsten would not be alive today if it wasn't for me. I made sure she got to the hospital. I could have killed them all and nothing

would have ever been known about it. No one would have ever found out. But I saved Kirsten's life. That's what Joseph said. Well, Joseph said. So the whole question is, where does Rosemary stand in this? There was a whole debate about Rosemary because I mean is she really that naive? How does she not know? Did she really not look for her kid? Like her kid went missing for 24 years and shows up with babies? And she's like, yeah, I'll just raise these babies. That doesn't make any sense.

So there has always been a huge debate about it. The police have only informally questioned her once. They never said that she had anything to do with it. There was no DNA found inside the seller that belonged to anyone other than the underground family. I'm not even ashamed. Okay, I'm 24. Wait, am I 24? 25. No, I'm 25 and I still have acne. Yes, I said it. I have adult acne. And the only thing that I found that really works for me is prescription acne treatment, okay? But it's hard to get. I mean you have to jump through so many hoops. You have to take time off

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visit for $15 off. And we thank apostrophe for sponsoring the podcast. So the police raid the seller and immediately once they get into the seller, they all looked at each other and they said, um, we should take three hours shifts. The smell. They said, once you step in, it's a smell that they can't even describe. It's, I mean, the way that they describe it almost makes it sound like it's like worse than a corpse for some reason, because you know how every cop is like, oh, they immediately knew the smell. They only smell of the human corpse. You can eat no other smell. But they said it was so bad. They found sex toys, porn videos, handcuffs, whips.

The saddest thing they said was the photo album. There was a photo album that was gifted to Elizabeth and in the front of the album were pictures of the family upstairs. They were all living normal lives. They were wearing clothes. They all looked bright and vibrant and I'm not saying that none of them didn't have emotional physical or verbal abuse from the parents but they were still living a life. And then near the back, they had taken family photos of the underground family, and all of their faces were bone white, and their expressions were just unreadable. And it was almost like right on top of each other. There were these two families living

completely different lives, side by side for 24 years, two different worlds, and the only connection between them was Joseph. They also find 10 tablets of a date rape drug, a typewritten story called the St. Bernard, which is the story of a young between a whore and a slave. It was like a BDSM questionnaire. There was two photos of an unknown girl sitting naked in a bathtub. There were five pictures of women naked on a beach. There was a diary of a young woman, a tenant, where he had entered her apartment without her knowing. Toker diary, photocopy it, returned it, and she never knew.

I don't know why you did that. He just leaves these things downstairs. Yeah. This is like his little hideout spot. His little hideout spot. They also searched the rest of the house, and inside the house, they found that 10 page letter from one of the brothers that was two Elizabeth,

which, finally in 2008, she read, and she was like, I never got that letter. Yeah, I never knew it happened. So the press is freaking out. And they'll only freak out more once it's released that Joseph had a prior abuse. He had the 1967, he confessed to raping the 24 year old nurse while holding her at knife point,

only served 12 months for that. And people were upset that 10 years after your rape convention, why does it leave your record? So a bunch of people started, you know, activists got together and they were like, we need to get rid of this law. Like it needs to stay on your record forever because once a woman is raped, that's forever. Why does your criminal record get expunged after 10 years? That's freaking gnarly. The police in CPS got a ton of backlash because CPS went to the home 21 times. 21 times. How did you not know anything was going on? I mean, that doesn't

make any sense, does it? Also, the letters, like that's any anyone with a brain that watched one episode of Criminal Minds would have been like, that doesn't sound like a cult letter. What made it even worse is that this happened exactly two years after Natasha Campush had been rescued. So Natasha Campoosh, we talked about her on our YouTube channel. She was locked away in an underground bunker for eight years and escaped in 2006 by a mother for her named Wolfgang and she escaped and that was in 2006. She escaped and now 2008 you're saying another girl, another an entire family. So they're like, is something wrong with CPS is something wrong with the government is something wrong with the police like this was a Moral panic of like wait a minute Austria. I thought we are relatively safe place. We're not like America

What's going on here? So Kirsten wakes up from the hospital. She had life-saving operations and finally she awoke and for the first time ever out of her coma She saw daylight for the first time ever out of her coma she saw daylight for the first time and the police told her you're going to be okay we have your family the doctors told her it's going to be okay your mom's okay you're going to be reunited and her first word her first words back where hello new life and she smiled at the doctors. Wow Elizabeth and all of the kids, well, all of Elizabeth's kids.

So the three kids that were living upstairs and the three kids downstairs, they were all reunited with Rosemary and Elizabeth's mom at a psychiatric hospital to recover from all of this as a family. They had dedicated entire unit. I think they had 14 doctors who were working on rehabilitating everyone. Now the children who lived in captivity, they were released into a world that they had no idea. They had never experienced it not even for one day. So you're you're saying there's gonna be a lot of issues. The first car right they ever had, the

police they had to they had to drive so slow because every bit of light the kids would kind of freak out because they had never seen a street light. They had never seen a headlight of a car. They had never seen a store, let alone a store light. And you know, they had always been in this dim darkness and their eyes were hurting and everything was kind of like freaking them out. Imagine the panic.

One of them pointed at the moon, the young one Felix, he pointed at the moon and said, is that where God lives? And so once they get admitted, their main serious issues that they were facing were light and open spaces. They were so sensitive to light, and all of them would panic in big rooms, open spaces.

It's just something like your human psychology does to you. Even Elizabeth, who had seen open spaces, who had been in open fields prior to her captivity. Wow. Stefan, the older brother, who was 17 when he was rescued, he, um, because of the low ceilings, he was always stooping. He had trouble walking straight. He had trouble walking in general, because of the way that he was walking in the cellars with the low ceilings. Kirsten, she had a lot of trauma, like a lot of psychological trauma.

She had torn out her hair and clumps while she was under there. So as she got older, the more she found out about what was going on, I'm sure that was weighing heavy on Kirsten too, because she's 19 when they found her. Any dimming of the lights, any closing of doors,

the door sound was really scary for them, because he went through eight doors. Oh my god. And every time they heard the doors they knew he's coming and they hated him. So it would send them into anxiety panics, just panic attacks. And they were having really difficulty. I mean, there were two sets of problems. So the upstairs children, Lisa Monica and Alexander, Joseph had lied to them about their mom abandoning them. Now they find out that they have siblings and they were imprisoned in a cellar. They were living on top

of their siblings. They have survivor's guilt. They have anger and resentment. Like, what? I don't even know this woman. Who is this? This is my mom and she has been held prisoner. Like, I don't know what to do. The downstairs children, they had deprivation of normal development, lack of fresh air, lack of daylight abuse from Joseph, witnessing Joseph abuse their mother. I mean, all the children also had genetic issues

from being born by infest. So there was just a lot. The team of 14 doctors, they were overwhelmed. This is a huge task. It was considered unprecedented in medical history. I think a lot of people were also fascinated with the fact that it's so sick and twisted how human minds work. And I think a lot of psychologists,

they weren't thinking of it in the twisted way, but a lot of press, they were intrigued. Because you know, when you think about it, if there were no morals, if there were no ethics, what kind of experiment would you do if you were a mad scientist? And sometimes you think about it, if there were no morals, if there were no ethics, what kind of experiment would you do if you were a mad scientist? And sometimes you think about, what if I held someone in isolation and then another kid and raised them differently? There's always like these weird experiments with twins, one of them grows up in this situation,

another one grows up in there, and then you see where they end up. So there was this sick fascination with the press to be like, let's compare the upstairs children with the downstairs children. Like what happened? Psychology experiment. Let's compare the upstairs children with the downstairs children like what happens psychology experiment So while they're being held in the psychiatric hospital hundreds of reporters were outside trying to get their pictures They called them in the press incest family Cellar children and the first picture of them

Would be worth around a million dollars. That was the bid like the news Yeah, news network wants a photo. They want a photo around a million dollars. That was the bid. Like the news? Yeah. News network wants a photo. They want a photo. People were flying in from all across the world. Sending journalists. One tabloid from the UK, they sent like 12 people. They were like, one of you forkers get a picture. They had to get police and private security detail at the hospital at all times. Photographers would go under disguise. One of them tried to disguise as a police officer. picture. They had to get police and private security detail at the hospital at all times.

Photographers would go under disguise. One of them tried to disguise as a police officer, another one as a maintenance man. One of them tried to dig a hole into the hospital and camouflage himself with dirt and was found by a police dog. What in the world? One of them tried to pay a patient who was in the mental institution for attempted suicide, to smuggle in a camera, take pictures, and deliver the camera in the pictures to a quote-unquote visitor who would be a reporter. But that was caught.

He did take pictures of the family, I believe, but they caught him before it went out, and they destroyed them. So the press started making up their own shit. I mean, they're just dying. They want to know about these quote-unquote seller children. And so they started running these headlines, incest children speaking their own animal tongue, mixture of growling and kooing. They don't know how to speak in a language. They got their own language. Sometimes the children will just crawl on all floors. One of them walks like a monkey.

What? The children have no idea what the real world is. They were in a fantasy world for the last 24 years with wonderful stories of princesses and princes. They think they live in Disney World. So they're like running these crazy headlines. Meanwhile, Joseph and his attorney are some doing doing some bullshit too. He's being held in prison. And Joseph's lawyer tries to tell the press

and excuse Joseph's behavior by saying that, well, it's because of the country's Nazi past. Like, you grew up in this war time with the Nazis. That influenced him. And so suddenly, the new press headlines where Hitler made me do it. So then the lawyer ruins it even more. He's like, no, no, no, that's not what I said.

What I said was that this is misunderstood love. There's this movie called Misery. It's about a woman who smashes her lover's feet so that he can't literally run away. It's just that if someone is in love, there's always the danger to be disappointed. So Joseph thinks that without power, he can't keep anyone around. It actually shows his inner powerlessness. I've never seen my fiance so frustrated. It's like this story, there's not even a second of me thinking thinking okay, I think I get it. Yeah, it just keep going Yeah, even after like he got arrested. I don't I don't know why my brain was like all right

He's just gonna resign like he's gonna hang his head. You're done. You're done, dude Shut up, but it's like nope not gonna be done now rosemary and Elizabeth They have their own saga the price ran it saying saying that Elizabeth threw Rosemary out of the hospital because one of the kids was calling Rosemary mom instead of Elizabeth, but that's not true. They were having fights because I mean, wouldn't you be mad at your mom? Like your mom's supposed to protect you? Your mom barely looks for you. Like I would have resentment.

I mean, I'm just think, like I don't think they can have regular conversation. It's not effective. Let's talk it out. Let's solve the issue. This is like I can't imagine. Like yeah. So Rosemary, she moved into like a little apartment.

She was penniless. Her reputation is gone. I mean, she was an arrested. She was never listed as suspect, but the public really did not like her. They were just like, there's no way you don't know anything. And even if you don't know anything, you should have done more. You should have looked for your kid more.

If I were you and my kid goes missing and says they ran away in a cold, I would track down that postage stamp. I would look for her, I would do everything. Now Rosemary was offered over a million dollars to do a tell-all and she never once did it. And Elizabeth on the other hand she received, well immediately from the state so I don't know I'm sure I really hope she's doing well now. But Elizabeth she received 60,000 euros from the state. She also received a 25,000 Euro donation from Natashi Campos.

Like I said, had just escaped her 8-year-long captivity 2 years prior. And so she donated 25,000 Euros to Elizabeth and her children. And Elizabeth, I mean, this is how good of a person she was. She never refused to let her kids see Rosemary. And these days in 2021 she's getting closer with her mom after everything. So Elizabeth and the children, they were giving new identities, but tabloids and newspapers are constantly trying to uncover it, especially now with the new movie that came out girl in the basement. A lot of tabloids are trying to get a picture of her. I believe one of the I think it was like the daily mail got the first picture of her

With her daughter like years later, and it's just so nasty You would think that this is a slam dunk trial. I mean Joseph confessed to it You got the seller the police went into the seller. I mean come on the seller exists the children exist the DNA matches that Joseph is the biological father like come on Children exist, the DNA matches that Joseph is the biological father like, come on. Well, there was struggles because in Austria, incest is only punishable by one year sentence. That's it. You can't give more than one year. Rape, you can only serve maximum of 15 year sentence, but you also can't have a cumulative sentence. So if you rape someone three times, nope, you only get to serve one of those rape

sentences. They don't stack up on each other. Slavery, So they charged him with slavery. You get a maximum sentence of 20 years. So if you total it all up, that's like 36 years in prison. And he being the absolute douche-watt that he is, the authorities were like, yeah, he's definitely gonna outlive that and then he's gonna be a free man. And it's gonna be like what the fork, right? And Austria and the whole world is looking at us like you better put this motherfucker in jail for the rest of his life. So they start looking for some loopholes and they finally settle on the murder of baby Michael. They believe that if he had taken Michael to the hospital, he would be alive. So this does not constitute as like, you know, an accidental death. This is straight up murder. So he was charged with rape, incest, false imprisonment, slavery, coercion,

deprivation of liberty, and the murder of baby Michael. And Joseph had the audacity to partially accept the rape charges, because eventually Elizabeth went along with it for her own self-preservation. So technically, it wasn't rape. He said, because she did it to stay alive and to keep her children alive. So she didn't say no, technically, and he denied the murder charges. I mean, the community went into full on insanity when the trial was happening. I mean, they did some really out of pocket stuff. Like the local bakery started selling um, fritzel snitches, fritzel schnitzels, like a schnitzel, but named after fritzel. They also doing the trial sold on what they called prison bar cakes near the courthouse.

So there was just a lot. There was like plays about people being trapped in the cellar like live action plays. It was just, they did a lot of out of pocket stuff. Now the most dramatic moment in the courthouse started when the prosecutors brought in a box and they told the jury, smell those 24 years. And one by one each juror took the box and they looked inside, they smelled it. And we don't know the smell, but by looking at the jurors,

I mean they were wrecked. Like they were emotionally wrecked because that is 24 years. And that's just the smell. That's like the last thing you care about when these things are happening to you And so the jury declared him guilty on all counts March 2009 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 15 years What now nobody thinks he's gonna get out on parole But also we had the guy from Austria Jack, and Tevega Like made a killing after and then became a serial killer. So I don't really know how Austria works.

I hope he doesn't get out. I do know it's a beautiful country. Sorry, I only talked about two crimes from there. In prison, Joseph is a remarkably upbeat man is what everyone says. He's writing his memoirs right now. He calls his children non-stop and the police are trying to make him stop, but he won't stop. Yeah, he calls all of his kids still from prison and they're like no for you

We hate you in 2017 He changed his name because he got into a prison fight and several of his teeth were knocked out He has no remorse So when the police came to check up on him later after the prison fight He joked around and said hey, have you licked into the sellers of other people? You might fight some other families and girls down there. He just jokes about it. Discussing.

And now Liz Weth is trying to live her life with her kids after spending 8,516 days in captivity. She was officially released when she was 42 years old. Now she's in her 50s. I don't even know what to say. That was insane. My drawer is just on the floor the whole time. Yeah.

Even after like this two hours, I feel so defeated. And the fact that she stayed through all of that to keep her children alive. Holy cow. Let me know. What are your thoughts on this case? I know that we did like a full on deep dive. what are your thoughts on this case? I know that we did like a full on deep dive. What are your thoughts on these?

Do you like deep dives? Or do you like simple summaries? More. I kind of want to know. And I hope you guys enjoyed this week's podcast, and I'll see you guys this weekend for the mini-sode. Bye.