AUSTRIA: Austrian police are preparing to launch a hunt for an accomplice to the kidnapping of schoolgirl Natascha Kampush, who escaped eight years of imprisonment on Wednesday.
They are reinterviewing a 20- year-old woman who, as a schoolgirl, reported seeing a man drag the 10-year-old Natascha into a white van on March 2nd, 1998, at about 7.15am, while another at the steering wheel drove away.
One of the men was Wolfgang Priklopil (44), the telecoms engineer who threw himself in front of an express train on Wednesday night just hours after Natascha fled the windowless, soundproofed cell under his garage where she had been held captive for 8½ years.
"The question of an accomplice is part of our investigation," said Gerhard Lang, an investigator with Austria's federal crime office (BK).
Questioning of the 18-year-old proceeded slowly yesterday. DNA tests proved conclusively the girl's identity while her relatives, as well a police officer, said she had admitted being sexually and physically abused.
"She told me everything immediately. It is clear she was [ abused] but it isn't clear to her," said Sabine Freudenberger, the first police officer to speak to the young woman. "She said she always did everything of her own free will."
Psychologists have said Natascha is suffering from an extreme case of Stockholm syndrome, where long-term captives develop a strong emotional attachment to their captors.
Natascha said she did not know the name of her captor for the first year and was forced to call him "master". During questioning, however, investigators said Natascha referred to Priklopil only as "criminal" and veered between attacking him and defending him.
According to the Kurier newspaper, Natascha spotted her chance to flee while vacuuming Priklopil's car. He was talking on his mobile phone and when he moved a few steps away from the noise of the vacuum cleaner she dashed out of the garage.
The pale young woman hammered desperately on the window of a 71-year-old neighbour, identified only as Inge T.
"She was very skimpily dressed and told me to go back into the house immediately because she was worried that the man would kill me if he saw me," said the neighbour yesterday to the Kronenzeitung newspaper. "It is unforgivable what he did to her."
The neighbour called the police and a patrol soon arrived, including Ms Freudenberger. Natascha told her she left her family home for school on the morning of March 2nd, 1998, in a bad mood after fighting with her mother. She noticed a man in a white van at the side of the street and considered briefly crossing to the other side, but was preoccupied with the row.
"She said she thought to herself 'nothing will happen'," said Ms Freudenberger. Seconds later, she was swept off the street and into eight years of captivity.
Natascha said she begged repeatedly for Priklopil to let her go, but he retorted that "something bad" would happen to her and her family if she fled.
Soon after taking her captive, he began to give her schoolbooks and lessons.
"The woman is educated, she is highly intelligent and has an amazing vocabulary," said Ms Freudenberger. Natascha was extremely pale and weighed just 42kg, she said, less than she did at the time of her kidnap although she has grown at least 15 cm since.
Austrian police in charge of the 1998 investigation face serious questions about how no one found the steel door in his garage that lead to Natasha's cell when they questioned Priklopil a week after Natascha's disappearance.
He was one of 1,000 men questioned because he was registered as owning the same model of white van used in the kidnapping.
"We can assume that in this case everything was planned - except the exact victim," said criminal psychologist Thomas Müller on Austrian television yesterday.
Police expressed regret that Priklopil had killed himself and could not help to solve the mystery, a view not shared by Natascha's father, Ludwig Koch. He said: "Perhaps it's best that he's dead."