WHAT HAS been dubbed Austria’s “trial of the century” gets under way this morning when retired engineer Josef Fritzl goes on trial charged with “enslaving” his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years in a windowless cellar.
Fritzl (74) has confessed to locking up Elisabeth as an 18-year- old in 1984 and fathering her seven children in a hidden dungeon under his house in the Austrian town of Amstetten, between Vienna and Linz.
He is expected to plead guilty today to charges of rape, incest, coercion and false imprisonment in a courtroom in the regional capital, St Pölten.
The trial will break new legal ground, with Austrian jurors deliberating for the first time on the charge of “enslavement”.
State prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser will present to an eight-member jury her 95-page indictment, as well as, in camera, hours of prerecorded video testimony from the Elisabeth Fritzl, now 43.
DNA tests have proved she and her father are the parents of the children, three of whom lived with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in the apartment above the cellar.
Fritzl told his wife and police that Elisabeth had joined a cult, only to return in the night on three occasions to deposit babies on their doorstep.
It was the illness and emergency hospitalisation of the eldest “cellar child”, Kerstin (19), that brought the case to light last April.
Defence lawyer Rudolf Mayer will contest the charge of murder of one of two twin boys born in 1992.
Prosecutors say that, through his neglect, Fritzl allowed the baby to develop breathing problems after birth and die.
After the baby’s death, Elisabeth Fritzl reportedly told prosecutors that her father remarked, “what happens, happens”.
Mr Mayer says his client did not witness the birth, only disposing of the body later in the cellar furnace.
Considering the passage of time and lack of forensic evidence, some Austrian legal experts are doubtful that a murder charge can be reached.
Nevertheless, facing a series of charges carrying maximum sentences of up to 20 years, Fritzl is likely to die behind bars.
After a failed insanity plea, the defence will portray Fritzl as an “unstable narcissist” who was “born under a bad sign”. A defence psychologist describes him in a report as the victim of a dominant mother who “treated him as a calamity, at best a burden, not someone who experienced love or closeness”.
Fritzl says he imprisoned his daughter to save her from herself.
Defence psychologists will argue he underwent a role reversal as an adult, from the victim of a woman to someone who seized full control over a woman.
After spending the first four years alone in the cellar and begging her father for company, Elisabeth was forced into a sexual relationship with her father.
The first child arrived in 1988, with six more to follow, and “strengthened our marriage-like relationship”, Fritzl told police.
He extended the sound-proofed cellar to 60sq m (645sq ft), sealing it with heavy doors and electronic locks.
No Fritzl family members will attend the trial. The defendant’s wife Rosemarie and her six other children are not suspected of involvement.
Elisabeth Fritzl and her six children, living in Austria under new identities, have returned for the duration of the trial to the clinic in Amstetten where they lived last year.
The case has attracted huge media interest, with only a third of the journalists in town allowed into the courtroom.
After the charges are presented, Judge Andrea Humer will close the court to the public until the verdict, expected on Friday.