Father Threatened To Gas Captive Austrian Family
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AMSTETTEN, Austria — The Austrian man who kept a secret family captive in his cellar for two decades, threatened to gas them to death if they tried to overpower him and escape.
Josef Fritzl, 73, an electrical engineer, told them he had installed a device that could pump poisonous gas into their windowless dungeon.
Mr. Fritzl locked up his daughter Elisabeth, 42, in the cellar under his home in Amstetten for 24 years. Three children he fathered by her — Kirsten, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five — lived their whole lives underground until they were released earlier this week.
A spokesman for Austrian police, Helmut Greiner, said, “We are trying to ascertain whether there really was a mechanism that would allow the gas to be pumped in or whether it was to intimidate them.”
Mr. Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, 68, lived in the house above the cellar with three other children he fathered with Elisabeth — Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alex, 12.
