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This episode is brought to you by. Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year. After the love hypothesis, Sterling point and more slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Guys. You know when you're up late at night, you're on your phone, you're scrolling on TikTok, and the most random video comes up on your for you page of like, I don't know, a random person eating 17 pounds of watermelons or doing a science experiment in their bathtub or putting on a hundred layers of clothing just to see how many layers they can put on before they have to stop. Just the most random acts of free will. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? I'm sure you guys have seen it. And then you open up the comment section and there are thousands of comments of people saying something along the lines of, wow, you never really know what someone is doing inside of their own home. You know what I'm talking about, right? I've seen so many comment sections like that. Well, that thought crosses my mind often. The fact that you don't really know what people are doing inside of their own homes, what anyone is up to inside the walls of their own home. But the dark side of that thought is that sometimes horrific acts of evil are happening inside of a house. Maybe close to you, maybe not. And you, a random normal human being, could never really imagine the things that someone else is being put through at the same time that you're just going on about your day. And this is what I imagine that Joseph Fritzl's neighbor must have felt like, because no neighbor would have ever thought, would have ever imagined that inside of his own house he was keeping his daughter captive and hidden away in a basement for over two decades. The Joseph Fritzel case emerged in April of 2008 as one of the most shocking and disturbing criminal cases in modern European history. Joseph, an Austrian electrical engineer, held his daughter Elizabeth captive for 24 years inside of a concealed room that he designed in his basement beneath a family home. During this imprisonment, he subjected her to constant and repeated sa, resulting in the birth of seven children. The case captured international attention not only because of the duration and severity of the crimes, but also because of the elaborate deception that Joseph was able to maintain to conceal his actions and his behavior from family, friends, neighbors, making him so incredibly unsuspecting. This case, you guys. I'm sure you guys know about it because it's a pretty well known case, but it will send shivers down your spine and rightfully so. So with all that being said, welcome to this episode of I wish you were here. I'm your host, Michelle Cuervo. Joseph Fritzel was born to Joseph Fritzel Senior and Maria Fritzel in 1935. According to psychiatric testimony presented later on during his trial, Joseph grew up as an only child raised solely by his working mother. And we're starting off on a bad note because Joseph's mother sucked. She was awful. Joseph remembers his mother being extremely neglectful, but not only that, he alleged that she regularly subjected him to physical and emotional abuse throughout the entirety of his childhood. His father, Joseph Sr. Wasn't any better. He was a severe alcoholic who pretty much walked out on the family when Joseph was only around 4 years old. And after that, his father never maintained contact. And although information regarding his upbringing comes from Joseph himself, who you will very quickly realize that he isn't a guy that should be trusted. I do think that what is said, what he has said in regards to the way that he grew up is real, given that he grew up to be what I would describe as a monster in disguise. And actually, since we're on that topic, not to get too sidetracked, but I know that people believe that some perpetrators and some criminals are just born evil. I've heard people say that. In my own personal belief, I don't agree with that. I don't think that someone can be born being bad. I think that the circumstances that they grow up in, the people that they are surrounded by, by, and the things that they're subjected to as a child ultimately ends up being what shapes them to grow up to be the person they grow up to be. That said, though, I know a lot of people who have had terrible childhoods and have grown up to be the kindness people, nice people, full of love, full of life. So being born into circumstances that are hard, being born into a difficult environment is not to say at all that you are going to grow up and be a bad person. I just think that it makes sense. It does make sense when someone's childhood is difficult, that they grow up to be horrible people. I just think the difference between the two is what you ultimately choose to do with the cards that you were dealt. If someone wants to be a good person, they're going to be a good person and vice versa. Does that make any sense? Anyway, in 1956, at the age of 21 years old. Joseph Fritzel married 17 year old Rosemary Rosemarie was born September 23rd of 1939. And together the couple had seven children I believe three boys and four girls. Elizabeth Fritzel, born April 6th of 1966 was the fourth out of those seven. And the dynamic of the family, it was very much Joseph made the rules and you better follow them or else versus Rosemary. She was the more laid back and actually loving and caring parent towards her children. It doesn't sound like Joseph was a very nice guy, a nice dad or person overall to grow up with. He was strict, he punished his children and he loved being the one and only person in control in every single situation. He was the type of guy that people knew to walk on eggshells around is how I would describe it. Like even at family gatherings, extended family members knew not to do anything that would make him ang because he was just so scary and he gave off that vibe to people that he didn't even live with. So you can imagine what it must have felt like to grow up in a house with him, let alone have him as your father. But for the people who didn't know him, so neighbors, maybe co workers, just strangers that met him once or twice, he seemed like a normal guy, normal dad, whatever. There was nothing about him that stood out. He was just a strict father. But behind the scenes it feels like there was always some sort of evil within him. In 1967, when Joseph was 32 years old, something happened that would affect the family to its core because Joseph Fritzel was convicted of sa. According to court records, he broke into the apartment of a 24 year old nurse and he s ate her at knifepoint. He was sentenced to approximately 18 months in prison for this crime. And it was absolutely horrible for the family as you can imagine. But as a mother to seven children, as a wife scared of her husband, when he was released, all Rosemary wanted to do was keep her family together and love her kids and care for her kids to the best of her ability. Putting aside the mess that Joseph Fritzel had created for the family and putting aside her rocky marriage to him, she tried her best to put her kids first and focus on them and loving them and raising them despite Joseph's conviction. And that wasn't the only neon red flag when it comes to Joseph's behavior because there were also reports that before imprisoning his own daughter, he had kept his mother locked in an attic room with bricked up windows. And I think it's safe to say that he did have a Lot of anger and resentment towards her. And everything that he did, he did out of hatred. And throughout that time, when people noticed that they hadn't seen his mother in a while, they would ask about her, and Joseph would just falsely claim that she had died until she eventually did. He later claimed that he did that as revenge for the abuse that she had inflicted upon him throughout his childhood. So in the late 1970s, around the time that Joseph began building his underground dungeon, the world was absolutely consumed by enormous, sweeping events. It felt like there was something big and terrible in the news every single day. And there was a lot of fear in people, of the public in relation to the Cold War, A lot of fear, a lot of talk about nuclear events. So people building dungeons or safe rooms inside of their houses, inside of their basements, and it was not an uncommon thing at that time. So in Austria, when a man named Joseph Fritzel walked in to submit paperwork to his local council for a request to expand the basement of his house, nobody looked twice. And nobody had reason to question his intentions behind large construction projects that he had started to plan out. It was that year, 1978, when he applied for permits to expand specifically the basement of his house. And, yeah, I guess on paper, it would look like plans for a standard renovation, creating either, I don't know, a storage space or a work area. But in reality, Joseph Fritzel was laying down the groundwork for the terrifying cellar where he would later imprison his daughter and the seven children that he would have with her. The renovation projects, planning the imprisonment, began years in advance. And given that Joseph worked as an electrical engineer and later on in the concrete industry, he was able to use his technical expertise to construct his perfect, elaborate underground prison. The cellar was designed with reinforced concrete walls, multiple locked doors, I believe as many as eight, and soundproofing to ensure complete and total isolation. And getting into the dungeon, to begin with, consisted of its own projects. And because it had a very complex system of rooms accessed through two different entry points. One of those was a hinged door weighting approximately 1,100 pounds. That door eventually became unable to use due to its extreme weight. The primary entrance was a reinforced metal door weighing 660 pounds, measuring just over 3ft high and 2ft wide. This door was located behind a shelf in Joseph's basement workshop. Meant to be hidden, obviously, and not only that, but it was also protected by an electronic numeric code that only he knew. So even if you were to get inside of that door, or, sorry, even if you were able to find that door, you would not be able to go inside unless you were him, because he was the only person in the entire world that knew the code. Which is a terrifying thought, because if something had happened to him, a freak accident or whatever, he passed away. And nobody knew that Elizabeth was in there, she would remain there, right under their family home for forever. Once you got through the door that had a sliding mechanism made of, again, reinforced concrete, and then you entered the actual area in which he was planning on keeping his daughter in, it was a series of small, windowless rooms spanning approximately 600 square feet. There was a 16 foot entrance corridor to, like, a hallway leading into a storage area. Three small open cells, little rooms connected by narrow passageways, all basically just concrete rooms with hardly any ventilation at all, just enough to be able to keep you alive. The ceiling stood just 5ft and 8 inches high, foreseeing anyone of normal height to have to duck down at all times. It was damp, it was dark. There was no natural light of any kind. And that ended up being something that Joseph Fritzo used as a weapon, the darkness itself. Because he would, at times punish Elizabeth by shutting off the lights completely and or refusing to deliver food to her in the dark for days. But before I get too ahead of myself, that just gives you kind of an idea of the terrifying, horrible living conditions that were to come. A concrete, lightless box buried beneath a normal suburban home, all while life went on completely undisturbed, just a few feet above that dungeon. Now, let's talk about Elizabeth, who was entering her teenage years as her father was beginning to build out these projects of his. According to Elizabeth's testimony to police, her father began essaying her when she was only 11 years old. And by all accounts, she was a bright, sensitive girl who was described as shy, but very, very kind, with a good heart and nice to every single person that she met. But as we know, she grew up in a household defined by fear. Her older brother Harold, later testified that he, along with Elizabeth and their siblings, were all physically abused by their father. Throughout their childhood, however, Elizabeth bore a particularly darker burden that set her apart from her siblings entirely. For whatever reason, it felt like Joseph just had it out for her. Like I mentioned before, he essayed her first when she was 11 years old. Max, 12 years old. But that was only, heartbreakingly, the beginning of a pattern that continued for years. And that was also a secret that Elizabeth felt at the time like she had to carry all alone because she was scared of her dad. And she never wanted to make him angry, knowing that if she did, she would then have to pay for it. So the way that she learned how to try and cope was to just stay out of his way and try to avoid him as much as she could. But as you can imagine, that's pretty hard to do when you're living and coexisting underneath the same roof. And things got to a point in which Elizabeth was so miserable, she felt so broken in the life that she was living in. She hated living in fear and constant tension and she couldn't handle it anymore. It was tearing her apart. So In January of 1983, when she was just 17 years old, Elizabeth ran away from home. She ran away and she spent several weeks with a friend in Vienna before police officers ultimately found her. And because she was not a legal adult yet when she was found, she was just taken right back to her house and handed right back into her father's arms. After she returned, Joseph tightened his grip. It felt like that was sort of a turning point for him. And ultimately it was then that he decided that he would make sure that Elizabeth never, ever, ever got the chance to run away ever again. And within a year from that, he set in motion the plan that would confine her for decades. Joseph himself later claimed that his decision to imprison Elizabeth came about because she did not adhere to any rules anymore as a teenager, stating, quote, that is why I had to do something. I had to create a place where I could keep Elizabeth by force if necessary, away from the outside world. End quote. Hold. Taking a quick break to thank today's sponsor, Warby Parker. I'm so excited to be working with them again. If you guys don't know, I think I've mentioned this before. Definitely on Tik Tok. Not sure about the podcast. My wedding is coming up next month. Oh, I'm going to throw up. It's so soon. Anyway, it's a lake wedding weekend. We're getting married in the cutest little lake town in it's peak June summertime. AKA as I'm making my little list of the items that I'm going to need for that entire weekend, the best weekend of my life. Warby Parker is at the top of the list. Their sunglasses are my absolute favorite. The ones that I'm holding up on screen, I'm holding them up. If you're not watching the video version of this happen, my go to glasses, I don't know what it is about them. I feel like they, they just feel nice. You can feel that they are higher quality and you can feel that they're gonna last you a long time. Not to mention, the styles that they have are my absolute favorite because I feel like they do a really good job on keeping up with the newer, trendy, stylish styles. They don't just stick to one and kind of just never upgrade from those. And in my family group chat, we've been talking about Warby Parker. I'm telling my parents to get their sunglasses before the wedding before we head down to the lake. I'm telling my sisters. And it works out very nicely because with Warby Parker, you can get whatever prescription you have, if you have one, into your own pair of glasses, which is so convenient and also the reason as to why you're going to wear them over and over and over again. But maybe my favorite thing about Warby Parker is that for every single pair that they sell, they also give a pair to someone in need. They have distributed over 20 million pairs of glasses to people in need3 through their buy a pair, give a pair program. Meaning that not only do they leave you feeling good when you wear them because you look your best, but they also feel you leaving good on the inside if you're part of that program knowing that someone in need got a pair because you decided to purchase one. If you have not checked out their styles online and if you have any summer weddings coming up and you know you're going to be out in the sun, definitely go look at Warby Parker. It's wedding season, it's summer. I know a lot of you guys have a lot of exciting weddings and travel plans coming up. So I felt like now would be the best time to let you guys know about what I've been obsessed with. It's the perfect time to upgrade your glasses for spring. Buy one prescription pair and get 20% off any additional prescription pairs at warbyparker.com wish that is 20% off any additional prescription pairs when you go to w a r-by parker.com wish thank you so much Warby Parker, for sponsoring today's episode. On August 28th of 1984, shortly after her 18th birthday, Joseph Fritzel lured Elizabeth into the basement under the pretense of needing help installing a door for a home renovation project. He walked her right downstairs into that basement, making her believe that all she was doing was helping her father. But as Elizabeth held that door in place, he attacked her. He drugged her with an ether soaked towel, placing it over her mouth and her nose, leaving her unconscious very quickly and giving her absolutely no chance to scream for help. To scream for anyone. And then he pushed her right into that room. He closed the door, and he locked her in the concealed basement prison that he had spent a long time preparing, Elizabeth Fritzel would not see daylight again for the next 24 years. To explain Elizabeth's disappearance, Joseph decided that the best idea. I mean, I guess his only option, was to lie. So he concocted this elaborate story that she had run away on her own accord to join a religious cult. Why not use that as an excuse? I guess it makes sense, doesn't it? That was sarcasm, by the way. But because, as we know, she had tried to run away before, Joseph just thought that by saying that she ran away again, saying that she did it again, he could get away with it. And I hate to say it, but he was right. And to make sure that his wife, her mom, wouldn't ask too many questions and wouldn't go looking for her too hard, he forced Elizabeth to write letters to support this narrative in this fake story that he had made up. One letter, which Elizabeth was coerced into writing, asked her family specifically to stop searching for her. Joseph made her write that letter, and then he took it upstairs to show his wife and Elizabeth's siblings. He presented this letter to his family members, but not only to them, but also to the police. And the police did conduct an investigation into Elizabeth's disappearance Because her mom had reported her a missing person. But with no evidence of foul play and the letters from Elizabeth herself, the case eventually went cold. The first thing Elizabeth saw when she came back to was complete and utter darkness. She woke up, and she was chained to a bed in a dark, cold, concrete room. She regained consciousness, not yet understanding that she was in a secret dungeon that her father had constructed just for her. She stayed chained to that bed the entire day. And the following day, her father finally reappeared in the cellar. But he was only there to replace the restraints with an iron chain around her waist so that he could comfortably sa her. And that's exactly what he did. Joseph entered the cellar almost daily, or at bare minimum, three times per week, bringing down just enough food and supplies for Elizabeth to be able to survive. During these visits, he repeatedly essayed his own daughter over and over again, at times controlling her breathing by placing his hand over her mouth, telling her over and over, if you do not do as I say, the situation will only get worse. In any case, there is no chance you will ever get out of here. Joseph maintained strict control through threats and psychological manipulation. And that was an easy thing for him to do, because if Elizabeth dared say no to him. He would just withhold food and shut off the electricity and take anything that he could take until she eventually gave him the only thing that he wanted. And in those early years, he barely spoke to her, really forget even treating her anything like a human being. The routine that he very quickly fell into was sneaking downstairs into that cellar quietly, only to sa her and then leave. And yet, above the cellar, above Elizabeth, life in the house that she grew up in went on completely undisturbed. Her mother, her siblings, the neighbors, the whole ordinary world was separated from her by nothing more than a concrete ceiling and a locked door that only one man could open. Elizabeth spent the first five years of her imprisonment entirely alone. But despite the horrific conditions, she attempted to create as normal of a life as she possibly could. Even more so when she began to birth her father's children. During her 24 year imprisonment, Elisabeth gave birth to seven children, all fathered by Josef Fritzl. Through repeated acts of sacred. She received absolutely no medical assistance throughout any of her births, relying only on a basic pregnancy book that Joseph had given to her. He also supplied scissors to cut the umbilical cords, blankets and diapers. For the first birth, he did not check on Elizabeth or the newborn baby for 10 days. One kid turned into two, then into three, four, five, six, seven, until there were a total of eight of them. Elizabeth educated her children with the very limited resources that she had. She sang them lullabies. She decorated the walls with images of flowers and stars and animals that she made from cardboard or magazine cutouts. She crafted models and toys, doing literally anything in her power to make her kids feel like their life was normal. She also kept a diary of sorts, documenting key events, including the births of her seven children and other significant incidents, which prosecutors were then able to later on use as evidence. Kirsten Fritzel was born on August 30, 1988. She was Elizabeth's first baby. She remained in that cellar with her mother throughout her captivity. And because she was born into contaminated conditions, without any fresh air, without any medical care, without any proper nutrition, Kirsten suffered severe health consequences throughout her entire childhood, up until the day that she got out of that dungeon. Just to give you an idea of the kind of effects that the environment had on her, I'll tell you that she lost most of her teeth due to only the absence of dental care. Stefan Fritzel was born February 1990. Stefan was the second child, and he also remained in captivity. He grew up entirely underground and developed a permanently hunched posture from having to exist Every single day in the low ceilinged space. Lisa Fritzel was born August of 1992. But things were different for her. Lisa was removed from the cellar when she was less than one year old because for whatever reason, Joseph decided that she would get to grow up upstairs inside of the family house. So what he did was take her upstairs. Obviously when nobody was watching, he placed her in a cardboard box and then left that on the doorstep with a forged letter, allegedly from Elizabeth. I think he did force her to write it, asking her parents to take care of the child. Basically saying, this is Elizabeth, I'm okay, I had a baby, can't take care of it. Can you guys handle this? He and his wife Rosemary opened up their front door to this baby that was seemingly left to them and they took her in. Joseph completely faking that he was just as shocked to find a baby from Elizabeth on their doorstep as Rosemary was. Rosemary and Joseph were approved by local services to be foster parents. And baby Lisa then grew up upstairs with absolutely no knowledge of her mother's imprisonment below. Monica Fritzel was born in February of 1994. Monica was also removed from the cellar as an infant and she was raised upstairs by Rosemary and Joseph. Following her appearance, Rosemarie reported receiving a phone call from someone that sounded like Elizabeth asking her to take care of her baby. But when she got that call, she immediately called to report it to the police, expressing a lot of concern and confusion about how Elizabeth was able to call because there was no reason as to why she could have known that phone number. But nothing ever came from that. Michael and Alexander Fritzel. They were twins. They were born in April of 1996. Michael passed away very shortly after birth, approximately only two to three days old. Due to respiratory problems and lack of medical care, he was very unwell. But because Joseph refused Elizabeth's pleas to get medical help for her baby, he didn't make it. And get this. Joseph didn't want a body inside of that basement because that wouldn't be good for him. He didn't want to risk any potential smell coming from a decomposing human body. So after baby Michael passed away, Joseph took his tiny little body upstairs when the family was asleep and he burned it inside of the home's wood burning furnace. Alexandra, the surviving twin, was also eventually taken upstairs to be raised with Lisa and Monica. The seventh baby, Felix Fritzl, was born in 2002 and Joseph decided to keep Felix in the basement with Elizabeth, Kirsten and Stefan, allegedly because Rosemary had expressed that she could just not handle taking care of yet another child. Felix grew up daydreaming about getting to play with other children his age. Having never experienced the outside world. The three children raised upstairs, Lisa, Monica and Alexander, lived what appeared to be normal lives. They attended school, they received music lessons, completely unaware that their real mother, biological mother and siblings were imprisoned right below them. And because they had kids in the house who were supposedly abandoned by their mother Elizabeth, social workers made regular visits to the Fritzl home. But I guess they never saw anything that made them think that anything was wrong. I guess Joseph's explanation for the kids just magically appearing at their doorstep were deemed very plausible to authorities. And I bet by this point you're yelling at your screen or at your phone saying please Michelle, come on. How does this end? How does he get caught? I will tell you. Because everything finally would come crashing down for this evil, disgusting excuse of a man. The case came to light April 19, 2008. Due to a medical crisis. Kristin, Elizabeth's first daughter, who was by then 19 years old, suddenly fell dangerously sick inside of the cellar. She was suffering from severe convulsions. She was losing consciousness and things were only going from bad to worse. Elizabeth desperately begging her father to get medical help and initially he was extremely reluctant but, but eventually I imagine, because he didn't know what he was going to do with a 19 year old's body if she didn't make it, he agreed to take Kirsten, and only Kirsten to the hospital where she was diagnosed with kidney failure and other serious complications. When he took her, hospital staff became immediately suspicious because how could you not? First of all, Kirsten had absolutely no medical records. She appeared severely malnourished for her age. She was pale, she was frail and she showed clear signs of long term neglect. Medical professionals recognized that her condition was life threatening and they demanded to speak to her mother, Elisabeth Fritzel. But of course Joseph couldn't let that happen. He couldn't even provide any contact information for her mother, Elizabeth. But very thankfully there were some doctors that were just not going to let this go. And they ended up making a public appeal through the media urging Kirsten's mother to come forward to provide crucial medical history, literally medical history that they needed to be able to save her life. And remember the story was that Elizabeth had left on her own accord, that she had joined a cult and that she had been the person that had been leaving her babies on the doorstep of her parents home. That was the story that Joseph had been telling people all along. And because of that it felt reasonable. For medical staff to turn to the media and say, elizabeth, wherever you are, we know that you're alive because you keep having babies. Wherever you are, it's time to come out and come forward and help save your child's life. And by this point, I feel like Joseph already knew that things were just not going to end well. So under pressure and realizing that his deception was slowly but surely unraveling right before his eyes, he ended up agreeing to allow Elizabeth to visit the hospital. On April 26th of 2008, for the first time in over 24 years, Elizabeth emerged from the dungeon. Her father coached her with a cover story that she was supposed to follow about having escaped from the cold. But once Elizabeth was alone, once she felt like she had a second of something that felt like safety, she revealed the horrific truth about her captivity. And as soon as she got the chance, she took it and she told authorities everything. On April 26th of 2008, one week after Kirsten was hospitalized, Joseph Fritzel was arrested by Austrian police. When police officers arrived at the Fritzel home, the secret cellar was so well concealed that officers init failed to find it. Joseph himself had to show them the exact location. But when authorities finally accessed the underground prison, they found Stefan and Felix still inside. The rooms were found to be neat and tidy, with the children's paintings and posters all over the walls. There was also a very, very small television and a small video player, but absolutely no space for exercise or any sort of normal human activities. Elizabeth and her six surviving children were immediately taken to a hospital, where they were placed in a special psychiatric wing designed to help them recover from the years of trauma and to help them begin the process of trying to adjust to freedom. Elizabeth was described by prosecutors as a broken woman, having endured constant essay, some in front of her own children for nearly a quarter century. The physical examination of the three children who had lived their entire lives underground revealed severe health consequences. All three of them suffered from vitamin D deficiency, leading to muscle weakness, joint pain and soft or deformed bones. They had never seen sunlight. They had never had the opportunity to breathe fresh air. When they emerged, Stefan and Felix were pale and they were stooped, struggling to comprehend the world above ground. Obviously, as far as Kirsten goes, she had to remain in intensive care for months, recovering from her medical emergency. When the truth came out, as you can imagine, it sent shock waves throughout the Fritzel household. Rosemary, the woman who had slept, cooked and lived directly above the dungeon for two and a half decades, was described as reacting with complete and utter shock. And amazement at the events that had unfolded right below her. Police investigated her as a possible accomplice, but ultimately concluded that she too had been mistreated and abused by Joseph throughout the entirety of their marriage. A woman so crushed beneath his control that she had simply stopped asking questions. But Elizabeth and her relationship with her mom was far beyond repair because for her, it was extremely difficult to understand why her mother had stopped looking for her and why she had believed Joseph when he told her that she simply ran away. She also understandably found it extremely difficult to accept that three of her own children who had been raised upstairs stairs, still were calling Rosemary mom even after everything came out. That entire situation is so difficult and sad and so, so heavy for a million different reasons. For Elizabeth's siblings, it meant the total unraveling of everything that they thought they knew. But when it came time for it later on in court, like I mentioned at the start of this episode, they did stand up and confirm what many had suspected. That the abuse in that house while they were growing up had not belonged solely to Elizabeth alone. Testifying that they too had all been physically and psychologically damaged by their father throughout their childhood. Obviously not to the degree that Elizabeth had, But every child, every person in that family had been living inside Joseph Fritzels messed up way of living. Some above ground, some below it. And having such a terrible person in their lives affected them all in different ways. The trial of Joseph ritzel began on March 16th of 2009. He faced six charges, including murder, specifically murder by negligence or neglect, rape, incest, assault and deprivation of liberty. The murder charge related to the death of baby Michael in 1996, whom prosecutors argued died from lack of medical care that Joseph willfully denied. The state prosecutor, arguing that he might have survived if Joseph had arranged for the medical treatment that he desperately needed. On the first day of trial, Joseph entered the room, the courtroom, attempting to hide his face from the cameras with a blue folder, like the coward that he is. After opening statements, all journalists and spectators were asked to leave the courtroom. The Joseph initially pleaded guilty to the charges of incest, coercion and deprivation of liberty. But he denied the other charges. Rudolph Mayer, the defense counsel, did his best to appeal to the jury, to be objective and to not be swayed by motions. He controversially also insisted that his client Joseph was, quote, not a monster. And his argument, I'm sorry, I. I know it's his job. His argument was so horrible, it's, it's truly something. For example, one of the things that he brought up was the fact that Joseph brought down a Christmas tree down to his victims downstairs, to his captives in the cellar during the holiday season. I'm sorry if that's like the best argument that you have, that he took them a Christmas tree while holding them captive. I don't know. Please exit the room because what? Elizabeth Fritzel provided videotaped testimony before Austrian prosecutors and investigators on July 11, 2008. So before the trial began, she wanted to do that because she didn't want to have to do it in the courtroom because she never wanted to see her father again. Her Testimony consisted of 11 hours of emotional and detailed accounts of her ordeal, which she had because, remember, she kept that diary slash journal, so she was able to provide all of the different things that she had written down and the different horrible experiences that she had suffered. The videotape was played in court over the course of two days of the trial proceedings. The tape was described as so harrowing that eight jurors could not watch more than two hours at a time. Four replacement jurors were also on standby in case any of the regular jurors could not bear to hear more of this evidence. On March 19th of 2009, Joseph reversed his pleas and he approached the judge to change his pleas to guilty on all charges, saying, quote, I regret it with all my heart. I can't make it right anymore. End quote. And finally, after approximately four to five hours of deliberation, the eight person jury convicted him on all counts. Joseph Fritzel was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 15 years. But that said, it was ordered that after those 15 years, psychiatric experts would be allowed to then discuss, if they decided to, they would have the option to free him. As of today, he has not yet been released. He is now 90 years old. He's also suffering from dementia. And in 2024, he was transferred from a secure psychiatric facility to then a regular prison in Austria. His lawyers have since then continued to argue for compassionate release due to his worsening dementia. But In October of 2025, the court denied that request. So as of today, he remains there behind bars, exactly where he should be. Now let's talk about the aftermath and recovery of Elizabeth and her six children because obviously they were all left with a mo of trauma For a while. They were all kept under supervision and received counseling at the hospital as medical staff worked with them all to help them heal from everything they went through. In December of 2008, Elizabeth was released from the psychiatric clinic where she had been treated. And she, along with her Six surviving children moved into their home in an undisclosed location By March of 2009, after the trial concluded, the family was relocated to an unnamed village in northern Austria. Austria, where they live in a house under constant CCTV surveillance with police protection. And that remains the same. Elizabeth today with her kids, remains in an unidentified Austrian town with her children, all of whom have been given new identities. The road to healing has obviously not been an easy one. But by all accounts, the family has slowly grown closer and closer over the years, healing together in a life that was stolen from them for so long. And as far as Rosemarie goes, throughout everything, she has always maintained that she had absolutely no knowledge of what was happening beneath her feet inside of that family house. She filed for divorce, and that was finalized in 2012, three years after Joseph's imprisonment. And from my understanding, she has no relationship with neither Elizabeth nor any of her children. The Joseph Fritzel case stands as one of the most disturbing criminal cases in modern history, revealing the the deaths of human cruelty and the resilience of survivors. But the story of Elisabeth Fritzl and her children is ultimately one of survival and hope. And that is what I want to end the video with. Because despite experiencing unimaginable torture, Elizabeth protected and educated and loved her children in captivity, maintaining their humanity in inhumane conditions. The courage that she has is one that everyone should have the utmost respect for because she is truly such a brave and strong woman. That is all I have for this week's episode. Let me know your thoughts on this case. Let me know if you have anything that maybe I missed or let me know if you have heard about this before. Thank you guys so, so much for spending time with me today and for listening to Elizabeth's case. I hope you guys are having the best day. If not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy and I will see you in my next episode. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of I wish you were here. As a reminder, you can listen to this podcast anywhere. 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