Jury urged to hand Josef Fritzl life sentence
- 00:01:15
- ITN
Jury urged to hand Josef Fritzl life sentence
Josef Fritzl is facing a life sentence for imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years. The 73-year-old surprised his legal team in Austria when he changed his plea to guilty on all charges after being confronted in court by 11 hours of his daughter's harrowing testimony. Fritzl acknowledged his guilt on the third day of the trial. "I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment," he said. Asked by the presiding judge why he had changed his mind, Fritzl said it was the testimony from Elisabeth. He watched 11 hours of her videotaped evidence, describing how he imprisoned her in a dungeon underneath their home and repeatedly raped her, fathering seven children. One child, a twin boy, died at three days old and the changed plea means Fritzl has admitted killing him through neglect - a charge that carries a potential life sentence. Initially he denied responsibility for the baby's death, along with an enslavement charge. He had already admitted rape, incest, forced imprisonment and coercion. Elisabeth was 18 when she was imprisoned in the cramped, windowless cell her father built beneath the family's home in the town of Amstetten. She and her six surviving children, who range in age from six to 20, have spent months recovering from their ordeal in a psychiatric clinic and at a secret location. DNA tests prove Fritzl is the biological father of all six of Elisabeth's surviving children, three of whom never saw daylight until the crime came to light 11 months ago. Three of the children grew up underground in Amstetten and the other three were taken upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently believed they had been abandoned. Prosecutors said Fritzl refused to speak to his daughter during the first few years of her ordeal, coming downstairs only to rape her. They said the rapes sometimes occurred in front of the children, and described Elisabeth as a "broken" woman.
ITN | March 19, 2009
