AUSTRIA: Kidnapper kept missing girl captive for eight years

An Austrian teenager who escaped eight years' captivity in the hands of a man she had to call "master" simply asked for her favourite toy car when she reunited with her family, her father said on Thursday (August 24, 2006). The disappearance of Natascha Kampusch at the age of 10 as she walked to school in 1998 remains one of Austria's most baffling crime mysteries. Speaking about the moment the family was reunited, Kampusch's father, Ludwig Koch, told the Austrian daily Kurier: "She said: 'Dad, I love you.' And the next question was: 'Is my toy car still there?' It was Natascha's favourite toy, I never gave it away in all those years." He and her half-sister identified the 18-year-old on Wednesday (August 23) and were joined by her mother on Thursday at the hotel where Kampusch is staying with a policewoman and a psychologist. Authorities said they had little doubt that the girl was really Kampusch. Kampusch's passport was found in her prison and she bore a scar that is identical to one of the missing girl. "She was identified by both parents, who live separately, and by her half-sister. We have learned that she had certain body marks, some scars which we did not know about before. These scars are there and for us there is no doubt this is Natascha Kampusch," chief police investigator Erich Zwettler told a news conference. Zwettler said that Natascha appears to be calm and psychologically coping with the present situation. "In the morning, we were informed by our colleague who is taking care of her that she slept well, she had breakfast and she seems to be very calm. We assume that she is psychologically coping well with the situation," Zwettler said. But her father, who separated from her mother before the kidnap, told the paper Natascha was "emaciated and has a very, very white skin and blotches all over her body", according to quotes released ahead of Friday's edition. Adolf Brenner, the policeman who questioned her first on Wednesday, told local news agency APA she was forced to call her captor "master" in the first years of her ordeal. The police spokesman said it was unclear whether Kampusch had been abused. Officers were due to interview her later on Thursday once DNA tests results confirmed her identity. Kampusch escaped from a garden outside the house of the kidnapper, who police identified as Wolfgang Priklopil, in Strasshof, a hamlet 25 km (15 miles) outside the capital Vienna and about 10 km from her home, police said. She showed up in another garden nearby and identified herself to a neighbour. Her captor equipped a 6-sq-metre cell beneath the house's garage with running water, toilet, washing facilities, bed, books, radio and occasionally television, police officials said. Police said they wanted to know details of the relationship between Kampusch and the man, given that she appeared to come down with "Stockholm Syndrome", a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors. Kampusch's captor had recently loosened his security measures, allowing her occasional outings in the village with him. He was distracted by a phone call, allowing her to flee, investigator Erich Zwettler told Sky Television. Her re-appearance sparked a major manhunt for her captor on Wednesday. Neighbourhood witnesses said they had seen a car speeding away shortly after the girl re-emerged. Police said it was virtually certain Priklopil was the man who committed suicide while a manhunt was under way. While the body was mutilated by the train, he had the key to Priklopil's car in his pocket and wore his clothes. Priklopil, a communications technician, had been questioned by police soon after Kampusch's disappearance, just like hundreds of owners of white vans similar to the one a schoolfriend had seen Kampusch get into the day she vanished. The hunt for the teenager had never been dropped. Sightings had been reported in Hungary, divers searched ponds and police flew over the region with infrared cameras.

ITN Source | August 26, 2006

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