While on trial, he was taken to his dungeon by police officers and a judge, who was taking testimony from him in a courtroom earlier this week when he ordered a visit to the cellar lair.
Judge Nikolaus Obrovski wanted details on the cellar in general and in particular on the last of eight doors used to seal it from the outside world.
He was also interested in hearing Fritzl’s alleged “escape plan” for his daughter and the children should anything have happened to him during her long years of solitary confinement.
Fritzl was taken from his jail cell in St Polten, Austria, near his Escape house at Amstetten, in a white VW mini-bus. Three guards were assigned to take him to the ‘House of Horrors’.
According to the report, Fritzl was reserved at first before becoming animated as he explained the workings of a 660lb door which kept Elisabeth – and later three of the seven children he sired with her – in captivity. His lawyer was also present.
Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said he spoke in a strange way – using the term “we” as he told her about the subterranean jail he made.
But Fritzl failed in his bid to convince authorities that he had, in his words, arranged for the door to open in case he fell ill or died.
Austrian media said he was “not convincing” about his story of a time-release clock that would let them out. No such mechanism was found in the dungeon. After two hours he was taken from the house and driven back to his prison cell.
The re-emergence of this detail comes as the incest monster was granted conditional release today (January 25). Fritzl was seen leaving the court at 7.20am after being granted release from the mental health hospital. It is understood he will be taken to a nursing home, where he could spend the rest of his sentence, due to his advanced dementia.
The sighting today marks the first time the 88-year-old, who is serving a sentence of to life in jail for rape, enslavement, and the murder, by neglect, of his newborn son, has been seen outside prison in 15 years.
