Josef Fritzl used his daughter as a "toy", an Austrian court heard Monday after the 73-year-old admitted imprisoning her in an underground bunker for 24 years and forcing her to bear seven children. But the Austrian engineer, who set up a house of horror with electrically controlled doors to stop Elisabeth Fritzl and her children from escaping, denied slavery and a murder charge over the death of one of the incest babies.
The white-haired Fritzl, dressed in a grey suit, entered the court for the first day of his trial shielding his face with a blue document folder which he kept in place until the hearing started.
Police sat on either side of Fritzl and others stood in front of the public gallery as maximum security was imposed for the week of hearings. Several protesters were outside the court house, some carrying baby dolls smeared in fake blood. It was Fritzls first appearance in public since the shocking case broke last April when the eldest child, Kerstin, 19, who had lived her entire life underground with two brothers and her mother, fell severely ill and had to be hospitalised. Fritzl is accused of holding his daughter Elisabeth captive for nearly a quarter of a century and fathering seven children with her.
Fritzl admitted rape, incest, sequestration and coercion, replying with a simple "yes" to the question as to whether he pleaded guilty when the charges were read. For these, he faces a prison term of up to 15 years. But he lodged a plea of "not guilty" to a murder charge which carries a life sentence. Prosecutors accuse him of letting one of the babies die shortly after birth in 1996, when he failed to seek medical aid after birth.
Fritzl told police the baby was still-born and he burnt the body in a boiler in the cellar. He likewise pleaded not guilty to a charge of enslavement - the first time such a charge has been brought in Austria - as the trial started in Sankt Poelten, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the family home in Amstetten. He also denied telling Elisabeth and the children they would be gassed if they tried to escape, which, according to the 27-page charge sheet, constitutes grievous assault.