On 28 August 1984, Josef Fritzl drugged his teenage daughter with ether and imprisoned her in an underground bunker behind eight locked doors. Over the following twenty-four years, he raped and abused her, never letting her or the children she bore him out of the dark, windowless cellar.
Based on 150 new interviews with psychologists, neighbours, colleagues and friends who knew Fritzl, as well as the insight of his own chilling confession, Allan Hall reconstructs the monstrous personality behind this hideous crime. He exposes Josef Fritzl's dark past in Nazi Austria, his previous conviction as a rapist, the appalling conditions in which Elisabeth and her children were kept and her astonishingly brave conduct while held prisoner. Including exclusive photographs and previously unseen evidence, this is a truly heart-stopping record of one of the most elaborate and disturbing cases of abuse in modern times.This book is made very readable by a very professional author, who has covered other similar true crime cases - eg the Natascha Kampusch case - and uncovered many insights into the character involved. This has been accomplished by interviewing life-long friends, many of which had no inkling of the incredible double life of this man. Some of the book is speculative, but that is to be expected, until Elisabeth Fritzl herself...
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