Josef Fritzl’s bid for freedom: Lawyers for evil monster, 89, say he could be back on the streets ‘later this year’ and believes he will leave prison to ‘people cheering and wanting to shake his hand’
Evil monster Josef Fritzl believes he will walk out of prison to people ‘cheering and wanting to shake his hand’ if he is successful in his bid for freedom, his lawyers have revealed.
The depraved rapist fathered seven children by his daughter Elisabeth while he kept her as a sex slave in the basement of the family home in Amstetten, Austria, for 24 years.
The 89-year-old, who was handed a life sentence in 2009, was last year moved from a maximum security hospital wing for the criminally insane in Stein to a regular prison.
His lawyer Astrid Wagner said she will submit a parole application for Fritzl in March and is optimistic the incest monster will be released due to no longer posing a danger to society based on his old age and frail health.
‘If the court rejects it we will appeal and given his condition I believe he will be released by next year,’ Ms Wagner told the Mirror.
She added that deluded Fritzl believes that ‘a big celebration with people cheering’ and ‘wanting to shake his hand’ will be waiting for him upon release.
‘This is obviously not the case. It is a fantasy. I don’t think he fully understands what the world really thinks,’ Ms Wagner explained.
A regional court ruled in January 2024 that Fritzl no longer posed a threat to society, and therefore could be moved from a high-security prison to a normal jail.
This decision went on to be viewed as the first step in a process which could result in the Fritzl being released from prison completely as soon as this year.
Fritzl allegedly ‘regrets his decisions every day’, but still wrongly believes he has friends outside the prison, according to his lawyer’s statement to the Mirror.
However, he does reportedly accept and respect his family’s decision of not wanting to see him anymore.
Fritzl’s heinous crimes, including rape, coercion, and imprisonment, sent shockwaves across Austria and Europe in 2008.
Elisabeth, who he abused from the age of 11, disappeared in 1984 at age 18.
For more than two decades, Fritzl held his daughter captive in a cramped and mouldy cellar beneath his home in Amstetten, which he built.
Shockingly, his lawyer Ms Wagner revealed to MailOnline in January: ‘I went to see Mr Fritzl in prison […], and he keeps talking about wanting to be in a house when he gets out of prison, and he has made very, very clear it has to have a cellar.
‘He says he wants a cellar because he has so many things he needs to store. Of course he’s been transferred from a high security to the standard prison, but he still has all his things which he has collected over the years.
‘I’m talking about loads and loads of files and folders. This is why he said his new place absolutely has to have a cellar.’
When asked if she thought he was aware how unsuitable it was for him to demand a cellar given his horrific crimes, Wagner said: ‘He didn’t really notice, or maybe he didn’t but he didn’t say anything.
‘He’s old and getting more and more frail. He’ll be 90 next year. And now it’s time for him to be released.’
He raped his daughter thousands of times over many years, with the abuse resulting in the birth of seven children – three of which remained in captivity with their mother.
One died at the hands of Fritzl, a matter of days after being born. His disposed of the body in an incinerator.
The other three were brought up by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who lived in the house above.
The discovery of his sickening crimes occurred only when one of his daughters fell critically ill, forcing him to seek medical help.
Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 for incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and for the negligent homicide of one of his infant sons.
