World Apr. 28, 2008 - 06:17AM JST ( 15 )

VIENNA —

Austrian police on Sunday arrested a 73-year-old man accused of locking up his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her.

A prosecution spokesman said Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, had accused her father, Josef, of “massive crimes.” DNA tests are being conducted on the woman and six surviving children.

It is the third time in recent years that Austria has been stunned by tales of children locked away by parents or adults they know.

According to police, Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her father put her to sleep with an anesthetic on August 28, 1984, handcuffing her in a locked basement.

Officially, she was declared a missing person, with Interpol opening an investigation.

A letter was sent to her parents asking that they stop searching for her and local authorities concluded she had been seized by a religious sect.

She told police that she spent years imprisoned in an underground chamber beneath the family home near the eastern town of Amstetten.

Elisabeth Fritzl told detectives she was “regularly abused” by her father and their incestuous relationship produced seven children.

All the children appear to have been born in grim captivity but investigators said one child, a twin, died shortly after birth. Police said the body was subsequently burned.

Three boys and three girls, now aged between five and 20, survived. Josef Fritzl legally adopted two boys and one girl.

Josef Fritzl is said to have told his wife, Rosemarie, and local authorities that three babies had been left by Elisabeth on their doorstep, in different years.

Each delivery was accompanied by a letter purportedly signed by Elisabeth Fritzl saying she could not support the child because she already had others to care for.

The trio went to school as normal, seemingly unaware that their mother and three other siblings (a girl of 19, and boys at 18 and five) were trapped underground.

According to ORF national television, the mother and five children are now in hospital. All are being treated by a team of psychologists. Reports said the mother was physically frail and badly disturbed by her ordeal.

Authorities were worried about the health of the mother and three of her children.

Yet neither neighbors nor social services appear to have had the slightest inkling. “They had a swimming pool in the garden, we would hear them laughing the three of them,” said one neighbor.

Another backed up the story of the babies on the doorstep, adding: “Rosemarie always looked after the kids so well, taking them to school. We said ‘it’s incredible what she manages to do at her age’.”

Police said the case only came to light after one of the girls, 19-year-old Kerstin, was admitted to hospital in a critical condition in mid-April.

Doctors stepped up efforts to find the mother, looking for background medical information, and Josef Fritzl brought his secret offspring into the family home.

He is said to have told his wife they suddenly re-appeared. Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her mother knew nothing about the sexual abuse she had endured since the age of 11, some seven years before she was locked away.

Authorities found Elisabeth Fritzl and the three underground children on Saturday evening.

In a cell himself since Saturday night, Josef relented and gave police the security access codes to the basement on Sunday night.

Police found several rooms 170 centimeters high equipped with water and a television.

Josef Fritzl had been refusing to answer questions put by detectives, although Gerhard Sedlacek, a prosecution spokesman, said Elisabeth’s accusations of kidnapping and incest are “credible.”

AFP