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  Would Kerstin die? Reiter anticipated the question before Fritzl had to ask it, and he weighed up the chances of Kerstin’s survival for her grandfather as tactfully as he could. Frankly, the odds were slim. Reiter asked Fritzl for his permission to alert the police about the note, and Fritzl agreed.

  The whole conversation took no more than thirty minutes. Around 11:30 they emerged from Reiter’s office; the two men shook hands and arranged to meet again at two o‘clock that afternoon. Reiter telephoned the police and filed a report about the note that Fritzl had found on Kerstin’s body, then looked in on Kerstin before driving home. It was lunchtime but, not being in the habit of eating much before supper, he spent an hour or so mowing his lawn, trying to unscramble the riddle of Kerstin Fritzl’s illness.

  The case was a mystery and obviously revolved around one person: the mother. But there was little to go on. Poisoning? An overdose? Had Kerstin been trying to escape from the cult? Had her mother deliberately put her own daughter’s life in danger as a result? Reiter’s chief suspicion fell on Elisabeth. But nobody knew where she was, whether she was in the region or even in the country. She was a woman who had abandoned four children, perhaps an unstable person but also the only person capable of supplying the information necessary to save her daughter’s life.

  And then there were the stranger aspects of the case: a young woman lying unconscious in Ybbsstrasse, where Josef Fritzl lived with his wife, Rosemarie, and their three fostered grandchildren. It might have made sense if it had been one of those small dead-end lanes that you come across in Austrian towns, somewhere higgledy-piggledy and hidden away. But Ybbsstrasse is neither a dead end, nor a lane, nor in any way hidden away out of sight. Ybbsstrasse, named after the river that runs alongside it, is a thoroughfare, the main artery out of town, busy with cars day and night. It is also a commercial area, lined with convenience stores, a hairdresser, a travel agent, a supplier of building materials, a flower stall, a tattoo studio, two bars, and a bakery. The bakery, Bäckerei Pramreiter, is just three doors down from the house outside which Kerstin Fritzl was found passed out on a doorstep at eight in the morning. On Saturdays it opens at seven A.M.

  By the time Reiter had returned to the hospital, he had decided to persuade Josef Fritzl to make an appeal to his missing daughter through the media. He strongly felt that if Elisabeth Fritzl knew that her daughter’s life was now in danger, she could not help but respond.

  Fritzl agreed readily that involving the media was both the right decision and a matter of urgency. After signing a release form for this purpose, Fritzl looked in on Kerstin one last time and returned home, leaving Reiter to make the necessary arrangements.

  Reiter felt a little out of his depth; it was a case that might require the involvement of the police. So he decided not to call the media directly but to telephone the state prosecutor’s office and was put through to Christiane Burkheiser. A short conversation ensued in which Reiter explained the situation and the prosecutor reassured him that she would make the necessary arrangements.

  At five P.M. on Saturday, April 19, just over eight hours after Kerstin Fritzl had first been discovered abandoned and desperately ill on an Amstetten doorstep, the first appeal for the urgent return of her mother was broadcast on local radio.

  Kerstin’s condition showed no improvement by Sunday. By Monday, April 21, the story of the abandoned girl who was being kept in an artificial coma had been reported several times in the local media but still there had been no sign of her mother. Nevertheless, national newspapers were beginning to latch onto the story and, as the week progressed and Kerstin’s condition deteriorated, reports of the case multiplied and found their way onto television.

  Meanwhile, anxious relatives of Kerstin passed in and out of the room. Kerstin’s mother, Elisabeth, was the fourth of seven children and now her brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives and children descended on the hospital to do what they could. Josef Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, visited on Tuesday and talked briefly to the doctors about the practicalities of Kerstin’s health insurance status. She had been worried because, having grown up in a sect, the girl was essentially invisible to the authorities; she didn’t have a birth certificate or a passport and wasn’t insured. The doctors reassured her that considering the parlous state of Kerstin’s health, the hospital would deal with the matter.

  The next day, Wednesday, April 23, Reiter had originally been scheduled to drive down to a medical conference near his hometown in Carinthia, but with the snowballing media interest in Kerstin, his trip had to be repeatedly delayed. It was becoming a case of national interest.

  On Thursday a reporter from Austria’s national television channel, ORF, called to let Reiter know that it planned to broadcast a special feature on the story and asked if he would agree to be interviewed. Hoping that such major coverage would finally encourage Kerstin’s mother to emerge from wherever she’d been hiding for more than twenty years, Reiter agreed to meet the journalist at the hospital on Friday morning. He finally left for Carinthia later that Friday, satisfied that wherever she was, Elisabeth Fritzl, or someone who knew Elisabeth Fritzl, was very likely to have heard the appeals. Whether she chose to respond was a different matter.

  Albert Reiter is a doctor, a man used to seeing horrible things. It wouldn’t be fair to say the Fritzl case was obsessing him—he had several other gravely ill patients and a seminar to chair—but Elisabeth Fritzl was very much on his mind as he drove southeast to Carinthia. Just as it had been a week ago, it was a beautiful spring day. The drive took four hours, and Reiter’s mood alternated between mild disappointment that there still had been no sign of Elisabeth and happy anticipation of the conference ahead. The St. Paul Emergency Medicine Conference is a highlight in many surgeons’ calendars, and physicians from all over Austria look forward to this annual opportunity to catch up and exchange ideas. But by the time Reiter arrived, he only had time to attend a seminar or two. He went to bed early. At noon the next day he chaired a debate on the psychological impact of narcosis on intensive care patients and, having said his goodbyes, made tracks to leave.

  It was Saturday, April 26. A week had passed since Kerstin Fritzl had first been admitted to Amstetten Hospital. Reiter had just left the conference center and was on his way back to the hotel when he got the call he had been waiting for all week. It was 4:30 P.M. “Wonderful news,” said Josef Fritzl. “She’s back.”

  Elisabeth had finally resurfaced and was now with her father in Amstetten. Reiter explained to Fritzl that it would take him several hours to get back from Carinthia, but he would set off right away. He told Fritzl to meet him at the hospital with Elisabeth at 8:15 that evening and added that he’d call him on the way if there was heavy traffic. Fritzl agreed, but there was one thing: His daughter had made it clear to him that the police were not to be contacted. Reiter said that he understood and hung up.

  He drove a little faster than usual. He remembered how bitterly Josef Fritzl had expressed his disappointment at the incompetence of the police and felt proud that it was through his agency that Elisabeth had finally been persuaded to come forward. He was aware of what Elisabeth Fritzl had done to her children and possibly to the teenage girl in his unit, and he also knew that it amounted to criminal neglect. He wondered whether she’d brought with her to Amstetten the two other children still in her care. But what worried him most was the possibility that Elisabeth might attempt to visit her daughter and slip away again before he’d had the chance to speak to her. To prevent this from happening, he called intensive care and instructed the staff not to allow any visitors in to see Kerstin until he arrived.

  Reiter then made a second phone call, a crucial one. He called Christiane Burkheiser, the state prosecutor, and asked her to alert the police.

  Reiter now sped along the motorway. An hour and a half from Amstetten he received one more call, from one of the intensive care staff. Reiter had been right. Elisabeth Fritzl and her father had arrived early to visit Kerstin b
ut had been sent home on Reiter’s instructions.

  At eight o‘clock that Saturday evening, Reiter arrived back in Amstetten and drove directly to the hospital. He took the elevator up to intensive care, where he spent a few moments assessing Kerstin’s deteriorating condition. At that moment he happened to glance out the window. He saw an old black Mercedes pull up in the parking lot. Out stepped two figures: Josef Fritzl and a woman. Reiter prepared himself for one of the most difficult conversations of his medical career.

  Everything about Elisabeth Fritzl seemed to confirm what her father had told Reiter. She was neatly dressed and still youthful in appearance; she had a few gray hairs, but her pale skin was undamaged by the sun. She was clearly extremely fragile and spoke very little. She barely shook Reiter’s hand. Wherever she’d been, in whatever cult, life had not been easy for her. Her father stood comfortingly at her side. Together they walked into Kerstin’s room.

  Her condition had worsened. But her mother was unable to shed much more light on what had happened in the days leading up to her daughter’s hospitalization. There was something intensely guarded about Elisabeth, Reiter thought. She certainly seemed fond enough of her daughter; she just couldn’t say anything. What was it? Shame? Fear that she would be investigated? The exchange ground to a halt after just a few minutes. Reiter felt confused and guilty. He now adamantly believed in Elisabeth Fritzl’s guilt, but he felt ashamed. He knew that, concealed in the reception area, the police were waiting for a signal from him to arrest her.

  Reiter watched Elisabeth Fritzl whisper some encouraging words to her sleeping daughter. Then he watched her leave the unit with her father and sister. He gave the signal: a phone call. Downstairs three plainclothes policemen emerged from a corridor to arrest Elisabeth.

  It had been an extremely long day: hours of driving, this awful dilemma still unresolved, and the continuing mystery of Kerstin’s deteriorating health. Reiter was exhausted. He went home, ate a quick supper, and, having briefly discussed the day with his wife, was asleep by 10:30.

  At 2:30 A.M. he was woken up by the sound of knocking. In pajamas and bathrobe he opened his front door to a young policeman; Dr. Reiter was to call the head of police at St. Pollen as a matter of urgency. He thanked the officer and dialed the number. He was put through to a chief inspector.

  The phone call was brief and shocking. For an hour Elisabeth Fritzl had sat in St. Pollen police station saying nothing. By 10:30 P.M. she had started to talk. By 11:15 P.M. nothing in Amstetten would ever be the same again.

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

  Beginnings

  The Mostviertel is still a very beautiful part of Europe. Bounded by the Danube to the north and to the east by the Vienna woods, its tree-speckled meadows make up the rolling foothills of the Alps; a place where whitewashed, wooden-roofed houses cluster in pleasant little villages, cut through by streams with water pure enough to drink. It’s a fairy-tale landscape: Every village has its church, every roadside its Catholic shrine.

  Important dates in the religious calendar that have been forgotten elsewhere in the country still mean something here. On Ascension Day long, solemn lines of local people process down the street: the women, some of them wearing Dirndl, the heavy-skirted folk costume of Austria. They are pious, down-to-earth people here, with a dialect that can sometimes be unintelligible even to other German speakers. Brot (bread) is Bracht; Milch (milk) is Mu; an indecisive woman might find herself described as a Suppnhehn, a chicken fit only to be made into stock; a man in need of a haircut is a Zodawaschl.

  And it is one of those places where everywhere you go you’re reminded of the local talisman. For the Mostviertel, it’s the pear: There isn’t a shop, a market stall, or a gas station that doesn’t sell pears, or foodstuffs made of pears, or pear-shaped key rings, or other souvenirs. Giant pears made of glazed papier-mache or plastic squat by the sides of the main roads; they huddle in twos and threes in the middle of roundabouts. For the pear is the main ingredient of Most, the poor man’s drink in central Europe long before beer. In the late eighteenth century, at the height of the Habsburg Empire’s confidence, Emperor Joseph II, foreseeing Most’s commercial potential, decreed that he would award a silver medal to every person who planted a hundred pear trees. Of course, the farmers of the region began planting them in every available corner, and soon its low hills were transformed into a pretty but chaotic orchard, one of the world’s densest; more than a million fruit trees grew in its meadows. It was the Mostviertel’s first economic boom. “The Most built these houses,” its farmers boasted. And it was Most that built the little village of Amstetten.

  For centuries Amstetten had been a mere speck on the map in the far west corner of the Mostviertel, where the River Ybbs snakes down from the Limestone Alps toward the Danube. For nearly a hundred years it thrived on the Most boom. The surrounding countryside was flat enough for the paper mills and steel plants that came with the Industrial Revolution to flourish here, but an accident of geography was the making of the village. Amstetten was located halfway between Vienna and Linz and close enough to the borders of both Germany and Italy for it to be an ideal railway junction, a stopover where the main east-west and north-south lines crossed. In the late nineteenth century the village suddenly found itself growing into a town, and local farmers and paper and metal entrepreneurs began to settle there, erecting houses of sandstone and limestone quarried from the Alps. In the 1880s the long, anonymous dirt road that ran southward from the main square earned itself a name: Ybbsstrasse, after the river. The Gattenbauers made their home here, as did the Aschenbrenners, the proud owners of the street’s first grocery store. The ochre-painted house at 40 Ybbsstrasse was completed in 1892, a solid, symmetrical two-story affair set around a courtyard, with a back garden, separate kitchen, and scullery; room enough for a moderate-sized family of considerable means. Here lived a family named Fritzl.

  The Fritzls had a daughter, Anna. Sometime toward the end of the nineteenth century, the owner of a mill in Ardagger, a hamlet several miles distant, made her an offer of marriage. Given his relative affluence—he lived in a cottage attached to his mill and was wealthy enough to employ several servants—it must have seemed a suitable match to her parents, and for a few months the marriage could have been said to be happy. But when the couple were unable to produce a child, the miller’s disappointment expressed itself in violence. He not only beat his wife but began a sexual relationship with a female servant that may or may not have been consensual.

  When this servant became pregnant, it must have seemed to the miller that he had magically stumbled across the solution to the problem of his marriage. Here was both the answer to the couple’s child lessness and proof that it was not he but his wife who was at fault. Although he was well within his rights to demand a divorce—it was his prerogative in the eyes of the Catholic Church—he kept her in the house as his wife. Provided that she remain silent about the true parentage of the child and bring it up as if it were her own, there would be no need for a separation.

  So the child was born, the servant dismissed, and the child was given to the miller’s wife to raise. Over time two more children were fathered by two more maids, both of whom were thrown out of the house once they had fulfilled their purpose. The miller had his family: two little girls and a boy born out of wedlock to three different women, brought up by a wife who had become little more than an accomplice in a lie. The youngest girl was born and baptized in Stift Ardagger, the eleventh- century church after which the hamlet is named, some time in the mid-1890s. Her name was Maria.

  From Maria’s account, her father delighted in the deception he had practiced. To the outside world Maria and her two siblings were brought up in a family that conformed in every way to the norms of conservative rural society. But behind the foot-thick stone walls of his house, the miller constantly goaded his children with the truth about their origins. Maria would later remember how much he relished the disjunction between public appea
rances and their secret. She was never allowed to forget that she was illegitimate: It was her disgrace and the disgrace of the woman she thought of as her mother. As an uneheliches Kind, a bastard, she was a constant reminder of the inadequacy of the wife the miller had saddled himself with. The violent husband became a violent father, a terror to his unhallowed children. Maria spent her childhood and early adolescence longing to find the husband who could offer her a way out; she found him laboring on a nearby farm. According to her own account, she was in love, for the first and last time in her life.

  And now there is a strange echo, one of those tragic twists that can define a life. A year of marriage passed, two years, three, but Maria’s pregnancy never came. Her husband blamed her. “You don’t work properly,” he told her. “You’re not a woman.” A less complicated man than her father, he divorced her. Jobless, homeless, and publicly humiliated, she returned to the cottage in Ardagger, only to find that life had become intolerable for her mother in the meantime; her husband’s temper had grown so violent that she had begun to fear for her life. Roused by the return of her adoptive daughter, Anna now made an extraordinary decision. She had inherited the house in Ybbsstrasse in the late 1920s and had left it to stand empty; it was no place for an aging woman on her own. But Maria’s return was an opportunity for them both, and one day in 1932 the two women walked out. They walked the five miles from Ardagger to Amstetten, carrying only a few personal belongings (although no money, because they had none), and never came back. Amstetten was safety. And 40 Ybbsstrasse was all they had.