Episode 592: Josef Fritzl Part II - The Family Downstairs
01:06:31 Share

NetCredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit are lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit. Applications subject to review and approval. Learn more at netcredit.com slash partner. NetCredit, credit to the people. At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than just a car. It's the two-door coupe that was there for your first drive. The hatchback that took you cross-country and back. And the minivan that tackles the weekly carpool.

For the cars you couldn't live without, trust Amica Auto Insurance. Amica. Empathy is our best policy. Hey, buddy, it's election time. Oh, yes. How fun this whole process has been. I've been having such a delight watching everyone hymn and haw over certain doom and everything's going to be mediocre. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.

For all those of you out there in swing states, the deadline for voter registration is October 7th in Georgia and Arizona. And in Nevada, it's on October 8th if you're mailing in your registration. In North Carolina, it is October 11th. So...

If you are not registered to vote and you want to participate in this election and, you know, make the choice that Ed was just talking about, make sure that you're registered to vote now. And especially if you're in Georgia and you think you're registered to vote, I know they just did a big voter purge. So double check and make goddamn sure that you can vote when the election comes up in November. Yeah, and also just think about the one candidate said you may never have to vote again. So maybe this could be your last chance. Yeah.

So get out there and fucking vote. If one side wants you to vote and the other side doesn't want you to vote, it's very important to vote.

To check your registration status, you can go to usa.gov slash confirm dash voter dash registration or nass.org slash can dash I dash vote. Follow prompts to check out your status. And now also, Florida's October 7th and New Mexico's October 8th. And even if you're not a swing state, go out and fucking vote anyway. We're all fucking going out and voting this time. Pile on this fuck. Goddamn right. All right. Hit it.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last hot ass. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. Who's there? Yeah! Um, oh, wow. Just gotta ease back in. You know, I just spent the last two days reading the thoughts of Josef Fritzl. Mm-hmm.

And I got to say, I feel confident. Right. I feel changed. Do you feel honest? I feel up front with me. And I really think that everybody should go in there. If you want to learn, we have a lot of new dads in our life. Yeah. And I feel like if they really want to learn how to keep a tight-knit family.

You really should read the words of Josef Fritzl and talk about the joys that he experienced watching his children open presents on Christmas. And they would all rejoice with the first snowfall of the season. He writes this long, flowing thing about his favorite thing. The nutmeg. Smell of nutmeg. Nutmeg was one of his daughters? Yeah.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zebrowski. I hate my daughter. Red hot Italian pepper burns my nose. You gotta run out of names at some point. Yes, I was very into spices. And the eternally spicy Ed Larson. Yes, to prepare for this episode, I've been sleeping under my bed. Ha ha ha!

Just get the vibe. So when we last left the Fritzl family, Elizabeth had given birth to the first of her seven inbred children while still imprisoned in the underground bunker that her father, Yosef, had built. No chaser, no big

getting no palate cleanser. I'm fucking... It's the first sentence. Yeah, man. I'm fucking diving right into this shit. Good. She'd been locked in Fritzl's dungeon alone for four years and still had almost 20 to go. Damn. And by the way, there's no way to, like, slow roll into a Joseph Fritzl episode once you're already in it. You could say stuff like...

You know, you think you're sick of your mattress. You know, like stuff like that. You can go be like, oh, you know me, I'm bed rotting. It's taken to a new extreme in the Joseph Ritzel story. He could be the guy for sleepies. You know, sleepies for the rest of your life.

Now, as we said last episode, this was Elizabeth's second pregnancy, as the first had ended in a sudden miscarriage because Elizabeth was so unhealthy and depressed because her own father had gotten her pregnant. Likewise, this new child named Kirsten, she almost didn't make it either. She was pregnant with her first child, and she was pregnant with her second child.

She suffered from epilepsy and cramps that resulted in screaming fits that no doubt echoed at ear-splitting levels in Elizabeth's 15-foot-by-15-foot concrete prison. It's also, like, fucked up because...

At least it's something new. And she does talk about how it gave her a lease on life. Oh, absolutely. But even though Kirsten was obviously born sick, the most Joseph Fritzl contributed to child care were formula and diapers, which he bought at different stores far away from the town of Amstetten to avoid suspicion. You know, and I could see him doing our former president style, like when he went down to Puerto Rico for the hurricane, being like just kind of dumping the diapers.

Okay, have fun shitting. Now, wouldn't it draw more suspicion to buy from multiple stores? Just get it all from one place. You're still buying baby formula in diapers. You're just showing up with diapers to another store buying baby formula. That's weird. Hey, no, you got a specific ass baby.

How many of these babies are pains in the asses in that way? You know, the only one shrimp flavored formula. Yeah. Well, I think you would buy all of them like in a clump, but not go to the same store like multiple times because it'd be weird if it's like, oh, here's the grandfather coming to buy the formula and the diapers once more. You know, just to alleviate your suspicions, this is all for me. I am running.

as hell and I like my food as soft as an egg. But I hate eggs! So yes, congratulate to me. I'm my own grandpa. Like the song.

The thing about Kirsten, though, is that the child gave Fritzl even more control over his daughter. After Kirsten was born, Elizabeth did whatever it took to keep her alive. And with each successive child, Fritzl's control only increased. To that point, just a couple of months after Kirsten was born, Elizabeth was pregnant again. In late 1989, she gave birth to her second child, a boy named Stefan.

And like, Kirsten... Is it Stefan? Stefan? I think it's Stefan. I think Stefan, you know, we all... It's the associations of the name that I can't get past. I can see it coming out with a...

Like a duck tail, grease, like hair cut, like little sunglasses. Okay, Stefan. We'll go with Stefan. Well, like Kirsten, Stefan's birthday was written down on a piece of paper so Elizabeth could keep track of her children's ages. But while one might think having two infant children would make a lot of noise that would be heard above ground, Fritzl had built his dungeon with extreme skill when it came to keeping it hidden.

No one heard anything that would have made them think, hey, sounds like the backyard screaming. No, it's noise rock. It's my new album called Sounds of Unpleasantness. And I've been working on it for some time now. It's stuff like gargling while, my favorite track is gargling while drowning in the top. Can I be on the album? No. No.

You're too fat. Actually, my friend Addy, who, you know, he's a co-owner of the Reykjavik Grapevine, he has a noise rock outfit called AMFJ, and he used to sample his infant daughter screaming for his songs. People in Brooklyn loved it. Yeah, I bet they did. Oh, this is almost like having your own child. Yeah.

Well, the story that Fritzl had told when Elizabeth disappeared, that she'd ran away to join a cult, it was still working extraordinarily well. Most people who had known Elizabeth simply forgot about her. And when her siblings were old enough to move out,

They did and tried their best to forget their time under Joseph Fritzl's thumb and therefore forget their sister Elizabeth. Yeah, these are definitely people who are like, ah, yeah, I don't talk to my family. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just quick, that's it, enough, and I don't want to go into detail about it. But it sounds like they almost in a way viewed Elizabeth as like succeeding in getting out and getting away. The only child who was left behind was Joseph Jr., who actually went through a very light version of what Elizabeth endured.

See, Joseph Jr. had an unspecified learning disability that kept him from living on his own. So Joseph put him to work as a houseboy and personal servant, only allowing him to leave the Fritzl home once a week. Oh, so he had two prisoners. Yes, he had two. That's the incredible thing is that Joseph Jr. is never talked about. And the book that we used for this series, Secrets in the Cellar, mentions him very briefly.

But no one mentions, like, he had a mentally handicapped son that he kept as a house slave. Jesus Christ. I mean, that's so hard to teach him to make sushi. How are you going to get him good at all the various different cuisines you want to try? Austrian sushi sounds like the worst thing you could ever ask. It's Vienna sausage wrapped in crook and noodle, and honestly, it sounds delicious. It's shrimp thrown against a wall. That sounds good.

That's how I like it. Good and flung. But as Joseph Fritzl's children were leaving home upstairs, Elizabeth was giving birth to more kids in the dungeon.

Three years after Stefan was born, Elizabeth gave birth to her third child, Lisa. Now, the 15 by 15 foot room was holding two toddlers and an infant, so Elizabeth begged her father for more room so her kids wouldn't have to watch as she was periodically raped. But since Joseph Fritzl either couldn't help but be evil or couldn't be bothered to pitch in, aside from the actual construction, he forced Elizabeth and the children to do most of the labor to expand the dungeon.

They dug out a tunnel from the dungeon to the house's original 1890 cellar with their bare hands. It took years. I was going to say, those are tiny hands. Yeah.

Oh, tiny hands and also very weak at the same time. Extraordinarily weak. And doing it a chunk at a time, like literally just going down and just moving it ahead inches at a time, inches at a time. And he'd come and he'd take out the dirt and like scatter it around like the backyard. That's how little they were getting done like each time. It's just like scatter it.

enough to scatter in the back yeah very much so now as a digger how long do you think it would take you to do this yeah let's say i have you in an underground subterranean bunker and i'm making babies with you right all right what are you gonna do you're making in defiance of god and nature you're making babies with me no it's because it shows that i'm right right in a way the fact that i can make love to you and a baby is made means technically my actions are correct we use the great

Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger to show us how a man can give birth to a baby. Wow, it actually all runs together. It goes back to the beginning of Austrian history. Adolf Hitler who had one nut and then the other baby, he imported one of his nuts. And then it goes directly to Arnold Schwarzenegger pregnant with Danny DeVito's child. I cannot give an accurate answer because I do not know what kind of soil I will be digging in. And the kind of soil I will be digging in would...

change my answer drastically. One word, Eddie. Construction guys never give a straight answer. Eddie, one word, evasion. That's all I'm hearing. Sounds like you're running up the tap. Yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, obviously once I'm done breastfeeding her, I can kind of, I could see this taking three or four weeks. But Elizabeth would only have two pairs of hands to help her dig.

Because in May of 1993, Fritzl told her that he was taking her youngest child, Lisa, upstairs to be raised by him and his wife, Rosemary. Moving on up, moving on up to the upstairs, to the big living room that I sit in.

Now, this was a bold move for a number of reasons. But in the end, it actually helped Joseph's cover story. Fritzl made Elizabeth write another note saying that while her parents may be shocked to hear from her after all these years, it's almost 10 years by this point, she was nevertheless leaving them her daughter Lisa to raise. The note claimed that the cult she'd run off to join had a rule where each person could have only two children each and she'd reached the maximum already.

Therefore, child number three had to be given up, and she figured giving it to her family to raise was the best option. At least that's what the note said. No one ever thought to try and stop the cult? Well, that's... It was a fantasy world. All of it. But like the police were notified about the cult. Here's the thing. This sounds ridiculous, but every single person who needed to buy this story believed it.

Rosemary Fritzl accepted it immediately. The government accepted it when Joseph took steps to properly adopt his own incestuous grandchild. And social workers accepted it when they made regular visits to the Fritzl home.

nobody questioned it. They just thought, Colt, okay, I don't really want to ask more questions here. Well, one thing is lawyer illustrated that seems to make, could kind of make some of this make a little bit more sense is how he was viewed in the area is that he was viewed as a no-nonsense, straight,

laced businessman. And a lot of times people don't push these questions hard if they go and they're living in a quote-unquote nice house and the kids are dressed and fed. It's a very low bar. It's a very, like, in a way, like... Well, the story's very embarrassing. And they don't want to embarrass this businessman. They don't want to embarrass this person who's seen as somewhat upstanding in the community. So they don't really ask questions. Yeah, because who could...

resist the wonderful like neck nuzzles of a mustachioed father with burnt hair from the from Sesame Street and they all knew that being like oh value she can't handle those wonderful sort of brush mark kisses then to obviously that she was deficient as a daughter and

It's not any besmirchment upon these fatherhood skills of Josef Ritzel because he did everything he could. He's not covered in blood. I guess it makes sense because if I got a letter from Holden saying he took his family to a cult, I'd be like, oh, okay, good.

Better off. Good luck. Really, the only misstep Fretzel made in his mind was that he could have made far more money from government benefits by fostering Lisa instead of adopting her, which was not a mistake he would make twice. Fly from your glade.

Hey, everyone. Ed Larson from Last Podcast on the left here. And if you're a great consumer, then I'm sure you're listening to me right now on your Raycon everyday earbuds. They got new ones coming out. They keep updating these things. They have a 32-hour battery life now. Can you believe it? That's so long. That's multiple hours.

flights to Australia. You can go to Australia and back and not even recharge these things. It's a wonderful thing. Um, they also have multi-point connectivity and it lets you pair with two devices at once. And they're easy to use. I am a technical fool. I don't know how to use anything. I have to call our buddy Rob every time I open my email.

It is a mess.

You know what happened with these everyday earbuds? They just worked. They just worked every time I use them. It's so easy. I can't not use them sometimes. They work so well. Raycon, I'm coming for you. I'm going to use the last podcast code. All right, so stop the fuss. Go to buyraycon.com slash last today to get 20% to 50% off site-wide. That's right. You'll get up to 50% off everything.

thing on Raycon's website when you go to buyraycon.com slash last buyraycon.com slash last I'm doing it myself join the club baby we love you over here at Last Podcast on the left and we love you Raycon rock and roll

With new Home Internet Plus from T-Mobile, you get internet right where you want it. With Wi-Fi mesh, you can boost your connection to places it hasn't reached before. Like a boring basement that you can turn into a podcast studio. For a limited time, get a free upgrade to T-Mobile Home Internet Plus while supplies last. Home Internet Plus starts at $50 a month with auto pay and any voice line.

Check availability at T-Mobile.com slash home internet and get internet right where you want it.

During congestion, customers on this plan may notice speeds lower than other customers and further reduction if using greater than 1.2 terabytes per month due to data prioritization. After $20 bill credit plus $5 per month without auto pay. Debit or bank account required. Regulatory fees included for qualifying accounts. $35 connection charge applies.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Oh, that's the sound a ghost makes when it's sitting down. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Oh, spooky. It's a spooky season. Don't you want to make a website to tell everyone that you're not a werewolf?

That's what you can do on Squarespace. Oh, thematically themed, spooky website mentioned. Go and build it if you dare. Because if you don't sign up for Squarespace, your life might be in danger. Remember that this Halloween season, as we get closer to the veil of the undead, only Squarespace stands between you and the inevitable judgment of your very soul.

Check out squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, squarespace.com slash left to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

By 1994, Elizabeth had been in the cellar for 10 years, and she was suffering a myriad of health problems as a result. She had an extreme vitamin deficiency, she had anemia, and her teeth were rotting out of her mouth. She, however, had lived her childhood in sunlight, which could not be said of her children, Kirsten and Stephan. They were now five and six years old and had never once been outside the confines of the dungeon.

After much begging, Fritzl did provide them with vitamin D supplements and an ultraviolet lamp. But other than that, they never received any medical care outside of aspirin for the near 20 years the two oldest children spent underground. Hey there, you piece of shit narrator! That's where you were wrong! I left out the big flat rock, and they had a big thing you could go lick at the tube with the water in it, whatever they wanted. You could bring up the salt lake. They never got it!

No one brings it up. No one talks about the fact that I used to bring perfectly smoked piles of smelt for them every other Sunday for them to use as deodorant. And you know what they say, whoever smelt it dealt it. Do so if I could. I would put you first against the wall. Now, a number of things happen when a human being is completely deprived of sunlight.

Besides the vitamin deficiencies, people lose all sense of time itself, which leads to sleep patterns that don't make sense to our bodies. Besides the obvious fatigue, extremely irregular sleep patterns cause headaches, dizziness, and a loss of coordination. These symptoms were only compounded by the underground family's lack of oxygen.

Did they have any idea when a day started and ended? No. No. Well, Elizabeth had... She definitely had a concept of dates. She knew how old all the kids were. She knew what day they were born on. I think she asked him what the days were. That's probably right. And I think that he did sort of... Because he would come down. One of the things that they... No, he wouldn't turn off the lights and go, Good night!

And then turn off the lights. The lights were on all the time. Do you hear those birds? Street tickets time to get up! Oh, you don't. But no, it is... He legitimately did keep her, like...

At this point, like at first, it was very much like a prisoner and captive. She obviously had to fake on some level, like a meeting point between him. She began to, out of her own need for survival, would begin to engage with him on a more personal basis. And he'd come down and they would have like check-ins. Because at this point, he views her as his wife in a way. Like it's like his basement wife. His dungeon wife. Yeah. And so when he would,

talk with her, like he would fill her in on the news of the day and stuff. But but it's all from his perspective. So it's all just stuff like, you know, I won a gold medal in the slalom yesterday. And then everybody, the mayor said, give me a prize for my penis on Thursday. This Friday, just, you know, the thing is that Fritzl, he knew how to work with concrete, but he didn't know shit about HVAC.

So Elizabeth and her kids, deprived of oxygen, spent most of their time lying down or sitting due to constant exhaustion.

Lack of oxygen also makes it hard to think, which led to emotional and comprehension problems in all of them. I mean, people might ask, you know, why didn't Elizabeth ever try to escape or anything like that? She couldn't fucking think. None of them could think because they couldn't breathe. This is a, this is common. They, you know, we always just, we'll talk about the Natasha Kampusch too. And they all talk about this concept of like, well, why didn't you leave this type of extreme torture? Yeah. It,

your brain. Yeah, it does. You know, it limits the neural connections. Without societal connection, without affection, without these things that we view as extremely common because none of us are bound to a basement, you don't understand what it does to you. Yeah, I mean, we talked so much in Patty Hearst about what just her time... But she only got the one chunk of time. This is 24 years. That's exactly what I was saying. She just had a...

relatively small amount of time. And fucked her up. Yeah, in the closet and completely fucked her up for years. This is over two decades. Yeah. And also, no matter how much she hates him, and obviously she fucking hates him more than anyone can hate anybody. Of course. You need some sort of conversation. Oh, it's how it goes. The human animal and our brains, it's why we evolved so well and for so long is because we're highly adaptable.

We can make pretty much any circumstance at some point feel comfortable. Yeah, we make it work. Just fucked. Well, as far as what they ate, Fritzl only provided frozen, canned or processed food. The underground family never had anything fresh. And the lack of nutrition, sleep, oxygen and sunlight meant that there was rarely a time when at least one of them weren't suffering from an infection of one kind or another.

Now, Fritzl usually drove out of town to buy groceries for Elizabeth and the kids, again to avoid suspicion. But when he didn't have time to make the drive, he would take advantage of his position as the landlord of multiple apartment complexes. Yes! That's right! Oh, yeah, I forgot almost! I'm a landlord, too! Oh, yeah!

Yes! I'll go take it from them. I break in. I get to whatever I want. I own the building. I can sell it underneath them. Make them all homeless. Just thinking about it makes me want to come in my ledger horse. And everyone else had to foot the bill because he had people living for free. Yeah. Well, that's actually, we'll get to that here in a second. I mean, Fritzl had keys to everyone's apartments. So when a tenant was away from home, Fritzl would let himself in and steal their food. Oh, fuck you. Yeah.

Is this the worst thing he's done to us? The thing was, like, everyone noticed it was happening, but no one could explain it. One tenant thought he was losing his fucking mind because things he bought at the store would simply disappear from his home. Yeah, I think I was filled with worms. Your brain, your stomach. It's just like, am I worms? I think I'm worms.

The tenants who lived in the apartments attached to the Fritzl home also had high unexplainable electric bills. This goes to your point. These came because Fritzl had rerouted electricity from the apartments down to the dungeon, meaning that the tenants were partially and unwittingly funding Fritzl's extreme sexual deviancy. And what is this, Brooklyn? Yeah, literally. My next destination, Bushwick. Ha ha ha!

I want to take some time to thank Frank Oz for being on the show today. Yes. Left a little bit of calm on my daughter, I did. Evidence.

Now, when it came to educating the children, Elizabeth did the best she could. Using cardboard and glue, she'd make pictures for her kids that told stories of pirates, princesses, and fairies. Like J.K. Rowling. Yeah. And while this does sound somewhat impossible, Elizabeth also took great pains to maintain the illusion that the situation in the dungeon was totally normal.

If only to give the kids at least a shot at momentary happiness. And I bet it helps her too in a way. Yeah. Like this can be like we can all pretend for a second like I'm just a regular mom and we're in the living room. Mm-hmm.

Otherwise, she would have had to kill everybody and herself. Yes. And that's the thing. She never told them that they were all prisoners, but neither did she ignore the world upstairs. She educated the kids about the sun, the moon, nature, and weather, none of which were things the kids had ever experienced. Like, just imagine that. Like, being told about the concept of weather, but not knowing what weather was. I feel like that makes, like, duality.

Dweezil Zappa or something. It kind of explains a lot of Nepo babies. They know what weather is. But I feel like they get special weather. Like they go to a place and they're told they're like, awesome weather. Jaden, look up there. That cloud, that's for you. You know, like stuff like that. We made that cloud. We purchased that cloud just for your birthday. Yeah, I'm your father, Will Smith. Bit of a farter.

Oh my God, that story. Man, I just laughed about it all day. Honestly, Elizabeth should be happy that Will Smith wasn't her capture because then also she'd have to deal with the horrendous A-level fart. For those of you who don't know, new story just came out. Barry Sonnenfeld says that Will Smith farted so much on the set of Men in Black, they had to shut down production. Shut down production. That's an expensive fart. Yeah, dude.

Insurance doesn't cover shit like that. They don't know. They were like, what? That can happen? The thing I saw a couple of days ago, someone said that they had to shut down a Godspeed U Black Emperor show because a guy was farting so much that he shat himself. God.

That's not even a fart problem. That's not a fart problem. That's a shit problem. Oh, yeah, but Will Smith does have a fart problem. I can't fire Will Smith, but I can fire the caterer. He said he wanted the seven bean salad. He said, I didn't know. I didn't know I was eating and abetting. Well, back to Elizabeth. Oh, man. Okay. Well, Elizabeth.

We're going to put the picture here right now on social media of Yosef Fritzl on vacation. We just texted back and forth to each other, and that man is, what would you describe him? He looks like if Beef Wellington was on vacation. Yeah.

Too tan for an Austrian. Very tan, spread white eagle with his big ass bulge. He definitely had a fucking wiener on him. You think so? Because I looked at the picture and I saw a flatness there. Like I saw nothing. Let's pull it up.

You get the text as well, Rob. Just type in Joseph Fredsall on vacation. Oh, yeah. There's my boy. That's him right there. That is a flat... It's just the belly that makes his dick look small. That's all of us. He's like a Ken doll down there. Yeah, there's nothing. He doesn't even have big nuts. I'm going to have to go with Marcus on this one. Unless it's flat. It could be just flat penis. What the hell?

I defy you to make 19 children with your family. Okay? Wow, that is a... Ooh, man. Technically, that is the lord of... You'd call that a father body. That is a father figure. Now, his arms are completely covered in hair from shoulder to wrist. Whatever, man. That's called normal. And it's called... Technically, he's very virile. Okay.

Don't fucking defend Joseph Frenzel's virility in an attempt to save face for yourself and you're fucking into extreme body hair. I'm just saying it's a part of why I...

He's going to wake up hard as a dickens. If you're going to call him virile, you have to put criminally in front of him. Yes, he is criminally virile. For about nine months after Elizabeth gave birth to Monica, in December of 1994, Fritzl stole the child away and took it upstairs. She made Elizabeth write another note almost exactly like the one she'd written when Joseph brought up Elizabeth's third born. This time, however, Joseph Fritzl took the ruse even further, saying,

Taking an incredible risk for seemingly no reward other than to make a fool out of his wife, Fritzl left the infant on his own doorstep, drove to a phone booth, and called Rosemarie. But when Rosemarie Fritzl answered, Joseph didn't speak in his own voice. Instead, the nearly 60-year-old Fritzl impersonated Elizabeth by speaking in a hushed falsetto whisperer.

He said, quote, Hello, it's me. Your daughter you haven't seen in many years. Don't be angry. I just left her at your door. Sorry. I was wondering when Miss Piggy was going to come. I can't tell you where I'm at. Bye. Come here. Nailed it.

You know, I got caught doing this when I was younger. Really? Yeah, I was dating some girl and her father wouldn't let me see her ever, and so I tried to call her house as her English friend Faith. Oh my God, Eddie. What a penis will do. Because this is before you even joined drama. This is before you did musicals. Give us your teenage British girl accent. Oh, hello. Is Dorothy there?

No, you can't fuck my daughter. No, get the fuck off the phone. You're trying to fuck my daughter. I know you, you fat fuck. I've seen you walk around. It's just a friend, Faith, and I'd like to say hi.

She doesn't have a friend, Faith. I know she doesn't. Your throat is thicker than the phone. You know what made me even sadder about this guy? He actually wrote the Miami Dolphins fight song. And he hated me. He really hated me. It's like the saddest you two looked the whole day.

We've been steeped in the Fritzl story for weeks. That's new sadness. Yeah, that's new sadness. That's personal sadness for a friend. It's different. It's because you were trying to fuck his daughter. Yeah. I didn't even know what fucking was back then. I bet he did see you walking around like fucking asshole walking around. He definitely had his daughter was dating the biggest boy in school.

Speaking of the biggest boy in school. Yeah. I mean, when Fritzl called up with doing this falsetto voice, this high-pitched voice, Rosemarie bought it. And I think maybe it's because she didn't, at this point, she didn't have any other choice but to keep lying to herself about the extreme weirdness of this situation. I got an email, which I do tend to agree with, what there's almost no way.

That she didn't know something. That a lot of these people don't, like, do know something. I think Rosemary has also just, has the same effect of being so abused and so afraid of Yosef for so long that she legitimately just doesn't, it's almost like you could have just brought him in the house. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you could have just brought the kid into the house and I wouldn't have even said anything. But you're going through this whole thing, which in a way, she must have been like,

Joseph and his games. You know, like almost charmed by the linked scene. You're married for as long as we've been married. You've got to mix it up. You just know your picadillos of your man. These aren't picadillos. What Jeffrey Epstein did was shenanigans. These are picadillos. What is a picadillo? Oh, it's having sex with your daughter and making multiple children with her. Oh, man, I wish I could go back to that.

knowing. No, it's just a funny little thing that you do. It's like a thing. It's like a thing about me. I think it's like funny. A piccadillo about me. You know how you eat spoonfuls of cream cheese straight out of the bucket? That's a piccadillo. Oh, okay. Nice. It's just a funny little thing you do. Scallions cream cheese. Ha ha ha!

See now Eddie's smiling again. All we had to do was bring up cream cheese and he's ready to go. See? He's not even thinking about picadillo. I'm sitting on some. Unbelievable. Derailed.

Well, after the phone call, Rosemary reported it to the police, and within a few weeks, Rosemary and Joseph Fritzl were legally appointed Monica's foster parents. I mean, all this stuff was on the up and up. Everybody knew about everything when these kids were brought upstairs. And it just seems to be fine because he was considered to be a successful local businessman. And when Joseph Fritzl turned 60 years old...

He bought a Mercedes Benz and drove around in his new car wearing his customary expensive tailor-made Italian suits complete with shiny crocodile shoes. And as far as that famously wavy head of hair went, Fritzl got that installed at an expensive hair transplant clinic in Vienna. He was very concerned with his appearance. Very, yes. How much did that cost, asking for Henry?

I will not do it. I will not do it. There is a service in Turkey that you go. Apparently you go. It's like, it's apparently, it's like a thing. You, it's like a whole all inclusive where you go to a place. Not a lot here, huh? No, it's because it's bad for you. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, it didn't really work because you notice now is he's older, right?

If you look at the older pictures of Josef Ritzel, this is also one of the major crimes that he did. He shows how bad a hair transplant is because you could see the front line of his hair where it was installed is there, but then he's bald behind it. Just still every time I look at him, I still see the Carlo Farts guy. I mean, they look eerily similar. Well, I hope wherever he's buried, someone paid for the plot.

Ted Pillman, I think, is too poor to die. I think that he's around. The thing is about Joseph Fritzl, by all appearances, he was a wealthy, successful man who carved out a chunk of Austria for himself in the real estate and property management businesses. But even though Fritzl was good at what he did, his spending far outweighed his income.

He was deeply in debt and had leveraged many of his properties just to stay afloat, all to keep one step ahead of the banks. Oh, at the banks, I heard he had several incestments. Incestments.

Instead of investments, he had assessments. Are you happy with this? Joe cost you all money. People running away. The expenses at home, meanwhile, were piling up. In April of 1996, Elizabeth gave birth for a fifth time. I mean, technically fifth and sixth. Yeah, fifth and sixth. Twins named Alex and Michael. Now,

Now, Alex did all right, but Michael developed severe respiratory problems almost immediately. And actually, she's kind of lucky at this point that this is just the first kid to be born with extreme birth defects. It's wild. Yeah. Actually, it's like I can't believe like I think that's a part of what makes this story so big was the fact like in a very perverse way. It was like luck where she because.

Because these kids all kind of came out normal, there was no real reason for the situation to hit the stakes it would need to take for it to pop. But no one knows these kids, so we really don't know how normal they actually are. Well, they're out now, you know...

We'll get into it in episode three, but we actually know a fair amount about what they were like, how they acted when they first got out. But, you know, we'll talk about that more in the third episode. Okay, cool. Well, Elizabeth begged Fritzl to take the newborn to the hospital, but Fritzl refused, saying, what will be, will be.

And so, after several days in which Elizabeth, Kirsten, and Stefan had to watch an infant slowly die, Fritzl took the corpse and tossed it in the same incinerator he used to burn garbage down in the cellar. But perhaps because the infant's death was emotionally devastating, Fritzl finally put a TV and VCR in the cellar in 1999, 12 years after Elizabeth had been kidnapped, halfway into her time underground.

I think that it's important for us now that we've all been through so much and this has been such a trying time for us with the health of the baby. I think it's all, it's time for all of us to sit down and watch scary movie. I'll explain to you a lot of the references. Obviously, a lot of these you have seen, but this is absolutely hilarious. The Wayans brothers are unstoppable right now. And I think that you would, it's time for a laugh.

Well, not surprisingly, the TV was left on day and night, although the kids had a hard time understanding just what it was they were watching. As author John Glatt put it, it was as if the TV programs were being broadcast from another planet.

Likewise, the kids learned history and geography from textbooks Fretzel provided, but since the kids had only ever known the dungeon. I really can't stress that enough. Concepts like kilometers or World War II or Napoleon, these could only be cross-referenced with what the kids saw on TV. That's only what you researched when you were a child. The rest of us like Legos and V-Man. I also like...

I still like Legos and E-Man. I love Legos and E-Man. I still love Legos. These kids didn't know anything about the Nazi death camps. These kids didn't know anything about the horrors and atrocities. Nothing about Kristallnacht. God. Don't even get me started on what they didn't know about Ernst Rommel.

Now, when Fritzl came down to the cellar, which was not as often as you'd think, he treated his visits like family get togethers. He'd bring small presents for the children and sexy lingerie for Elizabeth, which was all bought on a credit card opened in Elizabeth's name. So it looked like she was out in the world still buying shit.

See, and it's kind of fucked up too because he missed all the daddy stuff in the sexual world. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? What? Missed all the daddy stuff in the sexual world? No, it's everybody. People, they say daddy and they say call me daddy and then the other show has got the daddy in it and then, you know, like it's all about being daddy and they say- Oh, that's the fucked up thing, huh?

Yeah. Well, I think he got plenty of it, probably. I'm just saying he got more than most. There would be more official merch for him. More official merch that he would enjoy, that he would buy for her and bring her, like, buy her a Call Me Daddy, like...

Tank top. Yeah. Take it down. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Except I guess he would be wearing the tank top, wouldn't he? I'm the daddy. That's what's funny. It's crazy enough, right? Yeah, it's really fucked up that he missed all that. Yeah, it wasn't until he got to vacation until he was called Poppy. I just missed so much. But...

When Fritzl forced Elizabeth to wear the lingerie, the children knew that it was time to run to another room because Fritzl was about to rape their mother. Usually he'd have porn playing on the VCR he provided, and sometimes he'd force Elizabeth to reenact his favorite scenes in a special rubber padded room that he had built specifically for rape.

But speaking of construction, Fritzl hadn't thought too much about height when he'd built the cellar. Even though Fritzl was six foot tall, each room topped out at five feet, six inches. Stefan Fritzl, however, the second born, he would eventually grow to be five foot nine.

As a result, Stefan could never stand up straight after he passed 5'6", while some of the other kids walked around stooped over like monkeys even after they were freed. I mean, think about that. Your entire existence, 5'6 ceiling. Jesus Christ. And you know nothing else. Henry would be fine. Ha!

5'7", it would be difficult. And honestly, I like sunshine. But when the underground family walked around, they weren't really walking around.

Even though Fritzl had expanded the dungeon by three rooms, there were two bedrooms and the padded room. It was still tiny. And each room was connected by passages no more than two feet wide. I mean, the, the pictures are, um, highly disturbing of like what life was like down there. There aren't very many. There were only two released, I believe. Um,

But they are extraordinarily disturbing. Oh, no. Those are pictures Rob just pulled up of his prison cell, which is almost twice the size of where he kept her. Really? Yeah, he built his own bathroom. Like, you did get a, yeah. No, no, it's absolutely fucking, God fucking awful. His prison cell looked nice. It is.

It's like log cabin. No, it is nice. It's a good vibe. It looks like an Airbnb. No, the Austrian prison is nice. It's better than like any hotel in Midtown. Now, in addition, the walls were always damp and covered in mildew and everyone had constant fungal infections as a result. Again, the only treatment they ever got, despite Fritzl's wealth, was aspirin.

The issue of space could be why Joseph Fritzl, in August of 1997, took the surviving twin infant Alex upstairs, the third such child to be taken away from Elizabeth.

By this point, though, Fritzl barely needed the customary note from Elizabeth saying she wanted her parents to raise another child. It's like, oops, here's another. Yeah, they just she just didn't care. And she just assumed I believe that Rosemary also maybe put it up to he's having sex with many, many sex workers and bringing home the children. She knows, I think, that he goes on sex tourism. Yeah.

and that he would go and come back. And I think that's a lot of what she just assumed. This is some affair partner and she just didn't want to deal with it. Do you think Elizabeth felt relief whenever he moved the child upstairs? No, I think she felt intense grief. Yeah. Well, intense grief, but also, you know, the knowledge that the child would have a better life. Yeah. Upstairs. But you also have no idea if the thing's even alive. But he's also telling her that one day we're all going to be upstairs. Like he's starting to say stuff like that. Well,

I mean, concerning the authorities, though, instead of thinking that maybe it was weird that so many kids were ostensibly being dumped on the Fritzl steps, authorities accepted it. It was just one of those things, you know? It's just one of those crazy things. They probably also thought he was the quote-unquote illegitimate children of sex workers. But it's like, yeah, every few years, the crazy Fritzl girl who ran off to join the cult, she gets pregnant, she drops off a baby, we got to do a bunch of paperwork, and then...

just one more guy in Amstetten. Yeah, I'm sure the cops even looked at Fritzl as a good guy. Someone who takes in kids who need help and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the children who went upstairs, they were far better off than the ones left downstairs because Elizabeth's other children were largely raised by Rosemary. These kids went to school. They ate. They had sunlight. They lived as good of a life as was possible with Joseph Fritzl in their home.

But lest ye think he began to mellow with age, Fritzl was introduced to Viagra when he was in his 60s, which made his frighteningly strong libido even more violent and long-lasting. Let's just say I'm a people pleaser.

I just want them to know Yosef is coming. He's bringing that pipe. No matter what's going on, I'm super stressed at home. My basement wife is on my ass about sunlight. My upstairs wife is just... I hate the way she sits and stares and says nothing. It just drives me nuts. Even now it's annoying to me. The way she breathes is annoying me. So just nice to let off some steam in here.

You know, just sit and talk. Bye. And how did you get the Viagra? What did you say to the doctor? Oh, I told him, you know me, my noodle isn't as noodle as I want it to be. And he was like, give me a wink. And he told me, tell me what I need to do. Have you ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home? Good. Because no matter where you go, just know someone is watching you, waiting for you to be at your most vulnerable moment.

And that's when they will attack. Unless you have SimpliSafe. Yeah, the stakes are that high. SimpliSafe has protected my home ever since I've ever had a home. And the security that they provide exceeds all expectations. Thank you, SimpliSafe. Sometimes when I'm scared at home alone, I just call the customer service line and I talk to them.

And they're so understanding because they know, too, if they don't have SimpliSafe in their homes as employees, someone's going to come and steal them, too. That's why SimpliSafe is so important. It makes me feel confident that if the man who is coming to kidnap me in my sleep comes while I'm at work, he will have to wait and know to wait until I'm home and I've seen him. Maybe I can get ahead and offer money to not take me because I'll give you double.

If you're trying to kidnap me, I'll pay you double whatever it is they're giving you. And know that, okay? SimpliSafe, no set. So thank you, SimpliSafe. Protect your home with 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. Plus a free indoor security camera when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash LPOTL. That's simplisafe.com slash LPOTL. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Everyone loves a good deal, right? Yep.

So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for $15 a month with the purchase of a three-month plan, we had to call them on it. I called my deal lawyer. And he was busy, and I actually had his assistant in. Turns out, it really is that easy to get wireless for $15 a month. Yep. The longest part of the process is the time you spend on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. I say ghost him.

All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. G-g-g-g-g-g. All right? I love Mint Mobile. It's cheap. I love Ryan Reynolds. Handsome as a devil himself. He slings these phones faster than anybody I've ever seen sling a phone since Naomi Campbell threw her phone at her assistant.

But I'll say these mint mobiles are just absolutely dynamite. To steal another catchphrase, you're going to love your mint mobile because I'll tell you what, we all hate cinnamon mobile. That's for certain. I'm keeping that one. We're keeping that one.

To get this customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash LPOTL. That's mintmobile.com slash LPOTL. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash LPOTL. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

Are you holding back on travel plans this holiday break because you're afraid of the language gap? Well, no need to moin the gap if you have Babbel. Speak like a whole new you with Babbel, the language learning app that gets you talking. With quick 10-minute lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts, Babbel gets you talking a new language in three weeks. Thank the Lord, because I need to learn Norwegian.

Because my goal is to go over to Northern Europe, deep in the hinterlands, and find Santa myself and get $1 billion. And I know that the only true way to do it is to fool him using his native tongue, Norwegian, to convince him I'm a member of the government.

And he needs to come with me. Then I can proceed to knock him out, bag him, zip tie him, put him in a boat, bring him to America, make him give me $1 billion. And that's all thanks to Babbel. Because here's a special holiday deal for our listeners. Right now, get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for Last Podcast on the Left listeners at babbel.com slash left.

Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash left. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash left. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Well, as if what Fritzl was doing at home wasn't enough, he was also visiting brothels well into his senior years, and his tastes were getting stranger as he got older. One sex worker called him sick beyond imagination, but she also didn't elaborate. It's like she couldn't even talk about what he made her do, while another said that he forced her to call him teacher for some reason. Now, in 1998, Fritzl went on another month-long trip to Thailand, followed by two weeks in Italy.

But just before he left, he stockpiled massive amounts of food in the dungeon so his underground family wouldn't starve to death. But while Joseph was on his six-week European-style vacation, another Austrian was making his own incursion into the world of dungeon kidnapping.

His name was Wolfgang Priklopil. And in March of 1998, he kidnapped a 10-year-old stranger, a 10-year-old little girl named Natasha Kampusch, and locked her in his basement for eight years. Now, Wolfgang Priklopil, he is not quite the charmer that Joseph Ritzel is. No, he's a technician, a communications technician. Wolfgang Priklopil is a fascinating person.

Fucking weirdo. Yeah. Who is... This guy's fucking weird. I know nothing about him. Oh, well, you'll learn some. Mm-hmm. See, Pricklepill had also constructed a sex slave dungeon in his cellar in the southern Austrian town of Strasshof an der Nordbahn, which was about an hour from Vienna.

This one, however, this cellar, was far smaller at approximately 5 feet by 10 feet. Just room enough for a bed and a ladder. I was watching a very interesting documentary on him, and you could see his buddy. The only way to really describe him is that he does look like somebody Indiana Jones punches at the beginning of the movie.

of a Nazi sequence. It's this guy, he looks like the first attack. And he was, quote unquote, Wolfgang's co-worker. And he says in this whole thing, he's like, you know, Wolfgang came up to me with this concept of making a soundproof room, and he showed me the materials that he was working on, and I looked at them, and I said, oh, Wolfgang, this will not absorb enough sound. You need to make this more. And I gave him all the instructions, and I guess he followed them to the letter. Yeah.

He's just sitting there like, oh, God. Well, Natasha spent 3,096 days in Pricklip Hill's thrall, having been abducted in the most stereotypical way possible. He just dragged her into his white van off the street. It's very long legs. Yes. But to that point, police did question Pricklip Hill during the initial investigation, much like British police questioned Peter Sutcliffe during the Yorkshire Ripper mass canvas.

Also like the Brits, Austrian authorities were satisfied by Pricklepill's explanation that he was alone on the morning of the kidnapping, and they therefore left him to his devices. I'm always alone! I don't know why you think I would be...

Now, Natasha was not allowed to leave the chamber at any time during her first six months of captivity. But unlike Joseph Fritzl, Pricklip Hill did eventually let her out. For many years, Natasha was allowed to leave during the day, just as long as she stayed under Pricklip Hill's close watch. Once Natasha turned 18, 18 years old,

eight years after she was kidnapped, Pricklepill actually started taking her outside of the house. Because, you know, at this point, no one's going to recognize her. Oh, so at first it was just like the backyard and stuff. Yeah, at first it's just the backyard, upstairs, but then eventually, yeah, he took her outside of the house, but he threatened to kill her if she made any noise. And she thought that he always had a gun on him at all times, so she took him at his word. In fact, he once took her skiing for a few hours near Vienna.

Although Natasha maintained she had no real chance of escape. Yeah, because she had skis on her feet. You know what? That's really true. Yeah, it's hard to do. Mostly, though, Natasha spent her time upstairs doing housework or cooking for Pricklepill when she wasn't locked in the cellar. He would beat her so hard she could hardly walk. He'd starve her to make her physically weak and would, of course, rape her repeatedly. Like Joseph Fritzl, Pricklepill also lied to Natasha by saying that booby traps were in place to prevent her escape.

But instead of just the cellar being booby-trapped, Pricklip Hill told her that all the doors and windows on the house were rigged with high explosives set to go off should she ever try to leave. It's so crazy, because if that's what you thought, it's interesting that they still...

had the will to live. Because it's like, eight years, you tell me there's explosions and the house is going to blow up, it's like, fuck it, let's rock, bro. Yeah, exactly. That's different. You're a big macho man. And she was a little girl. But Natasha Kampush kind of talks about it very interestingly because she said she viewed herself as

She did have a very strong will to live and she viewed herself as living in defiance of him and that she was going to live no matter what. And according to her, she was looking for as many outs as she could, but it was the way he did it. Like there was a couple of things that he said to her that was also part of the thing. So the first thing she, he would come in and he would,

bring her presents. Like he'd bring her fancy croissants. It started with the expensive toys. Then you'd bring stuff like piles of mouthwash and scotch tape to her and say like, you can play with this. And then eventually he started telling her that he was a reincarnated Egyptian God and that, that she just had to go with it. She literally had to sit and be like, yep, you're Cyrus. And he's like, yes.

Not so. Oh, send in my twos. I'm Mr. Farrah Mann. And then you have to call him maestro over and over again. But then largely, eventually, even the sexual nature of the relationship changed. The relationship, the rape changed to him coming in crying in her arms like a toddler, like crying. So he would like flip it on her where she would sort of be the adult comforting him in these very...

I'm gonna go, honestly, odd circumstances. Yeah, real strange. It's like if someone with dementia was totally in charge. Yeah. Wow, what's that like? If you only have, like, three presidents like that. It's like, literally, three of them. But finally, on August 23rd, 2006, Natasha had a chance to make a run for it. Sometime that afternoon, she was vacuuming Pricklip Hill's white van in the garden when Pricklip Hill got a call on his cell phone.

In order to hear the call, he walked away from the vacuum noise. Hello, Creepo Services! I'm coming to put my long legs on! Once he was out of sight, Natasha ran through the neighborhood, jumping fences and pleading with any person she saw to call the police. Strangely, though, no one reacted to Natasha's pleas. Pretty much everyone just kind of went about her day, just sort of brushed her off.

It was only when Natasha knocked on the window five minutes into her escape that a 71-year-old man named Inga finally responded. I mean, imagine that. Five minutes of running and screaming and trying to get help. And thinking at any moment, like, he's going to come around the corner and he's going to catch you. Five minutes. It's the end sequence of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah. And no one helped. This is also post-1990s.

Fritzl's capture, right? No, it's not. Oh, okay. This is what's fucked, is that this is all during. She loudly said to the old man, I am Natasha Kampush, which rung bells immediately, and Inga called the police who quickly took Natasha into custody. This is before Fritzl. This is in 2006. Fritzl's 2008. Oh, man. And I'm going to talk more next episode on Yosef's point of view, but he talks about this...

case being like one of the first pop up and it like when he saw this this thing hit the news then Tasha accomplished hit the news the story hit the news he kind of like it was the first beginnings of the unraveling of his like super long-term plan in his own mind like he started like apparently for him that's when the interior pressure started to build because it really was very difficult on him

He finally realized that what he was doing was wrong. No. No. He finally realized that what he was doing, people would not look kindly upon. Well, he always knew that they would. That's why she was underground. But because he knew that they would never understand. And so, but this was just way more like, oh, they're going to start looking for hidden girls more.

Yeah. Yeah. Joseph Ritzel, he's kind of like a Nazi at Nuremberg who will never admit that anything he did was wrong. He's an utter, he's a full Nazi. I'm going to talk, next episode, I have some more talking about more of his Nazi thoughts. Cool. Now, Wolfgang Pricklepill knew that the game was over the second he saw that Natasha had escaped. So the 44-year-old communications technician hopped in his red BMW and drove to the Weynord station in Vienna.

There, he jumped in front of an oncoming train and ended his own life. Yep. Incredibly, Natasha- Bye-bye! He just got exploded like that. Probably the nicest thing he's ever done. Yes. Honestly, I think it means he's a fucking pussy and he couldn't handle the punishment. Of course! Of course!

She said.

She is truly an inspirational person. Same thing as Elizabeth Fritzl, but she is an extremely... Her interviews are powerful. Yeah, and she wrote a book about the whole thing, too. Like, Elizabeth Fritzl, like, you know, as we'll talk about, she...

faded. She was like, I'm done. Don't talk to me. This is over. Natasha has become a person who really speaks out about this stuff. Does she live in the house or does she just own it? It's her vacation home. She spends a fair amount of time there. That's crazy. I don't know if I could do that. I would burn it down. I guess it's worth money. I don't know. They said that there were reports that she would go and was cleaning the place out.

And just, yes, she would spend extended amounts of time there. Wow. Just, I don't know. Maybe it was familiar. Who knows? Maybe she was trying to face something. You never know why people do the things they do. Natasha didn't escape until 2006. Back in 1999, though, she was just one year into her captivity, while Elizabeth had been underground for a full 15 years. Wow.

When Elizabeth's time reached 18 years, the age she was when she'd last seen sunlight, she gave birth to her seventh child, Felix. Now, Fritzl did entertain the idea of taking Felix upstairs as well, but he decided that Rosemarie couldn't handle a fourth child. So Felix was sentenced to stay in the dungeon with Elizabeth, Kirsten, and Stefan. There's also a little bit of talk of the way he chose what kids would go up, because let's just say he has a type.

And so there was a little bit of, maybe I'll make my second wife one of these ones. Third wife. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. They go by so fast. It's crazy, dude. Now, the kids he moved upstairs, were they the ones that he would want to sleep with or would he keep those downstairs? God, I hate that question.

Eddie, I'm so glad you asked that question. I can answer that question as well. We may have two different answers, but I have an answer as well. I believe that they were the ones he was acclimating to real life that he would maybe peruse in a Tinder-like fashion. Okay.

I believe that the ones that he had an eye on, he kept downstairs. Yeah, that's what I would guess. Do you like sun-grown pot or do you like fucking the hydro shit? I actually prefer sun-grown. I think he appreciates the hydro. Yeah. Wow. Weird.

Now, besides the stress of raising three children solely in a place that's smaller than a railroad apartment, Elizabeth's body was breaking down due to a lack of the most basic human necessities. She was only in her mid-30s, but her teeth were falling out due to rotten disease, and her formerly red hair was now gray.

As such, Fritzl announced that he was no longer attracted to his daughter and stopped raping her as a result. He now, however, was turning his gaze towards his daughter-granddaughter Kirsten. She was now 13 years old, but was just as frail and sickly as her mother's sister.

Every time I'm kind of smiling from something we said, it just gets sucked right off my face. That's the idea. That's called our show, Eddie. Yeah, that's what's incredible. That's the push and pull of Last Podcast on the Line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe's kind of wondering, how am I supposed to feel? The sweet and sour, the bitter, you know.

But perhaps to ease the burden, Fritzl brought a washing machine into the dungeon that same year. That's a good... Natalie loved it. For our anniversary, our fifth anniversary, I bought one of those washboards so she could take it down to the L.A. River and wash my underwear in the swamp. And she was so happy. Thank you.

Hot tip, fellas. Yeah. Ladies love a washing machine. You know, and she was so happy about it. She called Julie. She told her about that. I had to buy fucking Julie a washing board. Damn it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. At least they get to go down by the river and sing their folk songs and stuff, and then we could tell them how many kids we're having.

But that's the thing. I would imagine it would just make the dungeon more miserable because of the space it took up. And, you know, it's not like she needed to save time. Like, she had plenty of time to do laundry. Yeah, she's not... She's unfortunately, she's the exact opposite of a wife on the go. Yeah. Yeah.

And he's fucking Kirsten at this point? Yeah.

Beginning to groom Kirsten. I don't know. They never talk about that. Okay. They hint at it. It's hinted at, but it's never really talked about. Yes. You know what's also interesting is that Natasha Kampusch also talked about the fact that her Wolfgang was very sickly.

And what he would do is he installed an intercom. And so he would talk at her all night and largely was insulting her slash sobbing slash, you know, he's, you know, it's not well. And he called her in one of the, he would call when he was sick and he'd go there. He's like, I don't know if I'm long for this world. Who will take care?

of me like all night long and eventually she's like if he dies up there I'm gonna die down here yeah so she'd have to be like no Wolfgang you're gonna make it like have to like kind of like and help him and go she'd he'd let her upstairs to like help him feel better and like take care of him when he was sick fuck me that's so horrible and then she had to yeah because if I don't keep him alive

I die down there in a much worse way. Yeah, and Elizabeth knew that as well. Yeah. That if he dies up there... I'm fucked. Well, she told... He had told her that there was like a special mechanism that was in place. It would release over time. It would release them if, you know, it reached a certain amount of time. That was not true at all. Of course it wasn't true. It was eight doors. Well, I mean, I would imagine...

That's the thing, is that you really do wonder through those eight doors if anyone would have smelled the bodies. If they would have died down there. No, they were in a concrete prison with ventilation. If you look, there was a tiny door that he would use to get

through the cell like it wasn't like there was a massive door in the cellar that it was like oh no don't go down there like he had it it was a little door about two to three feet tall that he would open up and crawl into and then stand up and then would go through the rest of the doors uh to get back there so willy wonka and so i mean the you know four dead bodies that is going to be a lot of that's going to be a lot of stink yeah uh but it could also be possible that

They were in there deep enough that people might be like, where the fuck is that smell coming from for about a week? Like you do with the dead rat in New York City in the walls. You wait for the maggots to start crawling out your light bulb. Yep, exactly. And that probably would have been the case there. And who knows, after someone bought the house in...

20 years, 30 years. Yeah, if they'd uncover the basement. If they would uncover the basement or, you know, if you find weird shit. Inspections, house inspections, that's just what they're supposed to find. Or you find weird shit in the house, sometimes you're like, I don't know what's behind that door. I don't really have the effort to, I don't really want to check out what's behind that door. That's my line in the sand. Then you do. If I'm buying a house and the realtor or something says, don't open that door. It's my house. I don't know what to say. I don't open the door. Yeah.

Yeah, don't say, I don't know. If you say, like, hey, what's behind that door? And someone says, another door. Run away. Just run away. You'll buy the house. Yeah, I'm not fucking going anywhere near it. Well, to most people upstairs, Fritzl seemed to have the appearance of a good family man. He and his wife were raising their wayward daughter's three children, which everyone thought was a noble cause. And in 2006, the same year Natasha Kampusch escaped, Fritzl and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Oh, and what?

The next year, it seemed like Fritzl already had an inkling that the truth was going to come out one way or another.

He was chatting with one of his tenants, coincidentally a former classmate of Elizabeth's, and told him that, quote, One day, this house is going to make history. How? You wait. Just wait. I don't want to spoil it. And indeed, Fritzl was correct.

But once Fritzl hit his 70s, he very plainly got tired of the whole rigmarole that came with having a second underground family.

Now, at first, he considered just killing them all to hide what he'd done. But since he was an old man, getting rid of four bodies, small and malnourished as they were, that was going to be a challenge. And if there was a smell that was going on while he was still alive... It would come out while he was transferring the bodies. Well, if there was a smell, he'd have to deal with it. Yeah. You know, if he just kind of let them starve down there, he'd have to deal with the smell because he's the fucking landlord. Landlords got to deal with smells. Who's got an incinerator?

He's already put one, maybe two if you count the miscarried child in there. I will say, guys, just know that if you are mad about a man or lady ghosting you, it can be much worse because this is the worst ghosting possible because at the end of this ghosting, you become a ghost. Yeah, you die. Well,

Fritzl, he actually began to lay the groundwork for Elizabeth and the kids to leave the dungeon by continuing the cult narrative. He thought this actually might work. In 2008, Fritzl made Elizabeth write another letter which said that she was tired of the cult and she wanted to come home. Apparently, Fritzl was going to slow roll the entire process to make it seem natural.

But in April of that year, Fritzl's slow roll plan fell apart when Kirsten, Elizabeth's firstborn, she got dangerously sick and started having seizures. This came amidst a mental breakdown where Kirsten tore her hair out in clumps and ripped off her clothes so she could stuff them in the toilet to clog it up.

And so on April 16th, 2008, on Elizabeth's 42nd birthday, she begged her father to take the 19-year-old Kirsten to the hospital. And that's where we'll pick back up for Joseph Fritzl Part 3, the conclusion to the saga. You thought we'd end it in two, but guess what? No.

We're still in the basement. And we're going to continue. But it does get interesting because there was a lot of new information. That's a part of why it got to three parts is that a lot of new information has dropped in the last year. Yeah. That is really kind of... Well, now it's this whole...

We'll talk about it, but it's very... It is interesting. There's a third chapter here, and it's a little uplifting. Right? Yeah, in a way. Like out of the basement uplifting. No, I just think, in a way, it just shows...

Joseph is still able to forgive himself. And I really think that that's the hardest thing for anybody to do. Powerful. It's so hard to get, to have, to absolve yourself of things that you've done. And for that, I'm really proud of him. Good for him. Yeah. Good for him. You know, that's the thing with being Catholic, you

You know, you can just go to confession and everything's fine. Yeah, that's so great. Jeffrey Dahmer's up there right now, loving heaven. Him and Michael Jackson, loving life. Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left is where you can go to watch video episodes of

every show we do as well as many other cool things. You can check out the stream, last stream on the left every Tuesday. Fucking better, I say. Live on Patreon on Tuesdays, then it goes up on YouTube for free. We take out the juicy parts that YouTube won't let us show, but that's why you gotta sign up for it live and you can yell at us as well. And you can follow us on the socials at LPOnTheLeft

on TikTok and Instagram. Check out all of our streams at LPN TV. LPN TV is at twitch.tv slash LPN TV for the live shows. And they're on YouTube for everything afterwards. You can also come see us on tour. Check out last podcast on the left.com. Click on shows, click the date, buy the tickets, Boston, LA, Brooklyn, London, Iceland. We're coming to you this year and we don't know when the fuck we're going to be back. So make sure to grab your tickets as soon as you can see us live.

Come on out. Nice. I got stand up on Monday. Come and check me out in Burbank. If you're in Burbank, I'm going to be at the good night at 8 p.m. or come at 7 p.m. I think it's a 7 p.m. at the good night. It's like light comedy. It's going to be great. It's going to be a lot of fun. There's karaoke afterwards. We'll have some fun. I got a nice set. And that's just, you know, it's party.

Hell yeah. Yeah, fuck at it. And that's on October 7th. October 7th, this Monday. Hell yeah. All right. Sounds good to me. Hail sweet Satan. Oh, and hell gain. Who would you like to hail? No, it's Tilikum. No! Tilikum! Oh!

Every day.

Our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human. Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of. At Amica, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Amica. Empathy is our best policy.