Episode 591: Josef Fritzl Part I - Dungeon Master
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Are you boys ready? Yeah. Back in Saturday. Back. That's not. Back. I'm trying to. I did a bunch of. Lost his voice. It's very, very sad. No, it's got to. It's got to be more of a deeper. Back in Saturday.

It feels good. It really feels good the other way. You gotta sound like you're on the verge of vomiting. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Marcus Parks. I'm back in the saddle with Henry Zebrowski. You're right. This series is really going to make you question, because obviously this is up.

It's going to be a rough one. But I'm excited for it. But I think that more people need to think about, do you have a sex dungeon, really? Or do you just have a sex basement with some sex furniture in it? Yeah, because this is really going to, you're going to listen to this and this is going to make you like, oh, I'm not really doing anything with my sex dungeon. Yeah, this is not a dungeon. Like, this is way more, this is a room. This is a fun, rump room. Yeah, there's a pool table, not a sex dungeon. It's not a sex dungeon. There's a refrigerator. Yeah.

Well, maybe a refrigerator. If there's a door that opens from the inside, it's not a sex dungeon. Yes. Yeah, that's the major one. What if it's a rumpus dungeon? That's cute. That is adorable. Lock me in here until I win all these darts. That's the thing. It's playing baccarat until you're 50 years old and you haven't seen the sunlight in 24 years. And, of course, with us is Ed Larson. Yes.

See, yeah, that's a good noise. See, you did it well. I love it. I would say Z's great. I blew up my voice earlier today. What'd you do? I was having sex with a police officer. They made you scream. I was howling like a siren. Yep, that's the exact noise. That's the noise you make when you cum. Were you there?

Why are we talking about dungeons? That's because today we are going to be embarking on the first part of our journey. We're finally going to cover dungeon master number one, Joseph Fritzl. We covered him scantily. Scantily. A very long time ago when we did our sex dungeon episode. Now this was literally probably the very beginning of the show. And so now getting deeper into it.

We really see a lot of uncomfortable details in there. Yeah, it was also a topic on Roundtable of Gentlemen, I remember. Multiple times. Fritzl's Pretzels. Fritzl's Pretzels. Yes. Which I'm still trying to remember what the fuck that joke is. All I remember is Fritzl's Pretzels. It just sounded good, and I thought it'd be fun if he sold pretzels. It wasn't an actual constructed, like, intelligent... Yeah, you know, it was just words. Wordplay. Yeah.

Joseph Fritzl is a notoriously monstrous sexual deviant from Austria who imprisoned his daughter in a windowless underground dungeon of his own making for 24 years. He did this with the explicit purpose of creating a second family for himself, an underground family, through incestuous rape. Hey, let's not sugarcoat it, Marco. Okay.

Goddammit, I'm gonna feel guilty every time I even chuckle. Yes! Well, Fritzl met this goal many times over, fathering seven children with his daughter Elizabeth.

Some of those kids were brought upstairs and raised by Fritzl and his wife, but others spent their existence in the dank dungeon with their mother, never seeing the light of day or breathing fresh air until Fritzl's crimes were finally uncovered in 2008.

But they were lucky enough to see pictures of the outside. They had a TV at one point. A little bit, for a little bit. And then they also got to see pictures of what it was like of her children playing upstairs in the light, all the stuff like that. That's just not a good way to do it. I'm glad that we have Zoom now. Did they have air filtration? No. No. Not whatsoever. We'll get into all that. No, they didn't have air filtration in good European buildings. I don't know.

But before we get into the story of just how something so awful can actually be achieved, let's acknowledge our source. Today, it's Secrets in the Cellar by John Glatt, which is a harrowing, if fascinating, read. You really, it's kind of amazing. This is one of those stories, too, where you think you know the story. You do, for the most part, know the story. But the details are absolutely insane. Yeah. His life was a life...

dreariness and horror and he loved it. Yeah. You know, like it was a, it's the happiest, evilest man possible. Yeah. Yeah. He is a Grinch looking motherfucker. He's always got a little bit of a smile and the hair is fun. You know, he's like, I'll say that's the only positive thing I am going to say today about Joseph Fritzl. What? His Egon hair? His hair is fun. Yeah.

You didn't see it? It sticks only up. No, it looks disheveled. Yeah. He was upset. He didn't have a cold. Or maybe he did. Now, I think Joseph Fritzl would have been an evil prick no matter when and where he was raised. But it certainly didn't help that he was born just 90 miles from where Hitler was born in the Austrian town of Amstetten. Now, this is a very interesting story.

Now, this wouldn't matter if Fretzel was born in, say, 1976, but his birth year was 1935. What was wrong with that?

That was just three years before the Austrian Nazi Party invited Hitler and the rest of his goons to annex Austria in the ramp up to World War Two. It really it is true because of every other type of he's not a serial killer, but every other type of criminal that we've covered. Like you could say if you took them out of their time period, they might not be you know, they would either be. It depends. Right. Yeah.

This didn't help. No. Like, being in pro-Nazi Austria did not necessarily make him, like, kill. Yeah, I mean, this was, it was a Nazi town. It was a Nazi town. I mean, not every town in Austria and Germany was a Nazi town, but this was a Nazi town. Yeah, and I will say, you know, there are extended periods of time when he's in weird places and we don't know what he did, so he could have killed some people. Oh, I could.

I imagine that he did. And there is some talk about what else. There is no proof. No, there's no proof that he killed anyone, but he was definitely around dead bodies a lot. I actually will talk about this when we get to the second half of this series because there is actually evidence that shows he specifically chose not to kill for reasons.

Now, as far as his parents went, Fritzl hated his father and called him a loser. And he was pretty much a nonentity in Fritzl's life after his parents went through an acrimonious divorce. His mother, Maria, on the other hand, loomed large in Fritzl's life in the most negative of ways.

She would beat him almost daily until, as Fritzl later put it, he was black and blue, lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It was my utmost surprise to see it is not jelly jams. That's my Joseph Fritzl voice. Sorry. Sorry.

That's his catchphrase? I'm sorry? It's not, though. Sorry! No, he actually, he never said I'm sorry. No, he didn't. Well, Maria would leave him humiliated and weak, withholding all affection. She would constantly insult Fritzl and tell him that he was a criminal, a no-good, a Satan, singular. Maria valued discipline above all else and was by all accounts an eccentric who, according to one neighbor, was unable to tolerate daylight.

Later, Joseph Fritzl would say that he was a so-called alibi child, birthed only so Maria could prove to Fritzl's father that she wasn't sterile. See, I'm an egg, used to be at least. Now I'm a little egg-shaped boy. Hope I don't do anything evil, Papa.

Mommy beat me good. I don't know why I'm smiling thinking about it, but now I know she was right. That's because you sound like a Sesame Street fan. R is for Ray. Oh, that's what R is for. I didn't know that's what that was for. Whoa, what episode of Sesame Street was that?

I'm sorry. He's allowed. He's allowed. Well, despite all this, Fritzl idolized his mother and called her, quote, the embodiment of the perfect woman. What?

I believe you. Oof, I love her. You just couldn't resist an oof. But it's not the normal oof. Oh, it's an oof. Oh, that's the Austrian oof. Yes, because it's different sounds. It is. I learned that the vowel sounds are different. Longer than Austrian.

But considering the time and place in which Fritzl was raised, it won't come as a surprise to hear that Maria Fritzl was an ardent Nazi, and she encouraged her son to join the Hitler Youth as soon as he was of age. Yeah, I got into a little bit of research about the Hitler Youth.

And it is true because we've talked about it a couple of times during various series on last podcast. And the lowest levels were something like the Boy Scouts. Like very, very low level levels.

Community building with a touch of Nazis. Yeah, the touch of Nazis. Like Jojo Rabbit? Yes, yeah. But then it would rapidly increase. Like, as you get older, there was different levels of Hitler youth. And the second, I believe, you got to about 10 years old is when they start teaching you about how to kill Jewish people, like how to do paramilitary actions. So all of those...

the pumping of the hate inside of them. And kids were also taught to rat you out. They were supposed to, the way that the first versions of kids ratting people out was to go and look for musicians.

playing for, and what they called their non-German music. Actually, they called it Schmutz und Schmock. It was filth and something else. That's from the Cannes series you did for No Dogs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, because it's all that where they'd have to go look for, if you're playing jazz, you're going to jail. Yeah. And a child would go up to you and go like, oh, I like you.

your bass drum move. And you'd be like, of course, Jailtease is for where you go. And the next thing you know, you're in fucking Boca. Yeah. The drummer in Cannes, his father was a jazz musician and it's rumored that he was killed by the Nazis for playing jazz. He just went, he left the house one day, just didn't fucking come back. There's cold and noises with no certain rhythms. Yeah. That is not

German! They're too strict for jazz. Actually, there's some incredible jazz musicians, German jazz musicians. Well, now that they've grown. Now that they've become decent humans, there's some good jazz. It's nice. They let the jazz in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As soon as the Jews were freed, the jazz got better. Yes. Also, how, curiosity, how young do they start the Hitler youth, or did they? It's like five or six years old. Damn. Hell yeah. Yeah, you gotta ride on your parents.

Well, the town of Amstetten was a strategic point for the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia. As such, the town was often full of Nazi soldiers about to head off to the Eastern Front. And one of Joseph Fritzl's fondest childhood memories was being a six-year-old Hitler youth playing amongst his fellow Nazis. Hello, can I have a question? Do you have any Jew teeth I can play with? Sorry, don't mean to annoy you. Sorry. That's me.

Later, Joseph... I love this child. Can we take him with us? I like him. Later, Joseph would say that he owed the Nazis for giving him his lifelong respect for authority and more significantly, his lifelong belief in control. He looked up to the Nazis. They were a part of their daily life and he thought that they were cool. And that's why it turned out so well. Ha ha ha!

Now, when Joseph was a young lad in school, he was intelligent and popular with both teachers and students. As such, his nickname was Pepper, which disturbs me for reasons I can't explain. I'm just a little spicy. I'm just a little pepper. I couldn't be bad. But Pepper was excited when the Wehrmacht came marching through. Yes, I was. Yeah.

He was over the moon when the Nazis installed a concentration camp close to his town. Is it my birthday? This camp, which came to be known as Mauthausen, was located on Fritzl's route to and from school. And Fritzl would only become more fascinated with what was going on inside the camp each time he walked past. Apparently, he would sometimes get off the bus early.

because this is apparently this is in the book and he did multiple interviews. So we know a lot of details about his life and he would like,

So my dad, you know, one of the fun things he used to do was that he used to go and he'd take me to Mets. We'd go see the Mets. We'd go to Shea Stadium to go watch the warm-up. Which is very similar to a concentration camp. Very similar. Have you ever gone to the bathroom in Shea Stadium? But then he would do that, but at a concentration camp. Like, he would walk up to the gates of a concentration camp and watching the Nazis, like, pressuring

practice beat a fake Jewish person in a mannequin outfit or whatever, you know, back and forth. And he's going like, can I get your autograph? Like, just loving it. I imagine they had school field trips. The Hitler Youth. Yeah. Because a lot of the Hitler Youth, Himmler was a member of the Hitler Youth, one of the earliest members of the Hitler Youth, and he went all the way to the top. They often hired from inside of the Hitler Youth. You know what's interesting is when you say something that you think is a joke and then just ends up being sad.

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Well, unbeknownst to Fritzl, Mauthausen was a favorite stop of Nazi psychiatrist Emil Gelny, who murdered countless mentally and physically disabled and mentally ill people as one of the Nazis tasked with ridding the country of so-called undesirables. He was a part of Aktion 4, or Aktion 5. Nope. Fumpf? Fumpf! Eins, zwei, drei, vier. Aktion 4. In the ramp up to the Holocaust.

Because, of course, they started killing people. They started killing mental patients before they started killing anybody else. That was kind of testing the waters.

Gelney, who is the man who coined the term useless eaters to describe disabled people who took food from the mouths of soldiers on the front lines, he began his murderous mission by encouraging parents to institutionalize children with mental and physical disabilities. Once the kids were wards of the state, Gelney would murder them by lethal injection. In all, it's estimated that Gelney was responsible for the deaths of roughly 10,000 children. But that was just the beginning.

Oh. By 1944... Strong start. By 1944, he'd moved on to experimenting with electroshock therapy. And when I say experimenting, I very much mean it in the Mengele sense. Yeah. See, because the war was going badly by 1944, the compounds Galney needed for lethal injections were starting to dry up, and bullets were expensive.

So, Galney constructed what was, in essence, a portable electric chair. This is one of those fun, like, lost chapters of the Holocaust. It's a fun one, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'm having a great time. Yeah.

Laugh a minute. Gelney modified a standard ECT machine by adding four extra electrodes, which were constructed by a locksmith who worked at one of his Nazi hospitals. Well, first, the so-called patient would be knocked unconscious using the standard ECT electrodes that were attached to the head. Then, once they were out, Gelney would attach the other four electrodes to the victim's wrists and ankles. It would then take a further ten minutes of

constant electrocution to finally kill the victim.

The body would then be wrapped in a sheet and hidden behind a screen, so the next person coming in wouldn't see what had happened to the last person who'd laid down for Dr. Galney. Excuse me, Dr. Galney! Dr. Galney! It's me! Hey, can I press the button one time? Do I get to sit in the cockpit? Why not just hang him?

It's got to be cheaper. Because that's not science. Yeah, they were trying to figure things out at the same time. They already knew what the answer to hanging people was. They were well aware of what happened then. But they also wanted to keep it quiet. And they also wanted to keep it efficient. Hanging people takes a long time. And you kind of need a large infrastructure for this. And as Henry said, if you use it, you can kind of, I guess...

feel a little bit better about yourself by using these sorts of like quote unquote scientific methods, because that's why they started using these methods in the first place is because all of the people who were like the people, because in the beginning of the Holocaust, it was like, just go out and shoot them. Just everywhere you find them, just fucking shoot them, gather them up, shoot them, bury them. And of course it was fucking people up like horribly.

So they had to find a more systematic way. They had to find a more systematic, systematic way. So this is just running out of ammunition. Exactly. And they're dancing on the razor's edge of history is going to look back on this and we have to figure out a way. We know what we're doing is a series of war crimes, but we can't let ourselves know that we're doing a bunch of war crimes. So what we need to do is pretend like it's legitimate science. Yeah. And that's also a lot of rope too that they need for, you know, various war. For jump rope. Yeah. Yeah.

And they used to do those experiments where they would see how high they could drop somebody before they died and shit like that. That's still a unit 731. Yeah. We'll do a redo of that. You'll like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's the Japanese. Oh, man. I imagine it's also easier to talk someone into laying down on bed and strapping something to themselves than walking up to a head in man's noose. Absolutely. Well, yeah, and they're all mentally handicapped and mentally ill and stuff like that. Or physically disabled. Either or.

But that's the thing, though, is that I don't know for sure what Dr. Gelny was doing in the concentration camp that Joseph Fritzl walked by every day on the way to and from school, but considering how the Mauthausen camp was where many of the sickest and weakest people from the other camps in Germany and Austria were sent to die...

Yeah, you don't get any lollipops at the end of those appointments. No.

Now, by 1947, two years after the war was over and the concentration camp had closed up shop. There goes my weekends. Joseph Fritzl was no longer the pepper everyone knew. I changed. By the age of 12, he was seen as a weird kid with a bad haircut because his mother was too cheap to pay for a good one.

But there was, of course, a much darker side to Maria Fritzl. Yeah. See, Joseph Fritzl would always deny that he'd been sexually abused by his mother. But he did admit to having sexual fantasies towards his mother. He said he loved her across all boundaries, which meant that he definitely wanted to have sex with his mother. No!

Every single boundary doesn't always end with stooping in the boot. Okay? It's just a lot of them, dude. Mine. Specifically, new. What was your favorite outfit that she would wear? I loved it when she was in the bath. It was always her birthday in the bath.

He said what he called himself, and this is a fun term, is that he called himself, including the psychiatrist that eventually would go to say that he was sane enough to go to trial, a born rapist and a natural rapist. And he said that he was bound by his DNA to do so. And the only reason why he never constantly basically never.

did anything with his mother was because of the law. Yeah. Well, he constantly congratulated himself for resisting his strong urges, as if it was a difficult thing that, like, everybody has to deal with. Yeah, and it seems like it probably wasn't rape as much as it was just sex. Mm-hmm. That's a very complicated...

Statement you've just made. Yeah, it's very strange. Yeah, it's very complicated statement. But for him. Yeah. Oh no, because he liked it. That's the real difference. He was probably flirting. Yeah. Mommy, you remember when I was in your tummy? What if I'm in your tummy again? But different. Yeah, wrong, but no, I'm making things uncomfortable.

Coming on too strong, mommy? I didn't know I was the fucking weird one. But whether or not Fritzl and his mom had sex, although they almost certainly did, Joseph moved with his mother to the town of Linz in 1952 when Fritzl was 16.

There, he got a job at a steel factory that had not only once been the heart of the Nazi war machine, but had also partially been constructed by prisoners from Fritzl's local concentration camp. Oh, my God. Locally sourced. It's amazing to be in here. You can really feel the Nazi vibes in here. This is a fun, workable space. It's just, if these walls could talk, they would go, ah! You know? Yeah.

Now, as Joseph entered his 20s, he became, as the book Secrets in the Cellar put it, I don't know if I would put it this way, called him something of a dandy. Yeah, something of a dandy in my mind is Alan Cumming. They said he had a perfectly manicured mustache and expensive clothes. He apparently never had any trouble getting dates, but he would never bring them home for fear of what his mother might say or do. This, to me, is him.

trying to fit in as a normal human being. Yeah. I think that a lot of times when you see somebody like that gain a bunch of affectations at once, we saw it with, actually kind of interestingly with the Ken and Barbie killers, we saw it with Paul Bernardo, like facing, pretending to be something else. We saw it with the guy that went to LA, that went- Not Unterweger? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jack Unterweger, where there's something about like,

dressing all up as an offensive measure because like he's doing it to appear normal, fun, engaging, like he's got money, like he's got it put together, but he literally like a walking sexual assault machine. Yeah. It's also around this time that Fritzl began his career as a dangerous sexual deviant, although it all started as it usually does with relatively small incidents considering the things he would one day do.

Fritzl began exposing himself to women in the woods of Linz while riding his bicycle around the countryside to stalk and spy on women. Later, he would describe the urges that caused him to do these things as an internal volcano that he could barely control. What's very interesting, though, is that once I started showing my pecker out, my peckeroon teeth out to all of the ladies in town, I regot the name Pepper. Because it

It's green hue. Oh, my penis needs its oxygen. So it's a green pepper. Oh, okay. Jalapeno. Jalapeno pepper. Okay, Yoda.

Sex with my mother I did. Good it felt. Made my own brother I did. You know, I always imagine it to be the spice pepper. Like salt and pepper. No. No. No. No. No. The vegetable. Thank you, Eddie.

Correct. Well, this volcano excuse would be employed by Fritzl many times over the course of his life. But it's worth noting that many of Fritzl's most heinous crimes involve meticulous plans that sometimes took years to come to fruition. That's kind of why I think

that later on. Again, all of this information comes that we know from his inner life. Comes from, yes, interviews around him that knew him as a kid, but largely his speaking with this psychiatrist and unleashing his entire life story. And I think he used the quote-unquote internal volcano thing as almost like an excuse. Oh, absolutely uses an excuse. Because he is very different than a lot of our impulsive people.

that we've covered before. Like, yes, he'd like to show his pepper at people, but when he wasn't doing that quick action, he was a stalker and he planned and he moved very slowly and he specifically tried to avoid getting arrested for a very long time. You know, in the very beginning, he was trying to be sneaky about it and thinking offensively

of ways to do it. He was like becoming consumed with it. Yeah, he's a like guy, he's sort of like a BTK or Erons, you know, people like that. Yes. Now, a lot of these guys are just straight up liars. Do we think that he was like that with his psychiatrist? I find that when guys, I find it's two types. There's people that talk about, there's people that talk too much.

Henry Lee Lucas. People that talk that are, Israel Keys. I actually put him in that category too, where like a part of their game is talking all about it after the fact. BTK did it where they spill all their guts. And then there are ones that don't talk, right? Or lie about what they did. He would admit up to a point things that he would do, but then he had this wall of

validation that he would use that and hide behind that I think is why a lot of this is interesting because a lot of this comes out. It's just getting right up to the lip of the full truth, which is just he won't allow himself to know.

Yeah, well, he's got a twisted logic when it comes to everything. And I find at least when these guys have a sort of logic to their own internal logic, then they are more likely to tell the truth because they want to explain to you. Yes, they want you to know how my brain thinks. Yeah, they want to explain it to you. They want your validation. They want you to tell them, like, oh, you're right. You've been right this whole time. Everyone else is wrong. Like, oh, shit. Oh, man. I've got to go fuck my mom. Hey.

shit, that's right. My mom's pussy is the best pussy in the world. It made me. So in 1956, Joseph moved back to his hometown of Amstetten and married a barely educated, easily controlled 17-year-old girl named Rose Marie. With

Within two years, Rosemarie gave birth to their first child, the first of six Joseph would bother with his wife over the next 13 years. It comes as no surprise to hear, however, that every single one of Joseph's children absolutely fucking despised him. They said he was a cruel and exploitative man who ruled his family like a little Hitler. Hey, medium Hitler! Hey, no, I'm not that little! Yeah, because Hitler was little! He was little!

You would beat anyone who disagreed with him in any way. As one person put it, it's like if he said something was black, it was black, even if it was white. And if you said it was white, he would beat you within an inch of your life. Because he's the father. Yes. This is a very much story, kind of like John List, where this is about...

The power of the hymn, this idea of like my come made you, which means you are you belong to me. You are mine. Yes, you are mine. You are my entities. And so we view that as the father's privilege. It was also apparent to his children that Fritzl was a bad person outside of the house when he started getting arrested for sex crimes.

In 1959, Fritzl was arrested for exposing himself to a woman. And from what I can tell, he didn't do any time for that one. Apparently, according to the local constable, my penis was big enough to be punished for. And he says it because it's got to get to four inches for it to be considered legally exposing a dingus. Because I have a little, little snoopy and it's my pepper is not quite as peppery as it once was. But that's just my explanation. That's my side of the story. Don't take my word for it.

Soon after, though, he left his family for three years to live in Ghana. At the time, it's a fucking black hole of information. Well, what we know is later on he would do big travels. It sounds like he did a lot of his work. When he left, a lot of it was sex tourism. Yes. He would do a lot of sex tourism and he would do a lot of just...

shady-ass shit. Like, he was like one of those guys who was a salesman. Like, whatever the fuck that means. You know what I mean? Like, he just did weird-ass jobs and stuff, and then like, yeah, I don't know what he did there, but it probably wasn't great. No. Yeah, when he went to Africa, we don't know exactly what happened, but I'm gonna say it was bad. Yeah.

But soon after Fritzl returned to Austria, Joseph and Rosemarie's fourth child, Elizabeth, was born.

Immediately, Joseph said that he felt a strange attraction to the infant and soon became obsessed because she physically reminded him of his mother. She's a baby. Yes. Babies can't remind you of mothers. I think that Joseph was wrong. Might have had some sort of twisted sense. There's something going on. Elizabeth, of course, was the daughter whom Joseph would imprison in his dungeon 18 years later.

But long before Joseph acted on these despicable urges, his so-called volcano was leading him to take more risks. Instead of being just a mobile creep on a bike, he'd spend hours on end sitting in bushes spying on women until someone finally called the cops. Yeah, do you think this is fucking easy? I've got a berry in my asshole. All I want to do is see an old woman's bush hairs while she's going to the bathroom. Is that not a liberty I...

Can't express! What is the point of not having Nazis anymore if I can't sit in the bush and watch an old woman go to the bathroom? That is what I like! I will not be detained! You just turned him into a sovereign citizen. Yes.

Well, in September of 1967, Fritzl escalated. That fall, he tried dragging a woman into the woods to rape her, but she fought him off and escaped. The next month, though, he climbed into the kitchen window of a house that he'd been casing, snuck into the bedroom, and raped a woman at knife point. He threatened to come back and kill her if she told anyone, but tell she did, as did the woman in the woods.

Joseph, however, only spent 18 months in prison for both crimes. And while he did lose his job, he was immediately hired upon release by a construction company who eventually promoted him to the title of technical director. See, Joseph, we know what you did. And I mean, a lot of us were super unhappy with what you did in your past, but...

Obviously, some of your previous actions shows that you do very well with blueprints. And I think that this is a perfect position for you and the company to be in charge of everyone. Thank you. Your general distaste of women will help with our catcalling. Yes, yes, right?

Okay, I'll tell you why. Here's my first go, hey. Oh, I love your butt. You remind me of my mother that I had sex with. All right, we'll work it out. Yes, we could work it out. I stick with the blueprints. Not much with the flirting I am. I couldn't even close the deal with my own mother.

What a pussy. Yeah, you could even fuck your own mom. Boo. Yeah, I know. I know. Because my dad was fucking always there.

Well, in this job, Joseph Fritzl oversaw machinery that manufactured concrete sewage pipes. I can't imagine a better job than this man whose job is to just create pipes filled with human shit. Yeah. That's like all he does all day because he's got the temperament for it. He really does. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not like they put the shit in the pipes in the factory. You're still moving shit. If someone asks you what your job is, it's I take shit from over there and I send it over there.

Well, before long, concrete technology, how to pour it and construct things with it, became Fritzl's specialty. This was how Fritzl learned the skills he needed to construct the underground dungeon where he would imprison his daughter for 24 years. It's just...

fucking pieces keep just start falling into place to make this shit possible. It's kind of like a twisted twisted little moment of fate. You know what I mean? It's just like all the stars aligned. Everything came together just the right way for me to do what I did. Isn't that great? In the worst way possible. Yeah, you know, well, to some. But in terms of being a father with a sex dungeon, pretty much the number one guy. laughter

And I have an actual dungeon. Now Fritzl managed to stay out of prison. And by 1970, at the age of 35, his wife gave birth to twins. Now that they had six children, Joseph decided they needed more room. So they moved into his mother's massive three-story house. The question is what happened to Joseph's mother?

No one really knows for sure where she went, but Joseph told neighbors in 1970 that she just died. According to what Joseph later told police, though, he bricked up the windows on the third floor and kept Maria Fritzl imprisoned there for a full decade until she really did die in 1980. Yeah, that's a, that's a, it's technically not, I don't think it's real. I don't think it's really a death. They're saying it's not real, but, you know, it's a track.

It's a good story, but it doesn't really make any sense. I think she just died and he dumped her body somewhere. Yeah, I think she just put her out with the trash. So there's no resting place. They have no idea where her body went. No, because in the early 70s, Fritzl tore down his mother's home so he could build a larger house with apartments he could rent out. Because he wasn't enough of an asshole. He had to fucking be a landlord as well. Ugh.

But when the house was demolished, Fritzl made sure to keep the cellar completely intact. Isn't that fucked? This is how far in advance he knew he was going to do this. Or it just started being like, maybe if I could just have a room of one's own for me, just like Virginia Woolf. Yeah.

Now, do you think he was planning to put Elizabeth in this dungeon at this point? Or do you think he was just building a dungeon in case he wanted to imprison someone? I have no idea. That's a question that I really kind of struggle with. I think he decided maybe when she was...

in her teens to do it. Like I, but I'm not, I'm not exactly sure if he, the entire time he was building it, if he decided like, okay, it's going to be Elizabeth. One of the, I, my theory is that kind of weirdly what you said is that it's about things falling together. And I think that a lot of these guys look at Leonard Lake. I can bring up a lot of different guys. He touches on a lot of different true crime strings. Leonard Lake, he had a childhood fascination with having women locked up. Yeah. Right. I,

There is no way this wasn't one of his protracted inner fantasies for a long time. Having an interrupted space where he could do whatever the fuck it is he wanted and nobody could see it or know. Well, it wasn't just a fantasy. It was also, for him, it was practical. Because that's how this man thought. He was very methodical. He's German. I mean, he was Austrian, but it's that line of thinking. He was a Nazi. Yes, he was a Nazi.

So while Fritzl was doing his 18-month stretch in prison for rape, he'd come up with an idea on how to never return. Instead of changing his aberrant behavior, he decided to build a dungeon underground where he could imprison a woman who would bear the brunt of Joseph's evil side so he could remain a so-called good man upstairs. Oh, so he's like, oh, it's kind of hard to get out of here. I need one of these for when I get out of here.

Yeah, and as the years went on it became more and more apparent that this woman was gonna be his own daughter Elizabeth

See, when Elizabeth was christened at the age of 11, her father raped her for the first time. She learned to endure these violations. They continued. But they got worse in 1977 after Rosemarie took the other kids on a vacation to Italy. Oh, God. They're leaving to go to the best place in the world. You got to be back with Daddy Yoda. So she took five kids and left Elizabeth and him. Because he refused to let her go. Yeah.

Fritzl insisted that Elizabeth stay behind, and once the rest of the family was gone, the rapes could occur anytime, anywhere. After that, Elizabeth turned from a normal, outgoing child into a shy, nervous recluse. Fritzl, however, maintained that things didn't happen that way. During his interrogation, he said that he didn't have sex with his daughter until she was 18, gallantly withholding his sexual impulses until it was, quote-unquote, a

Appropriate just like he done with his mother. He had this internal that it's that's what I'm talking about by this internal logic Where he's like, no, no, no, I'm not a bad guy Yeah, I'm not a bad guy. I waited until she was 18 to lock her up in the basement and have sex with her You know like oh, yeah, I just jealous You just wish that you had the same idea and you're just jealous you dick riding me Yeah

Now, this was, of course, a lie, but it was the only one that Fritzl could tell during his interrogation that made any sense, considering the cellar. See, Elizabeth wasn't imprisoned until 1984, after Elizabeth turned 18. The cellar, however, was no idle thought on Joseph's part.

He began construction on this nightmare in 1978, six years earlier. Yeah, so I don't know if it was daughter-specific. I actually don't know, because I think he was already doing... He started constructing it a year after he started raping her. Yeah. So it's quite possible. It might be.

It's likely that this was his fantasy. Yeah. I mean, it would have to be. He would need a place where no one else could go but him and whoever he had in there. Honestly, if you think that what I did was bad, you should have seen my mood board. It was pretty rough. Live from Northway. Everyone loves a good deal, right? Yep.

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Branching off from the original cellar left over from his mother's demolished home, which dated back to the year 1890. So you know that was a creepy fucking cellar. Yeah. The dungeon was meticulously planned and constructed all in plain sight. In fact, the Austrian government actually helped finance its construction. Wow.

Wow, that's how liberal they are. See, after building a new home for his family and eight additional apartments for tenants, there were eight people living above this shit. Oh, yeah. And Fred Rose West is also very similar, too. So you think that there's no way they heard this shit going on? Well, we'll get to that here in a bit. Okay. But Fritzl applied for financial assistance to build a domestic nuclear shelter, and he got the grant.

And after he got the money, he moved forward with the construction of a full-on rape dungeon in his own backyard in full view of everyone. But for Joseph Fritzl, the dungeon's purpose was not just sexual pleasure.

His plan was to start a second family with his daughter underground for reasons that are a little unclear. Yeah, they are unclear. But I think I got, I have some guesses. I mean, it might just be like the wrongness of it all gave him an extra charge, but more likely I think it was about control. See, I also think control, there's also like a medieval aspect. There's a little bit of me wondering if it's him being like, well, my DNA is so superior. Can you imagine two times?

Maybe, but I think, but looking at the situation, the room which would house Elizabeth and her children started off as no bigger than 15 feet long by 15 feet wide. It's no bigger than a medium sized bedroom. It's actually probably about the size of the room we're in right now.

This would be Elizabeth and her children's entire world, making it very easy for Fritzl to control every single aspect of their lives. And indeed, Fritzl did make the space livable for the long haul. He installed ventilation, an underground furnace, a toilet, and a kitchen complete with plumbing and utilities. More importantly, he soundproofed everything. Wow, it does kind of sound like in here. Yeah. Whoa, is that...

What we've done to ourselves? Have we put ourselves in a Fretzel's prison of content? I mean, I could use a sink and a bed, I'll tell you that much. Oh, you're saying Elizabeth had it good? One entrance led directly into the cellar of his house, but this required walking through eight locked doors, including three that required electronic codes and one door that weighed 600 pounds.

There was also a second entrance that was accessible via a secret door in Fritzl's backyard. It's a lot of work. Over six years, Fritzl would remove over 250 tons of dirt and pour reinforced concrete to make walls, floors, and ceilings all in full view of everyone and with the approval of the local government, who believed Fritzl was doing something good for the community. I mean, God, if there was a nuclear war, he was fucked.

Yes. Oh, no. You didn't start building until the Cold War was practically over? Honestly, I just, I should have made it both. I should have made it nuclear proof. This is 78, man. This is when the Cold War is starting to heat back up again. Fucking Ronnie Reagan, that shit started. The 80s were like hot.

time. Real hot time for the Cold War. I also find it interesting, not only just the size of it, because this is what I thought when I first read the story, when we first were all talking about it, I thought it was just like in a basement and you put a lock on the door. That's like what I thought, kind of like Ariel Castro, where it was just like they're in a back

room and no one's asking anything. No, he dug up his backyard to build this. Did he do it himself or did he hire like a crew? Or is he out there with a shovel just like... And construction machines. Yeah, he had fucking front end loaders. Whatever he needed. Yeah, yeah. He fucking did all of it himself. Man, and if I was her, I'd be super nervous every single time he came in to measure her. You know, like he's out there just going like, Soon! Yeah, you like it? You know that? It's gotta be rough.

Fritzl then planted trees, shrubs, and bushes in the backyard to ensure privacy and always made sure to shop around for the best deals.

In other words, Fritzl was in no hurry, which makes him all the more terrifying. Rosemarie Fritzl, meanwhile, would comment proudly on how hard her husband was working on his backyard project. She did nothing. Nothing. She just stayed at home. Well, she was terrified of him. Oh, yeah. Was she in a job? No. Not that I know of. I think she was just a housewife, yeah. Elizabeth Fritzl, however, had no idea what her father was planning.

He continued sexually abusing her, but she was doing her best to live a normal life. She was slowly trying to pull away from the horrors of her home in Amstetten. But it was pretty thick. What was happening to her was fucking awful. So it was, she was already known to her friends as like a shattered person. Like it was very, very difficult.

Fritzl, meanwhile, blew off steam at the local brothels.

While his family was forced to budget and struggle financially, Fritzl would pay sex workers $225 an hour up to three times a week to, among other acts, pretend to be corpses while he had sex with them. Oh, that's why he was looking for the best deals.

Budget your money. It's just hard. I don't understand Excel. Most of those women, however, didn't see him a second time because aside from the corpse play, he'd sometimes get violent, choking them right up until the point of death. The weirdest thing he did was he'd ask girls to crawl into sacks. And then once they were in the sack, he verbally berate them.

Yeah, while they're in the sack. While they're in the sack, and that's it. Yeah. That's all you would do. You're a bag woman, and you're dumb. You're a bag woman, and you're in your stupid little sack. You're a sack woman. Yeah, he notoriously hated potatoes. Oh, you misperlapos.

Look at you. You're all bagged up. Ready to go. Have to go. Jumping around. Well, other sex workers, however, would be paid to act as if Fritzl was hunting them down to rape them. And he was a bad tipper on top of everything else. To be honest, I find that the worst part about him. Well, I mean, it's Europe. It's not really a tipping culture. Is that what you're honest about? Is that you're honest about him being a bad tipper, that being the worst thing about him? I feel like, honestly. Honestly, this is what you're being honest about. Honestly, being a terrible customer is one of the worst things you can be.

That and a hypocrite. Then a father having sex with his daughter multiple times in a sex dungeon in order to make a second secret underground family. But God forbid you're a hypocrite. I mean, that makes me crazy. He's guilty of all three.

He was never a hypocrite. He openly talked about how he wanted to have sex with his mother. He openly talked about wanting to have sex with his daughter. He was completing a promise to himself. Okay. Well, according to one brothel owner, if Fritzl had a bill for 97 euros, he'd pay with 100 and ask for change. Yikes.

Now, the image we have in our mind of Joseph Fritzl is that of the exhausted old man. Hair sticking straight up with a look on his face that says he's just slightly put out by all this hullabaloo. It's one of those where if you were to put him next to two other old guys and you asked me who of these old guys kept his daughter in a basement and had a bunch of children with her. Yeah.

I'd choose him unless you also were going to ask me or which one of these makes fun candy professionally. With this look, if he didn't have sex with his own family, he'd probably be in charge of Cadbury. He kind of looks like the Carlota Farts guy. He does. He looks like Ted. Oh, wow. He does look like the Carlota Farts guy. I got the Carlota Farts.

I'm saving a few. Draw me a few. I know what I'm listening to on the right hand of the air. If you're having problems with the content of the show right now, I would say stop. Go listen to Carlota Farts. I got a Carlota Farts. Just trying not to let that guy remind you of Joseph Bristol, Ted Pilgrim. You know, I think he was local. Yep, he was. California boy. Mm-hmm.

But that mugshot, the famous Joseph Fritzl mugshot that we all know, the one taken in 2008 when he was in his 70s, that betrays the successful man that Fritzl was when he was younger. He owned multiple properties in Austria and did quite well for himself in the worlds of both construction and real estate. It takes a lot of fucking money to tear down a house and build up an entire new one with apartments everywhere.

and a fucking rape dungeon on top of all that. I mean, and he wasn't a cheat. Like, he wasn't like fucking around. He wasn't H.H. Holmes not paying people. He had money. He was successful. I'll just stop about that. And he's not a cheap guy. No, cheat. I called him a cheat. Yeah, he's not a cheat. I mean, at the very least. But that

No, it costs a lot of money. To me, that makes him even more terrifying. You know, like if he was a cheat and he was always a piece of shit all the time, like that's one thing. But this just regular successful asshole has this shit in his fucking backyard. That's how you get away with it. I would say that the superpower of the cishet male.

is the ability to compartmentalize in that way, where he is the type of person that can just lock, he just locks it away. Well, literally. Like, he literally compartmentalized it in a compartment underneath his house. Truly, we talk about this with another thing about, like, when their homes, when a serial killer's home sort of symbolizes the crimes themselves, where, like, he put that,

version of himself downstairs and upstairs is the Yosef that everybody knows and he's then free to kind of do both and then he can be even worse when he goes downstairs and he can even be more normal when he goes upstairs because he's not trying to balance but that's the thing is that he was still a fucking horrible father yeah he's still horrible to his kids but I don't think he was a nice man upstairs but they don't know how good they had it versus their sister yeah yeah well

Well, really, the only failure it seems he had in the business world was when he tried starting his own mail-order lingerie business. Yeah, that's what's hard. You've got a drum-up business, and they can't smell all, like, cigarettes and stuff. I was trying to mail out lingerie for a while. It's weird. They get mad if they see buffalo wing sauce on it. You can't get high on your own supply. No, I'm just sitting there just chewing on lingerie.

That new fucking Menendez Brothers show, like, I've been eating a lot of buffalo wings. Yeah, I know. Talking about Mr. Buffalo all the time. It could have worked. And I just, I'm glad that they finally kissed in the new show. The brothers do? Yeah. I can't watch it. Just because of Ryan Murphy, not because of Menendez Brothers. Understandable.

Well, as one of Elizabeth's brothers put it, they believed that the pig, that's what they called Joseph Fritzl, they believed that he would beat them all to death one day. And one child was so traumatized that when he heard the key turning the front door lock, he'd hide in the corner and wet his pants. Rosemary, meanwhile, resigned herself to a strained and cold marriage. I actually prefer it this way.

No. After Rosemarie's seventh child, Fritzl announced to everyone that he would no longer have sex with his wife because she was too fat. But Rosemarie was all too happy to accept this declaration because she hated him just as much as everyone else. The children, however, still met their father's focus all too often.

Fritzl believed in an Austro-Hungarian tradition called Scheitelkanin, or crown kneeling.

In this punishment, children were made to kneel for up to an hour on a sharply cut log of wood until they bled. Looking online, though, the only instances of Scheitelknein that I could find were pictures of old men dressed in traditional Austro-Hungarian garb, drinking beer out of huge steins, kneeling on specially made Scheitelknein boards as a weird endurance competition. See, that makes sense.

They just took that and they put kids on them. But that's the thing. It's not even fun! It started as the punishment first. It's like how in America, like certain fraternal organizations... Paddle people. Yeah, they use fancy handmade wooden paddles to spank each other. It's just weird. I don't know why men across many white cultures turn extreme childhood punishments into adult endurance contests when we all get together and form clubs. It's because men don't go and die in war.

They turn everything into violent competition, according to Jung. That is true. Well, this is endurance. Yes, but that's a war. It's experiencing pain. But I would imagine... Enduring pain. But it seemed as if many of the old German and Austrian men in these pictures...

Quite possibly had gone to war at one point. Oh, but the wrong side You know, this is why I like playing connect for when I go get drunk, yeah, yeah, but better than kneeling on wood Did you ever do that? Did you ever I know like the most I symmetric push-ups and stuff like that the most medieval thing I was forced to do when in Sunday schools and I had to be on my knees and I had a whole two

dictionaries in both of my hands. Was that like as a punishment or a training? Yeah, as a punishment. Oh, see, they used to make us do like sitting against the wall for as long as possible. Yeah, wall sits. Yeah, that stuff. But it was all for like making us strong. Yeah, and look up what you do. And they were right. Your father, even though in many ways was abusive, he was also many ways correct because look how big you are now. Oh, he's sounding great today. Ha ha ha!

Yeah, that's the thing. All these years of therapy being like, my dad ignored me.

me. You made me play football. But our punishments are just as valid. Our problems. You know what? I don't think they are. We'll save it. Yeah, I'm not going to go and say yeah, I'm glad that when I was at school I would get beaten by wooden paddles all the time in public school. Yeah, that was very strange. But look at you. I think it gave you discipline in many ways though. I don't think it did. No, probably

No, it really didn't. No, especially because, you know, they'd fucking, especially when you were like an adult, like when you were 17 or 18. That's weird. And then you'd have another grown man like paddling you. Yeah, paddling you. And then you'd like laugh afterwards and you'd shake your hand and you'd sign the paddle. Yeah, I hate that stuff because that's just one thing.

That's fucking one step away from actively having sex with each other. It's really fucking weird, guys. Yeah. It's really fucking strange. Yeah. A lot of you out there listening right now might not think it is. But it is. It's really fucking weird. Men play and horse play as other types of activity. You know what I mean? Join the wrestling team. Yeah, then you can play grab ass for free.

But as far as Joseph's other punishments went, he would make his children stand on rice on a marble floor in bare feet while balancing a book on their head. And if the book fell, the children would be whipped. I think Tidy Klum used to have to do that. That's like the type of stuff they used to do to Natalie in ballet school. They hit her with a stick and stuff. Yeah, but it's the standing on the rice. Yeah. That's a really horrible part. It's a waste of rice. It hurts.

Now, in the summer of 1981, Elizabeth started pulling away from the Fritzl household, although Joseph still maintained a degree of control. Fritzl got her a job as a server at a rest stop restaurant, intentionally coercing her into hospitality and service jobs so she would have the right skills to be, in his words, a good dungeon wife. Which I don't really know because it's not like she's going to be bringing stuff to a four-top restaurant.

In a rape dungeon. I think it was just a part of the fantasy. Yes. Like he wanted her to be able to be like a little housewife. Yes. A perfect servant. Turned on by a waitress on the other side of town and you wanted his daughter to do it or something. Yeah. I mean, if it happens five times a day out in Los Angeles. Well, reluctantly, Fritzl did allow Elizabeth to attend a technical college 100 miles south of Amstetten when she was 17. But

But it was there that Elizabeth would finally tell someone what had been happening to her at home since she was 11. In January of 1983, Elizabeth broke down in a bar and told a friend everything. They then decided to run away together. But when Fritzl discovered she was gone, he reported her missing and even got Interpol involved in the search.

Elizabeth and her friends were found at a party in Vienna three weeks later, and since she was still a minor, Fritzl was able to bring her back to Amstetten. This incident, however, had inadvertently given Joseph Fritzl the perfect cover story for when he finally locked her in the dungeon. From the beginning,

From just a single instance of Elizabeth running away from home, Fritzl was able to create a narrative that Elizabeth had always been an unruly and troubled black sheep who constantly ran away because of her problems with drugs and alcohol.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, figured that all she had to do was make it until she was 18 and she'd never have to see her father ever again. He knew that too, though. What she didn't know was that in the fall of 1983, Fritzl was putting the finishing touches on the dungeon where she'd spend the next 24 years of her life. The only thing left is to hang the mezuzah. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

You know, something about him makes me think he wasn't a mezuzah. I don't know. It's ironic, don't you think? It's like when you're having sex with your daughter. Fun. You fucking had it and then you lost it. Can't all be perfect Joseph materials?

Using an industrial winch, Fritzl lowered massive concrete blocks and a concrete and steel door into place. If I was Elizabeth, I would have been getting real nervous at this point. Well, that made the underground dungeon an impenetrable fortress from which there would be no escape save his mercy. In Fritzl's world, his cellar was his kingdom that only he could enter. He said, quote, This is what everyone knew who lived in the area.

That includes my wife, my children, and my tenants. And none of them ever managed to force their way into my kingdom or ask me what I did there.

And indeed, even the city signed off on the dungeon when it was finished. Building inspectors gave final approval to Fritzl for his so-called nuclear shelter, apparently unconcerned about the hall of eight doors with multiple electronic locks that all locked from the outside. It's to keep out all the smoke. You know, the smoke would go everywhere. And this is why it's important to remember, you must not try. Do. Do.

I'm sure they're all impressed. But the locks on the outside. They're all like, wow, honestly, this is pretty crazy. You did this this fast. But questions aside, if there were any, Fritzl was given a generous state grant when the dungeon was finished at the end of 1983. All he had to do now was find the right time to lure his daughter into the darkness.

Now, perhaps Fritzl had to work up the nerve to actually imprison his daughter because Elizabeth wasn't locked in the cellar until August of 84. Or, more likely, he may have wanted to give the so-called shelter time to cool off for a bit and let everyone forget that it even existed. I think that was probably why he waited. Yeah, I could also just see just like, you know, when is the perfect time? And that's what's hard is that there's no such thing as a perfect time ever. It's always about now. Stop procrastinating. Mm-hmm.

But either way, Elizabeth was working a new job and attending school when Joseph decided it was time. Quite suddenly, Joseph and Rosemary showed up where Elizabeth was living one day and brought her back to Amstetten. Once home, Fritzl asked Elizabeth to help him move a heavy steel door in the basement. When they were in position, just in front of the dungeon door, Fritzl shoved his daughter inside, grabbed the back of her head, and rendered her unconscious with an ether-soaked rag.

When she finally lost consciousness, Fritzl handcuffed her and dragged her down the hallway, passing all eight doors, then threw her on the bed in the dungeon. He then raped her repeatedly, and when he was done, he left her arms chained behind her back, handcuffed her to a pole, and turned off the lights.

Elizabeth would not see the sun or breathe fresh air again for almost 9,000 days. Jesus Christ. During those first nine months, time lost all meaning for Elizabeth because the only light she would ever see was when her father showed up to rape her.

After he was done, he'd leave a bowl of food that Elizabeth would eat while manacled to the wall in total darkness. She'd scream for days on end, banging the walls in a vain attempt to be heard, but remember, it was soundproof. After a few months, Fritzl unchained Elizabeth's hands from behind her back and tied an electric cable around her waist, then tied the other end to the metal pole.

It was just long enough for her to reach a small toilet in the corner of the room. He decided to release her, I believe. Something had changed in his work life where he decided that she had spent enough time manacled, she can now then start to roam freely inside of here.

Well, not even freely. She was still attached to the... She was tied with the electrical cable for quite a few months before she was allowed to walk freely. Not to sound horrible, maybe she was just sick of cleaning up her shit. I can't...

Yeah, could be. Yeah, that did sound horrible. And you were an asshole. Fritzl also hadn't done a very good job designing the ventilation system. Elizabeth barely had enough oxygen to breathe and spent the next 24 years exhausted and lethargic.

It only got worse in the summertime when the dungeon became as hot as a sauna. You figured that he'd want it to be nicer for himself. Yep. I think part of it was the torture. Yeah. I think he liked knowing that she was down there suffering. And then when he went down there, it was like a whole different world. He made it better. Yeah. He's like, look, you see, I'm here. I'm making everything nice. Now, this is going to be a very loaded, weird question. There is no right question to ask. Did he love her or did he hate her?

Because he loved his mother and he imprisoned his mother. He purported to love her. That was his line, was that he loved her. But this was, in his perverted sense, the ultimate expression of his entire love, right? This idea of, I've created a whole world where you're separate from everyone else and it's just you and me.

And I love you so much that you're too pure. You're too like other people can't have you. I have to have you here protected so that you and I can make this family together because one day you'll see.

Now, when Elizabeth disappeared, Joseph acted completely out of character in public by being concerned and empathetic, which everyone thought strange. It's weird to even try to make a crying noise. Because just sounding like it turns me on crying. You know, that's fucked up. That's fucked up. It is, Joseph. Thank you. I feel seen. But this was all a part of his plan.

After a couple of days, Joseph and Rosemarie went to the police to file a missing persons report, making sure to tell them that Elizabeth had done this sort of thing before.

Fritzl then made a big show of searching for Elizabeth in train stations, homeless shelters, and bars. Elizabeth! Like looking in trash cans. Like looking at someone with a duffel bag on the seat. He'd open up, Elizabeth! Oh, God, maybe she's at the John, Long John Silver's! Fritzl, however, knew that just getting... Cut a little bit of his sandwich as well. Put him in here. I'm looking for him in here.

Fritzl, however, knew that just giving her up for a runaway wasn't going to satisfy anyone. He needed people to think she was still alive somewhere. And he came up with what sounds like the dumbest fucking plan in the world. And it would be if it hadn't been 100 percent successful. A W is a W. After about a month after Elizabeth was imprisoned,

Fritzl forced her to write a letter to her parents explaining that she and a friend had run off to join a religious cult. The letter stated that she didn't want to live at home anymore and didn't want anyone to look for her. Fritzl then took the letter, drove 100 miles away, and mailed it back to his own home.

This was just the first of many letters that Fritzl would use over the years to convince everyone that Elizabeth had joined a mysterious cult that no one had ever heard of and no one could place. And all of her friends immediately were like, Elizabeth didn't join a fucking cult. She didn't hang out with us. How in the fuck was she going to have the time to go meet all of the people in the cult and...

and go join the cult. But for Rosemary, this was a relief because she was under the impression that her daughter had finally escaped, ironically enough. I mean, she was just, that woman was destroyed. Yes. She is, again, one of those, I think it'll go throughout history about how much was she involved, what she knew, but he really spent the most and majority of his mental energy hiding her.

She probably, Rosemary almost certainly knew that Elizabeth was being sexually abused while she was growing up. While she was growing up. I do not think that she knew anything about the cellar. Yeah. I don't think she knew anything. I don't think anybody knew anything about the dungeon. It's a

common question every single time we see one of these is how much did the other party know it's just because it seems like it's a lot but it's just again I think in this time I think that we should also place this story in the time period where they all came from and remember a lot of these people spent a lot of time being very good at not asking questions and not looking for answers yep

Yeah, and it's also, it's not just her, it's the other kids. Of course. There's like, what, six other kids or something? Well, we'll get to all that here in a bit. Yeah. Well, when the ruse passed the first hurdle, fooling the wife, Fritzl then took the letter to the police. They called off their search efforts, but still kept her on record as a missing person.

Finally, and I think this was pushing it a little, Fritzl took the letter to the local newspaper and had them run a story about Elizabeth running off to join a cult. See, he was like, people knew him around town. They knew him. He was a known quantity. I don't know if they liked him. I don't know about that. But he was viewed as a serious businessman that makes decisions and, you know, like...

just spent the last six years home building his own nuclear containment unit. So they all thought that he was just some very forthright and strong-willed German businessman. I'm sure he built half the buildings in town. I mean, he was involved in it, in all the shit pipes. Yep, definitely all the shit pipes.

Over the years, Joseph and Rosemary would give further interviews to the press about Elizabeth's supposed disappearance, always playing the part of devastated parents who had lost their child to some mysterious organization.

But while the press tour might seem like it was gilding the lily, Joseph Fritzl successfully convinced anyone who might have cared that Elizabeth was gone but safe. And from that point forward, Elizabeth Fritzl became just sort of a story people told if they remembered her at all. It's like she was already dead. Yeah, he was successful at just erasing her.

Meanwhile, the day Elizabeth turned 19 and the police officially called off the search, Fritzl celebrated the occasion by removing the cable leash from Elizabeth's waist so she could walk freely in her 15-foot-wide, 15-foot-long prison. This was seven months after her imprisonment began. Didn't you always just want to touch the south wall? Because that's crazy, right? It's a different temperature, different vibe. Yeah.

Now, in order to just survive, Elizabeth resigned herself to a life in the cellar. As one psychiatrist put it, her psyche had to twist itself to find patterns of daily existence in order to normalize her experience. Basically, she shut down and went along to get along. Oh, yeah. Once she did this, Fritzl softened.

This was his flirting. Yeah.

Yeah, this is him. He really is like, okay, now that I've broken you, we can now begin the process of our relationship together. He's making her his wife. Yes. The rapes also became less violent. And after he was done, he would sit and talk to her. He would tell her news about the rest of the family.

his future plans for the garden. He'd sit and talk to her about what movies he'd seen recently. Did you, have you seen, um, I went to go see Seven Easy Pieces. Oh, you did. You gotta see it whenever you can. Have you seen The Exit? Oh, no, you can't. E.T.? You've not seen it? You seriously, you've not seen E.T.? Everybody's seen E.T. Everybody's seen E.T.

But even after being some semblance of civil, Joseph would be sure to remind Elizabeth that the steel door keeping her imprisoned was booby-trapped, and if she ever tried to escape, she would be killed by a cloud of deadly gas. This wasn't true at all.

As far as how Fritzl kept Elizabeth in his dungeon a secret, he told his family to never go into the cellar ever again because he'd transformed it into his private office. And since everyone was fucking scared shitless of him, they obeyed. This doesn't surprise me at all. No, definitely. I think that it does work because he set the rules. He set the rules in the house and everyone just didn't want to deal with it. They just were trying to get the fuck out of this house, essentially. And I think that when you build your office, I mean, like...

Again, I'm not speaking positively at all. But I will say that there's... I have this idea of having what I call, I've said this to Natalie, my comedy lab.

What I would love is to have a comedy lab out in the backyard somewhere, if we ever have land. And it's just stuff like, don't ever come in there. Don't ever come into the comedy lab. Especially if I'm laughing, because that's when things are bad. If I'm laughing inside of the comedy lab. That's not when it's working. No. That's when it's going bad. Because it's when it's silence. Because that's when you know I have a good idea. Because of the silence. Because I'm scribbling.

But just don't come to the comedy lab. If the lab is a laughing, don't come and grab it. Right? Because I'm in that. So in this way, that's where I'm not jealous. Yeah. And plus, I'm sure they were relieved whenever he was in his dungeon. Very much so. Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, he's not in the house. Yeah, fuck it. Stay down there. Do whatever you want down there. Yeah. They absolutely loved when he was gone on business trips. Yeah. Anytime he was out of the house, they said things were good.

Also, remember there were apartments looking down on this dungeon. Oh, yeah. I mean, tenants lived on the property. There were eight apartments on the property. And these people were banned from both the cellar and the backyard. In fact, nobody was allowed to take pictures of the backyard. He told them...

Do not take pictures of the backyard. But I don't know what justification Fritzl gave for this rule. Was he a Brooklyn landlord? Because it does sound like one of those. You know when you live in those places where you... Those weird arbitrary rules. And you're not allowed to go and like, you know, there's a way to get there, but you're not allowed to go into the back courtyard. You're not allowed to go on the roof. You're not allowed to do these things. Yeah, don't take pictures of the backyard. Sure. Okay.

All I know is that everyone who lived there was terrified of Joseph Fritzl. And even though many tenants said they would hear mysterious sounds from the cellar over the years, all of them were too frightened to investigate or even complain. I'd be like, I'm renting here, buddy. I'm not looking into this. I also don't, I'm not quite sure about the whole mysterious sounds thing.

I'm not sure if that was like a remembered thing that they had or... Sounds like she was under inches of concrete. Yes. So I don't have any clue if they would be able to hear anything. Also, people like invent stories in their head after they're being... Exactly. Oh, yeah, of course, because...

I actually view them as all like, we talk about this with any one of these big true crime stories of how like the pain goes all the way down. They're all victims. They all were a part of his cover. They were all folded into the story. They are then, I imagine if you're sitting on top of this style of dungeon and all of this shit's going on afterwards, you're racking your brain to try to figure out like-

You know, somebody must have seen something. Somebody must have known something. I'm sure all their friends were like, what the fuck? You didn't see nothing? Yeah, of course. If you lived above this, I'd be like, Henry. I'm paranoid. I'm fucking paranoid and I dig. And I do look. And I look in windows. And I look in people's cars. That's also a problem. No, but I'm an investigator. I'm an investigator.

I'm a detective of the block. People ask why I dig. This is why I dig. This is why I dig. I love digging. I like to look. I like to see. I also love the act of digging. Yes. Well, as far as Fritzl's justification for spending so much time in the cellar went, he told his wife that he was working on a new business venture and had to spend his nights down in his cellar office in order to figure out how to make it work.

The second set of horrors, however, began in September of 1986, two years after Elizabeth was first imprisoned. See, Fritzl's plan, if you'll remember, was to create a second family underground that could be entirely under his control. And Elizabeth finally became pregnant that fall.

But after she became extremely depressed and miscarried, Fritzl tossed the fetus into the incinerator and turned off the lights in the cellar to punish Elizabeth. I'm mad at you, Elizabeth. Kobe! I'm leaving. It's also possible that Fritzl took out the rage he felt in other ways.

I wouldn't put it past him. No. Well, this happens a lot with serial killers or people that are capable of murder. If there's something very upsetting happens, you know, people lose a job, whatever, they take it out on somebody else. Yeah. And it's quite possible he took it out on this girl.

The next year, it's thought that Fritzl may have committed even more heinous crimes during a trip to Thailand that he took with a friend of his. See, Fritzl went on trips fairly often, and when he was gone, he'd stock up a freezer he installed in the cellar with food. He would tell Elizabeth that if anything would happen to him while he was gone, there was a failsafe mechanism on the cellar door that would release her after a certain period of time.

But of course that was a lie. Yeah. He died. He died. She would starve to death in there. Yeah. God damn. That's like the fucking worst thing on the face of the planet. Yeah. You think it's over. You know what I mean? Like maybe he's not coming back. And then it's like, maybe he's not coming back. Yeah.

Would there be a light on when he would leave for months? Yeah. Yeah. In reality, Fritzl would leave Elizabeth entirely alone in solitary confinement for up to a month during these trips to Thailand, where he would abuse staff and sex workers while sunbathing and riding elephants. Do you ever see that Netflix documentary they put out about Joseph Fritzl a little while ago? And they had taken it down for some reason. I couldn't find it anywhere. But one of the details I remembered was...

the buddies talking about what those trips were like, because now like sex tourism is like even more explicit than it was like a business trip. Yeah. You know? And so he'd go and, but they would all talk about how like Fritzl was like, honestly, he's a jerk at home.

But on vacation, he's hilarious. You know what I mean? Like, it's that style of like, if you knew him in Thailand, Thailand Joseph, let his hair up. He was ready to go. You know what I mean? Like, that's how they viewed it. But yes, he was extra. He was a fucking monster. Yeah.

In 1988, though, four years after Elizabeth was imprisoned in the cellar, she's in there for four years now, she got pregnant again. This time, however, the pregnancy stayed viable, and Fritzl left Elizabeth medical books so she could learn how to give birth by herself. Now, this is your opportunity to learn, okay? This is you. I'm just letting you have the opportunity to take care of the situation yourself, okay? So I'll be back.

You squirt it out, they'll see it. The only small mercy was that when her pregnant became visible, Fritzl became disgusted by her body and would stop raping her for months at a time, which would be a pattern for each of her pregnancies. Which would encourage her to get pregnant. Yeah. When the baby came, however, Elizabeth was all alone. She cut the umbilical cord herself and named the baby Kirsten, the first of seven children Elizabeth would give birth to in the dungeon.

Three would be raised upstairs, one would die, and three, including Kirsten, would be raised in the cellar. Kirsten herself would not see the sunlight for the first time until she was 19 years old.

And it's with the beginning of the underground family and Fritzl's eventual capture that we'll return next week for Joseph Fritzl Part 2. And everyone's excited. I think it's... I find this story to be obviously harrowing and terrifying. Yeah, it's fucking horrible. It's going to get worse. It gets worse next week. But it is interesting. What we'll also cover is that

It was not the only one of these crimes happening in the same area at the same time. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk a little bit more about the history. We're going to have to talk about how the Austrian government had to release a whole statement saying, we're not just sex dungeons. Our country is so much more than sex dungeons. We've got clocks, Arnold Schwarzenegger. We've got cheese. And we are, what else? Clocks. I don't know. I think it's Swiss with the clocks. The Ferris wheel.

They do. They got that big Ferris wheel. That's cool. And I feel like in that way, they're exonerated. Yeah. And Vienna's a beautiful city. But good work, Marcus, and good work, Eddie, for not throwing up. Oh, my God. It was fucking awful. I'm proud of you. But there was a lot of this shit. It makes you think, like, because this is around the same time as Castro in Cleveland. Ariel Castro was after this. Is after this. Yeah. So, like, at any point, there's probably lots of people in dungeons.

At any point? Oh, God, yes. You'd have to assume that this is happening in multiple places right now. Worldwide, I would imagine this is happening to tens of thousands of people as we speak. See, I feel like it's a lot, but I could see a thousand.

Just 1,000? Sidestorieslpotl at gmail.com. How many people do you think are currently kept inside of a dungeon? I would say, I agree with Marcus, considering there's like 4 billion people on Earth. Yeah, people kept in sexual, 8 billion. 8 billion. That's a lot more. That's a lot of people. So 20,000. Yeah.

Yeah, people kept... Hey, we were wrong about the size of a flock of birds. We might be wrong about this. I mean, as far as it being like... To this extent, I would not say it's a lot of people. Yeah, this is the worst one. Yeah, this is the...

The top. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like every pop star wants to be Michael Jackson, but no one ever will be. Yeah. But how many singers are there? A lot. A lot. A lot of guys singing songs. A lot of guys molesting kids. But it's hard. It's hard to choose which one you like the most. I don't know. I don't know how to answer. Are you still being honest? Hey, honestly? First of all, honestly?

Love the hair. We can come back to that. Tonight will be one of those nights where I can finally go home and tell Julie, you can't ask me about my work. I'm going to my comedy lab. Don't you fucking come in that

I'm in that comedy lap. Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left is where you can watch video episodes of this show. You can also watch full episodes of Side Stories on YouTube. You can check us out on all the social medias at LP on the left.

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Which one? Steven Tyler. It's still bad. It's still bad. No, no. I got one for you. Hail the fighting American forces who took down the Nazis and also the Soviets who took down the Jerrys in the other direction. Oscar Schindler. Pinscher. Oscar. Hail Oscar Schindler. Hail Oscar Schindler. Woo! Okay.

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