Control Freak

The defense attorney for Josef Fritzl, the Austrian fiend, the "Inseminator,"who imprisoned his daughter for over twenty years and fathered seven children, states that his client is a nut case and should not be put in jail.

"In my personal opinion, Josef Fritzl is mentally ill and therefore of diminished responsibility. I believe that my client does not belong in prison but in a secure psychiatric unit," lawyer Rudolf Mayer was quoted as saying by Bild am Sonntag today.

Herr Fritzl is not insane, he is evil. There's a big difference. Fritzl somehow managed to conceal from his wife, tenants, relatives, friends and neighbors the horrific conditions that he imposed on four people locked in his basement for decades. This beggers the imagination.

He fed them, carted out their dead, took care of their waste products, clothed them - for 24 years:

Elisabeth—now 42—was 18 when Fritzl locked her away leaving others to believe she had run away to join a sect. Over the next 24 years he fathered Kersten, 19, Stefan, 18, Lisa, 16, Monika, 15, Alexander, 12 (whose twin died soon after birth) and Felix, five.

Elisabeth was originally imprisoned in one room but over a decade Fritzl secretly added extra rooms for his second family. None had windows or sunlight and all had remote controlled locked steel doors.

This is not some out of control lunatic. This is a very much in control monster.

Just think of all the work, all the planning this took. He stole electricity and food from his tenants. No one had a clue? His wife never journeyed into her basement? Three of Elisabeth's children lived upstairs with the rest of the family based on a whimsical excuse that she left them on the doorstep?

I don't believe it, not for a second, not in the same house, not for for two and a half decades