"house of horrors" Options

[Teesa]

i read about this yesterday and it just truly made me sick.

here's an update:

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- DNA tests have confirmed that Josef Fritzl fathered six children with his daughter, whom he kept imprisoned under his home for 24 years, police in Austria said Tuesday.

Authorities have said that a seventh child, also apparently fathered by Fritzl, died shortly after birth.

A police spokesman also said authorities believed it was "improbable" that Fritzl was hiding other people in another location.

The 73-year-old appeared in court Tuesday as Austrians struggled to come to terms with its second horrific abduction case in two years.

The retired electrical engineer faces a possible 15 years in prison if charged and convicted of rape.

In court, he appeared calm and showed no emotion, according to an Austrian reporter present. Fritzl spoke, saying that he wanted to redeem himself, said Sabrine Arndt, of Pro7/Sat1 TV station.

The female judge presiding said he would be kept in custody, the reporter said, but gave no indication for how long.

Fritzl was on Monday moved from the town of Amstetten -- where he kept his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and three of her children in the cellar of his house -- to the courthouse in nearby St. Poelten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria.

The central European country's newspapers were filled with details of the case, which has shocked the nation.

"Horror father breaks silence," "Hiding a double life without wife knowing" and "Soundproof dungeon behind 300kg steel door" were headlines in Die Kronen Zeitung.

It also ran a story questioning how people could survive deprived of sunlight for so long.

Die Presse went with "The man who deceived the world" and also accused authorities of allowing the atrocities to happen.

rest of the story here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/29...llar/index.html

[Comptine]

^ One of their kids passed out and he brought her to the hospital. But since the circumstances for her condition were unclear, the authorities asked the mom to come forward. He eventually brought his daughter to the hospital and the police suspected something was up and the whole thing unraveled. Also, somewhere along the line they tested the guy's blood and the sick girl's blood. That's what I gathered from all the articles.

I'm surprised they had so many children. I wonder if any of them have birth defects from having that amount of common DNA.