how in the world is this man only getting 15 years in prison?

This man kept this woman and her children down there so long I was just born around the time she would have been put down in that cellar. That makes me so sick to my stomach I can't even describe the anger I have for this guy. I hope they show him what being locked up in a dark place with no human contact is like for the rest of his life. Which in that case I hope would be a very very long time.

I'm sorry. But I could only read the first two paragraphs of this story. Sometimes we just have to turn the world off or we'd give up hope for good.

I don't advocate that people strive for ignorance, but sometimes we just have to turn off the TV or throw the paper in the fire. This story is just disgusting on every level.

If the world was a person, it would be full of cancer. Tomorrow, I vow to wake up and try to find some good news to read.

@

... I can feel my skin crawling as I read this; very disturbing to say the least.

""his own childhood abuse at his mother's hand is the root of his problems" - What a lame thing to say. This guy is intelligent. He should say: Because I was abused as a child, I will not abuse my child and her children. He is a monster and he didn't love them in any way. He owned them and boy did he let Elisabeth know it!

It is inconceivable that no one else knew about this strange little man and the downstairs family. Talk about denial. These children did not feel the wind on their faces, rain drops; grass under foot... this guy needs to rot in a cell the size and stench of the prison he created. If it was good enough for the downstairs family, then it is good enough for him - too good.

Now I can truly say in any dark, self-pity days: at least I wasn't locked in a basement for 24 years, forced to have sex with my father, have his children, have some of them taken away from me, could not stand up straight, was not able to breath at times and was left to starve and freeze for days on end trying all the time to understand why this was happening to me.

How strange for the children to learn about time, about the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, the seasons, things we whom live above ground take for granted or cherish. Stars, clouds, rain. Otherworldly. A nightmare that strikes at our core.

The story proves that there is hell on earth and sometime a human being can be worst than an animal, much worse.

This story is too horrific for words. Yet, I can't help but wonder if there are other Elizabeths out there?

The fact that Elizabeth's mother didn't question anything her husband told her has me concerned about the abuse that went on upstairs as well.

I just hope the Austrian medical and mental healthcare systems provides all the care and support this family needs.

As for Fritzl, throw him in a hole in the ground, seal it and walk away.

For his attorney to justify that he is "not a monster" because his own mother beat him and that he focused his atrocities on only one of his children is outrageous. I have never bought into the idea that defense attorneys are supposed to do or say anything in defense of their clients. There should be a line and to spew that kind of warped logic crosses it. As for the dad, there is surely a special place in Hell for him.

What a monster. Words can't even express the contempt and disgust I feel for this man. His daughter and her children will never have a normal, healthy life. What he did is worse than murder; he robbed them of life and left them living ghosts of the people they could have and should have been.

I can't believe I haven't heard of this story before now. Instead I'm being bombarded with up-to-the-minute reports on Octomom. It's ridiculous and disgusting.

Hhickerson, you must not have read/watched much news last May, when this came out. It was in the papers and in the news magazines (Newsweek had a pretty good story about it).

It is a travesty of justice

This man's wife had to have known about this & should be tried as an accomplice.

Please tell me that Austria has a death penalty.
Or that Austrian prison populations do.

toliniku: "The new pleas mean that Fritzl will certainly receive a life sentence." (He should be forced to serve it in solitary confinement on Alcatraz, without heat or electricity and with only occasional and unpredictable ministering of food and water by unstable, abusive guards.)

What is most shocking about this story is the sheer miracle of Elisabeth's human spirit--how that girl lived and maintained enough sanity to raise children and seek hope in pictures of flowers and sunshine is beyond comprehension. Considering how many of us can't even read through the entire story, for her to have lived the horror for real and not perished, gone stark raving mad, or killed herself is really and truly a terribly beautiful testament to the human spirit.