New Shock in Austrian Dungeon Case

It seemed unlikely that the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian father who locked up his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years and forced her to have his seven children, could get any more lurid. Today comes news that the jailed Fritzl, 74, told a psychologist that he kept his mother locked in a sealed room for 20 years—until she died—as revenge for allegedly abusing him. “She used to beat me until I was lying in a pool of blood,” he said. “I never had a kiss from her or a cuddle.” Though he told friends she died in 1959, he now says it was 1980. “I locked her up at the top of the house,” he said. “I then bricked in the window so she never again saw the light of day.”