CHILLING

Dungeon Dad’s Prison

Shocking details from the courtroom.

The most dramatic moment of opening day of the trial of Josef Fritzl, the infamous Austrian accused of raping and enslaving his daughter in his basement, came when the prosecutor asked jurors to take a whiff of the stench of his dungeon. Jurors recoiled in disgust as the smell from a box taken from the basement was presented. "It has a morbid atmosphere, which starts with having to crawl in on your hands and knees through the 83 centimeter entranceway...” the prosecutor said. “It's incredibly damp, a damp that creeps into you." Worse, she continued, was "the uncertainty—when will [Fritzl] return, when will he turn on the electricity, when will he go again, what will happen if he doesn't return?"