Price on head of sex slave brute Josef Fritzl

JOSEF Fritzl will never live to face trial, according to inmates at the jail where he is being held in Austria for his vile crimes. Prisoners have placed a bounty on his head.

Prisoners have pledged to kill Josef Fritzl before he can face justice for his crimes Prisoners have pledged to kill Josef Fritzl before he can face justice for his crimes

Last night it emerged that Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter, Elisabeth, in a cellar for 24 years and had seven children by her, had been moved to solitary confinement after his cellmate threatened to kill him.

The cellmate, a hardened criminal injured in a shoot-out, flew into a rage when he discovered that Fritzl had admitted kidnapping his daughter and holding her as a sex slave.

“From experience, we know that with sexual crimes where children are the victims there is an increased need of protection for the prisoner,” said Guenther Moerwald, governor of Sankt Poelten Prison.

Fritzl is still on suicide watch and his lawyer said he remained “distraught”. Dr Rudolf Mayer said: “He is very depressed. It is certainly hard for him in jail.

An aerial view of the house and garden in Amstetten where Fritzl imprisoned his family An aerial view of the house and garden in Amstetten where Fritzl imprisoned his family

“He is also very worried about all the threats. He was with another inmate but now he is on his own. He has a window and, as a remand prisoner, he has advantages over others.”

A prison source revealed that Fritzl will finally be visited by relatives on Tuesday. “I think he is desperate and very much wants to explain himself,” said the source.

It is believed that the visitors could include some of the legitimate children he had with his wife, Rosemarie.

Insiders at St Poelten told a different story, however, painting a picture of a man who was showing no emotion over the crimes of which is accused.

I knew Elisabeth was being raped by her father before she disappeared.

Joseph Leitner

Fritzl has already partially admitted kidnapping his daughter, and DNA tests have proved that he fathered six children with her. A seventh died as an infant and he told police that he disposed of the body in an incinerator. One former inmate predicted that Fritzl would not be able to escape attempts on his life.

“Child abusers are hated in Austrian prisons,” said the former bank robber. “I know that if somebody has been blacklisted there is always a way of getting to him even if he is in solitary confinement,” said the 63-year-old.

“It can be during walks in the yard or during personal hygiene, or even at dinner which is prepared and served by the inmates.”

Yesterday it emerged that Elisabeth nearly escaped her fate when she ran away from home as a teenager – but her father finally found her and threw her into her dungeon prison.

Friends who knew Elisabeth, now 42, before she was incarcerated for 24 years, admitted they were aware that Fritzl had been sexually abusing his daughter for years but did nothing to help her.

“I knew Sissi was being raped by her father before she disappeared,” said one, Joseph Leitner.

“A good friend of mine from school was really close to her, they were best friends and spent a lot of time together. She told me everything that happened.”

Elisabeth and her friend hatched a plan to escape Fritzl’s evil clutches in 1983, less than a year before she was drugged and imprisoned.

He said: “Elisabeth packed her bags and left. She and my friend were 17. They went to Linz and also spent some time in Vienna.”

But electrical engineer Fritzl tracked down his daughter and hauled her back to the town of Amstetten. Fritzl, described as a domineering bully, was furious at his daughter and banned her from seeing her friend again.

Just a few months later, Elisabeth disappeared. Fritzl told police that she had run away to join a religious cult. The reality, however, was that she was being held as his sex slave in the secret basement he constructed with his bare hands a few feet below his family and other lodgers.

After his arrest last week he remained unapologetic, claiming he had imprisoned her to prevent her falling into a life of drugs.

Mr Leitner said: “When Elisabeth vanished, my friends thought she had run off again. She never said anything because she was too frightened. It’s not just Elisabeth that feared her father, my friends did too. They never went to the police because they were too scared of what Fritzl would do.”

For his part, Mr Leitner, who was Fritzl’s lodger at the time, did not  alert police in case he was kicked out of the flat. “I didn’t want to get involved, I did not want to lose the flat. I kept myself to myself,” he admitted.

Alfred Dubanowsky, who went to school with Elisabeth, was another friend who knew she was being abused. He, too, was a lodger and also acknowledged that he ignored his suspicions. He described Elisabeth as a shy, introverted student.

“We used to spend a lot of time together, we were in the same class and we were friends,” he said. “We all used to go to a disco at the bottom of her road and I danced with her a couple of times. But she was rarely allowed out. After she vanished we all talked about it.

"We knew she had run away before and thought she had done it again because she told someone in our group that she had had enough, that she couldn’t stand it any more at home and that her father had been beating her, hurting her. She said she was scared of him.”

Breaking down in tears, he added: “There were so many clues. The noises at night, the amount of food that he used to load into a wheelbarrow and push to the cellar.”

Leitner admitted his dog would keep barking and dragging him towards the cellar.

“Every time I walked up the stairs, the dog tried to run at the cellar door and barked. When Fritzl noticed, he changed the locks on my apartment and kicked me out,” he said.

Although he appeared prosperous, with five houses and annual holidays to Thailand and the Far East, Fritzl was on the verge of bankruptcy – and last night his children discovered they would not be inheriting what little he had if he is imprisoned because he owes banks more than £1.5million. Fritzl had intended to make a fortune by building a block of flats, but he was thwarted because Elisabeth had an automatic right to inherit the property and was listed in the deeds.

After her disappearance, she was officially listed as missing. Austrian bankers are reluctant to remortgage properties if there is a sitting tenant, because it makes them difficult to sell if the creditor defaults. So he told them he wanted the money to set up an internet underwear business.

After decades of legal wrangling he managed to have her name removed from the deeds in 2006, but his project failed because he had missed Austria’s property boom.

“There are debts, and there would seem to have been some problems in making repayments recently,” said a a legal source.

Fritzl’s family is now said to be applying to legally change their names. But it will be far harder to erase the memories of that evil brute from the record.

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