The face of evil: Fritzl is caught on camera

The 73-year-old was snapped by photographers waiting to catch a glimpse of the man who imprisoned his own daughter in a home-made dungeon for 24 years.

The chilling image was a stark contrast to the tanned shots of Fritzl taken on a Thai beach, that emerged after his arrest.

His weathered face looked aged and pale and was quickly hidden behind a blue binder as he headed into the courtroom.

The jury trying Fritzl at the court in St. Poelten, west of Vienna, heard more video-taped evidence today from his daughter.

The retired engineer used Elisabeth “like his own property”, raping her more than 3,000 times and fathering seven children with her in the dark cellar under his home.

For the first nine years of her captivity, Fritzl never spoke a word to his terrified daughter but would go downstairs to rape her three times a week.

After pleading guilty to a catalogue of sickening offences, the 73-year-old squirmed only once when the state prosecutor said: “Mr Fritzl, how could you do this to your own flesh and blood?”

The jury heard how he lured his 18-year-old daughter into the windowless cellar under his home in the Austrian town of Amstetten.

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For the next 24 years she was never able to stand up properly again as the ceiling was just 5ft high.

To add to her misery, Fritzl would sometimes turn the power off for up to 10 days at a time.

Four years into her ordeal, Elisabeth fell pregnant with the first of seven children but Fritz left his daughter to give birth alone on a filthy mattress with just a self-help pregnancy book, a pair of dirty scissors and some nappies.

The jury of four men and four women listened in horror as the state prosecutor described in harrowing detail the scale of abuse Elisabeth was forced to endure for more than two decades.

Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said: “In the first years, she had no washbasin, no bath, no shower, often no heat. He would come, switch the lights off, rape her, leave. Lights off. Rape. Lights on. Mould. Damp. Leave.

“There was no fresh air. In those first years the air came through gaps in the walls. He used her like a toy. He came, he took her, he left.”

Earlier, Fritzl had tried to hide his face in shame behind a blue lever-arch folder as he shuffled into the courtroom escorted by police. The court listened in stunned silence as Fritzl pleaded guilty to rape, incest and false imprisonment but denied enslaving his daughter and murdering one of the children he fathered with her.

He is accused of failing to seek medical treatment for the boy who developed breathing difficulties three days after birth, leaving him to die.

And when asked, “How do you plead to the charge of carrying out more than 3,000 rapes on your daughter during her time in the cellar”, Fritzl replied: “Only partly guilty.” His lawyer Rudolf Mayer had earlier said: “There is rape, and there is rape.”

Elisabeth was 18 in 1984 when she was tricked into the dungeon Fritzl had built beneath the family home.

The prosecutor told the jury: “He took her downstairs on the pretext he needed help moving a door and he drugged her and dragged her into the cellar where he tied her up.

“On the second day he put a noose around her waist which severely restricted her freedom even in the small room in which she was confined. How big was that room? It was 18 square metres. It is virtually the same size as the jury box in which you are sitting.”

For the first three years of her incarceration there was no hot water or heating until Fritzl connected a power supply.

Ms Burkheiser added: “Fritzl used his daughter like his property. He made her completely dependent.

“He decided what kind of food was brought into the dungeon. He decided when food was brought.

“Often the electricity would fail for hours at a time or longer. Sometimes the electricity would be off for up to 10 days. During that time they would be left without any light. There was no flashlight and no candles.

“With no electricity they had no water and no warm food. Even though there were babies to feed.”

The prosecutor also revealed that Fritzl repeatedly raped his daughter without saying a word to her for the first nine years of her lengthy imprisonment. “But worse than all these conditions and the rape was the uncertainty,” she said. “When would he come and when would he go? How long would he say? Would he even come back from his holidays?”

And when the children started to arrive, Fritzl would rape his daughter in front of them, said the prosecutor.

Elisabeth gave birth to seven children in the cellar. Of the six who survived, Fritzl took three upstairs to be raised by his wife Rosemarie after telling her they had been abandoned by Elisabeth, who had “joined a cult”.

The other three – Kerstin, Stefan and Felix – were forced to live in the cellar with their mother.

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Using a laser pen, Ms Burkheiser showed how cramped the airless cellar was with its low ceiling.

“I have been to the cellar twice,” she said. “It smells. It is incredibly damp. It has a morbid atmosphere that hits you as you crawl through the entrance.

“The damp creeps in within minutes. The dampness crept into their backs and into their bones. There is wet rot. He was the absolute ruler of this kingdom. He had complete control.”

She went towards the jurors with a box of musty objects and scraps of cloth from the cellar to give them a sense of the windowless tomb.

“Smell these things,” she urged the jury, who winced at the stench when a cuddly toy owned by Elisabeth’s youngest son Felix was removed from a plastic evidence bag. 

Fritzl even warned his victims that the cellar was fitted with booby traps that would lead to gassing and electrocution should they try to escape. “But she would never have tried,” added Ms Burkheiser. “Elisabeth Fritzl was a broken woman.”

Her ordeal ended only last year when her daughter Kerstin, 19, fell ill and Elisabeth persuaded Fritzl to take her to hospital, sparking an investigation by the authorities. Elisabeth, 42, was finally freed together with Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, who had spent their entire lives in the underground hell-hole.

Focusing on the emotionless figure in the dock, Ms Burkheiser said: “Look at him with his polite demeanour.

“He will present to you a caring side, a selfless person, the nice man from next door. But what really troubles me is that he has not shown a single sign of regret.”

She is pressing for life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane.

Four expert witnesses are ready to give evidence if necessary: A doctor who specialises in new-borns, a psychiatrist and an electrical engineer and a surveyor who inspected the dungeon.