The wife of Austria's accused "horror father" Josef Fritzl never believed he was involved in the 24-year disappearance of their daughter, though he had served an 18-month prison sentence for a 1967 rape conviction, her sister says.
In an exclusive television interview for The Associated Press, the sister-in-law of the man accused of imprisoning his daughter in a dingy dungeon for over two decades, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children has provided the intimate details of the life of oppression inside the Fritzl home.
The woman, who asked only to be identified as Christine R because of the wide attention the story has received, said incest victim Elisabeth ran away from home as a 17-year-old, about six months before police say she was locked into the soundproofed, windowless cellar beneath their apartment - hinting at a motive for the crime.
She described the father as a "tyrant" who instilled a culture of fear at home, which helped him create an elaborate cover story that no one questioned of Elisabeth running away to join a cult and abandoning three children on their doorstep.
The woman was interviewed today at her home in Austria. "He tolerated no dissent. Listen, if I myself was scared of him at a family party, and I did not feel confident to say anything in any form that could possibly offend him, then you can imagine how it must have been for a woman that spent so many years with him."
If wife Rosemarie had challenged Fritzl, Christine R said "we don't know what he would have done to her, maybe he would have slapped her.
"In any case, he was a tyrant. What he said was good and the others had to shut up."
Christine R also painted the most complete picture to date of her sister: a woman who against all odds fought to hold together a troubled family, yet never suspected that the cause of so much pain was in her own home.
"She never believed him capable of it," the woman said of her 68-year-old sister. "We spoke about it often when we met. And I would say, 'Rosemarie, where can Elisabeth be?' I even told her myself, she is definitely in a cult where you can only have a certain amount of children, or they don't want sick children."
Police say they have no evidence that Rosemarie was complicit in her husband's alleged atrocities. They say the 73-year-old electrician confessed to the imprisonment and rape and to incinerating the body of one of the children he had with his daughter after it died in infancy.
Josef is accused of concocting the cult story and even impersonating her in a phone call to convince his wife of its truth. He is also accused of forcing his daughter to write letters that were used to explain the three children apparently found at their doorstep.
She said Rosemarie had no idea that her daughter was locked in the basement and did for a while frantically look for her elsewhere. Christine R said her sister devoted her life to her children - a task that she focused on with even greater effort after her husband was jailed. "I believe he spent a year and half in prison," she said.
She did not have more information on the rape conviction.
The Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten daily on Saturday printed an excerpt of what it said was a 1967 court record found in the state archives in Linz, in which a Josef F was accused of breaking into the apartment of a 24-year-old nurse and raping her.
Police have declined to comment, saying records that old would have been erased under Austria's statutes of limitation. But authorities are awaiting old court records that the media say document the case.
Christine R said her sister reacted with "shock" but believed in the maxim that "everyone makes a mistake" and focused on keeping her family healthy.
As time went on, the relationship between Fritzl and his wife soured but there was no warning signs that something was disturbing about the relationship between the father and Elisabeth, whom police say may have been sexually abused when she was as young as 12.
"He was just as strict with her as he was to every other child," Christine R said. "There was nothing in particular that could lead you to say he was more intimate with her. From the child as well it never came out."
Authorities first began to unravel the complex story on April 19, when Elisabeth's eldest daughter was admitted to a hospital suffering from an unidentified infection.
Doctors, unable to find any medical records for the girl, appealed on TV for her mother to come forward. Fritzl then accompanied Elisabeth to the hospital April 26 and opened up to police.
Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offences, unless prosecutors can charge him with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the death of the infant. That is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
