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Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man who held his daughter captive in his basement as a sex slave for 24 years, fathering seven of her children, may be removed from a psychiatric detention center to a regular prison, according to global reports.
Fritzl, 87, will remain in the psychiatric prison while prosecutors evaluate the situation, The Associated Press reported.
Defendant Josef Fritzl arrives for the last day of his trial at the court of law in Sankt Poelten in Austria’s province of Lower Austria March 19, 2009. (REUTERS/POOL/Helmut Fohringer )
Fritzl was sentenced to life in prison a year later for incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and negligent homicide after he killed one of the sons he fathered soon after the baby was born, according to AP and Reuters.
CELLAR WHERE JOSEF FRITZL HELD DAUGHTER AND FATHERED HER CHILDREN TO BE FILLED WITH CEMENT
Investigators said in 2009 that the incestuous killer burned his son’s body in a furnace.
Defendant Josef Fritzl is pictured during proceedings on the last day the last day of his trial at the court of law in Sankt Poelten in Austria’s province of Lower Austria March 19, 2009. (REUTERS/POOL/Robert Jaeger )
A panel of Austrian judges made the decision Wednesday, and prosecutors appealed, court spokesman Ferdinand Schuster told the Austria Press Agency.
DAUGHTER OF AUSTRIAN ‘HORROR DAD’ JOSEF FRITZL REPORTEDLY WAKES FROM COMA
Fritzl’s daughter, Elisabeth disappeared in 1984 when she was 18 years old. She was found in 2008 after 24 years of captivity and brutal abuse. Authorities charged Fritzl that same year.
Colonel Franz Polzer, chief investigator of the district of Lower Austria shows a detail picture of the cellar appartment, where a father imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and had seven children with her, during a press conference on April 28, 2008. (Johannes Simon via Getty Images)
Prosecutors said at the time that Fritzl lured her into his windowless basement, drugged her and locked her in a room while telling those who asked about her whereabouts that she had run away.
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“He forced Elisabeth into slave-like conditions … shut her away in the cellar and made her totally dependent on him, forcing her into sexual acts and treating her as if she was his own property,” the St. Poelten provincial prosecutors’ office said in a 2009 statement, according to Reuters.
Prosecutors also alleged that Frizl threatened to kill Elisabeth and gas their children to death
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