Cries for help from Fritzl dungeon: book

Cries for help from the children Josef Fritzl imprisoned in a dungeon under his
Austrian home would have been heard by people living above, a new book claims.
Fritzl held his daughter Elisabeth and three of the seven children he fathered with
her in the cramped underground cellar for several years until they were released in
2008.
While many have speculated that the cellar must have been soundproofed to prevent
outsiders hearing the captives, a new book reveals they would have been heard.
The Crimes of Josef Fritzl: Uncovering the Truth quotes from a report by sound
engineer Peter Kopecky who found that knocking and cries for help would have been
"very audible" to those living above ground in Fritzl's home.
"The noises that the tenants thought they had heard coming from the cellar beneath
them had been real: the thumping, the moaning, the strange clanking noises emanating
from deep underground," according to extracts from the book published in The Times
newspaper in Britain on Tuesday.
"But nobody had thought to investigate."
Fritzl was jailed for life in March after being convicted of murder and rape.
Elisabeth was repeatedly raped by her father while he kept her prisoner in the
underground cellar for 24 years. She gave birth to seven children but one died
shortly after it was born.
Fritzl took three of the babies to live with him and his wife, while the other three
remained with Elisabeth in the cellar.
Elisabeth and her children were freed in April last year after her daughter Kirsten
fell ill and she begged her father to take her to hospital.
The book also reveals details of the day Fritzl bundled Elisabeth into the cellar in
August 1984 after an argument.
He told her he wanted to speak somewhere private and led her downstairs to the
cellar before covering her mouth and nose with a chloroform-soaked cloth and tied
her hands behind her back.
According to confidential documents outlining Fritzl's account of what happened in
the cellar, he said he began an incestuous relationship with Elisabeth about four or
five months later.
He claimed she had made it clear "she wanted to live her life differently in the
future".
"I now realised for the first time that my daughter was a desirable woman. She
didn't fight against it ... She never said that she didn't want it ..."
Fritzl's wife has said she knew nothing of Elisabeth's imprisonment and believed her
daughter had run away.
When Fritzl brought some of the children he fathered upstairs, his wife said she
believed Elisabeth had abandoned them because she could not take care of them.