When Monika Fritzl was 14 years old, she learned that her grandfather Josef was also her father — and he had held her mother captive in the family basement as a sex slave for more than two decades.
For the first 14 years of her life, Monika Fritzl had a fairly normal existence. She lived in a nice house at Ybbsstrasse 40 in Amstetten, Austria, with her grandparents, Josef and Rosemarie, and two siblings, Lisa and Alexander. Monika didn’t know — not until the spring of 2008 — that her grandfather had imprisoned her mother Elisabeth in the home’s basement, raping her and forcing her to bear seven of his children, including Monika.
Three of Monika’s siblings — Kerstin, Stefan, and Felix — lived in the basement with Elisabeth. These “downstairs” children grew up with no sunlight or fresh air, while Monika and her “upstairs” siblings went to school, learned how to play instruments, and made friends with other children their age. Tragically, there was one other sibling who had died shortly after birth.
But Josef’s heinous crimes were exposed when Elisabeth’s eldest child, Kerstin, became seriously ill and needed to be taken to a hospital. Soon afterward, Monika Fritzl realized that everything she’d ever known was a lie.
This is her story.
The Shocking Secret Lives At Ybbsstrasse 40 In Amstetten, Austria
SID Lower Austria/Getty ImagesThe Fritzls’ former house at Ybbsstrasse 40 in Amstetten, Austria.
By the time that Monika Fritzl was born on Feb. 26, 1994, she was living in a home that was shrouded in secrecy, violence, and deceit.
Ten years earlier, Monika’s grandfather Josef Fritzl had lured her mother, Elisabeth Fritzl, down into his cellar. Josef had abused Elisabeth from a young age, but this time, he took his abuse to a shocking new level. After knocking out his 18-year-old daughter with ether, Josef tied her to a bed in his nearly soundproof dungeon that he had secretly created in the basement. Over the next 24 years, he would keep Elisabeth as his captive: beating her, raping her, and psychologically tormenting her.
Though the outside world believed Josef’s lie that Elisabeth had run off to join a cult, she was actually a prisoner in her own home, where her father used her as a sex slave. And, before long, Elisabeth started getting pregnant.
Totally alone, and with little more than a pregnancy book, scissors, and a blanket, Elisabeth gave birth to her first child Kerstin in 1988. Her next child, Stefan, was born in 1990. And a third child, Lisa, was born in 1992.
YouTubeElisabeth Fritzl was 18 when her father kidnapped her and made her into his sex slave.
With the basement growing more crowded, Josef Fritzl developed a ruse. In May 1993, he left baby Lisa in a cardboard box on the doorstep of the family home, with a letter that he’d forced Elisabeth to write. According to Der Spiegel, Elisabeth’s letter read: “You will probably be shocked to hear from me after all these years, and with a real live surprise, no less… I breast-fed her for about 6 1/2 months, and now she drinks her milk from the bottle. She is a good girl, and she eats everything else from the spoon.”
In the coerced letter, Elisabeth asked her parents to take in the baby, but to not try and find her. Josef and his wife Rosemarie thus began to raise Lisa as one of their own, and Elisabeth’s real location remained a secret.
In 1994, Monika was born. Once again, Josef brought the baby upstairs and left her outside of the house (this time in Lisa’s stroller). Using a recording of Elisabeth’s voice, he also called the home. Rosemarie picked up, and was stunned to hear her missing daughter say: “I just left her at your door.”
Rosemarie was all the more shocked because she and Josef had recently obtained an unlisted number, and she told the police that it was “completely inexplicable” that Elisabeth would somehow know it.
XNot only did Josef Fritzl imprison his daughter for over two decades, but he also forced her to bear seven of his children.
The police noted Rosemarie’s comment. But nothing was done. Monika Fritzl was brought into the home, and for years, she was completely unaware that her mother and two of her siblings were imprisoned just beneath her feet.
Monika Fritzl’s “Upstairs” Life
For 14 years, Monika Fritzl lived a relatively normal life. She grew up with Lisa, and another sibling, Alexander, who appeared on the Fritzl doorstep in 1997. (Alexander also had a twin, Michael, who died soon after birth. Josef refused to get Michael medical help, and after the baby died, Josef burned his body in an incinerator.) Rosemarie largely oversaw their care and Monika attended school and music lessons, where she learned to play the trumpet.
YouTubeRosemarie and Josef Fritzl. Rosemarie largely oversaw the children’s care and education.
Indeed, a local social welfare agency wrote glowing reports about the conditions inside the Fritzl home. It found that the couple “encourage the children in many ways,” and that Lisa, Monika, and Alexander enjoyed “gymnastics” and “books and cassettes from the city library.” Rosemarie and Josef Fritzl, one report stated, “are very loving with their children.”
But in the basement, life for Monika’s other siblings was very different. Kerstin, Stefan, and another child, Felix — Josef decided that Rosemarie could not handle another child after Felix was born in 2002 — spent the entirety of their young lives underground. They had virtually no human contact, and they were vulnerable to Josef’s mercurial temper. When he was angry, Josef would sometimes cut off their electricity or withhold food.
Elisabeth tried to make life tolerable for the “downstairs” children. As Lisa, Monika, and Alexander made their way to and from school, Elisabeth decorated the basement walls, made up stories to keep the “downstairs” children entertained, and educated them as best she could.
SID Lower Austria/Getty ImagesA look inside the prison that Josef Fritzl constructed in the basement of his family’s home.
But she could not save them from their environment. Stefan, who grew taller than the basement’s ceiling, developed a stoop. Felix often struggled to communicate and spoke to his brother in “grunts.” Kerstin dealt with the stress of captivity by having “fits,” shredding her clothing, and stuffing it in the toilet. And they were present when their father/grandfather descended to brutally rape their mother, which he did some 3,000 times over 24 years.
Then, in 2008, Kerstin fell gravely ill.
How Monika Fritzl And Her Siblings Escaped From Josef Fritzl’s House
Kerstin, who had never felt sunlight or touched grass, had always been sickly. But by April 2008, her condition had become so terrible that Elisabeth begged Josef to take the 19-year-old to the hospital. Eventually, Josef agreed. But Kerstin’s doctors were suspicious about her lack of documents. They alerted the police — and they demanded to speak to her mother.
Shockingly, Josef agreed to the doctors’ demands. And once Elisabeth was finally alone with the authorities, she told them everything that had happened at Ybbsstrasse 40 over the past 24 years.
With that, Josef Fritzl was promptly arrested. Stefan and Felix, ages 18 and five, respectively, were retrieved from the cellar. And the Fritzl family secret, which had been held by Josef for 24 years, was finally brought to light.
AP Photo/Police NiederoesterreichJosef Fritzl, pictured shortly after his arrest. He remains imprisoned to this day.
But things remained complicated for Elisabeth Fritzl and her children. Though Time reported that Elisabeth and the “downstairs” children had an “astonishing reunion” with the “upstairs” children, they didn’t feel like a full family right away. Monika and the other upstairs children reportedly found it difficult to call Elisabeth “Mutti” (“Mom”), and it was challenging for the two sets of children to relate to each other. Monika, Lisa, and Alexander felt enormous guilt because they had been spared the horrors of the cellar.
That said, things are very different for Elisabeth Fritzl and her children now. They live together in an undisclosed location known only as “Village X,” purportedly in a brightly colored home with plenty of space and light. The family attends therapy sessions, and they’re watched after by locals, who are protective and suspicious of strangers. For her part, Elisabeth has even found love — she married one of her bodyguards, Thomas Wagner, in 2019.
Little else is known about Monika Fritzl, however. She was just 14 years old when she learned that her entire world was a lie — that her father was living a violent double life, and that some of her siblings were being held captive alongside her mother just below her feet. But at this point, she has lived in Village X longer than she ever lived at Ybbsstrasse 40. Hopefully, she’s found peace and privacy in a place where she can grow — and heal.
After reading about Monika Fritzl, one of the “upstairs” children born to Elisabeth Fritzl during her 24 years of captivity, discover the story of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian kidnapping victim who spent eight years in her abductor’s basement — but survived. Or, read about Alois Hitler, the Austrian civil servant who was Adolf Hitler’s father.
