For 24 years, Rosemarie Fritzl's husband Josef held their daughter Elisabeth prisoner as a sex slave in the basement of the family's home — and Rosemarie later claimed she had no idea.
The life of Rosemarie Fritzl, the ex-wife of Josef Fritzl, is one marred by unthinkable tragedy and horror. Rosemarie married her husband young and had seven children with him, including Elisabeth Fritzl.
Josef and Rosemarie Fritzl’s relationship was turbulent from the beginning and plagued with abuse. Josef was a ruthless authoritarian, controlling and belittling Rosemarie for all 52 years of their marriage.
His influence over her was so great that it allegedly prevented her from seeing the truth about her daughter Elisabeth’s disappearance in 1984.
In 2008, Rosemarie purportedly learned, along with the rest of the world, that her husband had been keeping Elisabeth locked away in a cellar beneath the family’s home in Austria for 24 years. An incestuous rapist, Josef had also forced his daughter to give birth to seven of his children.
Rosemarie Fritzl’s Marriage To Josef Fritzl
YouTubeRosemarie Fritzl with her ex-husband, Josef Fritzl.
Rosemarie Fritzl was born in Austria in 1939. In 1956, when she was just 17 years old, she married Josef Fritzl, a 21-year-old electrical engineer.
Those who knew Rosemarie described her as a “weak character” and said her husband controlled all the decision-making in their relationship.
Throughout their marriage, Rosemarie and Josef Fritzl had seven children, including three sons and four daughters. Despite the large number of children, the couple eventually began to struggle with their sex life. Josef was sexually deviant, cheating on Rosemarie numerous times, and he even took solo vacations to Thailand specifically for sex tourism.
X (Formerly Twitter)Josef Fritzl had a history of abuse and sex crimes, but he saved his most horrific violence for his own daughter.
Josef also began to commit sex crimes. In 1967, he was arrested and charged with rape, attempted rape, and indecent exposure. He served 18 months in prison for these crimes. Rosemarie Fritzl’s sister, Christine, later told Express that she despised Josef from the beginning:
“Josef is a despot, I always hated him. I was 16 when he was locked up on rape charges and I found that crime simply disgusting, not least because he already had four children with my sister at that point.”
Josef Fritzl also subjected Rosemarie to frequent humiliation, mocking her weight and exerting tight control over what she did and said in their home. When in public, he made crude jokes about their lacking sexual relationship and even reportedly told people, “My wife is much too chubby for me.”
Because of this, Rosemarie Fritzl was very quiet and reserved, and she tended to pull herself away from most social situations.
“I thought she was a cold person,” Josef Fritzl’s former friend, Paul Hoera, said of Rosemarie’s demeanor. “I don’t know what their relationship was like — but I know that she was not his type. He told me he liked thin women and that he had a girlfriend. I never guessed it was his daughter.”
The Disappearance Of Elisabeth Fritzl
YouTubeElisabeth Fritzl at age 16, two years before her disappearance.
On August 28, 1984, Josef and Rosemarie Fritzl’s 18-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, disappeared. The teen had a history of running away and then being brought back to the home by Josef or the police, so Rosemarie likely thought this was a similar incident that would quickly resolve.
The teen was reported missing, but a month later, a letter arrived at the Fritzls’ home at Ybbsstrasse 40 in Amstetten. The letter, written in Elisabeth’s handwriting, said that her parents shouldn’t try to look for her. Meanwhile, Josef began telling people that Elisabeth had run away to join a cult.
Years later, in 1993, a baby suddenly arrived on the Fritzls’ doorstep with a note, purportedly from their daughter, asking her parents to take care of the newborn. Just a year later, a second baby arrived on the family’s doorstep. And then, in 1997, a third and final baby arrived.
All of the children were reportedly birthed by Elisabeth Fritzl. According to Josef, Elisabeth was unable to raise the babies in the “cult,” so they would be raised by their grandparents, a task which Rosemarie Fritzl took on.
Daily MailRosemarie Fritzl with Lisa, one of Elisabeth Fritzl’s children.
During this period, Josef Fritzl spent significant amounts of time in the home’s basement. He told Rosemarie Fritzl that he was working in the cellar and that she was never to go down there under any circumstances.
“Every morning at nine, [he] went down into his cellar, apparently to complete technical drawings of machines which he had sold to companies,” Rosemarie’s sister, Christine, remembered. “Sometimes he stayed down there all night. Rosi wasn’t even allowed to bring him a cup of coffee. Questions about why he was down there so long were banned.”
Allegedly, it wasn’t until 2008 that Rosemarie Fritzl finally discovered the shocking truth that lay just below the basement steps: Josef had been holding their daughter captive as a sex slave for over two decades.
The Horrific Truth Of Josef Fritzl Comes To Light
SID Lower Austria/Getty ImagesImages of the cellar home that Josef Fritzl built specifically to imprison his daughter Elisabeth.
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Josef Fritzl had constructed a nearly soundproof underground bunker, complete with multiple rooms, running water, and electricity. He’d already been abusing his daughter Elisabeth since she was about 11 or 12, and he now wanted to exert complete control over her — by making her a prisoner in his newly created dungeon.
The day that Elisabeth Fritzl went missing in 1984, Josef had lured her to the basement, claiming that he needed her assistance with a project. He then tricked her into helping him install a door in the bunker before subduing her with ether and then locking her in the basement. Elisabeth would be held captive in that same bunker for the next 24 years.
During that time, Josef Fritzl regularly went into the bunker to rape, beat, and psychologically torture his daughter. Eventually, the rapes resulted in pregnancies, and Elisabeth’s first daughter was born in 1988.
In total, Elisabeth Fritzl gave birth to seven children while imprisoned, three of whom lived in the bunker with her and three of whom lived with Rosemarie and Josef Fritzl. One child died shortly after childbirth.
YouTubeA layout of the dungeon built by Josef Fritzl to keep his daughter Elisabeth — and three of her children — captive.
Then, in 2008, one of Elisabeth’s children in the cellar, 19-year-old Kerstin, suddenly fell dangerously ill. Elisabeth somehow convinced Josef to take Kerstin to the hospital and secretly stashed a note in her daughter’s pocket.
At the hospital, suspicious staff members (who noted that Kerstin had no previous medical records) demanded to speak with Kerstin’s mother, so Josef Fritzl begrudgingly allowed Elisabeth to come to the hospital to tell staff a rehearsed story about her “escape” from her “sect.”
Instead, as soon as Josef left Elisabeth’s side, she told the staff the truth about what her father had done to her, and he was arrested soon afterward. In 2009, he was found guilty of enslavement, incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, and negligent homicide (in the case of Elisabeth’s baby who died shortly after birth). He was sentenced to life in prison.
Where Is Rosemarie Fritzl Today?
Following the horrifying revelation, Rosemarie Fritzl purportedly viewed the bunker for the first time and wept. When she met her daughter in the hospital for the first time in 24 years, she was reportedly inconsolable.
“The wife of the accused man clearly had no knowledge of the terrible fate of her daughter. The two women fell into each other’s arms and just wept bitterly,” Berthold Kepplinger, a doctor at the hospital, recalled. “They did not want to let go of each other and just held each other.”
Rosemarie Fritzl reportedly apologized profusely to her daughter for not discovering Josef’s heinous crimes sooner.
Rosemarie’s sister Christine told the Daily Mail in 2009 that Rosemarie Fritzl’s life following the revelation was nothing short of a nightmare.
CollectAn undated image of Rosemarie Fritzl.
Christine said, “My sister Rosemarie has really been destroyed by this whole business. She’s had a terrible life and I never thought I would say it but I think her life is even worse now than it was when she was with him… everyone thinks she must have known something.”
Rosemarie reportedly relocated from Amstetten to Linz, Austria, living on her pension. She also reportedly changed her name. Rosemarie has never been charged with a crime, and Austrian police have stated that they don’t believe she had any knowledge of her husband’s crimes.
Sources vary when describing the relationship between Rosemarie and Elisabeth Fritzl after Elisabeth’s release. Some say the two had a falling out but eventually reconciled, while others say Elisabeth briefly became suspicious that her mother may have known about her imprisonment.
But by most accounts, Rosemarie regularly visits her daughter and grandchildren at their new home in “Village X,” an unidentified village in Austria where they were sent to protect their privacy. Rosemarie and Josef are divorced, and she has refused to visit him in prison.
Despite persisting rumors that Rosemarie Fritzl was involved in her daughter’s imprisonment, Austrian authorities are confident that Rosemarie was likely just another victim of Josef Fritzl, simply too beaten down by his cruelty to see the full truth of the horrors that lay just beneath her feet.
After reading about Rosemarie Fritzl, dive into the story of Rachel Koresh, the legal wife of polygamous cult leader David Koresh. Then, learn the story of Marcus Wesson, the man who turned his family into an incestuous cult.
