BERLIN ? An Austrian court sentenced Josef Fritzl to life in prison on Thursday for allowing one of the children he fathered with his imprisoned daughter to die without medical attention. The guilty verdict and sentence, which he will serve in a secure psychiatric facility, brought to a close a sensational tale of incest in a homemade basement dungeon that horrified but riveted the world. Mr. Fritzl, 73, was found guilty on all counts, including rape, incest, imprisonment and enslavement. But it was the charge of negligent homicide that carried the longest sentence. Prosecutors demanded the maximum sentence before the jury retired to deliberate. The verdict was unanimous.
Televised images from the courthouse in St. Pölten showed Mr. Fritzl as he was led out of the courtroom by a phalanx of guards, displaying no emotion. Mr. Fritzl?s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client would not appeal the ruling and told reporters outside the courthouse that it was ?the logical consequence of his guilty plea.?
Two days after refusing to take responsibility for his newborn son?s death, Mr. Fritzl abruptly reversed himself on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to all counts against him, including negligent homicide and enslavement.
The case began a quarter-century ago when Mr. Fritzl drugged his daughter and locked her in the basement of the apartment house where he lived with her mother. Over the course of 24 years of captivity in the windowless cellar in Amstetten, Mr. Fritzl repeatedly raped his daughter, who gave birth to seven children.
It was the fate of one of those children, a twin boy who died shortly after he was born, that became the centerpiece of the legal proceedings. Under Austrian law, sentences are served concurrently and not consecutively.
Due to his already advanced age, it is unlikely that Mr. Fritzl will ever be freed, but there remains at least the possibility. ?He could theoretically be released after 15 years, at the earliest, and then, of course, three judges would have to decide again about his release,? said Franz Cutka, a court spokesman.
Three of the children whom Mr. Fritzl fathered by his daughter were raised upstairs by him and his wife. Mr. Fritzl led his wife to believe that their daughter had run away and abandoned the children. Instead, the daughter, Elisabeth Fritzl, was not only in Amstetten but was trapped in the basement of the very same apartment house.
The scheme began to unravel when one of the three children living the cellar ? a 19-year-old girl who had never seen daylight ? became so ill that she had to be taken to a hospital. Medical staff members then notified authorities.
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