The Chilling Details of Elisabeth Fritzl Being Held Captive for 24 Years

The Last Day In The Light

Elisabeth Fritzl in a school foto taken when she was 15 at the “Polytechnische Lehrgang Amstetten”. This is the last picture of her before she went missing. Elisabeth is in the 2nd row centre, white blouse, reddish brown hair, underneath the girl with the glasses.

Elisabeth tried to run away from home on two occasions, but was retrieved by authorities each time and brought home to her parents. After completing her waitressing program, then-18-year-old Elisabeth had a job prospect about 40 minutes away in the city of Linz. But that is when her father Josef decided to trap Elisabeth for good. On August 29, 1984, Josef asked Elisabeth to help him carry a door down to the basement. Little did Elisabeth know, she was carrying the last piece of her own entrapment and it would be the last time she would see the outside world for the next 24 years.

A Missing Person

After Josef knocked Elisabeth out with an ether-soaked towel and threw her into the underground chamber, Josef’s wife Rosemarie assumed her daughter had gone missing and did what any concerned parent would do by filing a missing person’s report. A month after the report was filed, Josef turned in to the police a letter that he had secretly forced Elisabeth to write. The letter informed her parents that she had run away with a friend and that they shouldn’t look for her. Using Elisabeth’s previous runaway attempts as evidence she was a troubled teen, Josef convinced his wife and the authorities that she had run away with a religious cult. Elisabeth’s missing person’s case was closed, but what ensued over the following years is truly insidious.