LUGARES TURISTICOS

 

(CNN) -- Police, medical professionals and those who know Josef Fritzl are beginning to piece together how he led a double life for more than two decades in small town Austria.

 

Josef Fritzl is due in court after admitting raping his daughter and fathering her seven children.

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At his home on Ybbsstrasse in the quiet town of Amstetten, east of Vienna, Fritzl, a 73-year-old retired electrician, lived with his wife, Rosemarie, and their three children.

But with them also lived three of the children Fritzl fathered by his daughter Elisabeth, imprisoned in a basement dungeon with another three of the children she bore after being raped repeatedly by him.

Fritzl told his wife that his missing daughter had dropped off the children at the house because she could not take care of them, police said, and he forced his daughter to write letters to strengthen his case.

It was a deception he maintained from 1984 until just days ago.

Police spokesman Franz Polzer said that Rosemarie Fritzl was unaware of the deception.

"Let me also add that we know the suspect not only possessed an increased sexual potency, he's also very dynamic, imperious and quite authoritarian in his conduct and relationship to his existing family," Polzer said Monday.

Polzer added that Fritzl made clear to his wife and the children living with them that the basement area was out of bounds. He bought food for his captives and took it to them in evening.

Medical professionals have also offered their interpretations of the character of Fritzl.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Kristina Downing-Orr said, "What is chilling about this case is the cold, sociopathic detachment that Josef F[ritzl] went through year after year, decades even, to hide his crimes.

"It was as if there was no remorse, no empathy for his daughter, for his grandchildren, for his wife. That's what's chilling."