Family: Austrian accused of incest raped before

updated 11:45 a.m. ET May 4, 2008

AMSTETTEN, Austria - The wife of an Austrian man accused of imprisoning their daughter for 24 years never believed her husband was involved in her disappearance, even though he served 18 months for a 1967 rape conviction, her sister said.

In an exclusive television interview for The Associated Press, the sister-in-law of the man accused of imprisoning his daughter in a cellar dungeon, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children, has provided the intimate details of the life of oppression inside the Fritzl home.

The woman, who asked only to be identified as Christine R. because of the wide attention the story has received, said incest victim Elisabeth ran away from home as a 17-year-old, about six months before police say she was locked into the soundproofed, windowless cellar beneath their apartment — hinting at a motive for the crime.

'Tyrant'
She described the father as a "tyrant" who instilled a culture of fear at home, which helped him create an elaborate cover story that no one questioned of Elisabeth running away to join a cult and abandoning three children on their doorstep.

"When he said it was black, it was black, even when it was 10 times white," said the woman, who was interviewed Saturday evening at her home in Austria. "He tolerated no dissent.

"Listen, if I myself was scared of him at a family party, and I did not feel confident to say anything in any form that could possibly offend him, then you can imagine how it must have been for a woman that spent so many years with him," she said.

If wife Rosemarie had challenged Fritzl, "we don't know what he would have done to her. Maybe he would have slapped her," the sister said.

Christine R. also painted the most complete picture to date of her sister: a woman who against all odds fought to hold together a troubled family, yet never suspected that the cause of so much pain was in her own home.

"She never believed him capable of it," the woman said of her 68-year-old sister. "We spoke about it often when we met. And I would say, 'Rosemarie, where can Elisabeth be?' I even told her myself, she is definitely in a cult where you can only have a certain amount of children, or they don't want sick children."

But why was the cult story so easily accepted? And did Rosemarie search for her missing daughter? Such questions have puzzled this Alpine nation, which has grappled with whether Rosemarie might have had knowledge of the crime.

Police say they have no evidence that Rosemarie was complicit in her husband's alleged atrocities. They say the 73-year-old electrician confessed to the imprisonment and rape and to incinerating the body of one of the children he had with his daughter after it died in infancy.

Josef is accused of concocting the cult story and even impersonating her in a phone call to convince his wife of its truth. He is also accused of forcing his daughter to write letters that were used to explain the three children apparently found at their doorstep.

"Every person that looked in his eyes was fooled by him," Christine R. said of her brother-in-law.

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