From the AP:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Questioning of an incest victim held in a cellar for 24 years is set to start later this month and will involve a doctor to determine how one of the seven babies she had with her father died, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

St. Poelten prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek also said authorities hope to have formal charges against Josef Fritzl ready within a few months, which would allow a trial to start before the end of the year.

Fritzl has told investigators he fathered his daughter Elizabeth's seven children; three raised in a cellar at his home in Amstetten, three brought up above ground, and one who died in infancy, officials said. DNA tests confirmed he is the biological father of the six surviving children.

Authorities say Fritzl confessed to incinerating the corpse of the dead baby, identified as one of a pair of twins born in 1997. He could face murder charges if it turns out he was responsible for its death, Sedlacek said.

Sedlacek says Elisabeth's questioning by a judge will take place in a special room at an undisclosed location. Her answers will be transmitted via video to the defense and she will not have to face her father unless she specifically requests to do so.

At least two days are set aside for the questioning, Sedlacek said.

Fritzl and his wife raised three of the children he fathered with his daughter after Fritzl claimed Elisabeth left them at the doorstep of the family's home. Authorities say the other three were confined underground.

From NINEmsn:

Fritzl, 74, is writing his memoirs in prison and is planning to sell his story to the highest bidder, UK's Sunday Mirror reports.

Elisabeth, 42 – who was repeatedly raped by her father and gave birth to seven of his children while locked in the family cellar – is reported to be horrified.

Fritzl's plans to sell his story have been condemned by Elisabeth's lawyer Eva Plaz.

“It has been bad enough with all the leaks from doctors and police sources about Elisabeth," Ms Plaz was quoted by The Sun newspaper as saying.

“But that her father, who caused all her suffering, means to cash in on her ordeal is sickening.”

Elisabeth – who is recovering from her ordeal in a psychiatric clinic in Austria – has said she just wants to live the remainder of her days in privacy.

“She is appalled. It is like being violated all over again," The Sun quotes a source close to her as saying.

Ms Plaz said Fritzl's story would be worth a lot of money because Elisabeth had made it clear she didn't want to sell hers.

Elisabeth was drugged and dragged into Fritzl's secret cellar in 1984, when she was 18.

She finally escaped in April when her eldest child Kerstin, 19, fell seriously ill and had to be taken to hospital.

Fritzl is yet to be charged or put on trial for his crimes, but police say he has admitted to raping Elisabeth and holding her prisoner.

It seems Elisabeth has had no idea until now, the amount of details that the police and others associated with the case have released to the public.  No doubt she's pissed, hurt, and feeling violated again.  I hope this squashes all the talk about her giving an interview, because clearly, having the media involved in her life, or her past ordeal, is the last thing she is looking for:

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Fritzl-incest--victim-.4261118.jp

Well, well, well.  I am sure your fingers are tripping over each other, trying to write your comments on this one. 

It will be interesting to see if Elisabeth's lawyers head to court to stop this story from being sold by Fritzl, or having him involved in any other attempts to make some money off of this tragedy.

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2008/07/06/evil-fritzl-is-selling-his-story-98487-20633428/

Dungeon monster Josef Fritzl is writing his memoirs in prison - to the horror of the daughter he held captive and raped.

Elisabeth, 42, who gave birth to seven children, is aghast at the thought of the world reading 74-year-old Fritzl's account of her 24-year or deal in Amstetten, Austria, which he plans to sell to the highest bidder.

Frizl spends hours writing as fellow prisoners shout "Come out Satan - we want to play".

A source said: "Elisabeth is appalled. It is like being violated all over again. He knows his story is worth a lot because she has made it clear she does not want to sell hers."

 

By Christina Reihill

Sunday June 29 2008

If last week's documentary on the unspeakable acts of Josef Fritzl left you feeling nauseous, get ready to throw up. Because, when I heard Fritzl's line of defence -- "I was addicted to abusing my daughter" -- a chill went up my spine.

As unacceptable as this rationalisation might be, the truth is that anyone familiar with the unconscious mapping of addictions knows he could link a cogent argument here.

And the legal commentator interviewed knew this. "Addiction is not a defence!" he erupted.

Addictions are not an acceptable defence for criminal behaviour, but lawyers know that crimes committed by those in addiction can win leniency, and many think Fritzl knows this, and is already on the case.

As a master manipulator, Fritzl claims his motives were good, while he cast a powerful spell of denial around him.

Behind a mask of unholy deception, this architect of darkness robbed the hopes and dreams of so many, including the ultimate innocents -- his children.

How they survived this ordeal will add significantly to exisiting psychological theory.

Meanwhile, Fritzl's extraordinary cunning and capacity to beguile those around him will be testing the psychiatrists and lawyers preparing for the trial.

And while many will want him convicted as a criminal, with the promise that he will never be free to act out his sadistic primitive urges again, there is no guarantee of this.

The Austrian State has already proved itself to be the primary colluding force in allowing Fritzl's savage behaviours to go uninvestigated -- the Justice Minister admitted his officials had been "gullible" in accepting Fritzl's reasons for the disappearance of his daughter -- so we have no reason to believe that it won't continue to indulge him, or fall prey to his deep narcissistic wounding.

There is a strong mental health argument outside the obvious Freudian one. (He has said that he lusted after his mother -- which is the case for addiction.)

If the defence succeeds in defining his behaviour as an addiction, it could claim he had no control over his impulses, which could mitigate any possible charge against him. The defence could argue that Fritzl's powerful desire to sleep with his mother began as a compulsion, which led to a sex abuse addiction. Addiction counsellors know that when a compulsion becomes an addiction, self-will runs riot in the unconscious mind of the addicted person.

The key for the prosecution will be to prove Fritzl was aware of what he was doing and knew that it was wrong. Meanwhile, Fritzl's defence team will be studying the complex definition and nature of addictions.

Patricia Casey, the psychiatrist interviewed on the same programme, stated Fritzl will have trouble defending an insanity plea because his behaviour fails to exhibit the chaotic presentation of a psychosis eg: schizophrenia/ bi-polar disorder -- which is true, but she was not asked to comment on the addiction argument. Or maybe she was, and wisely stood back from commenting on it.

Because Fritzl's behaviour can be framed in the context of an addiction.

Of course, his repeated abuse of his daughter bears no comparison to the addictions we're used to dealing with -- alcohol, food, drugs and/or gambling -- but that doesn't mean his behaviour is not an addiction. His crime doesn't even compare with the behaviours of serial killers, but in terms of the unconscious pathways that addictions travel, there is a pathological map Fritzl's lawyers can, and will, undoubtedly use.

As unsettling as this is, I'd say Fritzl has already researched this subject and knows what boxes need ticking to flag his defence and has already laid the foundations for this argument.

In his limited statements so far, he's told reporters that he had a difficult childhood, with a dominating mother who regularly beat him.

This statement prepares the ground for a "learned sadistic behaviours" defence.

Addictions are defined by thought patterns. Fritzl's legal team could find experts to map their unconscious pathways to their client's pathology.

In terms of the definition and nature of addiction, the jury could well be presented with some version of the following: Addictions are sophisticated systems of denial requiring subtle but sustained attention for the addicted person -- Fritzl's highly organised attention to detail beggars belief.

Another definition states addictions are unstable states of being marked by a compulsion to deny who we are in favour of a new or desired experience. If the defence does its homework, they'll note that addictions focus on issues of control. Addictions, however harmless, make us feel in control, however illusory or momentary that is. Every "fix" soothes us with the statement "all is well" whether it's a hit of heroin or a high from hoping -- our drug of choice is only the vehicle we use to fast track its good feeling.

Fritzl's team could argue that, as a result of his experience of powerlessness under the sadistic reign of his mother, he unconsciously sought power by controlling all around him.

This argument should lose weight, as he seems to have been aware that what he was doing was wrong (the elaborate planning to hide his behaviour and a host of other arguments will support this), but the addiction argument has grounds.

More theoretically, Fritzl's behaviour is striking in its stunning metaphor for addictions. Our addictions hold the secrets of our most primitive desires in the cellars in our minds, and to keep these yearnings alive requires incredible planning and attention to detail, however unconsciously that is. The keys, the locks, the steel doors and dungeons we build, make up a labyrinth of unconscious locking systems which protect and propel our bad addictions, however hidden and harmless they may seem to be.

Indeed, some therapists would argue that some of these spaces are necessary to protect what is precious, as well as unhelpful to us. At the end of the documentary, the commentator remarked on the irony that Fritzl's years of imprisoning his family now had him under lock and key, which is the ultimate metaphor for addiction.

A Japanese proverb relating to alcohol addiction and how it imprisons the alcoholic states: The man took the drink, the drink took the drink, then the drink took the man.

- Christina Reihill

Galina Sapozhnikova. Photo: Author and KP archive. — 25.06.2008

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property's loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl's numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child's body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl's story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn't shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth's quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales of captivity are nearly identical. The Austrian bunker was in fact much more comfortable than its Russian analogue at 55 square meters with two rooms, a kitchen, a tiled shower and a washing machine. (The Russian bunker was primitive — a 5-square-meter hovel with an electric oven and bucket instead of a toilet.) But Amstetten and Skopin both have a population of 25,000 and seem peaceful rural towns to outsiders. What else ties together the fate of Mokhov, an unmarried Russian who lived with his mother and had no personal life, and Fritzl, an Austrian family man and father to numerous children living near the Alps?
"He did what many people think about doing..."

It would be wrong to say that Skopin and Amstetten are backwards in some way. News reports about similar incidents in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy have hit kiosks in recent weeks. What unites these criminals who imprison and sexually abuse their victims?

Psychologists say that they crave absolute power. This forces them to build a world that they alone can rule. With one press of a button, Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation in the small bunker if his victims refused to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, psychologists called Fritzl an egoist after stating that he liked to feel like God. But such an illness falls outside the realm of psychiatric pathologies. Fritzl is more a victim of psychological licentiousness than anything else.

"Fritzl did what many people think about doing," Director of the Sigmund Freud Fund Inga Shultz-Strasser told KP.

But thinking is not doing. Fortunately, few people manifest their sexual fetishes by oppressing others.

Mokhov learned how to build bunkers while watching a documentary film about the criminal Aleksandr Komin. Ten years ago, Komin built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word "SLAVE" on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. After Mokhov was captured, he confessed that he plagiarized Komin. When Mokhov saw him describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself: "I can do better than that!"

Nightmare on Fritzl's Street

"We just live far too well. And we're all going mad from the fat," said the salesgirl at the flower shop near Fritzl's home when I asked her if Amstetten was to blame for what happened.

No journalist would have ever stepped foot in the tranquil Amstetten if it wasn't for Fritzl. The town is boring and clean, and the people are beaming and bursting at the seams like overfed tomatoes. Many are willing to give their two cents about the incidents.

"I won't tell you if Fritzl was my client," said a hairdresser in the neighboring building. "Because that would be unethical. And also because my uncle raped me when I was 13 years old."

"When I rented an apartment from Fritzl, I often heard strange sounds coming from the cellar," Elizabeth's schoolmate Alfred Dubanovskiy told journalists.

But it isn't easy to get an inside look into how the investigation is unfolding. The police monitor Fritzl's home 24/7. When people get too close to the property, the police run over and say that they can't proceed any further and have been told not to comment on the incident. Trying to interrogate the neighbors to get details is also pointless. Austrians don't like poking their noses in others' affairs.

Interestingly, it seems that no one knew anything about Fritzl's crime during Elizabeth's captivity. This includes the whole Fritzl family (6 children besides Elizabeth) and all the tenants living in their home. One reason why is that they used the front door of the premises to enter and leave the house. Fritzl, however, pulled his vehicle into the covered garage where he had access to a secret, locked entrance to the basement. As a result, no one saw him taking the washing machine downstairs or regularly bringing up garbage.

But there are doubts about the involvement of Fritzl's wife. Did Rosemary really not know what was going on all that time? Oddly enough the entire street says, "No."

"She's such a kind, generous woman!" they say. "She takes her kids to study music and play sports. And her husband is a fop. So spic and span... He acted more like a minister than an electrician!"

Fritzl's neighbors Ingrid and Gertruda, two elderly women, defended Rosemary on camera.

"He was such a tyrant!" they said. "But Rosemary is a good woman who got married at 17!"

The question about what to do with the unfortunate home weighs heavy on the minds of Amstetten residents. The basement can be turned into a museum of horrors, or the past can simply be laid to rest.

"You'll see. Soon something worse will happen and they'll forget all about us!" a pharmacist told us near Fritzl's home.

"This is private property," said Hermann Hruber, an employee at the local mayor's office. "The home has an owner. That individual needs to decide what will happen to the property." So it seems that Fritzl will keep control of the situation even in prison. In Austria, breaching rights to personal property is just as severe an offense as infringing someone's personal freedom.

All electricians

A maniac is a person consumed by a mania. Does this include the desire to be God? Surprisingly, Fritzl, Mokhov, Priklopil and Komin are similar in both history and profession. They were all crazy about their mothers, grew up without fathers and were beaten in childhood. All their mothers were strong women. Fritzl's mother kicked her husband out and Mokhov's mother controlled who Mokhov brought home in the evenings even when he was 53. Priklopil was also close to his mother. He committed suicide shortly after he learned that his prisoner had escaped. But his mother recently said in a statement: "I think that he loved Natasha."

Of course he did. Priklopil loved her in the same way that children love their toys. Fritzl hid his daughter in the basement because he thought that he was saving her from drugs and the negative influence of her peers. Komin considered himself to be a benefactor because his prisoners had work, a roof over their heads and food. Mokhov thought that he was rescuing the whole world, too. He said that all young women were prostitutes and he had isolated Lena and Katya to steer them away from the banes of society. All the perpetrators were also miserly and kept detailed accounts of their expenses. And they all had arguments to justify their cruelty.

"I could have killed them all and there would have been no evidence," Fritzl said to his lawyer when he told him how he had brought Elizabeth cake on her birthday. "I bought the girls strawberries!" Mokhov screamed in court.

All the perpetrators had a technical education. More specifically, they were all electricians. Only criminologists can say if this is only a coincidence. Can society battle the animal in man?

See the final installment in the next issue.

Frank Cutka, a court spokesman, said the trial is likely to begin this autumn or winter and preparations are running "at full speed".

Fritzl, 73, has confessed to holding his daughter Elisabeth captive as a sex slave in a windowless dungeon he built beneath his home in the town of Amstetten, west of Vienna.

Austrian prosecutors have said Fritzl should be charged with murder after one of the seven children he fathered with Elisabeth, 42, died shortly after birth in the bunker. He confessed to hurling the baby's lifeless body into a heating oven three days after its birth in April 1996.

The Fritzl family – his wife Rosemarie, 68, his daughter Elisabeth, and her children Stefan, 18, Lisa, 15, Monika, 14, Alexander, 12, and Felix, five, are all recovering and their condition is improving "faster than expected," a hospital spokesman said.

Prosecutors are expected to begin interviewing the family next month according to Austrian public broadcaster ORF. Fritzl remains in detention in St. Poelten.

Acknowledging intense worldwide media interest in the case, Mr Cutka said journalists would be required to accredit themselves for the trial and would be issued "reserved tickets" to cover the proceedings.

Elisabeth Fritzl, the Austrian woman who was locked in a cellar for 24 years, has refused to testify against her father who imprisoned her, saying she is not yet ready to face him.

Doctors caring for Fritzl, 42, told the Austrian media she needed more time to prepare for the encounter, which will require her to give evidence against Josef Fritzl, 73, via a video link.

While she would not be in the same room as him, she would be able to see him and could also face questioning by her father if he chose to challenge or rebut her evidence.

The hearing was due to start in a week's time, on Elisabeth's insistence, so her father's trial could begin as soon as possible. It has now been put on hold indefinitely.

Doctors will determine when she is fit enough to testify.

It is expected that Elisabeth will give evidence from the clinic in Lower Austria where she is being treated along with her six children, all of whom were fathered by Fritzl during her incarceration.

Doctors will be on hand to ensure she takes adequate breaks and that she is not overwhelmed by the encounter, which will be the first since the kidnapping ordeal ended two months ago.

Her mother Rosemarie, who denies knowledge of her husband's double life, is due to give evidence at the same time.

"A video recording of it will be shown at the main trial, because the victims will not be required to appear in person to give evidence," said Franz Cutka, a spokesman for the court in St Pölten, where the trial is due to start at the end of the year.

Elizabeth Fritzl, who was imprisoned in the windowless dungeon and abused for more than two decades, was due to give evidence against her father via video link at the start of July.

However, doctors caring for her and her family have asked for the questioning to be rescheduled for the end of the month, and warned they could request a further delay.

Elisabeth, 42, had insisted on bringing forward her testimony to police to ensure that Fritzl's trial can take place as soon as possible.

Police hope this will speed up the legal process and that Fritzl, 73, will be in the dock by the start of next year.

Elizabeth's live statement will be the first time she has seen her father since her ordeal ended. Doctors will be on hand to ensure she does not suffer a breakdown as she relives her years of torment.

Her mother, Rosemarie, will give evidence at the same time.

Fritzl will appear on a link-up from his prison cell. The live link-up means he will be able to make comments about her statements, alongside prosecution and defence lawyers and the judge.

A hospital insider told Austrian media: "She was determined to make sure he did not escape on a technicality or get freed on bail if the proceedings were to drag on too long. When she found out that the trial could not go ahead without her statement she insisted on it being done as soon as possible."

The three children who lived with Elizabeth in the cellar will be questioned at a later date and may not be included in the trial. Prosecutors have said it is the evidence of Elisabeth and her mother are the most crucial witnesses in their case.

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

After Viktor Mokhov's arrest, Skopin residents broke all the windows of his home. His mother, Alisa Valentinovna, boarded them up and locked herself in the darkness, just as her son had done to the girls from Ryzansk. Mokhov received 17 years in prison for his crimes.

"They give you less for murder!" Mokhov writes in his letters. Instead of compensating for the damage caused to his former sex slaves, Mokhov lovingly sends his monthly pension checks to his mother. He asks her to write to the president and sends her ready made texts: "Honorable president! I sincerely request your help in re-examining my son's case. His sentence is illegal. The accusations are built on the victims' testimonies without any evidence. My son was always involved in socially useful work and has a 37-year work history."

"Nonsense!" Valentinovna said. "He doesn't really think I'll write that, does he?" she asked. Valentinovna can't explain what happened to her son shortly before retirement. He had once been such a quiet, modest boy who didn't drink or smoke. There seems to be only one explanation, as banal as it may seem. Mokhov got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

It's a complicated story. Mokhov had a girlfriend named Inka, who was sent to prison for killing her lover. He waited for her faithfully. But when Inka was released from prison, she left Mokhov for her lesbian girlfriend Lena. It was Lena who helped Mokhov poison the two girls and lure them into his vault as a form of compensation. Lena was later sentenced to 5 years for her crimes. She'll be released soon. Sadly, no one will meet her. Last month Inka got drunk and drowned in a cesspool. So it seems life isn't boring in Skopin. I guess that's why the cafe menus often start with the price of broken dishes and seats.

"Man is an animal by nature. Dissatisfaction is the foundation of his behavior," said Dmitriy Plotkin, former special affairs investigator at the Ryazansk Regional Prosecutor's Office, who took part in the case. "When the beard starts to gray, some people see they lived their entire lives with little to no sexual development. So Mokhov went out and dug a hole three years just to sleep with a woman! One wise quote like we found at Mokhov's place is enough to trigger the crime: 'If an elderly creature reproduces with a young one, then the former will grow younger.'"

Only two questions remain. How many men have a similar dream? And how many bunkers are already filled with prisoners?

They and It

Freud referred to the animal that controls a man's decisions and forces him to hunt for prey as the "It." Modern society takes this issue all too lightly. And this is unfortunate. Many scholars attribute the gruesome path taken by Hitler's Third Reich to his sexual problems.

Most "wardens" of home prisons, including Fritzl, Komin, the Belgian rapist and killer Dyutru and the French Furnire, have served time for rape. What they did later — digging bunkers and forcing girls inside — is a repeat manifestation of this "It."

Many parents lose their children because no one keeps an eye on sexual offenders after they are released from prison. Although Fritzl served time in 1967 for raping a nurse, Austrian archives only store information on sex offenders for 5 years. Thus, he faced little difficulty in becoming the father and grandfather to his daughter's children. No one was regularly checking up on him. After Fritzl was released from prison, he had three children in his official family and 7 kids in his unofficial one.

Police have put together psychological portraits of potential rapists who are prone to keeping sex slaves. But hundreds of thousands of men fall into the category — 40 and older, technical education, sexual problems, authoritarian mother, fights in childhood, greed and exceptional professional characteristics.

Who can help weed out the perpetrators?

If rapists can't be castrated, then we need to look for the bunkers that they've built. What advice should be given to those searching for these bunkers? I headed back to Ryzan to talk with Katya, who escaped four years ago. She once offered her advice to people in similar situations in KP (March 2004). I thought that she may have some insight.

Witnesses must have suspected something was going in in the cases of Mokhov, Fritzl, Komin and Priklopil. So who can the police rely on for reliable information? I asked Katya.

The neighbors? Katya says that this is unlikely.

Mokhov's neighbors must have seen him climbing into his vault from his garage. But they kept silent.

Komin's neighbors once asked him what he was digging. But they were satisfied with the answer: "Growing cucumbers."

Maybe family members? That's doubtful.

All Skopin residents are sure that Mokhov's mother knew what was going on. And Valentinovna herself doesn't hide this fact.

"Who's in there?" Valentinovna once asked her son. "Just a refugee," he answered and she calmed down.

Theoretically, Rosemary should have suspected her husband was up to something. She would have found the basement lair if she had checked the water or electric meter just once in 24 years. But her husband insisted that he would look after the electricity and heating as is customary in many small towns. So she never asked any questions.

How about local shop owners? Probably not.

Fritzl drove hundreds of kilometers to large supermarkets to avoid suspicion when purchasing children's underwear and women's hygienic goods.

How about the police then? That's also not a fail-safe option.

Kampush's lawyer said that the police conducted the most wide-scale searches in Austria's history.

Russian police also searched for Lena and Katya in the Rzyansk region, but for some reason skipped over Skopin entirely.

The police did not react at all to Elizabeth's disappearance in 1984. Instead they took Fritzl's word that she had run off and joined a sect.

Tatyana Melnikova was held captive by a maniac in Vyatskie Polyany. She died in poverty before receiving any assistance from the state.

"We would have found these criminals more quickly back in the Soviet days," said a retired Ryzansk police officer who I bumped into in Rzyansk. In the Soviet days, he said, someone would have told the police that Mokhov kept a prostitute in his cellar for one week and let her go long before he captured Katya and Lena.

Desensitized from the horror

The Russian and Austrian stories are similar. But they have different endings. Austrian citizens donated so much money to the Natasha Kampush Fund that she began sharing the money with other victims. She could even buy an apartment with all the money she received for interviews. The situation is more complicated for Fritzl's family, but Austria certainly won't leave them impoverished either. At the moment they are receiving state-sponsored medical treatment.

What about Russia?

In spring 2004, KP published Lena's and Katya's bank details and wrote: "Readers! We need your help! These girls have returned home to see the light of day, but not life itself. They need time and money to heal. Please help them forget the awful nightmare they were forced to live through."

Four years later, I called them to find out if they had received much money as a result of the ad. Only 1,000 rubles a piece.

"So many horrible things are happening in Russia that people have become desensitized," Lena said laughingly.

But money isn't the only important thing. Everything turned out just fine for Katya and Lena. They both rehabilitated and got married. Of course, instead of receiving help from the state, they ended up having to prolong their torment by undergoing medical examinations and driving up to 150 kilometers a day to attend 18 court proceedings shortly after their escape.

Eventually Lena received a diploma as a guide and translator without attending any courses. She studied English while imprisoned to keep from going mad. Katya became a wonderful artist during her 3.5 years of captivity. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to enroll at the professional art school as they required her to attend paid courses. So Katya stopped drawing and writing poetry.

After publishing one of her poems four years ago, KP was sure publishing houses would be knocking at her door. Strange. How could they have passed up such a story? A young girl who wrote 321 poems as a sex slave in captivity?!

Today, Katya is trying to write again. But this time she's writing prose. READ MORE

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property's loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl's numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child's body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl's story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn't shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth's quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales of captivity are nearly identical. The Austrian bunker was in fact much more comfortable than its Russian analogue at 55 square meters with two rooms, a kitchen, a tiled shower and a washing machine. (The Russian bunker was primitive — a 5-square-meter hovel with an electric oven and bucket instead of a toilet.) But Amstetten and Skopin both have a population of 25,000 and seem peaceful rural towns to outsiders. What else ties together the fate of Mokhov, an unmarried Russian who lived with his mother and had no personal life, and Fritzl, an Austrian family man and father to numerous children living near the Alps?

"He did what many people think about doing..."

It would be wrong to say that Skopin and Amstetten are backwards in some way. News reports about similar incidents in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy have hit kiosks in recent weeks. What unites these criminals who imprison and sexually abuse their victims?

Psychologists say that they crave absolute power. This forces them to build a world that they alone can rule. With one press of a button, Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation in the small bunker if his victims refused to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, psychologists called Fritzl an egoist after stating that he liked to feel like God. But such an illness falls outside the realm of psychiatric pathologies. Fritzl is more a victim of psychological licentiousness than anything else.

"Fritzl did what many people think about doing," Director of the Sigmund Freud Fund Inga Shultz-Strasser told KP.

But thinking is not doing. Fortunately, few people manifest their sexual fetishes by oppressing others.

Mokhov learned how to build bunkers while watching a documentary film about the criminal Aleksandr Komin. Ten years ago, Komin built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word "SLAVE" on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. After Mokhov was captured, he confessed that he plagiarized Komin. When Mokhov saw him describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself: "I can do better than that!"

Nightmare on Fritzl's Street

"We just live far too well. And we're all going mad from the fat," said the salesgirl at the flower shop near Fritzl's home when I asked her if Amstetten was to blame for what happened.

No journalist would have ever stepped foot in the tranquil Amstetten if it wasn't for Fritzl. The town is boring and clean, and the people are beaming and bursting at the seams like overfed tomatoes. Many are willing to give their two cents about the incidents.

"I won't tell you if Fritzl was my client," said a hairdresser in the neighboring building. "Because that would be unethical. And also because my uncle raped me when I was 13 years old."

"When I rented an apartment from Fritzl, I often heard strange sounds coming from the cellar," Elizabeth's schoolmate Alfred Dubanovskiy told journalists.

But it isn't easy to get an inside look into how the investigation is unfolding. The police monitor Fritzl's home 24/7. When people get too close to the property, the police run over and say that they can't proceed any further and have been told not to comment on the incident. Trying to interrogate the neighbors to get details is also pointless. Austrians don't like poking their noses in others' affairs.

Interestingly, it seems that no one knew anything about Fritzl's crime during Elizabeth's captivity. This includes the whole Fritzl family (6 children besides Elizabeth) and all the tenants living in their home. One reason why is that they used the front door of the premises to enter and leave the house. Fritzl, however, pulled his vehicle into the covered garage where he had access to a secret, locked entrance to the basement. As a result, no one saw him taking the washing machine downstairs or regularly bringing up garbage.

Viktor Mokhov wasn't at all concerned with the design. His prisoners had to decorate the walls themselves with gouache.

But there are doubts about the involvement of Fritzl's wife. Did Rosemary really not know what was going on all that time? Oddly enough the entire street says, "No."

"She's such a kind, generous woman!" they say. "She takes her kids to study music and play sports. And her husband is a fop. So spic and span... He acted more like a minister than an electrician!"

Fritzl's neighbors Ingrid and Gertruda, two elderly women, defended Rosemary on camera.

"He was such a tyrant!" they said. "But Rosemary is a good woman who got married at 17!"

The question about what to do with the unfortunate home weighs heavy on the minds of Amstetten residents. The basement can be turned into a museum of horrors, or the past can simply be laid to rest.

"You'll see. Soon something worse will happen and they'll forget all about us!" a pharmacist told us near Fritzl's home.

"This is private property," said Hermann Hruber, an employee at the local mayor's office. "The home has an owner. That individual needs to decide what will happen to the property." So it seems that Fritzl will keep control of the situation even in prison. In Austria, breaching rights to personal property is just as severe an offense as infringing someone's personal freedom. READ MORE

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property's loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl's numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child's body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl's story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn't shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth's quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales of captivity are nearly identical. The Austrian bunker was in fact much more comfortable than its Russian analogue at 55 square meters with two rooms, a kitchen, a tiled shower and a washing machine. (The Russian bunker was primitive — a 5-square-meter hovel with an electric oven and bucket instead of a toilet.) But Amstetten and Skopin both have a population of 25,000 and seem peaceful rural towns to outsiders. What else ties together the fate of Mokhov, an unmarried Russian who lived with his mother and had no personal life, and Fritzl, an Austrian family man and father to numerous children living near the Alps?

"He did what many people think about doing..."

It would be wrong to say that Skopin and Amstetten are backwards in some way. News reports about similar incidents in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy have hit kiosks in recent weeks. What unites these criminals who imprison and sexually abuse their victims?

Psychologists say that they crave absolute power. This forces them to build a world that they alone can rule. With one press of a button, Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation in the small bunker if his victims refused to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, psychologists called Fritzl an egoist after stating that he liked to feel like God. But such an illness falls outside the realm of psychiatric pathologies. Fritzl is more a victim of psychological licentiousness than anything else.

"Fritzl did what many people think about doing," Director of the Sigmund Freud Fund Inga Shultz-Strasser told KP.

But thinking is not doing. Fortunately, few people manifest their sexual fetishes by oppressing others.

Mokhov learned how to build bunkers while watching a documentary film about the criminal Aleksandr Komin. Ten years ago, Komin built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word "SLAVE" on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. After Mokhov was captured, he confessed that he plagiarized Komin. When Mokhov saw him describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself: "I can do better than that!"

Nightmare on Fritzl's Street

"We just live far too well. And we're all going mad from the fat," said the salesgirl at the flower shop near Fritzl's home when I asked her if Amstetten was to blame for what happened.

No journalist would have ever stepped foot in the tranquil Amstetten if it wasn't for Fritzl. The town is boring and clean, and the people are beaming and bursting at the seams like overfed tomatoes. Many are willing to give their two cents about the incidents.

"I won't tell you if Fritzl was my client," said a hairdresser in the neighboring building. "Because that would be unethical. And also because my uncle raped me when I was 13 years old."

"When I rented an apartment from Fritzl, I often heard strange sounds coming from the cellar," Elizabeth's schoolmate Alfred Dubanovskiy told journalists.

But it isn't easy to get an inside look into how the investigation is unfolding. The police monitor Fritzl's home 24/7. When people get too close to the property, the police run over and say that they can't proceed any further and have been told not to comment on the incident. Trying to interrogate the neighbors to get details is also pointless. Austrians don't like poking their noses in others' affairs.

Interestingly, it seems that no one knew anything about Fritzl's crime during Elizabeth's captivity. This includes the whole Fritzl family (6 children besides Elizabeth) and all the tenants living in their home. One reason why is that they used the front door of the premises to enter and leave the house. Fritzl, however, pulled his vehicle into the covered garage where he had access to a secret, locked entrance to the basement. As a result, no one saw him taking the washing machine downstairs or regularly bringing up garbage.

Viktor Mokhov wasn't at all concerned with the design. His prisoners had to decorate the walls themselves with gouache.

But there are doubts about the involvement of Fritzl's wife. Did Rosemary really not know what was going on all that time? Oddly enough the entire street says, "No."

"She's such a kind, generous woman!" they say. "She takes her kids to study music and play sports. And her husband is a fop. So spic and span... He acted more like a minister than an electrician!"

Fritzl's neighbors Ingrid and Gertruda, two elderly women, defended Rosemary on camera.

"He was such a tyrant!" they said. "But Rosemary is a good woman who got married at 17!"

The question about what to do with the unfortunate home weighs heavy on the minds of Amstetten residents. The basement can be turned into a museum of horrors, or the past can simply be laid to rest.

"You'll see. Soon something worse will happen and they'll forget all about us!" a pharmacist told us near Fritzl's home.

"This is private property," said Hermann Hruber, an employee at the local mayor's office. "The home has an owner. That individual needs to decide what will happen to the property." So it seems that Fritzl will keep control of the situation even in prison. In Austria, breaching rights to personal property is just as severe an offense as infringing someone's personal freedom. READ MORE

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property's loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl's numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child's body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl's story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn't shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth's quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales of captivity are nearly identical. The Austrian bunker was in fact much more comfortable than its Russian analogue at 55 square meters with two rooms, a kitchen, a tiled shower and a washing machine. (The Russian bunker was primitive — a 5-square-meter hovel with an electric oven and bucket instead of a toilet.) But Amstetten and Skopin both have a population of 25,000 and seem peaceful rural towns to outsiders. What else ties together the fate of Mokhov, an unmarried Russian who lived with his mother and had no personal life, and Fritzl, an Austrian family man and father to numerous children living near the Alps?

"He did what many people think about doing..."

It would be wrong to say that Skopin and Amstetten are backwards in some way. News reports about similar incidents in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy have hit kiosks in recent weeks. What unites these criminals who imprison and sexually abuse their victims?

Psychologists say that they crave absolute power. This forces them to build a world that they alone can rule. With one press of a button, Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation in the small bunker if his victims refused to fulfill his sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, psychologists called Fritzl an egoist after stating that he liked to feel like God. But such an illness falls outside the realm of psychiatric pathologies. Fritzl is more a victim of psychological licentiousness than anything else.

"Fritzl did what many people think about doing," Director of the Sigmund Freud Fund Inga Shultz-Strasser told KP.

But thinking is not doing. Fortunately, few people manifest their sexual fetishes by oppressing others.

Mokhov learned how to build bunkers while watching a documentary film about the criminal Aleksandr Komin. Ten years ago, Komin built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word "SLAVE" on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. After Mokhov was captured, he confessed that he plagiarized Komin. When Mokhov saw him describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself: "I can do better than that!"

Nightmare on Fritzl's Street

"We just live far too well. And we're all going mad from the fat," said the salesgirl at the flower shop near Fritzl's home when I asked her if Amstetten was to blame for what happened.

No journalist would have ever stepped foot in the tranquil Amstetten if it wasn't for Fritzl. The town is boring and clean, and the people are beaming and bursting at the seams like overfed tomatoes. Many are willing to give their two cents about the incidents.

"I won't tell you if Fritzl was my client," said a hairdresser in the neighboring building. "Because that would be unethical. And also because my uncle raped me when I was 13 years old."

"When I rented an apartment from Fritzl, I often heard strange sounds coming from the cellar," Elizabeth's schoolmate Alfred Dubanovskiy told journalists.

But it isn't easy to get an inside look into how the investigation is unfolding. The police monitor Fritzl's home 24/7. When people get too close to the property, the police run over and say that they can't proceed any further and have been told not to comment on the incident. Trying to interrogate the neighbors to get details is also pointless. Austrians don't like poking their noses in others' affairs.

Interestingly, it seems that no one knew anything about Fritzl's crime during Elizabeth's captivity. This includes the whole Fritzl family (6 children besides Elizabeth) and all the tenants living in their home. One reason why is that they used the front door of the premises to enter and leave the house. Fritzl, however, pulled his vehicle into the covered garage where he had access to a secret, locked entrance to the basement. As a result, no one saw him taking the washing machine downstairs or regularly bringing up garbage.

Viktor Mokhov wasn't at all concerned with the design. His prisoners had to decorate the walls themselves with gouache.

But there are doubts about the involvement of Fritzl's wife. Did Rosemary really not know what was going on all that time? Oddly enough the entire street says, "No."

"She's such a kind, generous woman!" they say. "She takes her kids to study music and play sports. And her husband is a fop. So spic and span... He acted more like a minister than an electrician!"

Fritzl's neighbors Ingrid and Gertruda, two elderly women, defended Rosemary on camera.

"He was such a tyrant!" they said. "But Rosemary is a good woman who got married at 17!"

The question about what to do with the unfortunate home weighs heavy on the minds of Amstetten residents. The basement can be turned into a museum of horrors, or the past can simply be laid to rest.

"You'll see. Soon something worse will happen and they'll forget all about us!" a pharmacist told us near Fritzl's home.

"This is private property," said Hermann Hruber, an employee at the local mayor's office. "The home has an owner. That individual needs to decide what will happen to the property." So it seems that Fritzl will keep control of the situation even in prison. In Austria, breaching rights to personal property is just as severe an offense as infringing someone's personal freedom. READ MORE

One cannot help but wonder how the drama went unnoticed for so long.

Just imagine the small town of Amstetten, Austria. On a quiet road rests a light blue home with ornate paintings decorating the rooms inside. Here lived Joseph Fritzl, 73 years old, his wife Rosemary and their many children.

But beneath the property's loving facade lies a concrete labyrinth that once housed Fritzl's numerous victims.

Newspapers worldwide recently reported how Fritzl held his daughter Elizabeth captive in his basement for 24 years. Each year she bore him more children. Fritzl brought the three loudest infants upstairs. He told his wife that their daughter had joined a religious sect and left the newborns on their doorstep in the night. In the evenings, Fritzl went downstairs via a secret passage in the garage to see the other children. One died in infancy and Fritzl burned the child's body in the same gas furnace where Rosemary baked biscuits on holidays.

Given the recent trend in such crimes, the main shock factor of Fritzl's story is how long Elizabeth was held captive. Austria witnessed a similar crime only several years ago. Natasha Kampush, who was then 18, ran away from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil after 8 years of confinement. Russia wasn't shocked at the crime itself either. In 2004, Lena and Katya, two girls from Rzyansk, were freed from a vault beneath a garage owned by Viktor Mokhov, a factory worker in Skopin. Back then, their story was beyond comprehension. But today, they seem lucky. Three and a half years of abuse is insignificant compared to Elizabeth's quarter-century of captivity.

Despite several differences, the horrible tales