Jezebel

Here's my problem with this:

If he was so insane as to not know right from wrong, in terms of having sex with his daughter, then why did he fake her kidnapping and hide her in the basement for 27 years?

Um, yeah, he is mentally ill. Seriously fucked up. But motherfucker is still an evil piece of shit and deserves whatever he gets.

Speaking of crazy depressing shit, I saw something about this cult on MSNBC last night: [en.wikipedia.org]

Have you guys heard about them? The Phoenixes were in it during the late 70s. Crazy disturbing.

Please don't put that picture up, please don't put that picture up.

Oh, and it's interesting to hear the wife's story. After the news first broke, many people were quick to jump on her, as though she were responsible.

So basically the man is pure evil. That's what I'm getting from this. To call him crazy is an insult to crazy people. But I can't decide which is a worse punishment for him, prison or a psychiatric institution. But believe it or not, I don't want him dead. I want him imprisoned like he imprisoned his daughter. And raped. Yes, I want him raped too.

@hortense: Exactly. At the very least, he knew that society thought it was wrong. That seems pretty sane to me.

correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't an insanity defense mean that the defendant didn't know what he was doing was wrong? i think building a super-secret cellar is a hint he knew EXACTLY what he was doing. i'm not saying he's sane, but i think he needs a bit more punishment than a hospital.

Ughhh.... you imprisoned your daughter for YEARS in the basement, raped her at least seven times, forced her to have and raise your incestual children. Suck it up and go to jail.

Isn't anyone that commits a serious crime a certain level of insane, in that they have obviously had a serious break with conventional though processes? I understand that there are paranoid schizophrenics and psychotics out there that are truly not in control of their own actions and are wholly inappropriate to put in a normal correctional facility, but being pure evil like this man doesn't necessarily mean you're insane, I don't think. I'll be interested to see what the psychiatrists that eventually examine him think.

There is a great gulf between insane and evil. This was a man with a detailed and organized plan who knew what he was doing was wrong and that he needed to hide it. The attorneys from Law and Order would chew up and spit out this insanity plea in an hour (with commercials).

@hortense: Exactly. He also kept up the arrangement for over 2 decades, and was able to manipulate his wife into submission and absolute fear of defying him in any way. He's not insane, just pure evil.

@hortense:

yeah, it's not going to fly. he might be "crazy" as in "not normal," but legally he has to not have been able to tell that he should not be doing this.

he clearly took great pains to hide his behavior.

Is it wrong that I don't give a crap if he's legally insane or not? I'd like to see that asshole fry (and I'm usually anti-capital punishment).

Bullshit on the 'mental disorder'. Too many people excuse their evil deeds because they are 'ill'. Many people have abused theirs or others children without being diagnosed as mentally ill.

He is a cruel vicious man, and needs to stand for the full measure of the law.

i mean, dahmer ATE PEOPLE. which is clearly INSANE.

but his insanity plea did not fly. and for good reason.

personally, i think they should just let the dude go and then whatever happens to him (whoops, chainsaw accident!) just happens...

besides there is no earthly punishment to suit this crime. i'm thinking anything this evil is incapable of feeling pain.

@hortense: Right. He'd have to prove he's so mentally ill he didn't know that he did not know what he was doing was wrong. All those years of lying and imprisoning would indicate he knew exactly what he was doing was wrong, and didn't want to get caught.

I don't know what the legal standard for insanity is in Austria, but in this country, that defense would get laughed out of court.

I'd daresay that her world collapsed a long time ago. She was too terrified to not stand by a man who was convicted of rape, and had 7 children with him...Everyone has their own reasons for staying in bad and dangerous relationships, but when do you draw the line and start holding that person accountable for endangering her life and her childrens' lives?

would he have to stay for more than 15 years in a psychiatric hospital? would he be confined by himself?

because if those are the case, i'm thinking psychiatric treatment might be a good idea. because he has a history of this shit and i think it would bug him more to talk about how fucking crazy he is than it would to just be in prison. i imagine austrian prisons are probably nicer than those in the US.

ooo. can we send him to rikers instead?

@TruculentandUnreliable:

Yeah...I figured the Phoenixes were weird. I read somewhere that River lost his virginity at the age of 14 to an 18 year old girl. What kind of 18 year old girl wants to do it with a 14 year old boy?

As for Josef Fritl: He's more than insane. It's too bad they can't put people away forever in Austria.

@hortense: And going to all the trouble to build rooms in the basement and incinerate the child who died? He knew what he was doing.

@hharlowe: I predict he'll die in a woodchipper "accident."

Not that I'm prepping it for him or anything!

When people commit crimes like these, 'insanity' is always brought up. It seems either a cop out or a way to try to understand what drives people this far. It does in no way diminish the crime and the effects of it. But honestly, who can say what the right kind of punishment for these crimeS could be? I can't.

@inchworm: Yeah, and the "Sorry, I'm just pure evil!" defense doesn't go over well in court, either.

I'm sorry, Mr. Fritzl, there is no insanity defense in the Court of Country Justice, Judge BAngieB presiding.

@hortense: Must agree! If you're competent enough to hide it, you're competent enough to suffer the consequences that you obviously knew would result.

In addition, you gross, sick, disgusting bastard, I hope you rot in prison that is 100 times worse than a dirty basement.

"I believe that the trigger was a mental disorder, because I can't imagine that someone has sex with his own daughter without having a mental disorder."

If that's why his lawyer thought of the defense--no doctor examined Fritzl, the attorney just can't imagine!--then I think the guy's screwed. He'll be put away. Ya know, for 15 years for the rape. Good ol' Austria.

@onthecornerofparkerandwoolf: Even in this country the insanity defense is different in different states. It may be entirely different in Austria.

Also, the lawyer is an idiot. Saying he's going for the insanity defense because he can't imagine a man having sex with his daughter otherwise? Really, dude? So we're going to allow anyone who molests a daughter to use that defense now? BULL. SHIT.

From what I was reading about this at the weekend he is more likely to be locked up and never ever let out if he goes to a psychiatric hospital while his prison sentence under Austrian law may only be 15 years max...

I hate to have them try and minimise his atrocities with an insanity defence, but I'd also hate him to get a fairly short sentence if they don't. Talk about the horns of the dilemma!

If he raped a nurse in 1967, there's already evidence of some criminal tendencies. And as onthecornerofparkerandwoolf said, building a fortress of doom in the basement and forcing your daughter to write letters saying that she's run away or whatever seems pretty well thought out.
I think he's a sick fuck who should end up in prison, where I have full confidence his fellow inmates will execute fantastic justice upon him.

Hook the electrodes to his balls, flip the switch and let him fry.
Bye bye evil evil man.

Solitary confinement, hungry fire ants and Mariah Carey's new CD on "repeat" for life.

Even that would still be too good for this scum.

@ccchild: I figured it would come out that she was too paralyzed by fear to act. And I believe that.

i detest the insanity plea. everybody please insanity after they commit a violent crime, regardless of their mental health history.

further, how sad is it that the women around him were too afraid of him to do anything about him?! this twisted pathetic asshole as well as one of the worst example of the male gender wouldn't have lasted five seconds in the house i grew up in.

Oh PLEASE, no no no.

The problem is: the plea for insanity is in Austria and Germany always at least taken in consideration. Which makes it possible that he only serves a few years in jail and is then moved to a closed hospital for life. But only if they decide, that he is a danger to people around him.

This already screams bad trial, really really bad trial.

The sicko should be locked up permanently. He knew what he was doing was wrong or everything wouldn't have been "hidden". I feel sorry for everyone is this situation except for that sick son of a bitch.

@hortense: Right. He was of sound enough mind to plot every step of this horrific crime. He had to of been carefully watching every step that he took and analyzing every choice that he made, or he NEVER would have gotten away with it for this long. If he's sane enough to plan out a crime this horrific, he's sane enough to pay the consequences.

@PetiteGal: If you go by male celebrities, every 18-year-old girl in the world, because they're constantly telling that same story of being seduced by an older babysitter when 13-14.

@BowlingForDollars: and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos juuuuuuuust out of reach for eternity.

This is why I am in favor of castration as a means of dealing with sex offenders. If you have demonstrated you don't know how to use your balls without fucking it up (which he already had, convicted rapist), you don't get to keep them. Not a big revenge thing, just social safeguarding, pure and simple. Recidivism is hugely high in this particular demo and rehabilitation does not work on this behavior, as far as I know. And if you don't have a genuine programming problem that's behind the behavior, it would be a pretty good deterrent, btw.

Or the chainsaw, that would work too.

@PetiteGal: It's totally fucked up. He said he was FOUR.

Which, judging from what I watched and what I've read, wasn't unusual.

@Sophie:

Yeah I wanted to jump all over this, too. What the hell? Because the lawyer can't fathom commiting the act, this dude just MUST be insane.

I sincerely hope the insanity plea doesn't fly. I know it would suck to be in an institution, but he would be protected there. I don't want him protected.

@TruculentandUnreliable: I was obsessed with The Family for a while. There is some really Lifetime-y memoir online somewhere from a woman who eventually left the cult. It's pretty fantastic.

@Macloserboy: I recall a story about a serial killer in India who was executed the same way he killed his victims (strangled, dismembered and body dissolved in a vat of acid). Seemed quite fitting.

This man is, at the very least, a sociopath.

Surely that could be the case for any crime deemed morally reprehensible as it's beyond societal concept of sanity, thus appearing to be insane. Fritzl's crime was methodically calculated and extended over such a long period of time, his sentence should reflect this.

@BowlingForDollars: yeah. Let's make him listen to Avril and the Simpson sister's.

@BowlingForDollars: Barbed wire and Yanni.

The worst thing is that no matter how long his sentence is, his life expectancy is only about 10 more years (maybe more/less, of course), so he will never do the time that he deserves.

I hope that Austrian justice is like the US and the guy gets Dahmer'd.

@sayanything: Or insanity always comes up as a defense because the defense attorney has no other choice besides the "Yup, he's a despicable excuse for a human being. I give up" defense.

@jetztinberlin: If the men are sadistic fucks, they can use their hands. Cutting off genitals doesn't change their brains.

Maybe they could speed up his "my face is melting" process. Like, with fire.

@nadarine: That's cruel and unusual. I like it!

@jetztinberlin: Often chemical castration causes sex offenders to diversify...more kidnap, more torture and more use of objects for penetration...so more physical impact for the victims.

Actual castration with a blunt edged hatchet and a daily application of neat TCP to the unstitched area might distract them from continuing, but I wouldn't guarantee it with some...