Fritzl lodger admits: 'I knew of rapes'

Beast's tenant tells how he learned the truth

A LODGER at the home of dungeon sex slave Elisabeth Fritzl has sensationally revealed he knew her dad was raping her.

Joseph Leitner also told how Elisabeth fled home at 17 but was found by father Josef—a year before he imprisoned her.

Leitner, who rented a room from Fritzl, claimed: "I knew Sissi (Elisabeth's nickname) was being raped by her father before she disappeared.

"I knew her best friend very well and she told me what a monster Josef was— and what he had done to Sissi.

"They came up with a plan to run away together. It was in 1983.

Timeline: Fritzl's 73 evil years

"Elisabeth packed her bags and left the house, and the two went to Linz but also spent some time in Vienna.

"Josef was furious and eventually found Elisabeth and dragged her home. Sissi was banned from having anything to do with my friend again.

"Her mother also made sure of that. She banned Elisabeth from seeing her—and watched her carefully to make sure they were kept apart.

"When Elisabeth vanished again just a year later, my friend thought she had run off again. She never said anything because she was scared. It wasn't only Elisabeth that was terrified of Fritzl, my friend was as well. That was why she kept quiet for so long."

The revelation came after this happy family snap (below)—taken by Fritzl at an annual family gathering—highlighted the depraved brute's bizarre double life.

The smiling faces mask the secret world of evil the tyrant inflicted on the children in his TWO families at home.

The picture was taken seven years ago at vile Fritzl's favourite restaurant Bratwurstglöckerl in Linz, Austria.

By this time he had already kept daughter Elisabeth imprisoned as a sex slave for 17 years beneath his house in Amstetten.

He had also fathered six of seven children by her after repeated rapes.

Also posing is his wife Rosemarie, now 68, with whom he also had seven children. She insists she knew nothing of her husband's secret world.

Fritzl, 73—who went on holidays alone—insisted on an annual family meal out. To the outside world he appeared a strict disciplinarian who ruled his model family with an iron fist.

But yesterday it emerged he was a brute to the children he kept upstairs as well as those locked in the cellar.

Chief of police Franz Polzen exclusively told us: "We have spoken at length to Elisabeth's brothers and sisters. All said their father wasn't just very strict, aggressive, dominant and power-mad, he was a ‘real tyrant'.

"They weren't ever allowed to address him or ask him anything. That was why every child except one son left the house as soon as they could.

But one son wasn't allowed to leave, just like Elisabeth. He is very slow and has a few problems and difficulties. Josef kept him, using this son as his slave and house boy.

"I believe it was Josef's youngest son. He had to wait on his father hand and foot, and skivvy for him."

If life upstairs was bleak for son Alexander, two storeys below in the cellar it was desperate.

Elisabeth—now 42—was 18 when Fritzl locked her away leaving others to believe she had run away to join a sect. Over the next 24 years he fathered Kersten, 19, Stefan, 18, Lisa, 16, Monika, 15, Alexander, 12 (whose twin died soon after birth) and Felix, five.

Elisabeth was originally imprisoned in one room but over a decade Fritzl secretly added extra rooms for his second family. None had windows or sunlight and all had remote controlled locked steel doors.

Our graphic at the top of the page shows for the first time the astonishing underground lair he built.

Austrian cops have reopened the inquiry into the murder of 17-year-old Anna Neumayr in 1966 and want to seeif DNA links Fritzl to the crime.

Meanwhile Elisabeth has paid secret visits to daughter Kerstin, 19, who is desperately ill in hospital.