Evil father broke her... now Elisabeth breaks him

INCEST beast Josef Fritzl confessed to his hideous crimes yesterday after being broken by his daughter — just as HE broke HER during her 24 years of captivity.

The sex fiend’s iron will finally cracked as he pondered the vivid 11-hour testimony Elisabeth delivered at his trial.

Yesterday it was revealed she was in court on Tuesday — sitting stony-faced as her videoed evidence played out on a giant screen.

It was the first time she and...

...Fritzl had come face to face since she and three of the seven children he fathered through her were rescued from his dungeon last April.

The sight and sound of her was too much for the twisted father. And after a night spent wrestling with what was left of his conscience, 73-year-old Fritzl dramatically changed all his pleas to guilty.

He told a hushed court: “It was only yesterday I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth. I never realised it was such a bad situation.”
Crushed

The statement still beggared belief in all those who heard it. But for Elisabeth — said during the trial to have had her spirit crushed by her imprisonment and Fritzl’s constant sex attacks — it was a kind of grim revenge.

Fritzl had already admitted false imprisonment and incest.

Yesterday he confessed to raping Elisabeth 3,000 times and coercing her and the cellar children by threatening to gas them if they tried to escape.

Significantly, he also admitted a charge of slavery — becoming the first convicted of this in his nation’s history — and murder.

Fritzl denied baby Michael medical help when he developed breathing difficulties after his birth in 1996.

And when the tot died two days later, he tossed the corpse into a furnace to preserve his grotesque secrets.

The murder rap means he will now rot behind bars as prosecutors will demand the maximum penalty of life when he is sentenced today.

There was high drama from the moment Fritzl walked into Court 119 in St Poelten, Austria. He was without the notorious blue clip file he had previously used to hide his face.

Surrounded by 11 armed guards, he took his place on a chair in the centre of the court.

In an electrifying exchange, Judge Andrea Humer asked him: “Can we go back to Elisabeth’s testimony yesterday?” Speaking quietly with a cracking voice, Fritzl replied: “Yes.”

Judge Humer: “Do you have something to say to me?”

Fritzl: “Yes. I recognise that I am guilty to all of the charges.”

After a short pause, he added the three words Elisabeth had waited 24 years to hear: “I am sorry.”

Judge Humer: “Why are you saying that now? What has changed?”

Fritzl: “Because of the video testimony of my daughter.”

Judge Humer: “Why did you not do more for the baby? Did you not realise it was gravely ill?”

Fritzl shrugged as he replied: “I just overlooked it. I thought the baby would survive. I should have realised. We all hoped he would pull through.”

Judge Humer: “Why didn’t you do more to help? You had time to get first aid.”

Fritzl muttered “I tried... ” before his words tailed off.

Judge Humer: “Is it the case you did not do anything because you did not want to be found out?”

Fritzl responded vaguely: “I just made that decision.”

Judge Humer: “You are not answering my question. Is it that you did not want to take the baby out of the cellar?”

Fritzl: “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

He added that he considered Michael’s birth “normal”.

Elisabeth — thrown in the cellar when she was 18 — had declared she never wanted to see her father again.

But she decided to go to court on Tuesday because she wanted to see his reactions as he listened to her story.

She arrived after telling her family: “I screamed and cried a lot of times in all those years but no one heard me.”

Elisabeth, now 42, was ushered into a gallery at the back of the court after press and public were told to leave.

A source said: “She spent just over an hour in there and sat grim-faced and silent throughout.”

The daughter was not there yesterday to hear Fritzl’s seven-minute confession.
Summoned

Last night a prison source told how electrical engineer Fritzl suddenly summoned a psychiatrist to his cell on Tuesday evening. He told him: “I’m going to change my plea. I’m guilty of everything they say.”

After he confessed in court, Fritzl sat slumped with his head in his hands.

His lawyer Rudolf Mayer confirmed it was Elisabeth’s unexpected appearance and the shocking detail of her testimony that made her father crack.

He said: “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was surprised.”

Psychiatrists have ruled Fritzl bad, not mad.

But he will serve his time in a secure mental unit rather than prison as he has been deemed “criminally responsible but mentally abnormal”.

It is understood that in return for his confessions, he will be allowed a single cell at an unnamed “soft” unit offering meditation, tennis, darts — and singing lessons.

It means he will be spared the notorious high-security Goellersdorf institution — where caged cannibal Robert Ackermann had vowed to turn him into “Fritzl schnitzel”.

Elisabeth plans to secure her family’s future by writing a book.