Depraved Josef Fritzl kept his beautiful daughter on a dog-lead chained to a wall for the first nine months of her captivity.
The warped fiend only set Elisabeth free from the chain around her neck when she needed to go to the toilet.
Today the Sunday Mirror reveals how she had run away from home aged 16 to flee his sexual abuse - but Fritzl, 73, dragged her back. News of this escape attempt is the first indication of why Fritzl decided to lock her underground nearly a quarter of a century ago.
The policeman leading the inquiry has revealed Fritzl even constructed a dungeon within his dungeon containing a hidden network of special punishment cells.
Officers fear he used the tiny solitary confinement cells with bare walls and floors to terrify Elisabeth and his three children if they misbehaved.
The cellar was SO dank and airless police working in it even had to drill holes to allow in enough oxygen to breathe properly.
Officers have also detected a strong smell of gas in the dungeon's inner chambers, fuelling fears Fritzl planned to poison his captives if they tried to overpower him.
EVIL BEYOND WORDS
Meanwhile, police sources said savage Fritzl has now confessed to the repeated rape of Elisabeth while her chldren looked on - powerless to defend their mother from him.
Fritzl's shocking punishment cells were revealed exclusively to the Sunday Mirror by police chief Detective Franz Polzer.
Giving his first full interview, Mr Polzer revealed officers fear Fritzl, who is pleading insanity, may serve as little as 10 years in jail.
Mr Polzer said: "The man is evil beyond words. The misery he has inflicted on his family is unimaginable. It will take the children many years to recover."
Rooms in the main part of the cellar contained odd bits of furniture or toys rescued by Elisabeth for her children. But the punishment cells are utterly bare.
"They are distinctive and stand out as they look just like a prison cell," said Mr Polzer, who is leading a team of 30 detectives and 300 uniformed officers.
Mr Polzer said police are so confused at the structure of the dungeon they have yet to draw up an official plan of Fritzl's terror chambers.
He said: "There are still areas we haven't found inside the dungeon and I expect it to take at least two weeks before we have answered all the questions we need to about how Fritzl controlled the areas and imprisoned the children.
"Areas of the dungeon appear to have been under construction and it is possible Fritzl may have been planning to expand it even further. But we simply don't know what his intentions were. He is no longer co-operating with us, which makes it hard, but he has admitted all the charges to us."
The revelations came as officers in Amstetten, Austria, continued to search the dungeon which Fritzl secretly built 24 years ago.
He held Elisabeth, now 42, as a prisoner, raped her and fathered her seven children while telling eveyone she had run away to join a cult. Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, lived in the dungeon while Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, were raised upstairs by Fritzl and wife Rosemarie after he claimed Elisabeth had left them to be looked after. Another child, a twin, died.
Sources who have seen details of Fritzl's confession say he admitted tricking her into the dungeon after asking her to carry a door downstairs on August 24, 1984.
REMOTE CONTROL DOORS
She remained in one room for NINE YEARS until Fritzl started expanding the dungeon with extra rooms in 1993.
But even this didn't stop him dragging Elisabeth in front of her children and raping her before their eyes. Inside the dungeon yesterday, forensics officers were investigating a maze of doors which Fritzl - a highly trained electrical engineer - may have been opening using a remote control.
Meanwhile Fritzl, who is now in jail in St Poelten, 80 miles away, has begged for a meeting with his wife but she has refused.
Fritzl's lawyer Rudolf Mayer said Fritzl has been examined by prison doctors who have diagnosed him as suffering from schizophrenia. He has been placed on 24-hour suicide watch.
Head prison guard Friedrich Wallner said: "We have isolated the inmate Fritzl from other prisoners for his own safety. He goes to the shower on his own and goes for walks in the prison courtyard sometimes. But most of the time he sits in front of the TV watching reports about the case."
The Sunday Mirror can also reveal that Fritzl's wife Rosemarie, 68, is going to be questioned again. She has told police officers she had no idea he had created a secret dungeon below their home in Amstetten. But officers are growing suspicious at her claims she was unaware of what was going on.
They are paying close attention to a former lodger who claims he saw Rosemarie taking wheel-barrow loads of food into the cellar. Mr Polzer said: "She will be reinterviewed."
CLINGING TO LIFE
Rosemarie and five of the Fritzl children are being treated at a psychiatric clinic in Amstetten. Last night Kerstin Fritzl was clinging to life at the Amstetten-Mauer hospital . The 19-year-old girl is suffering from multiple organ failure brought on by her treatment in the dungeon. Fritzl will appear in court on Friday.
But Mr Polzer said there is a chance the sex beast could be freed in just TEN years. Officers are struggling to gather enough evidence for a murder charge relating to the twin who died.
If found guilty of the murder, rape, incest and unlawful imprisonment charges against him, he will facea maximum 15 years and could be out in 10. He will face a double murder charge if Kerstin, 19, dies.
Dungeon built after battered wife left
Rosemarie Fritzl walked out on sadistic husband Josef after years of beatings and abuse.
She told friends she also suffered at the hands of the monster who imprisoned their daughter Elisabeth in the cellar below their home.
Rosemarie, who married Fritzl when she was 17, escaped in 1973 to live in a guesthouse the couple owned. It was two hours from the family home and Fritzl insisted their seven children stay with him.
She moved back in with him nine years later after the guesthouse burned down - a suspected arson attack blamed on him.
Friends say she knew nothing of his plan to build a dungeon. He converted the cellar while she was away, installing lights and plumbing.
Rosemarie's former colleague Anton Klammer, 57, said: "People ask how she could not have known but she was living away from him for a long time.
"Josef beat her and she was petrified of him. She loved her kids but the guesthouse they owned was a good excuse to leave him. She thought that if she didn't leave, he may kill her. Rosemarie was happy and normal but when he was around she used to shrink away.
"You could tell she was terrified of him.
"The children stayed with Josef because they had to go to school but sometimes he would come up and drop the children off with Rosemarie for a few nights. She was a loving mother - I'm sure she had no idea of what was going on."
Fritzl was arrested for arson at the guesthouse in the idyllic tourist spot of Mondsee but released due to lack of evidence.
Cafe owner Beate Schmidinger said: "Everyone thought he set fire to the place because we knew he had money trouble."
Fritzl owned five properties but had debts estimated at £1.5million.
The new owner of the guesthouse Paul Ruhdorfer, 58, said: "There were two Rosemaries.
"One was the owner and competent businesswoman who was happy and carefree. The other was a timid victim, controlled by her overbearing husband."
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