His lawyers say he is no longer a threat to society
Josef Fritzl could be freed from prison later this year and believes he will be released to people ‘cheering and wanting to shake his hand’.
The depraved rapist fathered seven children by his daughter Elisabeth while he kept her as a sex slave in the basement of the family home in Amstetten, Austria, for 24 years.
The 89-year-old was handed a life sentence in 2009 and last year was moved from a maximum security hospital wing for the criminally insane in Stein to a regular prison.
His lawyer Astrid Wagner has said she will submit a parole application for Fritzl in March and is optimistic he will be released due to no longer posing a danger to society based on his old age and frail health.
Wagner told the Mirror: “If the court rejects it we will appeal and given his condition I believe he will be released by next year.”
She revealed that the deluded incest monster believes that ‘a big celebration with people cheering’ and ‘wanting to shake his hand’ will be waiting for him upon release.
Wagner added: “This is obviously not the case. It is a fantasy. I don’t think he fully understands what the world really thinks.
In January 2024, a regional court ruled that Fritzl no longer posed a threat to society and therefore could be moved from a high-security prison to a normal jail.
The decision was viewed as the first step in the process which could see Fritzl released later this year.
Fritzl allegedly ‘regrets his decisions every day’, but still wrongly believes he has friends outside the prison, according to his lawyer’s statement to the Mirror.
He does reportedly accept his family’s decision of not wanting to see him anymore.
Fritzl abused his daughter, Elisabeth from the age of 11 and disappeared in 1984 at the age of 18.
For more than two decades, Fritzl held his daughter captive in a cramped and mouldy cellar beneath his home in Amstetten, which he built.
Wagner revealed to MailOnline in January that Fritzl wants to live in a house when he gets out of prison and that it ‘has to have a cellar’.
Wagner said: “He says he wants a cellar because he has so many things he needs to store. Of course he’s been transferred from a high security to the standard prison, but he still has all his things which he has collected over the years.
“I’m talking about loads and loads of files and folders. This is why he said his new place absolutely has to have a cellar.”
He raped his daughter thousands of times over several years, with the abuse resulting in the birth of seven children – three of which remained in captivity with their mother.
One died at the hands of Fritzl just days after being born while the other three were brought up by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie who lived in the house above.
His crimes were only discovered after one of his daughters fell critically ill, forcing him to seek medical help.
Fritzl was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and for the negligent homicide of one of his infant sons.
