The rape and murder trial resumed in Austria today of Josef Fritzl, who has admitted forcing his daughter to bear his children in a cellar.
The jury heard more videotaped evidence today from the daughter he allegedly imprisoned in a home-made dungeon for 24 years while fathering seven children by her.
Mr Fritzl pleaded guilty to rape and incest charges as horrific details of his family's suffering emerged on the first day of his trial in Austria yesterday.
The 73-year-old denies slavery charges and the murder of one of the children ,who died less than three days after his birth, and whose body Mr Fritzel allegedly disposed of in a furnace.
For a second day, the entered court with his face obscured from view behind a blue folder.
The trial is being held behind closed doors and a verdict is expected as early as Thursday.
Mr Fritzl used his daughter Elisabeth ‘like his property’ after imprisoning her in the cell under the family home, prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser told the court.
For the first few years he did not even talk to her. He just went to the cellar to rape her and left.
After she gave birth, the rapes carried on in front of her children, Ms Burkheiser said.
She said Josef Fritzl once punished Elisabeth by shutting off electricity to the dungeon underneath his house in the town of Amstetten, and forced her to spend the first part of her captivity in a tiny space that did not even have a shower or warm water.
‘The worst was ... there was no daylight,’ Ms Burkheiser said, adding it was also 'incredibly humid' in the cramped space and the air was stale.
She said Elisabeth was 'broken' by Fritzl's alleged actions and the uncertainty of her fate and that of her children.
Three of the children grew up underground in Amstetten, never seeing daylight. The other three were taken upstairs to be raised by Josef Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently believed they had been abandoned.
Josef Fritzl's entrance to the court in St Poelten, near Vienna, was the first time he has been seen in public since he was arrested last April. He walked in, flanked by guards, behind a blue folder to avoid his face being photographed.
Mr Fritzl spoke in an almost inaudible voice as he gave the judge his name and other personal details. He eventually removed the folder from his face, but sat still in the dock, clasping his hands together, and stared straight ahead.
His voice breaking, Josef Fritzl briefly recalled his childhood and said life with his mother was 'very difficult'. Asked if he had friends, he said simply: 'No.'
His lawyer Rudolf Mayer appealed to the jury to be objective and insisted Josef Fritzl was ‘not a monster’, saying his client even brought a Christmas tree down to his captives, whom he considered a second family.
‘If you just want to have sex, you don't have children,’ Mr Mayer said. ‘As a monster, I'd kill all of them downstairs.’
Josef Fritzl faces up to life in prison if convicted of murder. Incest, by contrast, is punishable by up to one year in prison.
