Austrian incest father's secret past emerges

By Paul Bolding

VIENNA (Reuters) - The Austrian man who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her was convicted of rape around the time the daughter was born, his sister-in-law told Austrian media.

The newspaper Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten reproduced what it said was a 1967 court record from state archives in the city of Linz, in which a Josef F. was accused of breaking into the apartment of a 24-year-old nurse and raping her.

Josef Fritzl's sister-in-law, identified as Christine R., told the daily Oesterreich that he had gone to jail for the offence. "I was 16 when he was locked up for rape," she said.

In a video interview aired by a number of news channels, she said she believed Fritzl had spent a year and a half in jail, and that his wife Rosemarie, despite her shock, had tried to hold the family together.

Austrian officials will say only that, if Fritzl had such a rape conviction, it would have been purged from the records after 15 years at the latest. A call to Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, went unanswered on Sunday.

The reported conviction dates from shortly after the birth of Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth, now 42, who was released just over a week ago from the cellar where he had fathered seven children with her.

The head of the investigation, Franz Polzer, said in an interview that Fritzl was a classic tyrant personality.

"This man, all of whose crimes were driven by his sexual energy, never once tolerated being asked about his holidays, his absences," he said.