'I'm no monster,' Austrian incest dad tells world
Says I could have killed them all without anyone knowing
The incest Austrian dad accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years has protested that he is not a "monster" and said he could have killed them all without anyone knowing, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"I'm no monster," Josef Fritzl, 73, was quoted as saying in comments passed on by his lawyer to Austrian newspaper Oesterreich.
"I could have killed them all. Then there would have been no trace. No-one would have found me out," Fritzl added ahead of being questioned for the first time by prosecutors since being arrested last week.
In the remarks transmitted by lawyer Rudolf Mayer, Fritzl claimed he had saved the life of the eldest of the six surviving children born out of the sexual abuse.
"If it weren't for me, Kerstin wouldn't be alive today," he said. "It was me who made sure she was taken to hospital."
Nineteen-year-old Kerstin, who was born in the cramped dungeon, was rushed to hospital on April 19 with multiple organ failure, which the doctors suggest could be a result of her incarceration.
She has since been in an artificially-induced coma and put on a life-support machine.
It was Kerstin's hospitalization that triggered the events which led to the discovery of one of the world's most shocking cases of domestic abuse.
In the comments, Fritzl declined to comment on reported allegations that he not only raped Elisabeth, but Kerstin as well.
Frtizl watches TV in prison
Fritzl has been held in custody in the prison in St. Poelten since April 29. And he was to be questioned by prosecutors for the first time on Wednesday.
Fritzl is in a prison where he is refusing to leave his cell.
Quizzed by Oesterreich on Wednesday, Prison director Guenther Moerwald said Fritzl was in a two-man cell with another inmate. "He's slowly getting used to daily life in prison," Moerwald said.
The suspect was being kept apart from other inmates to prevent any potential violence, but Fritzl was not being treated differently from other inmates and has access to television, radio and reading materials.
His lawyer Mayer told AFP earlier this week that his client would plead diminished responsibility from mental illness.