Posted on 08/25/2006 5:58:30 AM PDT by Aquinasfan
LONDON -- When 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch disappeared while walking to school on March 2, 1998, outside Vienna, it was the start of one of the most baffling mysteries in Austria.
For years, pictures of the chubby, smiling girl with brown hair and squinting blue eyes haunted the country. A special police unit called the Natascha Taskforce was set up to find her. Helicopters scoured the air, riverbeds were dredged. But no trace of the girl was ever found. It was as if she had simply vanished.
Then, on Wednesday, a pale and shaken 18-year-old was found huddling in the corner of a garden in Strasshof, a suburban hamlet northeast of Vienna. She told the astonished homeowner she was Natascha.
She said she had been held captive for years in a cellar beneath a garage a few houses away and had finally escaped. The neighbour called police.
Yesterday, officials confirmed that the young woman and the missing schoolgirl are one and the same, and that Ms. Kampusch has been reunited with her parents and sister, who live just 10 kilometres from where she was held captive.
"As far as can be humanly certain, it's Natascha Kampusch," an Austrian police investigator said, adding that her family had identified her positively and that a small scar on her arm matches the description of the missing girl. Results of DNA testing are pending.
Her father Ludwig Koch choked back tears on national television.
"I'm betting God this has really happened. I can't believe that after eight desperate years my daughter is finally coming home," he said. At the family's reunion in the police station, Ms. Kampusch jumped into her father's arms and cried uncontrollably before asking for her favourite toy car, police said.
Her father, who separated from her mother before the abduction, told the Austrian daily Kurier that Ms. Kampusch was "emaciated and has very, very white skin and blotches all over her body," according to comments quoted by Reuters. "I don't dare to think about where they come from," he said.
Her mother, Brigitte Sirny, who was on vacation when she heard the news that her daughter had been found safe, nearly had a nervous breakdown, Ms. Kampusch's sister told Austrian television.
"This is the most wonderful day of my life," an emotional Ms. Sirny told reporters. "She said mama mausi to me" -- a nickname that means "little mouse."
As the family went to a hotel to "get to know each other again" -- with a psychologist monitoring the girl -- details began emerging of Ms. Kampusch's captivity at the hands of Wolfgang Priklopil, an unmarried communications technician who committed suicide after the escape.
"In principle, she was locked up day and night," police officer Gerhard Lang said, adding she was "let out for different chores in the house." She was vacuuming the car Wednesday when Mr. Priklopil moved "off to the side for a few minutes in order to talk undisturbed because of the noise from the vacuum cleaner."
"Natascha used this head start of a few metres to leave the house and run away a few hundred metres so that the suspect couldn't follow her," Mr. Lang said.
A female police officer, Sabine Freudenberger, said the young woman told of spending her days with her captor and even doing gardening, The Associated Press reported.
Ms. Freudenberger, one of the first officers to have contact with the woman Wednesday, told Austrian television the man apparently threatened her, saying that was probably the reason she didn't try to flee sooner.
Police said the young woman had been examined by a doctor and did not have signs of injuries, but added that her condition was still being studied.
Ms. Freudenberger said she believed the young woman had been sexually abused but didn't realize it. "It won't become clear to her. . . . She did everything voluntarily, she said," Ms. Freudenberger said.
Police launched a major manhunt for Mr. Priklopil, 44, immediately after Ms. Kampusch was taken to a police station. Realizing the girl was gone, he panicked and escaped in a red sports car, which was later found abandoned in a Vienna parking lot. He threw himself in front of a commuter train and died.
His car keys were found in his pocket, federal police spokesman Armin Halm said.
Ms. Kampusch told police her captor kept her locked in a soundproof, windowless cell measuring 1.8 metres by three metres with a toilet, running water, bed, radio, a few books and a television. She was forced to call her abductor "master," and it was only this year that he started giving her permission to go outside for fresh air or accompany him on shopping trips, police said.
Prayers for her as she tries to recover. It's too bad she can never have those lost years back.
Who's monitoring the psychologist?
This man got off too easy by throwing himself in front of a train. He didn't suffer enough..
sw
there is a DNA analysis going on. i think it´s because after someone is hit by a train this person usually don´t look very "good" and it´s hard to identify him
This man got off too easy by throwing himself in front of a train. He didn't suffer enough..
Let's hope an animal like this is in a place of nonstop suffering
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yes. death by train is too easy for this animal, but maybe it´s better that he commited suicide because of the lax laws here in austria he would have been imprisoned only about max. 15 years i guess. may he rot in hell
Ping.
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