The Josef Fritzl affair: how could the Austrian authorities miss so many clues?

Elisabeth Fritzl and her children could have been freed years earlier if Austrian authorities had not missed dozens of clues, writes Stefanie Marsh, author of a new book on the man who held his daughter in a dungeon for a quarter of a century.

There is a theory, popular in Austria, that Josef Fritzl was a cunning and extremely stealthy criminal. But, having spent the past year researching the case, I have found that the opposite is true.

He is ruthless, and an accomplished liar, but he is also a clumsy operator, a man who, by the time he had reached his mid-40s, had been arrested twice for arson, twice more for sex offences, and jailed once for the rape of a woman at knifepoint. More...

See also:

1. Elisabeth Fritzl discovers that love is the best therapy!
2. It's hard to believe that Josef Fritzl raped his daughter for 24 years and had 7 children in a cellar , and no one knew about it...
3. Evil, yes, but Josef Fritzl is chillingly ordinary...
4. The Fritzl family in Amstetten: the children downstairs and the children upstairs...