This article contains discussions of child abuse and sexual assault.
True crime has been a very popular genre for a while now, so it’s not surprising that a genuinely horrifying real-life case — which occurred in Austria and came to light in 2008 — served as inspiration for two (admittedly different) movies. If you’ve heard of the 2021 Lifetime original film “Girl in the Basement,” you might be wondering what it’s about and how it connects to real-life events.
Released in 2021, “Girl in the Basement” stars Stefanie Scott as Sarah Cody, a rebellious teenager who’s seeing a boy named Chris (Jake Etheridge) and sneaks out to meet up with him against the wishes of her extraordinarily strict father Don (Judd Nelson, likely best known for playing John Bender in the classic teen film “The Breakfast Club”). After she returns home, having been out all night, Don does something horrific; he imprisons his own daughter in the soundproofed basement of the Cody family home, unbeknownst to her mother Irene (Joely Fisher) and sister Amy (Emily Topper). Don then keeps his daughter there for decades, repeatedly sexually assaulting her for years, which results in Sara giving birth to three children. When those children grow up, one needs medical attention and Sara is freed at last.
This is, obviously, deeply horrifying, and tragically, it is based on a true story. Here’s what you need to know about Elisabeth Fritzl, her real imprisonment, and the award-winning film that also took inspiration from her lived experience.
The Elisabeth Fritzl case came to light in 2008
Lifetime
Let’s now turn our attention to the Fritzl case, which was first reported on in 2008 when a truly despicable situation was discovered at the family’s home in Amstetten, Austria. In an article from The New York Times, the paper explains that Josef Fritzl, the family’s patriarch, imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth for 24 full years in his basement without anyone knowing. During that time, Josef repeatedly assaulted his daughter, who gave birth to seven children in captivity. In 2008, Elisabeth’s oldest daughter Kerstin, who grew up in the Fritzl family’s secret bunker until the age of 19, needed emergency medical attention; when Josef took her to a hospital, his entire secret was revealed. (Elisabeth was 42 years old when she ultimately left the basement.)
DNA testing then conclusively proved that Josef Fritzl fathered his own grandchildren and provided a litany of reasons as to why he held his daughter in the basement, including a difficult relationship with his own mother and claims that he simply wanted to protect Elisabeth and her children from the dangerous outside world. Ultimately, Josef pled guilty to all charges, including enslavement, murder, rape, imprisonment, and incest; the murder charge was defined as negligent homicide due to the fact that he refused to seek medical treatment for one of Elisabeth’s children, a son, who ultimately died as a result. He received a life sentence for his crimes.
Emma Donoghue’s novel Room was based on the Fritzl house of horrors
A24
Irish author Emma Donoghue took inspiration from Josef Fritzl’s horrifying crimes — and, more importantly, Elisabeth’s unbelievable resilience — while writing her 2010 novel “Room.” According to Donoghue herself, who spoke to The Guardian the same year that the book was released, she did feel that she needed to put some distance between the Fritzl case and her book, lest people think she was taking advantage of the very real trauma suffered by Elisabeth and her children. “To say ‘Room’ is based on the Fritzl case is too strong,” Donoghue told the outlet. “I’d say it was triggered by it. The newspaper reports of Felix Fritzl [Elisabeth’s son], aged five, emerging into a world he didn’t know about, put the idea into my head. That notion of the wide-eyed child emerging into the world like a Martian coming to Earth: it seized me.”
“Room” is told primarily from the viewpoint of Jack, a stand-in for the real Felix Fritzl — who left the basement with his mother, as Donoghue correctly said, at the age of 5 — whose entire world is contained within one subterranean room. Because of this, Jack believes that what he sees in “Room,” including his “Ma” and a man he calls “Old Nick” (who sometimes brings him treats and makes the bedsprings squeak), is everything that exists; while Ma and Jack do have a small TV, she tells him everything inside is fictional. At a certain point, Ma finds out that Old Nick has lost his job and may lose the house, so she comes up with a dangerous escape plan. She rolls a frightened Jack up in a rug and tells Old Nick that he died, firmly instructing Jack to leave the truck as soon as possible and find help; he manages to do so and police rescue Ma, leaving the two to adjust to the real world that Jack didn’t even know existed.
Two films were inspired by the Fritzl case — and one was Oscar-nominated
A24
While “Girl in the Basement” was also inspired by the Fritzl case, there’s no question that, in terms of sheer quality, the 2015 film adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s “Room” is the superior version of this tale (and, frankly, it’s far less exploitative). Drawing from a screenplay penned by Donoghue herself, Lenny Abrahamson helmed the film, with Brie Larson starring as “Ma” — whose name is eventually revealed to be Joy — and Jacob Tremblay making his live-action, feature film debut as Jack.
“Room,” if you haven’t seen it, is a harrowing and impeccably made film, giving more of the story to Ma’s struggles and following the plot of the book quite faithfully. (It does, however, cut a moment where Joy and Jack go to see “Room” after it’s dismantled by the police and she tells him about a stillborn child buried on the property.) Ultimately, the movie earned a nomination for Best Picture at the 88th Academy Awards in 2016, a Director nod for Abrahamson, and a Best Actress nod for Larson, which she won for her amazing, deeply powerful performance as Joy. Perhaps the most successful thing about “Room,” particularly the film version, is the way that it shows that amidst horrors that seem beyond the realm of possibility, children remain resilient — and Jack’s glee at discovering the real world is what helps his mother begin to work through her own trauma. You can rent “Girl in the Basement” on major platforms now, which is also true of “Room.”
Elisabeth Fritzl Was Lured into a Basement By Her Dad and Trapped for 24 Years. Inside the Horrifying Case That Inspired Room — and How She Pulled Off Her Escape
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Elisabeth Fritzl was held captive in a basement and sexually abused by her father, Josef Fritzl, for 24 years — and had seven of his children.
Years before the abduction, Josef remodeled the basement of their family house in Austria, where he eventually lured and imprisoned Elisabeth. When she disappeared, he claimed that she ran away from home, convincing even his wife, Elisabeth’s mother Rosemarie, that she left willingly to join a cult.
Josef and Rosemarie raised three of Elisabeth’s children, who Josef pretended Elisabeth left on their doorstep, while Elisabeth was forced to raise three of her children in a locked underground compound without windows.
She and seven of her children survived 8,516 days in captivity, according to The Belfast Telegraph, with some never seeing sunlight until they were adults. The case and its media attention were part of the inspiration for the 2010 novel Room and the film of the same name released five years later.
Since escaping, Elisabeth has kept a deliberately low profile. Here’s everything to know about where Elisabeth Fritzl and her children are now.
Who is Elisabeth Fritzl?
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Elisabeth was born on April 6, 1966, and raised in her family’s home in Amstetten, Austria. When she was 11 years old, Josef started sexually abusing her, according to The Guardian.
Josef began drawing up plans to build his extended cellar around 1981 or 1982. He equipped the space with electricity, made it soundproof and installed a toilet, sink, stove and refrigerator, as well as a bed.
In 1984, he asked a then-18-year-old Elisabeth to help him hang the final door in the cellar, Sky News reported. During the process, Josef held an ether-soaked cloth to her face until she was unconscious and then moved her into the cellar, where she’d be trapped for 24 years.
Josef physically, mentally and sexually abused Elisabeth almost daily starting on the second day of her captivity. He told everyone that she had run away to join a cult and forced her write letters to support his story. Elisabeth was alone, save for Josef’s abuse, for the first five years of captivity, per The Guardian.
During her 24 years of imprisonment, Elisabeth gave birth to seven of her father’s children. Josef took three of the kids (Lisa, Monika and Alexander) to live with him and Rosemarie, staging three incidents in which a baby would be left on their doorstep with notes from Elisabeth asking for Josef and Rosemarie to care for them.
Meanwhile, three other children (Kerstin, Stefan and Felix) remained locked in the cellar with Elisabeth. A twin boy named Michael died days after birth and Josef later admitted to incinerating the corpse.
Who is Josef Fritzl?
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Josef Fritzl had seven children with his daughter, Elisabeth. His crimes may not have been limited to his sexual, physical and mental abuse of Elisabeth though.
According to The Telegraph, he raped a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in 1967 and was a suspect in the attempted sexual assault of a 21-year-old woman. He served one year of an 18-month sentence for the 1967 rape, with the crime getting expunged from his criminal record 15 years later.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Josef was also a suspect in four murders and several missing persons cases dating back nearly 50 years, including the sexual assault and murder of a 17-year-old girl who resembled Elisabeth.
Why was Elisabeth Fritzl locked in the basement?
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Josef specifically designed the basement to make it nearly impossible for Elisabeth to escape from it or for anyone nearby to hear her if she screamed for help. He came up with a makeshift security system and ensured the cellar was soundproof.
“I brought in a heavy door of steel and concrete and equipped it with a remote-controlled electrical motor, which would open it only after a numeric code was entered,” he told Austrian prosecutors (via The Guardian).
Sky News reported that Josef told Elisabeth and their children that if they tried to escape, they’d be electrocuted or that poison would be released into the cellar, killing them.
Josef claimed that he initially locked Elisabeth in the cellar because she was smoking, drinking and not adhering to his and Rosemarie’s household rules. But the longer Elisabeth was locked away, the more difficult it became for him to consider letting her out.
“With every passing week in which I kept my daughter captive my situation was getting crazier,” he said. “I was afraid of being arrested and of having my family and everyone out there find out about my crime — and so I postponed my decision again and again. Until one day it was really too late to free Elisabeth and take her upstairs.”
According to Josef, his sexual abuse of Elisabeth began when she was in the basement after his feelings intensified over time.
“I knew that I was hurting her. But the urge to finally be able to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong. It was like an addiction,” he told officials.
Did Elisabeth Fritzl’s mother know she was in the basement?
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Rosemarie reportedly didn’t know Elisabeth was locked in the cellar, and neither did anyone else.
“The cellar of my house belonged to me and to me alone, it was my kingdom to which only I had access to,” Josef told Austrian prosecutors, per The Guardian.
He continued, “Everyone who lived there knew that. My wife, my children, my lodgers. And no one would have dared to enter my realm or even to ask me what I was doing there.”
Authorities told The Sydney Morning Herald that they believed Rosemarie was oblivious to Josef’s crimes against Elisabeth and the children, but that she did know about his 1967 rape conviction and took him back after he was released from prison.
Josef was reportedly also physically abusive to Rosemarie and to their son, Harald.
How did Elisabeth Fritzl escape?
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During his conversation with Austrian prosecutors, Josef noted that in case of his death, he had a timer set so that if he ever didn’t unlock and enter the cellar for a certain length of time, it would unlock and she could be free. But there was an unexpected turn of events when Elisabeth’s daughter, Kerstin, then 19, became ill.
On April 19, 2008, Elisabeth convinced Josef to bring Kerstin to a hospital for medical treatment. Once there, Josef gave Kerstin’s care team a note to demonstrate that Elisabeth was Kerstin’s mother who was away in a cult. Doctors made a televised appeal to Kerstin’s missing mother to come forward and provide information about Kerstin’s medical history, The New York Times reported.
Elisabeth, who had a television in the cellar, saw the TV report and convinced Josef to release her and the two other children, sons Felix and Stefan, who were still imprisoned in the cellar with her.
On April 26, 2008, Elisabeth visited Kerstin at the hospital with Josef after she was freed, at which point Josef was arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse. Police questioned Elisabeth about what she endured, but she wouldn’t cooperate unless they promised her that she’d never have to see her father again.
Josef was charged with coercion, deprivation of liberty, incest, rape and enslavement of Elisabeth, as well as the murder of newborn Michael by negligence for not getting him medical attention, the BBC reported.
He initially pleaded guilty to all charges except enslavement and murder but after a few days of his criminal trial, pleaded guilty to all charges.
The New York Times reported that Michael’s negligent death carried the highest sentence and prosecutors demanded the maximum time for Josef. On March 19, 2009, a then-73-year-old Josef was sentenced to life in prison.
Where is Elisabeth Fritzl now?
Elisabeth changed her name after her father’s trial, The Mirror reported in January 2024. Austrian law prevents news outlets from revealing her identity.
She lives in a rural Austrian town known only to the public as “Village X” with her six surviving children and her partner, Thomas Wagner, a bodyguard who was hired to protect the family.
A member of her care team told the outlet that she continues to work toward moving past her trauma and have some semblance of normalcy.
“With the approval of her doctors she has ceased psychiatric therapies while she gets on with her life — learning to drive, helping her children with their homework, making friends with people in her locality,” they said. “She lost the best years of her life in that cellar; she is determined that every day remaining to her will be filled with activity.”
Where are Elisabeth Fritzl’s kids now?
Elisabeth was forced to give birth to seven children in the cellar without medical help, which included Kerstin, Stefan, Felix, Lisa, Monika, Alexander and the late Michael.
Elisabeth’s six surviving children were reunited after Josef’s crimes were discovered but it took time to adjust.
The Independent reported that the kids (Lisa, Monika, Alexander) who grew up with Josef and Rosemarie felt guilt for living relatively normal lives, while the other three (Kerstin, Stefan, Felix) struggled to bond as they learned about the outside world for the first time.
Eight years later, Kerstin was in a serious relationship and Stefan reportedly had ambitions to be a merchant ship captain, per The Belfast Telegraph. Felix was also a relatively well-adjusted child who enjoyed PlayStation games and attended school.
Elisabeth’s children are now adults, ranging in age from 21 to 36, and live with her in a remote Austrian village.
One local told The Mirror, “Given what they have been through, they are very polite, happy and smile a lot.”
Where is Josef Fritzl now?
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In a May 2023 interview, Josef told The Sun that he expressed different hopes, including wanting to reunite with his family and reconcile with his ex-wife, Rosemarie, who divorced him in 2012.
“I do understand people who want me to die in jail. But I want to experience freedom one day. I’ve never been afraid of dying,” he said.
A year later, in May 2024, Josef was approved for a transfer from a psychiatric prison to a regular prison, Reuters reported. In a statement from the court, it was declared that Josef no longer posed a threat that required him to be in the “forensic therapeutic centre,” citing his dementia diagnosis and physical frailty.
In the Austrian correctional system, transfers like these are typical before prisoners are granted conditional release, which Josef’s attorney said she’d seek for him. However, the court also noted that it’s unlikely he’d ever be released from prison because of “special preventive reasons.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.