:smack:
What blows my mind about this case on the legal front is that according to MSNBC.com the slimeball is facing only15 years in prison.
So he locks up his daughter for 20 years, rapes her and fathers children and the max sentence is 15 years? That is wrong.
Slee
Oh, look who had to Godwinise the thread. :rolleyes:
Considering his setup, it’s definitely possible:
Either the wife is stupid going on clinically moronic or she knew something funny was going on. There’s a whole hell of a lot that had to be going on between upstairs and down. The whole damn thing had to be built. Food, clothing etc taken down. My guess is that the wife had suspicions but was similarly totally cowed.
But surely that setup had to be built at some time. Truckloads of concrete coming in, plumbing, etc. How did that escape her notice?
Good question.
Perhaps they went through a rough spot in their marriage and she stayed with her parents for a while and he built it then. Maybe she had a long hospital stay for some reason. Maybe he told her that he was building a bomb shelter. Hell, maybe he owned the house before he even met her and built it then. I don’t know anything about this couple’s history.
Of course, none of those explanations sound all that likely. I don’t know. I guess I just don’t want to believe that somebody else could have known about this and done nothing to stop it.
As I recall, there was a case in America where a married guy was kidnapping girls and keeping them as sex slaves in a basement dungeon. Also, I believe there have been cases of male serial killers who were married and who had trophy rooms/dungeons that were off-limits to their wives.
So I guess it’s possible. Although if the wife of one of these monsters had an inkling about what was going on, she obviously is gonna deny it when the authorities finally catch up with her husband.
Jerry Brudos, maybe?
At least, if you’re looking for one who had a family that was completely oblivious to his activities. Not a basement, but close.
There are a few other examples but that one came to mind.
Where’s Kurt Waldheim on that list?
1.5
Ugh. This story is so sickening. I think the asshole’s wife must’ve suspected something was up. The fact that the basement was off-limits is enough to make any reasonable person suspicious. And I can’t believe she didn’t notice him taking down food, bedding, clothing, etc. for 20 years. But it is likely that he was an abusive asshole upstairs, too, and his wife was too frightened to investigate. (I personally know of a case where the mother was made to feel so helpless and worthless that she ignored, or blocked out knowledge of, her daughter’s abuse to save herself emotionally.)
Like thirdwarning, the part I really don’t “get” is the fact that he took his sick daughter/granddaughter to the hospital. Once you get to the level of cruelty he was perpetuating, why would you take the risk of getting caught to care for someone’s physical health? There was clearly some fucked-up thinking going on in his head.
And how did he justify it all to himself? Did he think what he was doing was okay? Was he wracked with guilt over it?
One minorly odd thing about that story is how tidy that hidden basement was, with white tiles an all.
Trust an Austrian pervert to have a nice, clean rape dungeon! :eek:
I imagine from the news stories that he was so used to ruling his unresisting family (or rather families) in an authoritarian way, he simply assumed that they would never resist or tell outsiders when given the opportunity. Probably he had good reason to believe this.
Indeed, allegedly the secret only came to light when someone read a letter tucked into the daughter’s pocket. If it wasn’t for that, he’d have continued to get away with it.
He took her because he lurves her. Or something. Or maybe, given his picture, he’s an old man and got tired and perhaps realized that at some point, one of these younger offspring might challenge him physically and he’d go down.
I have no idea–I don’t think what I just said is all that likely, given that these people were essentially institutionalized and probably had no thought of running away or fighting. I think the same holds true of the wife upstairs–she may well have had suspicions, but the basement was soundproof, and she never saw anything (no windows, no one going in or out–except him). I’ll bet he was so unpleasant that anytime he was gone was enough for her. She probably didn’t care where he was when he left. IMO, there has to have been abuse in the upstairs family as well. I also can’t believe the daughter didn’t try to get away at first, at least. I’m not blaming her for staying, but surely she would have tried to escape at some point?
The absolute sickest thing to me is that those kids downstairs probably love him–or what passes for love. Afterall, they know no other life at all. The oldest daughter/concubine does–she remembers. Her children don’t. She may have had the strength to tell them about the outdoors and a different life, but I’m sure it all sounded like a fairy tale to them. Their reality is that basement and no other. How can they now cope with all the world? 
I honestly cannot think of a punishment bad enough for him. Death is too easy and stares him in the face as it is. Big whoop. I don’t believe in torture. I am happy to consider having him stay for the rest of his natural life in the basement he made. And there’d be no weekly visit–just him and those walls and the silence.
He didn’t keep it clean–the kids and the daughter did. You have a world that is severely circumscribed–what else did they have to do? think of the energy of little kids–and nowhere for it to go…
My mind is so desperate to pull something positive from this so here goes…
Maybe those kids could work on the international space station? They are probably well suited for it.
Wait. Now I am completely 
Apparently they had a TV downstairs.
read toward the end of the article
So, the daughter/concubine begged her captor to let her go to the hospital–but what about the note in the pt’s pocket?
WTF? I cannot understand how they were kept in all those years.
From your link, I didn’t get a clear idea why Waldheim is supposed to be so high on the asshole list.
What did he do?
-FrL-
You can ask anyone who’s been in an abusive relationship and stayed all about what it’s like. I’ve been there myself.