VIENNA, Austria - An 18-year-old woman who was kidnapped eight years ago and held captive in a cellar managed to escape, and her alleged abductor committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, authorities said Thursday.
Natascha Kampusch was found in a yard in a residential area northeast of Vienna on Wednesday afternoon. She was identified by a scar on one of her arms from a childhood operation, authorities said, ending one of Austria’s biggest police mysteries. She had disappeared while walking to school as a 10-year-old.
The alleged kidnapper has been identified by Austrian media as 44-year-old Wolfgang Priklopil. A DNA analysis was under way to confirm his identity, Austrian television reported.
Armin Halm, spokesman for Austrian’s federal police, said the woman told investigators her name was Natascha Kampusch and said she was kidnapped and kept for years in a cellar under a garage in a house in Strasshof, just outside Vienna, police said.
Besides the telltale scar, she also was identified by her father, mother and half sister. Results of a DNA test were expected later Thursday, Austrian television reported.
“We are quite sure it’s her,” Halm said.
Kept to himselfErich Zwettler, of Austria’s federal police, said neighbors told officers the alleged kidnapper was not very sociable and kept to himself, state broadcaster ORF reported on its Web site.
ORF reported that an 80-year-old man found the woman, whom he described as very thin and pale. The man, who was not identified, said the woman was running and screaming and in a state of panic.
Kampusch vanished in Vienna on her way to school on March 2, 1998, triggering a massive search that extended into neighboring Hungary.
Zwettler was quoted by the Austria Press Agency as saying the woman appeared to have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome, a survival mechanism in which a hostage begins to empathize with a captor.
Investigators said the woman had been examined by a doctor and that she did not have signs of injuries. But police are investigating whether she was beaten or sexually abused.
Nikolaus Koch, a lead investigator, said on Austrian television that the police had contact with the alleged kidnapper about three months after the girl disappeared but that he had a “sturdy alibi” at the time.
Halm said the woman spent the night in “a secure location” in the presence of a female police officer with specialized psychological training. She was due to undergo more questioning throughout the day, he said.
Kampusch’s sister said in remarks broadcast on Austrian television that her mother almost had a nervous breakdown when police notified her Wednesday, adding that she always held onto the hope that her daughter would come back one day.
“She always said she was still alive,” said the sister, who was identified as Sabina Sirny.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Wow. I mean I know children go missing or are abducted every day. But to think that at the end of season 13 of THE JOURNEY (1996 May), I had Olivia St Monge disappear from a car park and her mother never saw her again. Of course, at the end of season 19, Olivia's DAUGHTER was found by Sam, and she was united with her lost family and Nikko. Being a soap, of course, Nikko died peacefully in her sleep after having met her grand-daughter Chloe, finally succumbing to the cancer which was eating away at her for years (and for which there was a cure, but developed upon the foundation of experiments conducted in Nazi concentration camps, which was repugnant to her).
The joy was short-lived as Chloe met her death when Carrie's enemies caught up with her, and all were killed at sea when their yacht exploded. The secret of Olivia's disappearance looked as if it would never be resolved, since Chloe had no recollection of her true mother.
I had made a public commitment regarding this story-line back in '96: Nikko would never discover what happened to her daughter and the pair would never be reunited. I felt I had honoured this promise after I wrote off Nikko's character, and many still wondered what had happened to Olivia. And since the series was drawing to its ultimate conclusion, I relented.
Sam, racked with guilt (he believed if he had never gone looking for Olivia, Chloe would still be alive and happy living in seclusion in Ireland), began halucinating that Chloe/Olivia (for they were always meant to be played by the same actress) was showing up everywhere. This, coupled with his estrangement from Avery, precipitated a complete breakdown, and Sam was institutionalised.
Eventually, Avery discovered that Sam was not halucinating and that Olivia was alive and trying to drive Sam to suicide for the death of her daughter.
Once that mess was cleared up and relationships began to mend, the mystery of Olivia's disappearance was resolved.
Continuing the story:
Kidnapped Austrian 'thought only of escape'
Two weeks after dramatic escape, Kampusch to appear in TV interview
VIENNA, Austria - The young Austrian woman imprisoned for 8 1/2 years in an underground cell "thought only of escape" during her entire ordeal, she told a magazine in an interview published Wednesday.
Natascha Kampusch, who bolted to freedom on Aug. 23 while her captor busied himself with a cell phone call, told the Austrian weekly magazine News she repeatedly asked herself: "Why, of all the many millions of people, did this have to happen to me?"
The interview hit the newsstands a few hours before a TV interview with Kampusch, now 18, was to be aired nationwide.
"I thought only of escape," she told the magazine two weeks after she won her freedom by taking advantage of kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil's distracting call to run to neighbors, who called police.
Priklopil, 44, killed himself within hours of her escape by jumping in front of a commuter train.
"I always had the thought: Surely I didn't come into the world so I could be locked up and my life completely ruined," Kampusch was quoted as saying. "I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. You saw on TV how small my cell was, it was a place to despair."
Not enough to eat
News printed a large color photograph of a pensive-looking Kampusch on its cover, showing her with a pink kerchief covering part of her blonde hair.
The magazine said it interviewed Kampusch at Vienna's General Hospital, where a cardiologist examined her for possible heart trouble. She said she had suffered throughout her captivity from heart palpitations that at times made her dizzy and rendered her memory of some events "fuzzy."
Kampusch also said she often did not get enough to eat. Another Austrian magazine, Profil, had reported that at the time of her escape she weighed just 92 pounds, exactly her weight when she was snatched off a street while walking to school as a freckle-faced 10-year-old.
Kampusch told News she has made a smooth transition to freedom "and now have no trouble living together with other people."
On Wednesday evening, a 20-minute prerecorded interview with Kampusch was to air nationwide on public broadcaster ORF, which said her face would be visible unless she asks for a last-minute electronic retouching. Previously, the station had suggested she would appear behind a screen or with her face otherwise altered so she would not be recognizable on the street.
"People will see her," said Christoph Feurstein, the journalist who interviewed her Tuesday at an undisclosed location.
Feurstein said Kampusch spoke "from the gut" in the TV interview and wore a headscarf, which he described as more of a fashion accessory than an attempt at a disguise.
Kampusch's eloquent statement
Among the more touching moments in the interview, according to Feurstein: Kampusch describing the stillness of the cell when she was first thrust inside, and her account of how she once struggled in vain to make eye contact with people when her captor took her shopping.
Kampusch also granted an interview to the mass-circulation Kronen Zeitung daily, which like News planned to publish its account on Wednesday afternoon, promising more details in daily installments over the next few days.
Although Wednesday's interview was the first time she has shown herself since her escape, it was not the first time she has been heard from.
Last week, Kampusch issued an eloquent handwritten statement that gave details of her captivity, spent for the most part in the tiny, windowless cell Priklopil built for her in the dingy basement of his home in the Vienna suburb of Strasshof. That statement contained some surprises: Kampusch said she did not feel she missed out on much during her years as a prisoner, and she said she "mourned in a certain way" for Priklopil.
ORF said Kampusch had decided which questions to answer and had refused to be asked anything intimate. Police have said she may have had sexual contact with her captor, but have refused to elaborate.
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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