AUSTRIAN incest suspect Josef Fritzl, who has admitted to keeping his daughter and the children he fathered by her in an underground cellar for years, will say he is insane in order to avoid a prison sentence.

It also emerged Sunday that he had forced his daughter Elisabeth to help him build the dungeon in which he later incarcerated her, and that he kept her on a dog leash for periods of her imprisonment.

“In my personal opinion, Josef Fritzl is mentally ill and therefore of diminished responsibility,” said his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer.

“I believe that my client does not belong in prison but in a secure psychiatric unit.”

Fritzl, 73, has admitted imprisoning his daughter for 24 years, having sex with her and incinerating the corpse of one of their seven children.

He was scheduled to be examined yesterday at St. Poelten prison. Under Austrian law, Fritzl is entitled to a second psychiatric opinion if a court doctor decides he was responsible for his actions — a provision Mayer says his client will use.

Austrian police say they are close to completing their investigations and insist there is no evidence that Fritzl had an accomplice.

According to documents leaked by the Austrian police, Elisabeth was tethered with a dog lead around her neck for the first nine months of her imprisonment.

She had earlier helped him build the dungeon and move the heavy door into place, believing it to be an innocent cellar.

But from 1984, when she was lured into the dungeon, until 1992, she lived in a single room underground.

The dungeon was only expanded after she had given birth to two of their children.

She then begged him for more room and he made her help him scrape out another room by hand.

The complex took another 10 years to complete. Police said Fritzl may have been contemplating new extensions.

The man is reportedly obsessed with media coverage of his case. In prison, he is watching television news and reading every newspaper story about himself. He also receives large quantities of hate mail.

His wife, Rosmarie Fritzl, has now been placed in a special psychiatric clinic along with Elisabeth and five of her grandchildren.

Elisabeth has visited her own daughter Kerstin, who remains in a coma.

(SD-Agencies)

Painting a portrait of Austrian incest suspect Josef Fritzl

CASUAL acquaintances knew Josef Fritzl as a jovial fellow who liked to drink beer and enjoyed a bawdy joke. But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant.

“At home, he was clearly the lord of the manor. Even at his campground, he was very strict and his rules had to be followed,” said Anton Graf, who rented Fritzl land along the Mondsee Lake in Amstetten.

Fritzl, 73, a retired electrician, was both a hard worker respected by his peers, and a fiercely private man whose life revolved around the home he ruled with an iron fist.

“He was apparently very dominant within the family,” Herbert Katzengrueber, Amstetten’s mayor, said. “He terrorized the family. The deplorable acts against the daughter were not the only violence. There was also permanent pressure put on the family over the years.”

(SD-Agencies)