Girl in the Cellar (19 page)

Another eyewitness to the chase was Chris White, 26, a British worker at the United Nations, whose offices are a five-minute tube ride from where Priklopil's car was found. He described the police action:

Despite the dozens of checkpoints and, by now, nearly 1,000 officers deployed to stop him, aided by a citizenry galvanised into action by the drama—tip-offs and sightings were pouring in at the rate of one per second—Priklopil managed to pull into the underground car park of the massive Donaustadt shopping centre. He was back in the area where it all began. Back to where it would all end.

His downfall had started with that one telephone call which allowed Natascha to escape. Now it was Priklopil's turn to try to make his peace with the one person he called a friend. The last image of the kidnapper alive on this earth, just before he called Ernst Holzapfel, was captured on a security camera above the information desk at the shopping centre. The camera looks down on a composed Priklopil as shoppers and children move in the background. He doesn't look evil, only intense.

Minutes later he called his business partner. ‘Please help me, come quickly,' he stammered down the phone to Holzapfel.

Later, in the only statement he would give about his relationship with Priklopil, which included his account of the sighting he had of him with Natascha, Ernst Holzapfel spoke about this last phone call with the man he once called a pal: a man he thought he knew everything about.

He should perhaps have said identify what was left of him. On 23 August 2006, at 8.59 p.m., Wolfi made good on the promise that he had made to Natascha—that he would take his own life if she ever left him. Passengers on a commuter train heading towards the city's north station reported feeling a slight ‘bump'.

Within sight of the famous giant wheel in Vienna's Prater amusement park, where the psychopathic Harry Lime asked his cynical former friend Rollo Martins how much human life was worth as they gazed down on the ‘dots' of humanity beneath them in the cinematic version of
The Third Man
, Wolfgang Priklopil ended his tor
mented existence beneath the wheels of a train. Between the stations of Praterstern and Traisengasse, Priklopil beheaded himself. His body was badly mutilated but the keys to his beloved BMW, which had been found by police nearly four hours before he killed himself, were retrieved from a trouser pocket, along with other personal possessions.

What he did in the intervening hours between that last telephone call and his death remains a puzzle. No one reported seeing him drinking in pubs, sitting in parks, walking the streets. Like the wraith he so often was in life, he was unnoticed by the great mass of the public as the minutes ticked by to his lonely death.

Everything we would come to know of him would be refracted back, like light through a telescope, by the one person who came closest to ever really knowing him.

For so long he had controlled the whole show. He was the main actor, director and producer of the secret drama of Strasshof. Now the curtain was about to go up on Natascha Kampusch, megastar.

 

Not since Haider and his Freedom Party gained a share in power in 2000 had Austria witnessed such a media frenzy. When news of her escape, and her captor's death, hit the newswires, Vienna found itself at the centre of a story without parallel. Natascha Kampusch discovered herself as the Princess Diana of the common person: haunted, hunted, wanted by a sensation-seeking world eager to feed on the details of what had occurred during those long years of captivity. But as the onion was peeled
back, layer by layer, Frau Kampusch, as she insisted on being called in all interviews, baffled the world with her feelings for her tormentor. The relationship with her family was also called into question, and there were bitter recriminations from both parents that Natascha was somehow being kept from them, manipulated by her aides, like some modern-day Manchurian Candidate, into being distant and aloof.

The girl in the cellar was no more: the battle for her soul, her story, her mind and her affections was just beginning.

 

The first few hours after her escape were spent with the police in Deutsch-Wagram not far from the house in Heinestrasse. Erich Zwettler from the National Crime Squad told local media that Natascha ‘is suffering from serious Stockholm syndrome', and there were myriad reports attributed to police that she had been the victim of sexual abuse.

Inspector Sabine Freudenberger was the first to speak to Natascha and quickly made friends by wrapping her in her jacket and giving her a watch. The policewoman said: ‘She admired my jewellery and regretted that she never had anything like it. The kidnapper always told her he didn't have any money for that. So I gave her my watch.'

She added: ‘Natascha had a formidable vocabulary. Her kidnapper taught her and gave her books. He also told Natascha that he had chosen her. If he hadn't taken her on that day, he would have grabbed her on another.
She was very chatty. She told me the whole story from beginning to end. She told me she spent her days just listening to the radio.'

The policewoman revealed to the broadcaster ORF, the station Natascha would later use to give her—carefully sanitised—version of her captivity and her relationship with Priklopil, that she thought Natascha had been the victim of serious sexual abuse. But she believes that Natascha does not want to accept that. ‘It is not clear to her. She did everything of her own free will,' she added. Muddy waters would soon become murkier still.

In the meantime Natascha's family had been notified of her reappearance. When her father Ludwig heard the news that his daughter was alive and in Vienna he broke down, saying: ‘I hope, I hope, I hope so much that I can hardly bear it, I mean, I just can't believe it. If it is true it will be the greatest thing that could possibly be.' At seven o'clock that same evening, with less than two hours of Priklopil's life left to run, in the Kriminaldirektion 1 police station in Vienna's Berggasse, Natascha was reunited with her dad after eight and a half years.

According to police, Koch walked in and there was a long pause as the two stared at each other. Then Natascha, who was wearing just the simple knee-length orange dress and ballet shoes she had on when she escaped, jumped up and threw her arms around her father's neck. Police department head Herwig Haidinger said the pair just held each other while crying uncontrollably. Ludwig Koch said later: ‘The only way to imagine it is to picture a movie. It was completely over-
whelming. She fell into my arms and told me that she loved me. Then she asked me if I still had her toy car, her favourite. Of course, I told her. I also still have every doll she ever had.

‘I never gave up hope,' Koch added. ‘But I am so wonderfully relieved. She is 100 per cent my daughter. For me it's as if she never went away.' Her mother Brigitta was away on holiday near Graz when Natascha resurfaced, but hours later was back in Vienna for a brief reunion with her daughter.

Natascha remained out of the sight of the media for two weeks. Details seeped out from family members and police sources before the circus of media advisers and sharp-suited lawyers began trying to lock down the story of Natascha tighter than the Pentagon under nuclear attack. Ludwig described his daughter thus: ‘Natascha is emaciated, with a very, very white skin and bruises over her entire body. I cannot bear to think where they came from. She is staying in a hotel, with a policewoman and a psychologist. But they told me that whenever I want to see Natascha it would be possible.'

Austrian police allowed photographers into the room where Natascha was kept. The room, though small, looked quite like an ordinary child's room, a little bit messy with light pink walls and lots of clothes lying around, including what looked like a quite smart black and grey skirt and blouse outfit hanging on the wall. The cupboards looked full with brightly coloured ring binders, papers and books, and there was a red handbag hanging near the bed. The world was spellbound to see
this ‘dungeon', but it was the first of many instances where Natascha would complain that her privacy was being ‘violated' by the media.

Child psychiatrist Dr Max Friedrich—the man who would later refuse to be drawn on the disturbing childhood photos of a naked Natascha—is the head of Vienna's University Clinic for Youth Neuropsychiatry and was put in charge of her mental health. She was to spend her first month of freedom in the care of his team, meeting with damaged souls like potential suicides and anorexia victims as the doctors tried, slowly and gently, to discover what happened to her and what the precise nature of her relationship to Priklopil was.

Doctors said that the marks on her legs were more likely the result of a skin disorder than brutality. The claim was backed up by her mother: ‘That comes from malnutrition, as she was given practically only cold stuff like ham sandwiches and no fruit or vegetables.' This is in direct contradiction to Natascha's later claims that she cooked for him using recipes culled from cookery books he purchased.

Frau Sirny added that watching the video of Natascha's tiny prison was very hard for her. ‘The chequered clothes that were hanging on the wall, that was the dress that Natascha was wearing when she was snatched. She apparently always wanted to keep it in sight—her only connection to her former life.'

More details about what Natascha focused on in those first days and hours emerged through her stepmother Georgina Koch, who said: ‘Her first wish is a mobile
phone. We went out and bought one straight away, but we don't know if she'll be able to use it. She is always with psychologists and police officers—even when she has visitors, there is always someone there. They didn't even want to let her have a doll from back then straight away.'

When asked if he was afraid that the kidnapper had been violent to his daughter, Ludwig replied: ‘He did enough to her. I only have to look at her to know that.'

But the conflicting emotions she felt about Priklopil surfaced within hours of her being free. She was informed of his death the day after it occurred, and both police and medical sources said that her first reaction was intense anger at the police for ‘letting it happen', followed swiftly afterwards by intense sorrow. She cried bitterly. Dr Berger, the child and adolescent psychiatrist at Vienna University who is one of the key players in Natascha's ongoing psychiatric care, said it was ‘not surprising', given that a degree of ‘togetherness' had formed with the man responsible for her incarceration.

‘Of course the experience is a very severe psychological trauma, especially for a young person like Natascha,' said Professor Berger. He added: ‘There are two sides of the coin: on one hand the victim experiences suffering and pain because of the violence, but on the other hand, strong emotional bonding is involved as well. Eight years alone with just one man that has now been ripped from her life has certainly left her in shock.'