Josef Fritzl Research

Now we have decided on the event, we have been doing a lot of research in order to capture the happenings to their fullest effect.
All three of us watched documentaries and read reports of the case so we could have full knowledge on the events which took place, both before, during and after Elizabeth was captured.









This documentary carries on in several parts, i found this very interesting and it gave us a lot of crucial information for our opening sequence. We were able to listen  to neighbours views on the event, see the Fritzl's household and various images of the chamber. We also whitnessed the layout of the EIGHT rooms you needed to travel through in order to reach the chamber where Elizabeth and her children were kept. This would be useful for us if we dicided to carry out the Architech drawings idea.




We found this timeline on Wikipedia and found that it best describes the series of events throughout the traumatizing experience for Elizabeth and her children.

1977	Fritzl begins sexually abusing his 11-year-old daughter, Elisabeth.
1981 to 1982	Fritzl begins to turn the hidden cellar into a prison cell.
August 29, 1984	Fritzl lures Elisabeth, now 18 years old, into the basement and imprisons her.
November 1986	Elisabeth has a miscarriage in the 10th week of pregnancy.
1989	The first child, Kerstin, is born, and lives in the cellar until 2008.
1990	Stefan is born. He, too, stays in the cellar until 2008.
1992	Lisa is born. In May 1993, when she is nine months old, she is discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be looked after.
February 1994	The fourth child, Monika, is born.
1994	Fritzl enlarges the prison for Elisabeth and her children from 35 m² (380 sq ft) to 55 m² (600 sq ft).
December 1994	Ten-month-old Monika is found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call is made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asks Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl was able to use a recording of Elisabeth's voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew their new and unlisted phone number.
May 1996	Elisabeth gives birth to twin boys. One dies after three days; Fritzl removes his body from the cellar and cremates it. The surviving twin, Alexander, is taken upstairs when he is 15 months old. He is "discovered" in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters.
December 2002	Felix is born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife was not able to look after another child.
April 19, 2008	Fritzl arranges for the critically ill 19-year-old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital.
April 26, 2008	During the evening, Fritzl releases Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs, informing his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come home after a 24-year absence. Later that evening, after an anonymous tipoff during a visit to the hospital, Fritzl and Elisabeth are taken into police custody where she reveals her decades-long imprisonment during questioning.
March 14, 2009	After a 4 day trial in the town of St. Pölten, Fritzl pleads guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son/grandson, Michael, as well as the enslavement,incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment of his daughter, Elisabeth, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Now we need to focus on choosing the right themes throughout the opening!