Austrian confesses to raping and holding daughter captive 24 years

More white family “values” in action. Talk about keeping it in the family…

AMSTETTEN, Austria – A man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children with her including three who “never saw sunlight,” police said Monday.

Josef Fritzl, now 73, also told investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died shortly after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

“We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime,” Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.

The daughter, who is now 42, had been missing since 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip. She and the children have been placed under psychiatric care in an undisclosed location.

Authorities on Monday released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping from the cell, which was made of solid reinforced concrete.

After initially withholding Friztl’s full name, police released it along with a photograph at a news conference Monday. Fritzl’s identity was widely reported by media in Austria and elsewhere in Europe. He briefly appeared in court Monday in the city of St. Poelten, where he was to be held in pre-trial detention.

“He admitted that he locked his daughter, who was 18 at the time, in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children,” Polzer told The Associated Press.

Three of the surviving children lived with the grandparents and were registered with authorities. The other three — aged 19, 18 and 5 — were confined during their entire lives to the darkness of their cell, Polzer said.

Hans-Heinz Lenze, a senior local official, said the suspect’s wife apparently had “no idea” of what went on and was devastated.

“You have to imagine that this woman’s world fell apart,” he said.

Austrians — still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a young woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement cell outside Vienna for more than eight years — expressed disbelief at the latest case.

“The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong,” the newspaper Der Standard said Monday in a commentary.

Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street, told The Associated Press that the suspect and his wife would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.

“They appeared normal, just like any other family,” Pramreiter said. “I’m totally shocked, this was next door. It’s terrible.”

The case unfolded after a gravely ill teenager was found unconscious on April 19 in the building where her grandparents live, and taken to a hospital in the town of Amstetten, about 75 miles west of Vienna. Authorities publicly appealed for the child’s mother to come forward to help diagnose the young woman’s condition.

After receiving a tip, police picked up the 42-year-old woman — whom authorities identified as Elisabeth F. — and her father on Saturday close to the hospital.

Police said she appeared “greatly disturbed” during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for.

On Sunday evening, police said investigators had found the area where Elisabeth and three of the children were held captive. Investigators said the rooms were at most 5 feet 6 inches feet high. The area had a TV and small hot plates for cooking.

In a chronology of events outlined in a police statement, authorities said Elisabeth told them her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11. She told police that some years later in 1984, he sedated her, handcuffed her and locked her in the cellar.

Police said a letter written by Elisabeth had apparently surfaced a month after her disappearance, asking her parents not to search for her.

The Austria Press Agency reported that the surviving children are three boys and three girls. DNA tests were expected to determine whether Fritzl is the father.

Sunday’s developments recalled another case that shocked Austrians in the summer of 2006, when a young woman escaped after being largely confined to a tiny underground dungeon in a quiet Vienna suburb for more than eight years.

Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train just hours after her dramatic escape.

Kampusch, now 20, issued a statement Monday saying she wanted to contact Elisabeth to offer emotional and financial help.

White terrorists massacre Gaza children

The “master” race doing what they do best…

GAZA CITY — While representatives of various Palestinian resistance groups were heading to Cairo Monday, April 28, to discuss a truce, Israeli occupation forces killed at least seven people in Gaza, including four young siblings.

“They were eating and they were hit,” a neighbor told Reuters.

An Israeli tank fired a shell a one-storey Palestinian house in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun while the family was having breakfast.

The bombing immediately killed four siblings whose ages ranged from 1 to 5 years old.

Gaza Holocaust Museum

The victims were identified as Mussab Abu Maateq, one, Hana Abu Maateq, three, Rudeina Abu Maateq, four, and Saleh Abu Maateq, five.

Their mother died of her critical wounds in hospital, doctors at the Kamal Oudwan hospital said.

Nine other people were wounded in the Israeli attack, including two other siblings who are in life-threatening conditions.

A Palestinian resistance fighter was killed in an exchange of fire with the invading Israeli occupation troops in the area.

Earlier, a Palestinian civilian was detained by Israeli occupation forces.

“They soon released him before gunning him down,” said a reporter for the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news television.

A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli occupation forces Sunday in nearby Beit Lahiya.

An air and ground blitz unleashed by Israel against Gaza in February claimed the lives of more than 129 people, including more than 40 children, toddlers and newborn babies, as well as 13 women.

The onslaught came one day after Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai threatened to turn the sealed off Strip into a “bigger holocaust” for the Palestinians.

At least 443 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed since the US-hosted Annapolis peace conference in November.

Truce Talks

The latest Israeli aggression came as representatives of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), headed to Cairo.

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman will host them on Tuesday and Wednesday to draft a common position regarding the truce proposal.

Hamas last week offered Israel a six-month truce, including an end to rocket fire into Israel, if Israel lifted an embargo on the territory.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday gave his unconditional support to Egypt’s mediation efforts.

A proposal put forward by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit stipulates a ceasefire, the opening of the border crossings, a lifting of the blockade and finally the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israel has been closing the Gaza Strip’s exits to the outside world since last June.

It has completely locked down the coastal area, home to nearly 1.6 million people, since January.

White teen charged with killing family after break up with girlfriend

Why are young white males so prone to violence? He’ll have plenty of new girlfriends in jail….

EASLEY, S.C. – A teenager who had recently moved back home after breaking up with his live-in girlfriend is accused of gunning down and killing four family members, stunning friends and neighbors.

Nathaniel Dickson, 18, was arrested Saturday night at a home in Belton about 20 miles from where the bodies of his father, stepmother, stepsister and younger brother were found, authorities said.

Those who knew Dickson grappled with how the quiet teen who loved video games and sports now was charged with four counts of murder.

“I can’t put my finger on what happened,” said Melissa Funk, whose 16-year-old son, Robbie, was good friends with both the suspect and the youngest victim. “It’s not what I’ve known him to be.”

Authorities would not discuss a possible motive.

“I’m going to have this case tried in the courtroom, not out on the streets,” Anderson County Sheriff David Crenshaw said Sunday.

The suspect’s mother, Patricia Dickson, screamed and cried as he appeared before a county magistrate on a closed-circuit television for a brief hearing Sunday night, the Anderson Independent-Mail reported.

The teen remained motionless as the judge read him his rights and said a higher-level judge would hear any request for bail. He did not have an attorney at the hearing.

Dickson’s father was found shot early Saturday in the yard of his one-story house in a wooded neighborhood just outside of Easley.

Samuel Andrew Dickson Jr., 46, died as paramedics arrived. Officers then went inside and found the bodies of his wife, Martiza Hurtado Dickson, 46; Melissa Giliam Salazar, 19; and Taylor Dickson, 14. All had been shot to death.

One victim was found behind a clothes dryer, apparently trying to hide when slain. Authorities refuse to say how many times the victims were shot or release other details.

Dickson is the only suspect, and more charges could be filed against him, the sheriff said.

Dickson graduated from high school last year and moved in with his girlfriend, working a series of fast-food and restaurant jobs. The two broke up, and Dickson moved back in with his parents about two weeks ago, said Funk, who wasn’t sure whether he had a current job.

Neighbors said the family was quiet and kept to itself. Joyce Allen’s husband worked with Samuel Dickson, who went by Andy. The elder Dickson was an electrician with Vulcan Materials, a company that provides sand, gravel and crushed stone for construction.

Dickson didn’t say much at work, keeping to himself. Most of Allen’s memories are of him with his sons.

“He was crazy, crazy, crazy about those kids,” Allen said. “I’d see him running up and down the road, taking them to ball games.”

Taylor Dickson had just made one of the junior varsity baseball teams at Wren High School.

Neighbors said Martiza Dickson was a native of Colombia and worked as a translator. Melissa Salazar was attending a nearby technical college, Funk said.