Girl in the Cellar (23 page)

Christa Stefan, the old lady who saw him in the garden and saw Natascha too, kicks herself now for something long ago forgotten, something now remembered—something undone that could have shortened Natascha's time in captivity. ‘I remember my old father back then,' she said, referring to 1998, ‘looking at [Priklopil's] white van and being bemused by the black foil he put in the windows. “Shall I call the police?” my father said. “Look what he has done to his car. He's a bit strange.” But I replied, “Don't be stupid”…and now I go to my father's grave and say, “Father, you were right”—but who would have thought that anybody could keep such a thing secret for such a long time?'

Just as the home where Natascha grew up is now a magnet for tourists, so has Strasshof put itself on the must-see map in a way it never wanted. Mayor Herbert Farthofer said: ‘I have heard that people are coming here. They go to restaurants and casually ask the waiter if they can tell them where “the house”—Priklopil's—is. Business people speak of a difference, a different sort of tourist. They are not coming by the busload just yet, but who knows? As for the people in this town, we are just glad it had the ending it did. Everybody just says: thank God the girl is alive. If the case had ended differently, perhaps people would react differently.'

One thing the mayor must struggle with is whether the town coat of arms should be changed in the wake of the death of its most infamous citizen. It contains a railway
train wheel, symbolising the town's industrial past. Given the manner in which Priklopil died, there is a debate ongoing about whether it is time to abandon it altogether.

What is certain is that there will continue to be revelations in the case that will keep Natascha's story in the public eye for some time to come. Only Natascha can answer all the questions, but is it all getting to be too much for her?

‘She needs time to be a child again,' says her father. ‘All this responsibility is just too much for her. She told me: “I don't want any of this on my shoulders. I just want to be a young girl.” '

That does not gel with Natascha the Controller, the image that comes across from the lawyers and media advisers. And, however much Natascha may say she wants to live the life of a normal teenager, her world now is far from normal—it's shadowed by her horrific experiences and controlled by the media. Unsurprisingly, she has recognised that since she must live with this reality, she might as well get used to it.

‘She's looking to do worldwide deals now,' confirms her father. ‘She's lost eight years and she wants those eight years to have a purpose. She also wants to use her fame to help other people.' He went on:

He stops, staring, trying to block images, he says, of what Priklopil might have done to his little girl.

Meanwhile, despite the renewed contact with her family and the attempts to claw back some kind of normal life, she remains under psychiatric observation, albeit as an outpatient. The flat that she has been given temporarily by the Viennese city authorities is just a short distance from the hospital where she was treated. Dr Haller hopes there will be a normalisation in the relationship with her parents: ‘That is very important because, exaggeratedly speaking, she has been kidnapped a second time. It is difficult for Natascha to respond to a 180-degree swing from total isolation to 1,000 per cent attention.'

The police at one time discussed putting Natascha into some kind of witness protection programme of the sort afforded to supergrasses in organised crime, but dropped the idea when legal experts said it was not appropriate since she was not a criminal. But changing her name at some time in the future remains an option, and would only cost her the equivalent of nine pounds sterling.

Professor Berger acknowledges that the police investigation, in terms of dealing with Natascha, is finite. ‘It's clear that the police interrogation is coming to an end. Fraulein Kampusch is a victim not a perpetrator. The police are not used to working with victims.'

Both he and Professor Friedrich warn there could be some delayed effects on Natascha, like the kind of post
traumatic stress syndrome suffered by soldiers long after the shooting has stopped. They warn Natascha she can expect to suffer headaches, nausea, vomiting, sleeping disorders and panic attacks. The care and support team only sees ‘the tip of a dramatic iceberg' in Natascha Kampusch's reaction so far.

Natascha continues to be a magnet for those who praise her courage and unbreakable spirit. Fans worldwide have bombarded her with messages, letters, flowers and cuddly stuffed toys. At the height of her fame, in the days immediately following her escape, she was receiving 100 packages, letters and bouquets every 24 hours. To cope with the deluge, personnel at the hospital were reassigned from their normal duties to play postman. It has eased off a little now, but mail continues to arrive. Many of the toys have been donated to orphanages and wards for sick children. There have also been the inevitable marriage proposals, but she isn't taking them seriously.

‘Natascha reads every letter and will answer each and every one,' promises the lawyer Ganzger.

One girl with whom she has bonded in a unique way is a Russian teenager called Elena Simakhine. The reason is that, as a young girl, Elena was also kidnapped from the street and held in a purpose-built secret room under a garage. Like Natascha, she was held for years in a tiny cell, although she was held for four years instead of eight, and was older when seized. However, Elena's kidnapper had repeatedly raped and tortured her throughout her ordeal.

When Elena saw the pictures of Natascha's legs under the blanket as she was led to safety by police she did not need any more confirmation that the awful story was true. Lena's own skin turned the same milky white with a slight tinge of green after four years without sunlight.

Elena was just 17 when she and her 14-year-old friend Katya Martynova were drugged by former army officer Viktor Mokhov and locked in a purpose-built garage cellar. Elena gave birth twice in the underground dungeon, with only her young friend to help her, and both babies were taken away by Mokhov and abandoned on doorsteps in the small town of Skopin, from where they were later adopted.

When she finally escaped in May 2004, she was eight months pregnant, this time with a baby that would eventually be stillborn, and the young woman told the world she would never trust a man again. But now she is married to her new love Dima and has earned a place at university where she is studying journalism. She is even thinking of having children with her husband. ‘I would like two or three,' she said.

Speaking from Russia, she said: ‘My message to Natascha is private, for her only. I hope it will help her with what lies ahead. Back then I never would have thought that I could have a normal life ahead of me. I thought I would never love or even trust a man, so when my family and friends toasted us at our wedding last year it felt like a miracle. But when I had been locked in the cellar, I had given up all hope and stopped dreaming. It was all I could do to survive.

The man who kidnapped Natascha committed suicide when she escaped, while Mokhov, who kidnapped Elena, was caught and sentenced to seventeen years in jail.

Now 24, Elena says she hopes her correspondence with Natascha ‘helps her come to terms with the enormity of what happened to her'. Those close to her say it does. While that goes on, the psychiatric team are looking for her to bond with a special female friend. ‘It is important, since Natascha's only attachment figure for the past eight years was her tormentor, that she now has a positive feminine attachment figure,' says her former chief psychiatrist Max Friedrich.

 

Before the Natascha Kampusch case it could be argued that Austria was identified with Mozart, cowbells,
The Sound of Music
and Joerg Haider. Icons that, Haider aside, the tourist authorities were not unhappy with. Now it is Natascha who has become the indelible face of an entire country, the girl who put a nation of eight million on a map in a way it never thought possible.

She is even the subject of newspaper surveys. The
Salzburger Nachrichten
reported that 90 per cent of Austrians were ‘very excited' about her first TV interview, while 50 per cent of readers could not fathom why she chose to live neither with her mother nor her father. Over 80 per cent of Austrians are convinced that the kidnapping victim is receiving the best possible medicinal and psychological care, for which 75 per cent said the state should pay. However, 68 per cent believe that Natascha will never be able to lead a ‘normal life'.
Interestingly, over half—62 per cent—don't believe that Wolfgang Priklopil planned and executed the crime alone.

The ‘Natascha Bandwagon', as some newspapers have called this phenomenon, has had other repercussions. After she escaped and details of her existence were revealed there was a massive rise across the country, at least for a few days, in the number of parents accompanying their children to school. There was also a huge surge in mobile phone sales for children, their fretting parents wanting to be able to contact them at will. This in turn triggered a second debate about ‘cotton wool kids' and how it was important, after all, to allow them independence at an early age for character-building purposes.

There was even a new illness—Natascha Kampusch Syndrome. Medical experts coined the term to explain the anxiety thousands of parents began feeling about their own children after hearing Natascha's shocking tale. It involves spectacular and often violent outbursts, particularly by fathers who see demons everywhere and accuse neighbours and friends of being ‘kiddy fiddlers'. The most extreme case involved a father who set his neighbour on fire because he believed he had kidnapped his daughter.

Vienna psychotherapist Kurt Kletzer, interviewed for earlier chapters in this book, said:

In some areas, panicked parents bullied police into organising patrols to stand guard outside schools, and kids' late arrival home led to police stations being flooded with calls from their terrified parents. In the arson case, a 55-year-old man in the Austrian town of Gmunden became convinced that his neighbour had kidnapped his teenage daughter. He tied the 62-year-old up and, when he refused to hand over the girl, doused him in petrol and set him on fire.

Police later found that the 17-year-old had gone on a holiday with a boyfriend from the Dominican Republic, who took her to his homeland, and she had not told her parents. She apparently turned up just an hour after the attack. The injured man was taken to the serious burns unit at Wels hospital before being moved to the nearby Linz hospital. He has 50 per cent burns and, at the time of writing is being kept in an artificial coma, with his condition described as critical.

As well as Natascha well-wishers and hate-mailers, the police also had to deal with a new crime phenomenon: Kampusch con men. Numerous websites were set up by crooks claiming to be the official ‘Natascha
Kampusch Fund' or ‘Natascha Kampusch Foundation', complete with bank accounts and addresses to which cash should be sent. Several villains were laughing all the way to the bank before detectives shut the cyber crime scam down.

But it is Natascha herself who stands to make more money than she could ever hope to spend if the Hollywood machine strikes a deal with her. Media reports say she has been offered over a million pounds for the first movie deal.

Ned Norchack, an independent film critic, said: ‘People have already had their fill of gore and blood in Hollywood horror movies. But they want to see something else in a horror film, a new dimension of fear. Natascha's story has everything and, what's more, it's real, which makes it twice as frightening. It happened to her—it could happen to anyone in the audience.' Rising Hollywood horror director Eli Roth, who has won respect with films such as the recent
Hostel
, is rumoured to be among those in the frame to direct the movie. The legal team are scrutinising all offers.