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In his shocking new book, Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl claims that he is actually “a good guy” and a “responsible family man”.

‘Evil to the core’ and ‘completely and utterly delusional to the point of pure devastation’ are better descriptors, but then again, what allowed Fritzl to lock his daughter Elizabeth in a cellar for 24 years, sexually abusing her and fathering seven children with her, wasn’t exactly a healthy level of self-reflection.

The 87-year-old, serving life in prison, released a book titled Die Abgruende des Josef F (translated to The Abysses of Josef F), in which he makes these wild claims.

According to Austrian and German media, the NZ Herald reports, an excerpt reveals that Fritz believes he’s a “good person” despite his horrific crimes against his children:

“In reality, I’m a good person”, and states that the former electrical engineer cannot understand why his wife Rosemarie broke off contact with him.

He divorced his wife after a marriage of 52 years, claiming she failed to visit him.

In 2009 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement, and for the negligent homicide of one of his infant sons.

Fritzl’s daughter disappeared in 1984 at age 18, re-emerging in 2008 from the dungeon-like basement chamber, which Fritzl had built himself, in the town of Amstetten where her father had kept her captive.

The Mirror released images of what the cellar looked like if you’re so morbidly inclined. Elizabeth birthed all seven children in that basement, right under her mother’s nose:

Fritzl told his wife that Elizabeth had run away to join a cult, that the children belonged to their daughter, and had been left on their doorstep as she was unable to care for them.

Three of the kids remained in captivity with Elizabeth, while three others were brought up by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, upstairs. One of the sons died almost as soon as he was born, after Fritzl denied medical intervention, disposing of the corpse in an incinerator.

Besides these children, in the book, he claims to have a number of illegitimate children abroad resulting from “dozens of sexual affairs” during business trips.

He also said that he receives “hundreds of letters” from women he claims are in love with him.

In 2009, The Guardian released an article with Dr Heidi Kastner, the forensic psychiatrist who interviewed him at length, detailing her thoughts about him:

Kastner says he never considered himself “a monster”, and says it is dangerous to label people as such. “He is human. The worst things that happen to people are done by other people. Evil is human.”

…”It feels too simplistic to talk of “evil”, but Josef Fritzl said he always knew there was an “evil streak” inside him. “He said that it was hard to control,” says Kastner. “He told me that for someone who was ‘born to rape’ he controlled himself for a long time. He said he could have done worse.”

It is hard to imagine what he meant by worse.

We have to go cautiously into these cases, as they change us, Kastner notes, too. It is my opinion that a book by a serial incest rapist with such grand delusions is a dangerous thing.

As Lolita showed us, you don’t exactly want to land up empathising with evil.

[source:nzherald]