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 he would not hesitate to shoot her and any witnesses.
Further, he had warned her that the doors and windows of the house were booby-trapped with high explosives. Given the circumstances of her captivity, it is totally credible that Natascha would have believed the danger she and others faced if she tried to escape. Detectives who interviewed her after her escape certainly accepted her account.
As for her astonishing self-assurance - Alfred Wurm, editor-in-chief of News, said she ordered her hand-picked advisors around like "slaves" - those close to the story now believe that this is, at least in part, a facade, as advised by her psychiatric team to enable her to handle the worldwide attention. Behind the scenes, it is said, she has been depressed and there have been weeping fits.
After spending her formative years
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reliant on one human being (who no doubt ordered her about like a slave) and what she gleaned from TV and radio, it would be astonishing if Natascha conformed to any emotional or psychiatric stereotype. She will, almost certainly, continue to be a victim - albeit of a different kind - as the media and the public attempt to squeeze her complex, probably damaged, personality into recognisable psychological boxes.
Now it seems possible that this case may have consequences way beyond mere human interest. As was suggested in The First Post after Natascha's release at the end of August, this may have been a copycat crime, aping the 1996 kidnap of Sabine Dardenne, 12, in Belgium.
The latest abduction of Elizabeth Shoaf, a 14-year-old held in a 15-foot hole in South Carolina, by Vinson Filyaw, 37, raises fears of further warped imitators. 
FIRST
POSTED SEPTEMBER 20, 2006
 Was her kidnap a copycat crime?
Whatever happened, Priklopil was
still a paedophile
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