Josef Fritzl pleads guilty to murder

Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a dungeon below his home in Austria for 24 years and and fathered seven children by her, has dramatically pleaded guilty to all charges against him midway through his trial.

He had already admitted rape, incest, coercion and false imprisonment but had denied enslavement and a charge of murder relating to the death of one of the children his daughter Elisabeth gave birth to in her underground prison.

The prosecution argued that Fritzl was responsible for the death of one of his biological children, a twin boy called Michael, who died shortly after being born in the cellar in 1996. Fritzl had admitted burning the child's body in an incinerator in his back yard, but had denied he was responsible for its death.

Asked by the judge at the trial in St Poelten, west of Vienna, what had caused him to change his plea, he replied: "My daughter's videotaped testimony," the AFP news agency reported. "I'm sorry," he added.

He is expected to be sentenced later today. The eight members of the jury, assisted by three judges, will decide the sentence. He is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Yesterday he was forced to sit through hours of taped testimomy in which Elisabeth outlined the abuse she suffered at his hands.

The press were excluded from the courtroom as the tape, recorded last summer, was played. It was made weeks after Elisabeth and several of the children she had given birth to in the dungeon beneath the Fritzl's home in Anstetten were rescued.

The testimony contained details of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. He not only raped her thousands of times, often in front of the the three children who grew up in the cellar, but forced her to re-enact scenes from pornographic films.

Elisabeth, now 42, said she had resisted her father at first, but eventually complied with his demands because she knew her life, and those of her children, depended on it.

Elisabeth was only 18 when she was drugged and dragged into the cellar in 1984. She agreed to give evidence only if she would not have to face her father in court. The tapes were filmed at the psychiatric hospital where she and her six surviving children were living after being released last April.

Elisabeth gave her evidence looking straight into a camera with no-one else in the room, while lawyers asked her questions from neighbouring rooms.

Her testimony had been played in short segments to minimise the risk of the jurors becoming traumatised.