Abductee reveals she sleeps at house where she was kept prisoner
Austrian kidnapping victim Natascha Kampusch spends nights at the house she was imprisoned 18 years ago, she has revealed.
Snatched as a freckle-faced 10-year-old on her way to school, Kampusch was forced to live in a cell beneath the house’s garage from 1998 until her dramatic escape in August 2006, which turned her into an international media sensation.
She made her escape when her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, was distracted by a phone call while she was cleaning his car in the driveway of the home.
Priklopil, 40, committed suicide after she fled.
Six years ago Kampusch revealed details of her horrific ordeal, including being manacled to her captor at night and forced to call him ‘‘My Lord’’.
Despite the eight years of captivity she spent there, in 2008 Kampusch bought the house. She has now revealed that she regularly spends nights there.
With the 10th anniversary of her escape close, Kampusch has talked about the day she fled.
‘‘I was told to clean his car . . . He wanted to sell it and had told me to clean it really thoroughly and completely.
‘‘I remember that I felt like I could eat a horse because I had to make him jam sandwiches for breakfast but got nothing myself,’’ she told German newspaper Bild.
Later, Priklopil took his eyes off Kampusch when he took a call on his cellphone.
‘‘Previously, he has observed me all the time,’’ she said. ‘‘But because of the vacuum cleaner whirring in my hand, he had to walk a few steps away to better understand his caller.
‘‘I crept to the gate, which was usually closed or blocked by heavy objects, but not on this day.
‘‘I could hardly breathe. I felt solidified, as if my arms and legs were paralysed. Jumbled images shot through me.’’
Bolting to a section close by, she tried to get two men there to help her. When they ignored her, she ran on.
‘‘Then I saw a woman in a garden house and knocked on her window and whispered, ‘Please help me!’."