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For eight and a half years, Natascha Kampusch was held in a dungeon near Vienna, Austria, subjected to vile sexual abuse, beatings and starvation before escaping in 2006.
Now the mother of kidnap victim Brigitta Sirny has revealed how she wanted to ‘end it all’ after being wrongly accused of killing her 10-year-old daughter after she went missing in 1998.
In March of that year, Wolfgang Priklopil kidnapped Natascha on her way to school and locked her in a room under his house.
Natascha, now 34, and her mother appeared last night in the Channel 5 documentary The Girl in the Cellar: 8 Years Underground, which explored how Brigitta was subjected to cruel conspiracy theories surrounding her daughter’s high-profile disappearance. .
A Channel 5 documentary has broken down the story of the gruesome kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch in Austria in 1998. Natascha was locked up in a dungeon near Vienna for more than eight years. Her mother, Brigitta Sirny, pictured here, revealed how she wanted to “end it all” after being wrongly accused of killing her 10-year-old daughter after she went missing.
The search for Natascha became one of the most high-profile missing persons cases in the world. She had been kidnapped by Priklopil, a technician who was then around 30 years old and lived at her mother’s house.
However, some mistakenly speculated that a heartbroken Brigitta was involved in the case of her missing daughter, with some even accusing her of killing Natascha and dumping her body in a lake.
The mother, who admitted the allegations led her to consider suicide, recalled in the documentary how strangers on the street branded her a murderer.
Brigitta said: ‘[A] The private investigator said that I killed her and threw her in the lake. That annoyed me even more. It was very hard to go through all that. I stood outside on the balcony and wanted to jump.
Natascha, now photographed as an adult, managed to escape and alert authorities in 2006 when she was 19 years old.
Natascha pictured at age 10 before her kidnapping in 1998. Since her escape, she has recounted her ordeal in a book called 3,096 Days, which was adapted into a film of the same name.
Natascha was kidnapped by Wolfgang Priklopil on her way to school and imprisoned in a room under her house. Priklopil died in August 2006
A chilling collection of items that ten-year-old Natascha was allowed to keep with her in the dungeon where she was imprisoned
‘I wanted to end it all. Thank God I got back in. But then I did not go out on the balcony for three months. It caused very deep wounds.
Walking to school alone on March 2, 1998, Natascha recalled on the show how she noticed a strange Priklopil waiting by her white minivan.
“I thought I didn’t want to overtake him,” he said. ‘I thought ‘that’s weird, why is this person waiting there?’ She didn’t make sense.
‘That’s when I wanted to switch to the other side of the road just to be safe. But then I was like “no, I have to do this” so you can say, “Okay, you had the courage to walk past him.”
However, as she passed him, Priklopil grabbed her and put her in the back of the vehicle before taking her home, where he kept her in a dungeon under his garage floor.
Natascha recounted the moment her captor kidnapped her on her way to school when she was 10 years old.
The kidnapping victim visited a recreated version of the small room where Priklopil kept her for nearly a decade.
In August 2006, when she was 18 at the time, Natascha had the opportunity to flee her captor’s home, pictured, and alert the authorities.
The kidnapping victim was staying in her captor’s basement. Přiklopil claimed to Kampusch that the doors and windows of the house were booby-trapped with high explosives.
The kidnapper threatened to shoot Natascha and her neighbors if she tried to escape from his basement.
Natascha gave an interview to Austrian television in September 2006, which was watched by more than 2.5 million Austrians and then broadcast worldwide.
Natascha would go days without power, starve or receive only small amounts of food, and suffer regular beatings throughout the years she was locked in the basement.
When she became a teenager, Priklopil sometimes kept her upstairs with him to sleep, but tied her to the bed so she couldn’t escape.
“He seemed to think that he had the right to control me and use violence,” said Natascha, who suggested that her captor at this point imagined they were husband and wife.
Her kidnapper warned her there was no way out of her ordeal, and Priklopil said he would kill her if she ever tried to escape.
He also said he would kill himself if he ever got his freedom because she was “the most important part of his life.”
The basement where Natascha was kept was hidden by a hatch located in the garage of the house.
Desperate to end her suffering, Natascha even attempted suicide, but was stopped by Priklopil.
After four years in the dungeon, Natascha, who was forced to shave her head so as not to leave hair lying on the Priklopil property, was allowed into other rooms in the house.
A year after this, she was allowed to go out in public with Priklopil, but he followed her every move to make sure she didn’t run away or reveal her identity.
Watching the documentary, viewers said they were touched by Natascha’s story and added that they wished her and her family well.
After eight and a half years of abuse, Natascha was finally able to go on the run on August 23, 2006, when a chance phone call Priklopil received while she was cleaning his car created enough of a distraction for her to sneak off into a garden. gate.
Priklopil committed suicide the same day, jumping in front of a train.
Recalling the moment she heard about her daughter’s find, Brigitta, who was on holiday in the countryside at the time, said: ‘I screamed so loud the whole farm came to see what had happened.
“The police picked me up to take me to Vienna,” he added. “I instantly recognized Natascha and she told me:” I thought you would be old and wrinkled. But you’re still as pretty as ever.”
‘Everyone around smiled. We hugged and hugged for a long time,’ the mother recalled.
However, soon after, one of Brigitta’s biggest critics, former judge Martin Wabl, launched a new attack of accusations, alleging that the mother had abused Natascha and sold her.
He even took Brigitta and Natascha to court in an attempt to prove his theories. But Brigitta won a civil case against Wabl, which ruled that she can no longer make false accusations about her involvement in the kidnapping.
Brigitta said: ‘I’ve always gone through life and thought that people think and do what I think and do. But I realized that the truth is different. I realized that many people are sick. [They] have a sick mind
Watching the documentary, viewers said they were touched by Natascha’s story and added that they wished her and her family well.
‘What an unbelievably horrible story, and yet another example of man’s inhumanity to ‘man’!… Has the world and those in it lost all compassion? Blessed #NataschaKampusch’ said one
‘That was a moving documentary about Natascha Kampusch on Channel, right now. Poor girl. I wish her (and hers nearest and dearest to her) hers the best in life,” another said.
For confidential assistance, call Samaritans on 116123 or visit samaritans.org. The Girl in the Cellar is available to watch on My5.