Kidnapped girl free after eight-year captivity
Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Wednesday August 23, 2006
Vienna- A young woman escaped to freedom Wednesday afternoon after eight years' captivity in Austria's most sensational post-war kidnapping case, said initial police reports. The report said Natascha Kampusch, who disappeared without trace aged ten on March 2, 1998, had been held captive in a cellar within 30 kilometres of Vienna.
Natascha's disappearance happened at a time when Europe was preoccupied by the notorious Belgian Dutroux case of child abduction and murder.
In 1998 she vanished on her way to school in Vienna. A nationwide search was immediately launched. Hundreds of police scoured the whole of eastern Austria. Helicopters were brought in, and rivers dragged. No trace of her was ever found.
On Wednesday afternoon a young woman suddenly appeared at Deutsch Wagram in eastern Austria. First reports said she was thrown out, or had jumped out, of a car. Austrian ORF television reported she had been seen "staggering around" in a garden.
The woman told police her name was Natascha Kampusch. Comparative DNA tests were immediately started. A nationwide search was launched for the driver of the car. Natascha's parents were called in to possibly identify their daughter.
Head of Vienna criminal police Herwig Haidinger said the Kampusch case could finally have come to "a happy end." But it was not yet 100 per cent certain whether the young woman was in fact Natascha. However, relatives had already identified her.
Haidinger said the suspect wanted for kidnapping was a 44-year-old man named as "Wolfgang P.", resident in the village of Strasshof near Gaenserndorf, where Natascha had apparently been held for most or all of the time.
Police said the young woman had told them her captor had allowed her to listen to radio, but only occasionally TV. She had had access to newspapers, but had mostly been cut off from the outside world.
Investigators said the young woman gave an appearance of "having been away from the light of day for a long time." Her skin was pale. Otherwise she made a good impression. "She expresses herself well, and can read and write," said an investigator.
© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur
