Thank you for not killing

The man abducted and held a ten -year -old girl in the basement. She managed to escape only after eight years

On August 23, 2006, in a small Austrian town of Strandkhof near Vienna to the house of an elderly woman, an emaciated girl came running. In a panic, she asked to call the police: it turned out that she was held in captivity for eight years in the basement of a neighboring house. “Cold” tells who abducted her and how she managed to escape, in the new material of the weekly trigrum of the heading .

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On March 2, 1998, at seven in the morning, a primary school student Natasha Kampush left the house and went to school. Natasha only a few weeks ago turned 10 years old and her mother allowed her to go to classes alone.

Kampush was born in the family of the dressmakers of Brigitte Campush and baker Ludwig Koch. Her parents lived together for three years. By this time, they opened a small food store, and in 1988 they bought a grocery shop.

At first, the family lived together, but then the father began to sit in bars and the parents became often quarreled. When Natasha was five years old, her father left the family and she remained to live with her mother. Natasha spent most of her free time alone: ​​she read books or watched TV. And on weekdays, she was taken to study by car, despite the fact that the school was only a few quarters from the house in one of the sleeping areas of Vienna.

On that day, on the way to school, Natasha noticed a thin man of short stature, standing next to the white van right in her way. In those years, Austrian news often reported cases of pedophile attacks on children - both in Austria itself and neighboring countries. Natasha knew about it from the TV.

“I slowed down steps and numb. My eternal fear, with which I could not control, instantly returned, my hands were covered with goose skin. The first impulse was - go to the other side of the street. I immediately remembered the instructions: “Do not talk with unfamiliar men,” “Do not get into someone else's car,” Natasha recalled later. “But if I really want to become an adult, I should not succumb to fear.”

When she caught up with the van, the man grabbed her and dragged her inside.

Basement

“I tried to scream, but could not squeeze out the sound,” Natasha recalled. “The kidnapper said that if I follow all his instructions, he would not harm me.”

The car stopped in a pine forest, not far from Vienna. The kidnapper told Natasha that he would give her to “other people”, and they will never see herself again. As Natasha recalled, leaving the car, he began to call someone, and then told her: “They will not come” and started the car again.

The stranger brought her to a small private house in the suburbs, firmly wrapped her in a blanket and took it inside. There were no windows in the room, Natasha was lying on the floor and cried in complete darkness.

After a while, the kidnapper turned on the light. Looking around, Natasha realized that she was in the basement - in the corner there were a sink and a toilet.

Inside was stuffy and damp. Due to high humidity on the walls, mold formed and insects started. The apparatus of artificial ventilation, who worked in the basement, made a loud, buzzing sound, from which Natasha felt uneasy.

She screamed, begged to let her go, knocked on the walls and called for help, but all this was to no avail. In this room, Natasha spent the next eight years.

Investigation

Natasha was grabbed only a few hours later, when she was supposed to return from school. “Natasha always came home on time, so when she was late for 10 minutes, I was worried,” said Natasha Briggita Campush's mother. “I was very scared and thought that something happened to Natasha.” She called home, but no one answered her. Another half an hour passed, but the daughter never appeared at home, and Kampush called the police.

Natasha was put on the wanted list, more than a hundred police officers with dogs and helicopters began her searches, they combed parks and ponds, but found nothing. From the police reports it is known that more than 130 people turned to them, who said that they saw a girl who looked like Natasha. She was allegedly met in a supermarket in the company of her mother, one on a parking lot near an autobahn, once in Velsa and three times in Tyrol. Often, the police found children's things that, presumably, could belong to the missing Natasha - they were invited to identify her mother.

“When I went with the police to identify things that could belong to Natasha, it seemed to me that they were leading me to execution,” Brigitta recalled .

The investigation was carried out by the head of the Department of Criminal Investigation of the Vienna Police Max Edelbacher. The police studied the story of their family and her parents were the first suspects.

“We did not really like Natasha’s parents,” said Edelbacher. - Her father constantly drank, and her mother often changed her partners. They seemed strange people to us. ”

The suspicions of the police intensified when during a search in the house of Campush found naked photos of little Natasha. The police suspected that the father or one of the partners of her mother could sexually exploit Natasha, but the family explained that her sister was taking photos. And no other evidence could be found.

On the eve of the loss, Natasha visited her father in Hungary. Investigators visited her father and came to the conclusion that he was also not involved in her disappearance.

Soon, the investigators had a new clue - the testimony of a schoolgirl, who saw Natasha pushed into a white van, parked by the road. The Vienna police checked all the owners of white trucks in the vicinity of Vienna - there were 776 in total. Each of them was interrogated.

One of the respondents was a 35-year-old communication technician Wolfgang. He lived in a house that he got from his father, in the city of Stranskhof-en-Nordban, about half an hour from the place of abduction. On the day of Natasha’s disappearance, he claimed that he was at home, but no one could confirm his alibi.

But since the police did not have good reason for the search of the Wolfgang house, they limited themselves to taking pictures of his truck and drew up a protocol of interrogation. After that, the documents were sent to the archive.

Natasha could not find any traces of Natasha, and the case was closed.

3096 days of imprisonment

The kidnapper kept Natasha in the basement under his garage. To get inside, it was necessary to open the hatch in front of the garage, go down underground and push the safe behind which a strong door was hidden.

In the early days of her imprisonment, Natasha was afraid of darkness, so the light in her basement burned around the clock. Soon, the kidnapper brought her clothes and the old skinny mattress on which she slept. The kidnapper descended to her in the basement several times a day. Every time Natasha heard him opening the door, her heart began to beat more often and threw her into cold sweat.

According to her, at first the man treated her like his child, brushed her teeth and cut his nails. Sometimes he gave her toys and read fairy tales for the night.

After some time, the light in the basement began to turn on and turn off on the schedule. But, despite this, it was difficult for Natasha to understand what time of day was now. Almost all the time she spent alone, she recalled her parents, cried and did not lose hope that sooner or later they would find her.

However, months were going on, and gradually Natasha began to get used to her imprisonment.

“When they bathed me,” she recalls , “I imagined that I was in a spa. And when he gave me food, I imagined that he was a gentleman who was looking after me. ”

The kidnapper told her that he was the Egyptian god and demanded to call him "maestro."

“I thought it was funny and ridiculous,” Natasha recalled . - I noticed such behavior before, in kindergarten. One child said: "I am a ruler. I am a king." Or: “I am a princess. You must obey me, you must do whatever I say.” It was the same type of dignity. ”

The kidnapper said that Natasha no longer has a family: “Now I'm everything for you. You no longer have the past. You are much better for you. You are lucky that you came to me and I take you so. You belong to me. I created you! "

Soon he suggested that Natasha choose a new name and for the next seven years called her Bibiana.

Natasha described that out of boredom, she was saved by the books that the kidnapper left for her in the basement. The first was the children's novel "Flying Class" by Erich Kestner. After that, she read a lot of classics: “Uncle Tom’s hut”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “Tom Soyer”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “The Book of the Jungle”, “Treasy Island”. Books helped Natasha at least temporarily forget about her conclusion.

Natasha said that she often asked the kidnapper to bring a TV and a video recorder to the basement and once he agreed. The TV was the only opportunity for her to keep contact with the outside world.

However, the kidnapper chose programs or brought video cassettes with films that he recorded back in the early 1990s. He also gave her to play on the computer.

Sometimes the kidnapper told her about himself. It turned out that his name was Wolfgang.

The kidnapper

Wolfgang pricked was born on May 14, 1962 in Vienna. His father Karl pricked worked at the brandy production plant, and his mother Waltraud was a housewife.

In 1972, the Podlopilov family moved to Stratshof-en-Nordban to a small private house, which he inherited from Grandfather Wolfgang Oscar. Wolfgang went to school. He had difficulties with his studies, but he always received excellent assessments for behavior.

He had no friends at school. He spent his free time alone, reading books or collecting puzzles. From an early age, pricked signs of mental abnormalities were observed : when he was 13 years old, he made a pneumatic gun and shot from it at sparrows, pigeons and wild dogs. In addition, he suffered from an enuree (urinary incontinence).

After graduating from high school, he joked at the technical school, but a year later he decided to quit his studies and got a plane in the German electronic concern Siemens.

When he was 20 years old, he moved from his father’s house in Strandhof to a small apartment in Vienna, in which his mother lived.

Mother pricked led the whole household around the house: prepared for her son, washed his things and cleaned her at home. In the evenings, they often spent time together, walking around Vienna or Strakshof.

In 1986, when he was 24 years old, his father died, leaving his son a house in Strakshof-en-dordban. The death of his father brought his mother and son even more closely. They often saw each other and talked a lot. But she did not suspect the secret side of her son, like other acquaintances, slopped.

According to one of the former colleagues, Ernst Winter, no one ever noticed anything strange in behavior.

No more a child

At the age of 12, she stopped implicitly fulfill all the requirements of the kidnapper. Then I drove it brutally to beat it. He did not give Natasha to eat and kept one in the dark for a long time for the slightest offense.

During the imprisonment, Natasha kept a diary on toilet paper. In one of the records, she lists the beatings in one day: “At least 60 beats on the face, from 10 to 15 sickening blows with a fist on the head, one fist hit the right ear.”

Over time, I banged began to let Natasha out of the basement so that she would clean the house. She had to do the work almost naked, looking down. It was only possible to speak if he turned to her, otherwise he brutally beat Natasha.

Sometimes, in order to escape from the beatings, Natasha herself beat herself in the face until he ordered her to stop. Several times she tried to commit suicide; When she was 14 years old, she tried to cut her veins with knitting needles. But he stopped her.

Sometimes he asked Natasha forgiveness, gave gifts and shared his dreams of a joint future.

“It seems to me that he really trusted me,” she recalls . - He could be frank. I think he wanted to create his ideal world in which there would be a person next to him who would understand him and accept him as he is. ” Podlopil said that Natasha should become his “ideal companion”.

When Natasha matured, she drew to give her a little more freedom: he took her with him when he went to the city, and they went shopping together, and once even drove her to a ski resort. Then Natasha realized that she could escape.

Escape

When Natasha was 18 years old, she increasingly began to think about freedom and once said to the prick: “Because of you, we are in a situation where only one of us can survive. I am grateful to you for not killing me and take care of me so well. This is very nice of you. But you cannot make me stay with you. I am an independent person. This must be stopped. ”

Natasha recalled that at that moment she closed her eyes, waiting for a blow, but he was not followed.

“I think he understood that I no longer had the strength,” she says . “He brought me to the limit, but it helped me to some extent.” He had nothing to answer. ”

Soon, Natasha had the opportunity to escape. To pay the bills, pricked decided to sell a white van, on which Natasha abducted. Around noon on August 23, 2006, he ordered Natasha to carefully vacuum the car, seats and rugs. While she was cleaning, the phone rang at the pranks.

The loud sound of the vacuum cleaner prevented him from talking, and he moved away from the car a few steps and covered his ear with his hand.

From the conversation, Natasha realized that it was a call from the buyer of the car. He jumped very glad to call and moved even further to discuss the details in more detail.

“For the first time, the kidnapper released me from the field of view. For a few seconds I stood, frozen, in front of the car, a vacuum cleaner in my hands, feeling my arms and legs go numb. The chest seemed to be squeezed with an iron corset, ”Natasha later recalled .

She threw a vacuum cleaner and ran to the garage door, which was not locked. The first to whom Natasha met on the street were two men. “You must help me! I need a phone, call the police! " - Natasha shouted, but they said that they had no phone.

At that moment, she saw an elderly woman in the window nearby, ran to her and knocked out the window

“What are you doing in my garden? What are you looking for here? " The woman asked displeasedly.

“Please call the police! - Choking was repeating Natasha. - I am a victim of the crime. My name is Natasha Kampush ... Please call the police. Tell them that we are talking about the case of abduction! I am Natasha Kampush. "" Wait for the hedge and do not trample the lawns! " - the woman answered and called the police.

"Again here"

““ You are here again, ”my mother whispered.“ Natasha, you are here again. ” Hugging, we could not break away from each other for a long time, ”Natasha Kampush later wrote about a meeting with her mother in a police station. “Physical contact was so unusual for me that my head was dizzy of such proximity.”

Natasha spent the first days at large under the supervision of psychologists. In just a few days, her story became known to the whole world, notes about her came out in different languages, and the journalists lined up in line to interview Natasha and her relatives.

“Honestly, I did not think that I would live up to this day,” Natasha’s father, in tears and trembling voice, retold their meeting. - She said: "Dad, I love you." And the next question was: "My toy car is still there?" It was Natasha’s favorite toy, I have never given her over all these years. ”

In the hospital, Natasha received thousands of letters with words of support from people from all over Austria.

Return

Eight hours after Natasha Kampush managed to escape, a man rushed in Vienna under the wheels of a city train.

The police established the identity of the deceased-it turned out to be 44-year-old Wolfgang. A few hours before his death, he disappeared from the police in his car, and then threw it and walked. Probably realizing that he would not be able to avoid arrest, he jumped jumped under the train.

Already at large, Natasha found out that the police could save her. One of the neighbors, a month after the abduction, noticed his white van and informed the police about him. Investigators arrived at the place and demanded to prone to show the car. But he in advance loaded it with construction garbage and explained that he was using a van for repair work.

During the interrogation, he lied to lie that he was at home on the day of the abduction, and although he had no alibi, the police did not search his house, in the basement of which Natasha was sitting for more than a month.

After the release, Natasha Kampush began to be invited to the Austrian talk show. When she said that she sympathized with Wolfgang and even cried, learning about his death, she suspected her Stockholm syndrome - the state is called when the victim has emotional attachment to the kidnapper. In her book, Natasha wrote that, still sitting in the basement, she reassured herself that everything could be much worse: "Unlike many cases that I saw on TV, the kidnapper did not rape and did not kill me."

Долгое время Наташа страдала от социофобии и с трудом выходила на улицу. Чтобы преодолеть свои психологические травмы и развеять слухи, которые ходили вокруг ее истории в 2010 году, Наташа написала автобиографию под названием «3096 дней».

В 2008 году Наташа Кампуш купила дом Приклопила, в подвале которого просидела взаперти восемь лет.