Greetings And What We’re Drinking

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Jesse! Hey Lindsay! What are you drinking on this wonderful evening?

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Kentucky credential. And uh it's very good. It's it's double-barreled bourbon. Double barreled? Double barreled bourbon. So they take the bourbon out and they put it back in another barrel and then let it sit for another few seasons.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Yeah, eight-year-aged. So they probably did like four and four. It's really good.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm having a malted beverage called white claw. Um, it is a peach and a mango with a peach five Celsius. Sweet!

The Fritzl Case Recap Begins

SPEAKER_01 0:44

And we got recappage of horrific episodes that Lindsay put out and bestowed upon us that you can check out on drinkaboutsomething.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yes, so it is a two-parter about one vile human being named Josef Fritzel, who grew up during the Haw, well the World War II. And uh he grew up in Omstetten, and he I mean, it was a time of bombing, it was a time of war, and his mother neglected him, and she had uh a three, a three-level house. It was a very large house. Uh, we posted pictures of it in our stories. You can Google it, Yosef Rissel, it'll show you the layout of this house. Very large house. Um, she was told that she needed to take in people like refugees and things like that, and soldiers that needed space and her house got crowded.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

They took her to a concentration camp.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

They sure did.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

And separated Fritz Joseph and Yosef. Yos Joseph. Yosef. Yosef.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

The J is the Y.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Separated them two, and he actually believed that she was actually uh excommunicatoed in the middle of that. Yes. And that was the beginning of the salad, I think. Maybe. Somewhere in there. Yeah, somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Well, she was already um emotionally abusive. Yeah. So, yeah, and then physically as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

After all that, though, they kind of uh recoagulated back into the household, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Well, yeah, so he thinks that she's deceased for quite some time, and then he finds out that she's not. He goes into foster care. Or no, I'm sorry, he goes into an orphanage, right? Not foster care. Yep. Um, his father had uh been unalived in action in World War II and had kind of already excommunicated what do you say? Excommunicanto. Yes, excommunicanto from the family before that. So he really didn't have a dad. His mom was not great, and they developed this very toxic mother-son relationship that in the book that I listened to called Secrets in the Cellar about this case, they referred to it as like a very toxic husband and wife type situation between a mother and son.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, and then it traversed it to the point to where he actually did marry and a young, naive woman.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

He was 21, she was 17.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah, and he put his own mother in the attic.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah, later on. So he goes to Lintz.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

We're trying to rush all this into one big old pile of things because you can check out the whole two-part.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Oh, yeah, we got a two-parter and on Drinkabout Something.sight. And so he goes to Lentz, which is in Upper Austria because Amstetin is in Lower Austria, and he gets a job as an electrical engineer. He's very smart, very talented at what he does. He's great at his trade. He meets and marries Rosemie. Him and Rosemarie go on to have seven children. But in the time span that he had that these children are being born and he's becoming a family man and he's working and doing all the things. He's also being um uh a deviant, and there's certain words we can't say on these apps, so you will have to listen to our full two-part episode to find out what kind of deviant.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Which should have been the breaking point between their whole relationship, but she accepted it after his uh imprisonment and jail time.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

He goes, yes, he does go to prison for 18 months over this deviant seat.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

He comes back and and she still accepts it, and then um he eventually kind of decided that he had no more desire for her, and when his own child got old enough, that's where things were. Well, not really old enough at all. No, or she was 11 years old. No, not old enough. Not at all old enough. Not old enough. Um, maybe in his mind, but not at all. No. No. Disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So he uh develops an obsession for his fourth child, Elizabeth Fretzel, and then he starts to develop a cellar. And it takes him six years to complete this project, and from eleven, from Elizabeth's uh age eleven to eighteen, uh he he he builds the cellar and use the government's money actually because of the Cold War.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Making it a shelter, and it is a full-on complex that has eight doors to it, and that was really disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Eight doors and then a bookshelf to hide.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, and that's what I call the ninth gate. Yes, because it was Elizabeth's ninth gate to hell. And yeah, it's really horrific. You can check that stuff out. We're kind of recapping it real quick. Thank you guys for joining on the lives right now. Yes, and uh, thank you guys on YouTube. Share our stuff and follow us. We're true crime podcasters, and we uh also share a band at the end of usually every episode on Fridays, it comes out. Joseph Joseph Joseph Fritzel is what we're talking about. And it's horrific, Lindsay, because now she is in the basement, is where we're at right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Actually, in the in the uh in the in at the at after the ninth gate in the cellar. In the cellar.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And he

Inside The Cellar And Two Families

SPEAKER_01 6:30

the storm shelter or the bomb shit.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, he kidnaps his own daughter, takes her down to the cellar on her when she turns 18, right before she's about to leave the home. She's an adult, she's ready to go. He passes it off as she's missing and she has joined a cult.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

And she is young and impressionable, and he is putting so much on her in fear and so many things that he portrays his crazy fantasies and disgusting way of life for her for the next 24 years. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

So he has seven children above ground and he makes seven children underground. And two whole families, yeah. Two whole families. And like I said, he has made the his wife, the police, the town of Omseton believe that Elizabeth has run away and joined this cult. And then after she has child number three, he brings that child to raise for him and Rosemary to raise, basically Rosemary. And he also does that with child four and five. And five is born with a twin, and we're not gonna say what happened to that twin on here. You do have to go check out the full story.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I was broken so many times during this.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

This was one of the worst cases that we've covered.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

You kinda, you kinda messed me up a little bit there, Lindsay, in this one. Pretty bad. Yeah, both episodes, really. And it was not a fun journey, but sharing the true crime in the middle of all that and getting that out in awareness. Uh, what else? I mean, what else can you do? These young and impressionable children, dude. Look out for your neighbors, I guess. I don't know. I mean, are we?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Well, okay, so to be fair, so Yosef had apartments. Yeah, so he rented out uh certain parts of his main house, and then he built apartments, and he told all of his tenants, so he rented them out specifically to government subsidized people.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

It was a cash grab because he was actually even using his other ch children with his own daughter.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

He ends up bringing three upstairs.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, it's disgusting because like he uh he adopted one and then he fostered the next one.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Because he found out that he gets more money for fostering than adopting, so it was just a cash. Which is horrible. And these are his children that he's passing off as his grandchildren from a daughter that ran away to a cult. So that's terrible in and of itself. Yeah. And and he's making money off of it. And like I said, he's renting only renting to people that are receiving government checks every month. So he is guaranteed to get paid.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

It's a cash grabbing dude is just like living some lavish, ash life stuff, traveling around and doing all kinds of disgusting things while his own daughter.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah, he goes on holiday to Thailand several times. In the ninth gate of hell and hasn't seen sunlight for many, many years. Yeah, so Elizabeth hadn't seen it since she was 18. She doesn't get released from this prison until she is 42. Her children that are raised under in the cellar, they have never seen the light of day. They're vitamin deficient, they are ingesting mold and sludge and the moisture and all the stuff. There's not a lot of oxygen, so they are just worn out at all times, all the time. But Elizabeth, she's amazing. And the children that she does raise in the cellar, she is teaching them basic, you know, education.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

And basic humanity. Basic humanity revert against all of the horrific things of livelihood that they're in the middle of. And she is like trying to make better of the situation because they're just like, that's grandpa.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Yeah, so the down, the under the cellar children call him grandpa, and Elizabeth makes sure that they never know that they are being held prisoner. And then the upstairs kids call him dad.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

So it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And the pictures and everything that you shared on their social medias, which you can go to uh drink about something on Instagram. Yes, drink about something on Instagram. And you can check out the socials and what we have shared on some of that and the pictures, and this dude's just living it up, but he has this whole horrific dungeon that he has his own daughter in.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

And there are other crimes that happen throughout these years that he will later be tried for. They weren't pinned to him, but the coincidences of these crimes are just too big to say that he wasn't the one that committed them.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Does that look good on the time there?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I think it says 11 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Oh, good. 11 minutes. Well party.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

So a decade into Elizabeth's imprisonment, um, he finally, Yosef brings down a TV and a VCR, which he uses to his own advantage for certain disgusting, vile things. Um, but this is when

The Escape Trigger And Hospital Turning Point

SPEAKER_00 12:05

he's not around, because honestly, he's actually gone a lot, which is great for them.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

He's got all kinds of money on holiday.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Yeah, he goes, like I said, he goes to Thailand a lot, he goes to Italy, um, and then he works, you know, his his regular job. And so the kids underground, they they watch TV, and it's basically like uh what it was described as basically like looking at something from another planet.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, because they don't know trees any of this stuff. They did not even know.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

They didn't know a moon, the sun, trees, anything.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

A park existed.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

All they've got.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Education, schools, whatever, just whatever her, whatever their mom bestowed upon them in the middle of a and she would teach them days and weeks and months and years.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

She would teach them about the sunrise, the sunset, and the moon, but they've never seen these things. But what does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:04

They don't know. They don't know. And they're they're at they actually did get a TV, and eventually they actually seen things that were happening on the TV that pertained to them.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Right. So later on, and this is a story that we're gonna cover in the future. There's actually another woman in Austria that was also being held captive. What? Um by not we're gonna cover the full story later on, so I'm not gonna say the name because it will be a future case. So she was she got away in 2006, and that is when Joseph knew that he needed to find a way to bring his underground family to the surface. And he pondered on it for a while because you know, like time didn't mean anything to him. He's just going on, he's going on trips, he's doing his thing, he's living his life.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

But he's older, so he's like how do we take care of this, other other than actually getting rid of his family. And he was not sure about the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Because it was a huge, it was a huge conquest. I don't want to say conquest. It was a huge thing that he had to deal with uh because he's taking care of two families. And to take care of the underground family, he had to go out of town to stock up and buy groceries. And then he even remembers that he's got keys to his tenants' home. So he actually starts stealing from them to bring his underground family uh fresh food because most of everything that they ate was microwaveable or frozen, you know, easy dinners.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

Which you can only do TV dinners. Well, yeah, TV dinners, frozen entrees, things like that. Yeah. So he steals from his tenants who think they're losing their mind.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And he's like, no, there's nobody here.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Which is probably in the same building because he was renting out some rooms in his own house.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Yeah, he rent out rooms in his own house and he and he had he made he built an apartment block.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And then and they're watching him take stuff all in large quantities down to the cellar, but everybody was forbidden, even his immediate family, from setting foot in his cellar. And there was a time period after Rosemary had had their seventh child that he said, I don't want you no more, and I'm gonna get my own living quarters, and that was his living quarters.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

And I feel like that's why I said watch your neighbors, because he had tenants in his own house that should be watching his neighbors, and his own wife should have spoken up because in the end, she's gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

But we don't we don't victim because she's a victim in this too, so we're not gonna victim blame her at all.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

He was a victim 100%.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

But there were things that she should have spoken up about years before years prior, and her sister, who is a big part of the aftermath, said so. She's like, We told her to get the fuck out a long time ago. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

So after the one girl gets set free that we're gonna talk about in in in season three, uh, when she gets set free and Joseph Fritzel finds out about this girl that's been held in a dungeon for 10 years, um he's like, Oh my god, I need to resurface my underground family. So he comes up with a plan. He's like, I'm going to have Elizabeth write a letter and say, I'm tired of the cult. I'm gonna come home with my kids. But before that can happen, before Joseph, like, because like I said, he just kind of dilly dabbles about this plan, Kirsten gets really sick and she has a whole mental breakdown because internally her body is shutting down from years of being neglected and vitamin deficient. So she has a mental breakdown and she's really, really sick, and Joseph or Elizabeth begs Joseph to take her to a proper hospital. After some time, he agrees, he takes her. And then when she gets to the hospital, the hospital's like, oh my God, this is more than Colt's neglect. Way more. There's more to the story here.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

We're spitballing a lot of information, all in a recap. You can check out both episodes at drinkaboutsomething.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Because we're gonna wrap it up because we want you to listen to those episodes. So you have to find out what happens after this family does resurface. Elizabeth resurfaced after 24 years with her three children that have never seen the light of day in 2008. And it is quite the journey that

Where To Listen And How To Join

SPEAKER_00 17:55

this entire family has afterwards. It's a lot of aftermath, and the journey of being downstairs was it was a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

There's no words for how terrible it was, honestly. And the words terrible is an understatement. I didn't want to be part of that one. I did not.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

But we do feature two amazing bands on both of those episodes that you also have to listen to to catch because let me tell you something. People will say there's not good music anymore. There is. And listening to our episodes, you get a story and you get a new upcoming band that you've never heard before, probably most likely. I hope some of you have. I hope you have. I hope you're that cool that you know, already know some of these bands that we have featured. But if you're looking for new music, I'm finding them. Well, I've I have brought a lot to Jesse's attention because I'm chronically online because of researching and things. So check us out.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah. Do the things. Yeah, do uh do all that. Drink about something. Share on YouTube. Yeah, that's your uh that's your the beginning. But if you're on YouTube or on TikTok, you know, share us and uh we'll keep on growing. That way we're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yeah, if you're watching us on YouTube right now, hit that subscribe button. And Spotify, we're on all the platforms, every single platform you can think of. We're even on Audible if you have an Audible membership.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

I don't even know how I do.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I know, I know.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

There's a bunch of them, dude. Check them out.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Lots and lots and lots of platforms. We have new episodes every Friday. We have recaps sometimes on Wednesdays. We do sporadic lives here on TikTok. And what else, Jesse? What else do you want to say? Because we got to wrap this up for YouTube. We're gonna hang out here on TikTok for a while.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

No, come and hang out with us and holler at us. You know, send us something, drinkaboutsomething.side, or you can go to drinkaboutsomething pod at gmail.com. Yeah, send us your story. That's what we want to do.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Or if there's a specific case that you want to hear me tell Jesse to because he don't know shit.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

I do not.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

And that's what this is the thing. I just wanted to tell my husband the tea, but I'm like, I gotta write it down to tell you all the details. And then I'm like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

You destroyed it. You destroyed it.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Let's do the podcast and let's talk about some bands too, because we love music.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah. So is that time to hit that red button up there? I think it's time to hit that red button. So we love you so much on there. Bye on that one.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Bye on YouTube. Yay.