Tenants could hear Elisabeth Fritzl's cries, claims book

Melbourne, May 19 (ANI): Austrian dungeon victim Elisabeth Fritzl's cries for help during her 24-year ordeal could be "very audible" to those living above, reveals a new book.

Elisabeth, now 42, was held captive and sexually abused by her father, Josef, for 24 years in a rat-infested dungeon.

It has been famously believed that the dungeon in Amstetten, where Josef kept his daughter and three of the seven children he fathered with her, must have been soundproofed for the captives to have gone unnoticed, The Times reported.

However, according to The Crimes of Josef Fritzl: Uncovering the Truth, by Stefanie Marsh and Bojan Pancevski, a sound engineer who tested the cellar's acoustics found that the reality was quite the opposite, reports News.com.au.

As per a report by Peter Kopecky knocking and cries for help from the cellar would have been "very audible" to tenants living there, in flats rented out by Fritzl.

"The noises that the tenants thought they had heard coming from the cellar beneath them had been real: the thumping, the moaning, the strange clanking noises emanating from deep underground," the book states according to The Times.

"But nobody had thought to investigate," it added.

Fritzl was jailed for life after admitting raping Elisabeth more than 3,000 times and fathering seven children - one of whom he murdered hours after it was born. (ANI)