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Amstetten, Austria: Josef Fritzl came up with the idea for a windowless warren under his apartment building years before locking his daughter in a cell secured by sophisticated electronics, locks and a half-tonne door, authorities say.
Fritzl may have been plotting the design of the basement dungeon six years before authorities say he took his daughter Elisabeth captive in 1984 when she was 18, investigators said on Monday. He is accused of raping her and fathering seven children with her.
"We can't just look back to 1984," police colonel Franz Polzer said. "The logic says the idea was already there, or an obsessive thought played a role, to build this jail, dig out these rooms and later to equip them and imprison the daughter there."
Local building authorities had by 1978 approved expansion plans for the apartment building Fritzl owned in Amstetten, 120 kilometres west of Vienna.
"We are working with certainty on the idea that, during the planning phase, he already had the intention to build a small space, a small secret, a small dungeon unknown to the building authorities."
Investigators have said they believe Fritzl concealed his crimes from his wife, and Polzer reiterated officials' belief that the retired electrician acted alone.
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