Girl in the Cellar: The Natascha Kampusch Story

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HarperCollins, Jan 2, 2007 - Biography & Autobiography - 288 pages

On March 2, 1998, while on her way to school, ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was abducted. More than eight years later, on August 23, 2006, she escaped with a story that shocked and horrified the entire world. She spent the most delicate years of her life hidden in a cellar underneath an ordinary Austrian suburban home. How was she able to survive? What sort of woman had emerged? What kind of man was Wolfgang Priklopil, her abductor—and what demands had he made of her?

As the days and weeks passed, and Natascha's only TV interview failed to quell the world's curiosity, the questions began to multiply: What exactly was the relationship between the abductor and the hostage? Why had Natascha waited so long to make her bid for freedom when it seemed she had earlier opportunities to do so? Did Natascha's parents know Priklopil before he kidnapped their daughter?

Allan Hall and Michael Leidig have covered the story from the first days of the ten-year-old's disappearance, interviewing police investigators, lawyers, psychiatrists, Priklopil's coworkers and the family members closest to Natascha. A work of extraordinary investigative reporting, Girl in the Cellar gets to the heart of this very tragic case to reveal a truth no one would have imagined.

From inside the book

Contents

A Difficult Childhood
1
Portrait of a Monster?
33
The Abduction of Natascha
71
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Michael Leidig has worked as a reporter for newspapers, magazines, radio and television since 1988, and has been covering Austrian affairs for the London Daily Telegraph as a foreign correspondent since 1995. He is the founder of the Vienna-based news agency Central European News, which has correspondents in all the Central and Eastern European countries, and has founded and edited Austrian newspapers—the Vienna Reporter, Austria Today and the newly launched Austrian Times.