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08. 01. 10. - 16:00

Police admit mistakes as Kampusch case investigations end

By Thomas Hochwarter

A leading police investigator has admitted "big mistakes" in the search for the kidnapper of Natascha Kampusch as officials today (Fri) announced the case was closed.

Ernst Geiger, head of the department for organised crime at the Austrian Federal Crime Office (BK), took responsibility for not checking on statements by a Vienna police dog squad leader.

The man told investigators soon after Kampusch was kidnapped after leaving her Vienna flat for school in 1998 that an obscure loner from Strasshof might have had something to do with her disappearance after hearing that police were checking on owners of white Volkswagen vans.

A girl who spotted the vehicle observed how Kampusch was snatched from the street and dragged into it in Vienna-Donaustadt.

It only emerged years later that police had not checked up on the claims of the former cop, while investigators also had to admit that Priklopil’s VW was searched at tightened traffic checks. But officers let him go after he told them he was doing some renovation work at his house when they asked him about the building material he was transporting.

"The tip-off about Priklopil was estimated incorrectly under stress and in the hectic atmosphere of developments back then. This was a big mistake," BK official Geiger said today, adding that the error had occurred in his department.

Geiger also announced police had ruled out the possibility that Wolfgang Priklopil – who committed suicide by jumping in front of a train on the day Kampusch escaped in summer 2006 – had not been acting on his own.

"We are sure there are no accomplices," he stressed, reacting to ongoing speculation in Austrian media that accomplices could exist and might be plotting to kill Kampusch.

Thomas Mühlbacher, head of the Graz state prosecution who took over investigations into possible police errors and cover-ups last year, said jailer Priklopil’s former best mate Ernst Holzapfel was not regarded as a suspect any more after the obscure Vienna businessman gave contradictory statements.

Holzapfel told cops Priklopil had never told him about the kidnapping but admitted in recent interviews his sick pal had poured out his heart about the kidnapping on the day Kampusch fled from his house in Strasshof an der Nordbahn just outside Vienna.

Mühlbacher said Holzapfel could face charges of complicity in suicide and connivance for lying to investigators for three and a half years about that day in August 2006.

The prosecutor also explained the girl who had witnessed the kidnapping had withdrawn her claims that she had seen two men dragging Kampusch into the white VW van.

Speaking about why Holzapfel had transferred around 36,000 Euros to Priklopil shortly after the kidnapping, Mühlbacher explained it had been an attempt to evade taxes.

Mühlbacher and Vienna head prosecutor Werner Pleischl announced 120 people had been interviewed since investigations restarted last year, of whom 30 were interviewed in the category of witnesses.

"The theory that there was more than one kidnapper can be ruled out," Pleischl stressed at the press conference held in Vienna today to mark the end of investigations.

He explained investigation of DNA traces in Priklopil’s house had confirmed that the sick perpetrator of the kidnapping of the young woman now 21 had been acting on his own.

"These announcements will hopefully put an end to the appalling rumours that have been spread," a spokesman for Kampusch said in a first reaction today.

Officials also announced German police had not found any evidence Priklopil was involved in a child pornography ring as an obscure German witness had claimed.

Thomas Vogel, from Tengen in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, told cops he was in possession of a video showing the girl, her kidnapper and another man in the cellar dungeon below the house in Strasshof.

Vienna police chiefs said today German experts had found no such material on Vogel’s computer that they had confiscated.

There were doubts from the start whether Vogel’s claims had any substance since he had set up a sick condolence book on the internet shortly after it emerged kidnapper Priklopil had killed himself.

And it emerged that Vogel had a criminal record of around 50 various offences such as trying to sell a forged Picasso painting.

Asked why Priklopil had decided to kidnap a girl, Graz prosecutor Mühlbacher said the loner might had been in a "personal crisis" after realising he would be unable to find a woman in his life.

Natascha Kampusch last week branded claims by Austrian magazine profil that she had fled her sick jailer twice during captivity but returned within hours a "sheer lie" and a "low point in covering my past."

Kampusch – who recently compared the life she was living in Vienna today to that of a hermit crab – said: "The claim I returned to my kidnapper voluntarily after successfully fleeing from him twice is a sheer lie and a perfidious statement.

"Instead of speaking to me or the state prosecutor about it, anonymous informers are quoted," she added, stressing she had been "shocked" by the claims.

Meanwhile, a new TV documentary about the case is to be broadcast this month.

The 45-minute German production "Natascha Kampusch - 3.096 Tage Gefangenschaft" (Natascha Kampusch – 3,096 Days in Captivity) will be screened by German broadcaster ARD on 25 January.

Kampusch – who acquired her kidnapper’s house and BMW shortly after she fled in 2006 "to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands" – allowed the production team to film inside the house as well as in the cellar basement she is considering filling in with concrete.

Austrian Times

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