Kidnapped girl held eight years in garage

[azathoth777]

A young woman has told police she escaped a kidnapper after being held for eight years in a sealed garage, apparently resolving a missing child case that shook Austria.

Police said relatives identified her as Natascha Kampusch, who vanished in 1998 aged 10 while walking to school.

Her suspected kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, 44, a communications technician, died after throwing himself in front of a Vienna commuter train when a manhunt for him was under way, police said.

The head of the Federal Crime Office, Herwig Haidinger, said the woman was undergoing DNA tests to confirm her identity but that investigators were almost certain she was Ms Kampusch. Her passport was found in the cellar and she bore an identifying scar.

She met her mother yesterday for the first time since 1998.

Her father, Ludwig Koch, who split from her mother before the kidnapping, said he was overcome after being told his daughter had been found.

"I can't believe that after eight desperate years my daughter is finally coming home. If it is true it will be the greatest thing that could possibly be."

The family has asked the media to show patience as they get to know each other again.

A police spokesman, Armin Halm, said: "Her health is OK and mentally she also appears to be OK, at least in the eyes of a layman. She was not bedraggled."

There were no indications the woman had been sexually abused, investigators said.

She escaped on Wednesday afternoon after living under a garage next to the suspected kidnapper's house in Strasshof, a hamlet 25 kilometres outside Vienna, police said.

Her captor had equipped a six-square-metre cell with running water, a toilet, washing facilities, bed, books, radio and occasionally television, police said. The room was found tidy.

She showed up in a garden near the house and identified herself to a neighbour, Reuters reported. Locals said they saw a car speeding away after the woman approached residents. Police found Priklopil's red sports car in a Vienna parking lot and the key in his pocket after the suicide.

He had loosened his security measures recently, police said, allowing her occasional outings in the village with him. "He was not as cautious as he was in the beginning," said the chief investigator, Nikolaus Koch.

An investigator, Erich Zwettler, who was asked why the woman had not fled during her outings, said she seemed to have had Stockholm syndrome, a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.

The Austrian news agency APA quoted police as saying: "She is white-pale, looking as if she had been out of the light of day for a long time, but she articulated well and could read and write."

Ms Kampusch's disappearance caused an uproar because it occurred when Europe was unnerved by a notorious case of child abduction and murder in Belgium. A nationwide search, including dragging of riverbeds. found no trace of her.