A new book has been published that claims that the Kampusch abduction was not the action of a single loan kidnapper.

The book is by Dr Johann Rzeszut, former President of the Supreme Court in Vienna and a member of the Evaluation Commission that had been asked by the Austrian Interior Ministry to detect possible discrepancies in the Kampusch case.

Much of the content is based on evidence he gathered while he was on the commission and includes a new coroner’s report that claims that the decision to label the death of kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil as suicide was not based on a proper examination.

The decapitated body of the 44-year-old man who forced Natascha to call him ‘master’ was found on a rail line in Vienna on August 23, 2006, 10 years ago and hours after Natascha had escaped from his clutches.

Rescue workers recovered Priklopil’s body near the Praterstern station in the Austrian capital and detectives quickly concluded he had taken his own life.

The book notes that rather than treating the location as a crime scene, detectives had been content to accept that it was reported as a suicide, and they crucially failed to secure any of the evidence or follow up leads that could have allowed a conclusive investigation.

The kidnapper's best friend and business-partner Ernst Holzapfel (pictured

Instead, with a general election looming and massive errors already made by police that would have embarrassed the governing coalition, they closed the case.

The media were told he had acted alone and killed himself, and at the kidnapper’s house detectives were ordered to leave the crime scene.

Hours later, in the dead of night, the kidnapper’s best friend and business-partner Ernst Holzapfel was then free to enter the property and remove items, which he claimed were his own personal property ‘loaned’ to his friend.

Claiming that he went there to pick up tools, he has since been suspected of having removed computers and electronic equipment, possibly that contained images of Natascha.

The coroners behind the new report, Johann Missliwetz and Martin Grassberger, are of the opinion that the original coroner ‘failed to differentiate between suicide and murder’.

And they concluded that the suicide death of Priklopil was highly questionable, and believe the possibility exists that he was killed before the train hit his body.

The coroners said the incident was not investigated to the ‘acceptable forensic standards and common procedures’.

The medico-legal reports on the death of Wolfgang Priklopil in 2006 is, they declare, ‘worthless’. They added: ‘There was a considerable risk significant findings were destroyed and thus the awareness towards crime specifically forever foiled.’

Official version rejected

Furthermore, the book looks at the statements of the eyewitness of the kidnapping, the former schoolgirl who was 12 at the time, and who (it is now known) saw Natascha being bundled into a van by one man, while another man remained sitting in the driving seat. 

She said: ‘I know there were two men. The second man remained in the driving seat the whole time. I am afraid they saw me, too. They knew I was a witness. In all those years she was gone I feared they would come back for me.’

Then there’s the fact that Holzapfel was never formally questioned on a judicial level, either by any judge or public prosecutor.

Der Tod des Kampusch - Kidnappers: Wahrheitsfindung im Würgegriff' means The death of the Kampusch Kidnapper - Fact Finding in a Stranglehold in English. It's a book that offers evidence that the abduction was not the action of a single loan kidnapper

He was questioned by police informally although not under caution, where he said he knew nothing about what had happened and added: ‘It was only when I was questioned by the police that they showed me a photo and I realised it was her.’

However he later admitted that this was a lie, and that his friend had told him he had kidnapped and imprisoned Natascha — an admission allegedly made in the car shortly before Priklopil was found dead on a rail line.

He had then handed over the suicide note as proof.

He said: ‘I want to admit I deliberately, with regard to what happened on August 23, 2006 [the day Natascha escaped], did not say the truth because I feared the investigators would wrongly link me with the kidnapping. I was travelling in my Kombi-car Kia. He said to me: ‘You are going to hate me, I am a rapist and a kidnapper.

‘He was really stressed. He seemed to be beside himself. He then explained he had kidnapped Natascha Kampusch.

‘The name didn’t mean anything to me. He then told me that I knew her — I had seen her in the hall [of his own home].’

There have also been questions about why his first words when police arrived, just hours after Natascha escaped and before the story had become news, were ‘has he killed her?’ — suggesting that he knew she was being held.

The kidnap, in 1998, resulted in one of the biggest police missing person investigations in Austrian history and police officers interviewed Priklopil after tracking him down based on the eyewitness description of the van he had used for the kidnapping.

Had they done more than ask a few questions they might have realised that Kampusch was hidden on his property in her underground dungeon as they spoke to him.

The information that led police offices to his door came from a police-colleague, a dog handler, whose mother was living in Priklopil’s neighbourhood and who had told her son that she thought Priklopil matched the profile of the kidnapper.

She told him that he even had a white van in line with the description offered by the 12-year-old schoolgirl who witnessed the abduction.

Dr Rzeszut said that he hopes his book, Der Tod des Kampusch - Kidnappers: Wahrheitsfindung im Würgegriff, which in English means The death of the Kampusch Kidnapper - Fact Finding in a Stranglehold, will help the truth to emerge.

He added: ‘I know that there is little chance much will happen now, there was almost no mention of my book for example in Austrian media, and on the few occasions when it is mentioned, there are neither any of the essential details nor any of the substantial arguments.’