Josef Fritzl, the Austrian engineer who kept his daughter as a sex slave in a secret cellar underneath the family home for 24 years, will die behind bars, having been found guilty of a catalogue of crimes including the negligent murder of one of the seven children he fathered with his daughter.
The jury at St Pölten court sentenced him to life after finding him guilty on all counts – of negligent murder, enslavement, incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment. He will serve his sentence in a psychiatric institution, his lawyer said.
Fritzl accepted the verdicts and waived his right to appeal.
The homicide count "murder by neglect" was the most serious of the charges against him, and the jury gave him the maximum punishment allowed by law.
The jury was not swayed by Fritzl's 11th-hour confession of guilt, or his claim to be sorry "from the bottom of my heart".
In what was seen as a last ditch attempt to mitigate his punishment, the 73-year-old defendant had made an emotional statement to court this morning.
"I regret from the bottom of my heart what I have done to my family. Unfortunately, I cannot make amends for it. I can only try to look for possibilities to try to limit the damage that's been done," he said.
But prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser urged the jury not show mercy just because he had pleaded guilty.
She told them: "Don't be duped like Elisabeth was 24 years ago."
By giving Fritzl a life sentence, the jury ensured he received the maximum punishment for the crimes he committed over more than two decades.
Some 24 years ago, he lured his then 18-year-old daughter into the cellar of their family home. There, in this damp, windowless prison, Fritzl raped her more than 3,000 times, his abuse resulting in seven children.
One of the babies, a twin boy called Michael, died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar.
Fritzl failed to get the boy medical help and later burned his body in an incinerator. It was this failure that resulted in a guilty verdict for the most serious charge against him, that of murder through negligence, which carries a life sentence.
Where exactly Fritzl will spend the rest of his days has not yet been decided. But Adelheid Kastner, the forensic psychiatrist who spent 25 hours with Fritzl in order to produce a report on his mental health, told the court yesterday that he should be sent to a secure psychiatric facility.
This is most likely to be Göllersdorf, a high security institution in the town of that name in the district of Hollabrunn, Lower Austria.
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Kastner told the jury that locking him up without therapy and treatment could be dangerous, and that there was a real risk he would try to take his own life.