Kidnapped child held captive for eight years [+ pictures]

Natascha Kampusch

VIENNA - A young Austrian woman has escaped after being held for eight years in a sealed garage, apparently resolving a missing child case that shook the nation. The kidnapper killed himself yesterday.

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

Herwig Haidinger, head of the Federal Crime Office, said the woman was undergoing DNA tests to confirm her identity but investigators were virtually certain she was Natascha Kampusch.

The 44-year-old man who apparently imprisoned her, identified as Wolfgang P, threw himself in front of a night express train in Vienna, said the Austrian news agency APA.

The woman, very pale but in apparently good physical health, told police she had escaped from a house in a village near Vienna where she had been largely confined in a garage since her abduction.

But she said her captor allowed her occasional walks with him in the neighbourhood and access to radio, television, newspapers and books. The garage was equipped with a bed and wardrobe, according to police and local media.

APA quoted police as saying there were no indications she might have suffered sexual abuse.

Crime office investigator Erich Zwettler, asked why the woman had not fled while on any of her outings, said she seemed to have had "Stockholm Syndrome", a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.

"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," APA quoted a police investigator as saying.

Scores of police combed eastern Austria by patrol car and helicopter for the suspect before the news of his suicide.

Neighbourhood witnesses said they saw a car speeding away after the woman approached residents close to the house.

Natascha Kampusch's disappearance caused an uproar because it occurred at a time when Europe was unnerved by a notorious case of child abduction and murder in Belgium. Riverbeds were dragged in the search for her.

- REUTERS