'Horror father' warned captives they would be gassed: Police

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The revelation came as authorities also said that Josef Fritzl forced his captive daughter to write a letter last year indicating he may have been planning to release her from the windowless dungeon where she lived with three of their children.

Police Col. Franz Polzer said Elisabeth Fritzl wrote in late 2007 to her family, who believed she had fled to a cult, that she wanted to return home but "it's not possible yet."

DNA testing on the letter proved that 42-year-old Elisabeth had written it, but she was forced to by her father, Polzer said.

"He may have had plans to end the captivity at some point," Polzer told The Associated Press. "It shows that he must have had a spark of humanity."

Fritzl's elaborate crime came to the attention of authorities April 19 when one of Elisabeth's daughters, 19-year-old Kerstin, was admitted to a hospital with an illness linked to an unidentified infection.

Baffled doctors appealed on television for Kerstin's mother to come forward because they needed information about her daughter's medical history. Fritzl then allowed Elisabeth to go to the hospital, and her story came to light.

A hospital spokesman said Thursday that Kerstin was in life-threatening condition. She was brought to the hospital unconscious and later suffered seizures. Now she remains in an induced coma and on a respirator, and is still undergoing dialysis because of the effects of a lack of oxygen, spokesman Klaus Schwertner said.

Meanwhile, Helmut Greiner, a spokesman for federal investigators, told the AP that officers were checking whether Fritzl had indeed set up a mechanism that could send gas into the dingy, windowless cellar as the suspect claimed during questioning.

Experts were also checking another Fritzl claim that the reinforced door leading to the enclosure had a timer that enabled it to be easily opened if he was gone for an unusually long period of time, said Greiner, spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

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