Austrian 'Horror House' Dad: I Could Have Killed Them All

The man accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years, fathering her children and keeping them locked in a cellar agreed Wednesday to further questioning, prosecutors said.

Josef Fritzl and prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser did not discuss the allegations that he raped his daughter for more than two decades, fathering her seven children, an official said.

But he agreed during their two-hour talk — Fritzl's first face-to-face meeting with a prosecutor — to provide further testimony about the family, St. Poelten prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek said. Further questioning is not planned for another two weeks, he said.

Authorities say Fritzl initially had confessed to keeping daughter Elisabeth, now 42, and three of their children locked in a reinforced basement cellar after news of the family's existence surfaced last month. But he has not spoken since about the allegations.

• Click here to see photos of Josef Fritzl and the "House of Horrors."

Fritzl, 73, has not yet been charged and remains in pretrial detention. Sedlacek said Fritzl provided details about his background, including his professional career, during his meeting with the prosecutor.

The underground family came to light on April 19 when the oldest child, a 19-year-old woman, was hospitalized with a severe infection in Amstetten, west of Vienna.

Doctors, unable to find medical records for the woman, appealed on TV for her mother to come forward. Fritzl then accompanied Elisabeth to the hospital on April 26.

He told police then that he had fathered seven children with Elisabeth — three kept all their lives in the cellar, three raised above ground by him and his wife, and one who died as an infant.

Fritzl's lawyer, Rudof Mayer, said his client had access to a television in jail and was closely watching coverage of his case, which has garnered worldwide attention.

Mayer said Fritzl was bothered by the fact that he was being made out to be a monster. He said Fritzl told him: "I'm only being portrayed as a monster and not as someone who committed monstrous acts."

He also said he should be held in high regard for not killing the children, the Daily Mail reported.

"Kerstin would not be alive today if it wasn't for me. I have made sure that she gets to a hospital," Fritzl said through his lawyer. "I could have killed all of them, and nothing would have come out of that. No one would have ever known about it."

"I could have killed them and then sealed the place with concrete; it would have been very easy," Fritzl said in his plea for sympathy. "I have not been treated fairly. It has all been one sided."

Mayer made his comments when asked to confirm a report Wednesday by the newspaper Oesterreich that quoted Fritzl as saying he was not a monster and that without him, his 19-year-old daughter Kerstin would no longer be alive.

Politicians were questioning whether local officials in Lower Austria province had acted appropriately over the years and whether the crime could have been detected earlier.

Justice Minister Maria Berger, in an interview Wednesday with the newspaper Der Standard, said she saw a "certain gullibility" of authorities.

Berger told parliament that what had happened to the Amstetten victims "couldn't be made right."

Click here to read more from the Daily Mail.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.