Josef Fritzl’s six kids kept for years in an Austrian dungeon will not be forced to testify in his trial, court officials announced Friday.
Wife Rosemarie, 69, will also be spared giving evidence.
Court boss Kurt Leitzenberger said: “They will not give statements. This decision is final.”
When asked what this would mean for the trial, he said: “The picture is almost complete anyway.
“Their statements might have helped us but most of it was clear from the beginning.”
Fritzl’s autumn trial will be held behind closed doors in Sankt Poelten, Austria.
The family’s lawyers warned this week they were too traumatized to give evidence.
Prosecutors insist statements from Fritzl’s daughter Elisabeth, 42 — who was caged as a sex slave for 24 years — will “provide enough evidence”.
But they had hoped her daughter Kerstin, 19, would help convict Fritzl, 74, for murder over the death of Elisabeth’s newborn.
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