If I could write a letter to Fritzl, here's what it would say:

You are not mentally ill. Nor are you possessed, at least not in the classic sense of the word. What you are, however, is far worse. You are selfish--abominably so.

What else but complete selfishness could compel a man to decide that the woman he promised to love, honor and cherish all the days of his life could be brutalized, publicly demeaned, and cheated on merely because he felt like it?

What else but a twisted sense of one's self-importance could convince a father to build a prison for his own daughter--even forcing that daughter to help him construct the place that would be her own personal hell for years?

What other than complete self-absorption and lack of even the most basic empathy for other human beings could convince a father that it was acceptable for him to imprison and repeatedly rape his own child--the very child he was meant to protect from predators, not to predate upon?

What kind of sick solipsist repeatedly fathers children by his own child, and then chooses which ones live upstairs, which ones never get to see the sun, and which ones die from neglect?

What kind of twisted egotist lies for years to family, friends and neighbors alike that his daughter ran away and joined a cult, callously breaking the hearts of all the people who laid awake nights worrying about her whereabouts and well-being, merely so he could continue to enjoy the unbroken luxury of using her as a fuck-rag?

What are you? You are selfishness incarnate.

I'm glad you're in prison. It's where you belong. It's a shame they don't put you in a dark, windowless underground room with a makeshift toilet in the corner. It's too bad that you probably won't get a once-a-day visit from Gunther, a former bodybuilder with a taste for "correcting" scrawny, selfish old men with bad hair. Gunther might be able to help you understand quite thoroughly what beatings and rape are like when you're on the receiving end. He might help you understand what it's like to live with untreated injuries when he forcibly sodomizes you with a mop handle and something ruptures inside you. And if this went on for a long, long time--at least 24 years, if not longer--perhaps eventually you might grow a conscience and come to the knowledge that the things you did were evil.

I'm not holding my breath.