ORF revisits 18-day lockup ordeal in new podcast

ORF Vorarlberg has revisited the case of an 18-year-old left for 18 days in a dark municipal lockup in Höchst, where he survived without food or drinking water. The incident, one of the biggest scandals in Vorarlberg’s postwar history, is the subject of a new seven-part podcast.

The ordeal began on April 1, 1979, when officers in Höchst were dealing with a serious traffic accident involving eight people and asked colleagues from Hard to attend another crash in Fußach. The Hard patrol found two men whose car had gone into a construction trench. The driver tested positive for alcohol. While he was questioned, his 18-year-old passenger, an apprentice from Bregenz, was placed temporarily in the lockup beneath the municipal office.

Three officers were responsible for the detention, but each assumed one of the others had already released the young man. A missing-person report and repeated inquiries from his mother did not lead to his discovery. No one visited the basement during the 18 days. The cell was a roughly 15-square-metre vaulted former cider cellar, with two bunks and a plastic bucket. Its window had been bricked up, and the officers had not turned on the ventilation or heating. The cool conditions may have helped him survive by reducing fluid loss. He drank condensation from the walls.

His mother later told ORF that he kept track of time for six days and remembered Easter because he could hear church bells. After that, he could no longer tell day from night. Driven by hunger, he bit off and chewed the leather trim on his jeans.

He was found on April 18 by chance. As he tried to drink urine from the bucket, it slipped from his weakened hand and the liquid ran beneath the cellar door. An officer who happened to be in the basement smelled it and freed him. The young man was taken to Bregenz Hospital, and it took weeks for him to recover.

In the criminal case, the three officers blamed one another. They were convicted of gross negligence in office and each received a fine equivalent to about 2,000 euros. A civil court later awarded the victim 250,000 schillings in compensation, equivalent to about 49,000 euros after inflation. Before that ruling, the Safe Austria association had pledged 50,000 schillings, and the Vorarlberger Nachrichten newspaper set up a relief fund.

The case prompted a directive from then Interior Minister Erwin Lanc: municipal detention rooms across Austria could only be used if they had a bell that detainees could use to call for help.

The story later appeared in the collection of modern legends The Spider in the Yucca Palm as supposedly fictional, with parallels to a 19th-century ballad. ORF says the incident is extensively documented. The Guinness Book of Records lists the man as the person who survived longest without food or liquid.

ORF journalists Dominic Dapré and Christian Suter researched the case for months with producer Marc Spagolla. The broadcaster says the podcast brings to light previously unknown facts, and all seven episodes are available online.