Kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch

On the morning of 2 March 1998, 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch left her family's home in Vienna's Donaustadt district but never arrived at school. A 12-year-old witness reported seeing her dragged into a white minibus by two men, though Kampusch herself did not report a second man's presence. Police examined 776 minivans, including one belonging to Wolfgang Přiklopil, a communications technician living in Strasshof an der Nordbahn in Lower Austria. Přiklopil told investigators he had been alone at home and was using his minibus to transport construction rubble; police accepted this explanation at the time. Investigators pursued various theories, including possible links to child pornography rings, organ theft, and French serial killer Michel Fourniret, and extended the search abroad after learning Kampusch had her passport with her.

Kampusch was in fact held in a small, soundproofed cellar beneath Přiklopil's garage, accessible only via a concealed steel hatch. For the first six months she was confined to the windowless chamber at all times. Přiklopil controlled her food, lighting, and limited television access, and communicated with her via an intercom. After she reached puberty around 2000, he began bringing her into the main house more often, forcing her to perform housework and renovation labor, and subjecting her to physical abuse, starvation, and rape, according to her later accounts and statements from her media advisor. Přiklopil told her the house was booby-trapped with explosives and threatened to kill her and neighbours if she tried to escape. After her 18th birthday she was occasionally allowed outside with him, including a supervised skiing trip.

Kampusch escaped on 23 August 2006 while vacuuming Přiklopil's van; when he stepped away to take a phone call, she fled roughly 200 metres through neighbouring gardens before a 71-year-old neighbour called police, who arrived at 1:04 pm. She was identified by a scar, her passport (found in the cellar), and DNA testing. She weighed only 48 kg and had grown just 15 cm during captivity. Přiklopil fled in his car, and upon learning police were pursuing him, died by suicide that night, jumping in front of a train near Vienna's Wien Nord station. Police later concluded he had acted alone.

A special commission examined possible police failures in the original investigation; its head, Ludwig Adamovich, made a public comment about Kampusch's captivity that her mother, Brigitta Sirny, publicly disputed, and Adamovich was initially convicted of defamation, a ruling later overturned on appeal. In her 2010 memoir 3,096 Days, Kampusch described difficult aspects of her home life prior to the abduction while also stating her mother was not abusive. Kampusch has publicly expressed complicated feelings toward Přiklopil, rejecting the label of Stockholm syndrome as disrespectful of her own account of events. She later acquired ownership of the house where she was held and had the cellar filled in during 2011.