ST. POELTEN, Austria – An Austrian jury convicted Josef Fritzl of homicide, enslavement, incest, rape and other charges Thursday and sentenced him to life in a psychiatric ward for holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children.

Fritzl, 73, sat calmly and bowed his head as the verdicts were read. He later told the court he accepted the outcome and waived his right to appeal — bringing a dramatic end to a shocking case that has drawn worldwide attention.

Court spokesman Franz Cutka said Fritzl would be taken to a secure psychiatric ward for mentally deranged criminals.

The homicide count — "murder by neglect" in German — was the most serious of the charges against 73-year-old Fritzl, and the jury gave him the maximum punishment allowed by law.
Officials said Fritzl would not be eligible for parole for at least 15 years, and psychiatric experts would have to concur with any decision to free him. He will also have to pay court costs. The 11 months Fritzl already has spent in pretrial detention will count toward his parole.

The other charges included false imprisonment and coercion. Fritzl had changed his stance and pleaded guilty Wednesday to all counts against him after he and the court viewed 11 hours of emotional videotaped testimony by his daughter, Elisabeth, whom he locked in a dungeon when she was 18.

"I regret it with all my heart ... I can't make it right anymore," Fritzl told the court Thursday, hours before the verdicts were announced.

In a surprise move, Elisabeth appeared in the court as it viewed her testimony Monday and Tuesday. Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said Fritzl decided to stop contesting the homicide and enslavement counts after seeing that heart-wrenching videotape.

Prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser had called for the maximum punishment in her closing arguments in Fritzl's trial in St. Poelten, west of Vienna. She urged the jury to think about his daughter's nearly quarter-century ordeal as it considered how much time he should serve.
"Don't be duped like Elisabeth was 24 years ago," when Fritzl took her captive in a cramped, rat-infested dungeon he built beneath the family's home in Amstetten.

Elisabeth, now 42, and her six surviving children, who range in age from 6 to 20, have spent months recovering in a psychiatric clinic and at a secret location. Prosecutors described her as a "broken" woman after enduring multiple rapes — some in front of her children.

The homicide charge stemmed from the 1996 death in captivity of her infant son. Prosecutors contend the ailing newborn — a male twin called Michael — might have survived if Fritzl had arranged for medical care.

"Any amateur could have determined that the child was in the throes of death for 66 hours," Burkheiser said, arguing that Fritzl should be locked up for the rest of his life for refusing to intervene and save the baby's life.

Police say DNA tests prove Fritzl is the biological father of all six surviving children, three of whom never saw daylight until the crime was exposed 11 months ago.

The three other children were brought upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, who was led to believe they were abandoned by Elisabeth when she ran off to join a cult.
Eva Plaz, a lawyer for Elisabeth and the other victims, urged the jury not to lessen Fritzl's sentence just because he pleaded guilty. In Austria, guilty pleas can be a mitigating factor.

Fritzl's pleas "were not a confession," Plaz said, adding that Elisabeth's main reason for testifying was that she believed she "owed it to her child, Michael."

Mayer, his lawyer, did not argue that Fritzl was innocent — even admitting in court that Fritzl had raped his daughter 3,000 times. But he said Fritzl had been plagued with guilt for the past 24 years, and asked the jurors to take a hard look at the homicide charge.

Mayer said Elisabeth made no mention in her diary of her baby's struggle to survive, noting instead that Fritzl brought her a crib, that both twins were born without incident and that their names were Michael and Alexander.

Psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner told the court Wednesday that Fritzl had a serious personality disorder and would pose a threat to others if freed.

At a news conference after the verdict, court officials said Elisabeth could bring a separate civil case against Fritzl to seek damages for her suffering, adding there was no limit to what she could request.

They said the Austrian government would join in on bankruptcy proceedings that Fritzl recently initiated, and said the process could involve the sale of his real estate holdings — including the house in Amstetten where he held his daughter.

They also said Fritzl would have to secure permission from Austria's Justice Ministry if he wishes to write and sell his memoirs.

The Associated Press normally withholds the names of victims of sexual assault. In this case, withholding Elisabeth's name became impractical when her name and her father's were announced publicly by police and details about them became the subject of publicity both in their home country and around the world.

Source: Yahoo Associated Press Writer William J. Kole in Vienna contributed to this report.

NEW YORK – Saying he was "deeply sorry and ashamed," Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history and was immediately led off to jail in handcuffs to the delight of his seething victims.

The list, found in his home, included a metals plant that had forced Michael McLendon to resign years ago. Also on the list was a sausage factory where he suddenly quit last week and a poultry plant that suspended his mother, District Attorney Gary McAliley said.

McAliley was quoted as telling The Dothan Eagle that the list also included people at the sausage factory who had complained about McLendon for such things as not wearing earplugs and slicing the meat too thin.

"We found a list of people he worked with, people who had done him wrong," the district attorney said outside the charred house where the rampage began.

But investigators offered no immediate explanation for why he targeted relatives and other people who weren't on the list as he fired more than 200 rounds in a roughly 20-mile trail of carnage across two counties near the Florida state line Tuesday.

In the span of about an hour, McLendon, 28, set the home he shared with his mother on fire, killed five relatives and five bystanders and committed suicide in a standoff at the metals plant.
"The community's just in disbelief, just how this could happen in our small town," said state Sen.

Harri Anne Smith, from the nearby town of Slocumb. "This was 20-something miles of terror."
It was not clear how long McLendon had been planning the attack, but authorities said he armed himself with four guns — two assault rifles with high-capacity magazines taped together, a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol — and may have planned a bigger massacre than he had time to carry out.

"I'm convinced he went over there to kill more people. He was heavily armed," said Sheriff Dave Sutton.

The shooting was the deadliest attack by a single gunman in Alabama history, and plunged Sansom, the community of about 2,000 where McLendon grew up and where most of his victims lived, into mourning.

The town is so close-knit that the mayor coached McLendon in T-ball when he was a boy, and the dead included the wife and daughter of one of the sheriff's deputies who was sent to chase McLendon.

As word about the killings spread, graduates of the local high school scrambled to find their yearbooks, and many realized they knew the gunman. "Something had to snap," said Jerry Hysmith, 35, who worked with McLendon at the metals plant in 2001.

Among the dead were some of the very people who might have helped explain what set off McLendon — his grandmother, his mother, an uncle and two cousins.

This much is clear: McLendon had a hard time keeping a job over the years, and had been forced to resign from his position at a local Reliable Metals plant in 2003, authorities said. Investigators would not say why.

That same year, he tried to join the police academy, but lasted only a week before flunking out, authorities said. His next known job came in 2007, at a nearby sausage plant operated by Kelley Foods.

The company said he quit last week but was considered a team leader and was well-liked by employees. However, the district attorney said co-workers reported him for not doing things right. McAliley also said McLendon had a list of eight lawyers, a clue that he might have been planning legal action.

The rampage started around 3:30 p.m. at McLendon's mother's home. Authorities said he put her on an L-shaped couch, piled stuff on top of her and set her ablaze. Before he left, he also shot four dogs. Investigators did not immediately say whether the woman was dead or alive when the fire was set.

Inside the charred home, a gun safe was left with its door ajar, and military gear, including a camouflage jacket and green military-style backpack, was found about the home. In another room, remnants of his baseball career, including a 1995 All-Star trophy, were prominently displayed.

After setting the home ablaze, McLendon drove a dozen miles and gunned down three other relatives and two others on a porch and shot his grandmother at a house next door, sending panicked bystanders fleeing and ducking behind cars. His uncle's wife, Phyllis White, sought refuge in the house of neighbor Archie Mock.

"She was just saying, `I think my family is dead. I think my family is dead,'" Mock said.
McLendon went inside the house and chased his aunt out before driving off, said Tom Knowles, who was at his son's house nearby and saw the shooting. Knowles said McLendon returned moments later in his car as if looking for the aunt, then turned and looked at Knowles.

"He had cold eyes. There was nothing. I hollered at him. I said, 'Look, boy, I ain't done nothing to you,'" Knowles said. McLendon then left for good.

Then, McLendon shot three more people at random as he drove toward the metals plant, firing from his car. One woman was hit as she walked out of a gas station. Another person was hit while driving. One man was shot while walking.

At the metals plant, McLendon got out of his car and fired at police with his assault rifle, wounding Geneva Police Chief Frankie Lindsey, authorities said. Then he walked inside and killed himself.

The victims included the wife and 18-month-old daughter of sheriff's Deputy Josh Myers, who was sent to chase McLendon. Myers did not know at the time that his wife and daughter were among the dead. His 4-month-old daughter was wounded in the attack.

"I cried so much yesterday, I don't have a tear left in me," said Myers, who did not know McLendon. "I feel like I should be able to walk in the house and my wife would be there, my baby girl climbing on me."