Josef Fritzl: a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant

But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant.

"At home, he was clearly the lord of the manor. Even at his campground, he was very strict and his rules had to be followed," said Anton Graf, who rented Fritzl land along Austria's Mondsee Lake.

"He was inflexible and had no sensitivity," Graf, 57, told The Associated Press. "You were sick, something happened, he didn't care ... There was a rule and that was it."

Although authorities have clamped down on records, examples of Fritzl's double life are coming to light.

The 73-year-old retired electrician was both a hard worker respected by his peers, and a fiercely private man whose life revolved around the home he ruled with an iron fist.

The mosaic of Fritzl now taking shape also points to an astonishingly agile criminal mind: He allegedly forged letters, concocted an elaborate but consistent cover story that his daughter Elisabeth had joined a cult, and even impersonated her in a phone call to his wife.

Fritzl apparently complemented trickery with a heavy reliance on authoritarianism: To keep family and tenants from the windowless, soundproofed rooms where he confined Elisabeth for 24 years, along with three of the children, he menacingly banned them from the basement.

Former tenants said Fritzl told residents of the apartment house he owned that the cellar was off-limits and they were not allowed to take photos there. Anyone who broke that verbal agreement was threatened with eviction, they said.

"He was obviously a tyrant," said Sigrun Rossmanith, who works with Austria's court system. "If they heard over and over that the cellar was taboo, then they didn't dare to check on anything."