Teen held for 8 1/2 years says she 'thought only of escape'

VIENNA, Austria -- A young woman abducted 8 1/2 years ago told Austrian TV viewers Wednesday of her anger and frustration that she hadn't simply crossed the street to avoid her kidnapper or gone to school with her mother on the morning she was seized.

Repeatedly shutting her eyes against the glare of TV lights, Natascha Kampusch, now 18, recalled her first horrific minutes inside the windowless cell beneath her captor's garage where she was held for years.

"The first time I didn't see the cellar room at all because it was pitch black. No lamp was screwed in. He only brought that after several minutes or half an hour," Kampusch told public broadcaster ORF in an interview that gave Austrians their first glimpse of the woman whose abduction has riveted a nation.

She recalled how she sometimes threw water bottles at the wall in frustration and despair and occasionally also pounded it with her fists.

"I was very distressed and very angry, and I was angry that I didn't cross to the other side of the street and that I didn't go to school with my mother. It was awful," Kampusch said.

Kampusch bolted to freedom Aug. 23 while her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, was distracted by a cell phone call. The 44-year-old communications technician killed himself within hours of her escape by jumping in front of a commuter train.

The wheezing sound of a ventilator that pumped air into her windowless room was "unbearable," she said.

She said she would have "gone crazy" if Priklopil had not occasionally allowed her upstairs, although those trips did not start until six months after she was abducted from the street as a freckle-faced 10-year-old.

Earlier Wednesday, the weekly magazine News and the mass-circulation daily Kronen Zeitung published separate interviews in which Kampusch said she "thought only of escape" during her entire ordeal and had once tried to jump out of Priklopil's car.

When Priklopil took her out on errands, "he always wanted me to walk in front of him, not behind him," apparently to minimize the chances of her escaping, she said.

Kampusch told the newspaper how she had tried to leap from Priklopil's car, but he "held me back and then sped away."

She did not specify when that escape attempt occurred, saying only that she felt "it was much too risky" to try it again because she feared Priklopil would kill her if she failed.

But she said that didn't stop her from dreaming about beheading him with an ax.

"I always had the thought: Surely I didn't come into the world so I could be locked up and my life completely ruined," Kampusch was quoted as saying by News. "I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. You saw on TV how small my cell was -- it was a place to despair."

The magazine printed a large color photograph of a pensive-looking Kampusch on its cover, showing her with piercing blue eyes and a pink scarf covering part of her strawberry blond hair. In the TV interview, she wore a loose, glittery purple blouse and the scarf.

Since her escape, Kampusch said she slipped away incognito to enjoy some ice cream.

"It was nice to smile at people, and no one recognized me," she said, dabbing with a tissue at her eyes.

The magazine said it interviewed Kampusch at Vienna's General Hospital, where a cardiologist examined her for possible heart trouble. She said she had suffered during her captivity from heart palpitations that at times made her dizzy and blurred her vision. It was unclear whether she has been diagnosed with any chronic problems.

Kampusch also said she often did not get enough to eat. Another Austrian magazine, Profil, had reported that at the time of her escape she weighed just 92 pounds -- the same weight when she was taken on March 2, 1998, while walking to school.

Kampusch called her escape from her captor's house in suburban Strasshof "completely spontaneous."

"I was there behind the gate to the garden and I felt dizzy. I realized for the first time how weak I really was," she said.

But Kampusch added that she felt well enough -- "physically, mentally and no heart problems" -- to make a run for it.

Once she had run out onto the street, "I saw a window open and someone busy in a kitchen, and I asked the woman to call the police," she said. At first, she said, the woman refused to let her inside: "She didn't want me to step on her lawn."

ORF said Kampusch had decided which questions to answer and had refused to be asked anything intimate. Police have said she may have had sexual contact with her captor, but have refused to elaborate.

Kampusch told News she regretted that Priklopil committed suicide, "because he could have explained so much more to me and to the police," but added that she no longer wished to talk about him.

She said she wants to complete her high school education and is considering a range of possible careers, including journalism, psychology, acting and art, and that she has not yet decided whether to write a book about her ordeal.

Kampusch also told the magazine she loved her parents, who divorced after she was taken, and denied there was any controversy. Psychologists treating her have said she has been in touch with her mother, but has not asked for her father since they were briefly reunited after her escape.

"It was worse for them than it was for me. They thought I was dead," she said.