Austrian father to plead guilty to rape

VIENNA, March 7 (UPI) -- His lawyer says Josef Fritzi plans to plead guilty to raping and imprisoning his daughter for more than two decades in the cellar of their home in Austria.

Fritzi, 73, has agreed to plead guilty to deprivation of liberty, incest, rape, and coercion, said defense lawyer Rudolf Mayer.

Fritzi will deny, however, the charge that he killed one of the seven children he fathered with his daughter, Elisabeth, said Mayer, calling his client a deeply disturbed man, the BBC reported Saturday.

Fritzi, whose trial is scheduled to begin March 16, denies newspaper headlines that he was a "sex monster" and chooses to believe that he loved his daughter "in his own way."

Three of the six surviving children Fritzi had with Elisabeth were raised upstairs in the family home, while the other three children were confined to the cellar until Fritzi's arrest in April 2008.