Singing Like a Canary
He also denied claims of enslavement, and Rudolf Mayer tried to defend Fritzl's decision to imprison his daughter as nothing more than "the act of a devoted father," as reported by The Guardian. Josef's defense was that Elisabeth was a misguided child, and he locked her away to protect her from the outside world.
Mayer tried to maintain that Fritzl wasn't the animal the media painted him as and that he looked after Elisabeth while she was in the basement, bringing books, a Christmas tree, and even a pet canary down there. Proving that the bird survived was supposed to show that the air quality in the basement was acceptable.
