Sankt Poelten, Austria - "I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. Unfortunately, I can't change anything now," Josef Fritzl told the court on Thursday, just before the jury retired to consider its verdict in the murder-incest trial.
The prosecution has demanded the "maximum" penalty - which is life in the case of murder - for the 73-year-old who has confessed to holding his daughter as a sex slave in a damp, under-ventilated cellar for 24 years, fathering seven children with her and letting one of the babies die shortly after birth.
"It was murder by neglect and that demands the maximum sentence," chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser told jurors in her closing statement earlier.