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Tom Landon: Conspiracy theorist, 54, arrested after six children found living in cellar 'unfit for human habitation' for NINE MONTHS

Tom Landon, who is said to be a 'doomsday prepper', was living in a network of tunnels along with his wife and 6 children and had several guns

OBRITZ, AUSTRIA: The picture of the man, who was arrested after six children were saved from a wine cellar in a remote village in Austria, has been released. Conspiracy theorist and alleged Holocaust denier Tom Landon, 54, was held after he reportedly attacked the police and social workers with pepper spray in the Austrian village of Obritz. 

Landon along with his wife, 40, and six children were found living in a wine cellar with several guns and had reportedly lived there for the past nine months. The family of eight previously resided in London where Landon was working in IT, as per The Times. Officials said that they were living in a network of tunnels underneath Obritz, a tiny village some 60 miles north of the Austrian capital Vienna, near the border with the Czech Republic. According to Obritz's deputy mayor Erich Greil, he "wanted a cellar for each child." Landon is said to be a "doomsday prepper", which is a state of mind where a person builds their life around preparing for a "major disaster or cataclysmic event." At the moment, the police are trying to trace records on the children, none of whom were registered in Austria. 

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The arrest took place after Austrian officials were called by worried neighbors on Thursday, January 26. When the officials attempted to question him, it is alleged that he reacted violently and attacked them. Following Landon attacking the two government officials with pepper spray, the cops stormed into the cellar and found him barricaded inside along with a 40-year-old woman and six children, aged between seven months and five years. Several guns were also discovered in the cellar. 

"The man has been questioned and has now been released. Now with Interpol we are working to identify the children who we believe may have been born in the UK," a Austrian police source told the DailyMail. "The man and his wife, who is British, had certainly lived in the UK and had connections there. The children have been taken into the care of local authorities temporarily. The prosecutor has also been informed as the man attacked officers with pepper spray and he faces charges for that."

Landon had reportedly self-published a number of books denouncing Austria's government, including 'Red Sow', 'Dirty Justice', 'The Judas Principle', and 'The Destructive Effect of Information Technology on Human Intellectual Development'. According to The Sun, Landon is listed at Companies House as the director of two firms, although one of the two has since been dissolved. 

Landon apparently told the cops that he planned to stay in the cellar, which he reportedly bought through a British company, for a day or two longer. Greil told The Sunday Times: "He's not from here and has only been [in] Obritz for a short time. Before that, he apparently lived in England. I think he worked in the IT sector."

He is also believed to have ties to the Austrian branch of the far-right German Reichsburger movement. The right-wing extremist movement believes the German empire still exists as it did prior to World War II and the current German state is insignificant, as per the DailyMail. "The presumed Reich citizen is known to officials, was firmly convinced of bizarre conspiracy theories and had apparently completely ‘drifted away’ since the Ukraine war,” reported Austria's Kronen Zeitung newspaper, as per The Sun. 

Landon is also said to have written a musical about Austrian rock star Falco, known for his 1985 hit Rock Me Amadeus, who died in a car crash in the Dominican Republic. Landon, who was also living on the Caribbean island at the time, claims that he found the body and that the singer’s true cause of death was veiled.

Comparisons have been drawn between Landon's case and the infamous case of Josef Fritzl, 87, who kept his daughter Elisabeth locked in a cellar for 24 years, and forced her to have his seven children during that time.