[deanmine]

Andreas Gruber lived on a farm in Hinterkaifeck, Germany with his family and maid. Shortly before the murders, Mr. Gruber spoke to a friend in town about some strange things he was seeing on the farm. Mr. Gruber claimed that he noticed strange footprints that led to trees, but none that led away, he also claimed that he heard footsteps in his attic, yet never found anyone when he went to investigate.

Sometime during the night of March 29, 1922 himself, and three other family members went into the barn to investigate a strange noise, and were all killed, one by one. The still unknown killer then made their way into the house and killed the youngest child who was sleeping in his crib, and the maid, who was unpacking some items from her suitcase.

This murder is still unsolved today, and no suspect or motive has ever been discovered.




This was the scene of one of the most puzzling crimes in German history. On the evening of March 29, 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a mattock.



The murder is still unsolved.



The six victims were the farmer Andreas Gruber (63) and his wife Cäzilia (72); their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35) and her two children, Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2); and the maid Maria Baumgartner (44). The two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuous relationship.

The crime

A few days prior to the crime, farmer Andreas Gruber told neighbours about discovering footprints in the snow leading from the edge of the forest to the farm, but none leading back. He also spoke about hearing footsteps in the attic and finding an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm. Furthermore, the house keys went missing several days before the murders, but none of this was reported to the police.



Six months earlier, the previous maid had left the farm, claiming that it was haunted; the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived on the farm on 31 March, only a few hours before her death.



Exactly what happened on that Friday evening cannot be said for certain. It is believed that the older couple, as well as their daughter Viktoria and her daughter Cäzilia, were somehow all lured into the barn one by one, where they were killed. The perpetrator(s) then went into the house where they killed two-year-old Josef who was sleeping in his cot in his mother's bedroom, as well as the maid, Maria Baumgartner, in her bed-chamber.



On the following Tuesday, the 4th of April, some neighbours went to the farmstead because none of the inhabitants had been seen for several days, which was rather unusual. The postman had noticed that the post from the previous Saturday was still where he had left it. Furthermore, young Cäzilia had not turned up for school on Monday, nor had she been there on Saturday.

The Investigation

Inspector Georg Reingruber and his colleagues from the Munich Police Department made immense efforts investigating the killings. More than 100 suspects have been questioned through the years, but to no avail. The most recent questioning took place in 1986, fruitlessly. In 2007 the students of the Polizeifachhochschule (Police Academy) in Fürstenfeldbruck got the task to investigate the case once more with modern techniques of criminal investigation. They came to the conclusion that it is impossible to completely solve the crime after that much time had passed: There is a lack of evidence because the investigation methods then were rather primitive, in addition evidence has been lost and the suspects have since died. Nevertheless they came to the conclusion that they consider one person the main suspect, they don't directly name that person in the report out of respect for still living relatives.

To this day, many hobby investigators continue to investigate the case. The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, and interrogated several inhabitants from the surrounding villages, as well as travelling craftsmen and vagrants. The robbery theory was, however, abandoned when a large amount of money was found in the house. It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend – and anyone looking for money would have found it.

The death of Karl Gabriel, Viktoria's husband who had been reported killed in the French trenches in 1914, was called into question. His body had never been found.

The following day, on the 5th of April, court physician Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller performed the autopsies in the barn. It was established that a pickaxe was the most likely murder weapon. The corpses were beheaded, and the skulls sent to Munich, where clairvoyants examined them without result. The autopsy also showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault. Lying in the straw, next to the bodies of her grandparents and her mother, she had torn her hair out in tufts.

The Funeral

The six victims are buried in Waidhofen, where there is a memorial in the graveyard. The skulls were never returned from Munich, after being lost during the chaos of WWII. Close to where the farm was located, there is now a shrine.

The farm was demolished the following year, in 1923.

[30564U]

Nice touch...they autopsied the bodies at the actual murder scene. Classic...I wonder what else they did or didn't do? That was more than likely the first mass murder ever investigated by those officers.

[kellyhound]

No one was sure who Josef's (2 yrs) father was and Viktoria took Schlittenbauer to court for alimony

-There was an incestuous relationship between Viktoria and Andreas (common consensus by the town and he was even convicted)

-Schlittenbauer argued Josef was Andreas's child but lost the court case and got hit with hefty child support

-Guns owned by the family were not found after the incident

-The footprints were of two men who broke into the "engine houses(?)" and tracks back to the forest weren't found (this occurred in conjunction with below)

-Two nights before a cow was unleashed from the stable and Andreas had to take it back to the barn. A cow was found wandering around the property when the bodies were found. <-this is how he was lured and this was a test run

-Viktoria was strangled and the reports continually suggest it was a crime with personal motivations

-The person who turned the oven on had an outline similar to Schlittenbauer's

-Schlittenbauer was their neighbour

-Schlittenbauer went to two others and said they should visit his son -> this is how the bodies were found

-Schlittenbauer acted in a nonchalant manner at the crime scene and the others thought it was suspicious, especially the way he interfered with the scene

The fact that the culprit found the guns and didn't use them points to a something more person such as a rejection or revenge. The more personal style of murdering Viktoria along with the torture suggests that she was the focal point of this, but the sheer brutality of Andreas's murder suggests a hatred ("The right half of the face of the old man was broken apart. The cheek bones stood out, the meat was shredded, his face was caked with blood").

However, there is one other theory which the officials were more keen on.
-Their sister said on her deathbed that the brothers did it
-They contested that Josef was Andreas's brother's son and Andrea's brother was jealous
-There were two of them which would more accurately suggest the footprints
-History of trouble with the law

[Oswald2001]

Nothing compared to the horror that was coming 20 years later.

[deanmine]

to true....

[RealityBites1912]

Why weren't the heads kept with the bodies??

"Sir, we lost the heads."
"Which ones?"
"All of them, sir."
"Johnson, you are so fired...."

[K53]

Love the glimpse at historical gore

[janiceh801]

This would make a really good movie. I wonder why one was never made (I assume).

[darkredspyder]

The footsteps in the attic might be the creepiest part leading up the murders. Wouldn't expect it to ever be solved for the same reasons those students in 2007 gave.

[TheFallOfTroyML]

last 2 pics are not related to the crime itself.

altough you cant see it, there are 4 people dead in the barn.

those are the 8 pics that exist

1, 2 and 3 pic is the farm where they died

4 is a pic after the police moved the bodies

5 is a "reenactment" how the police found the bodies

6 is the room of the maid, where she was murdered. you can see her in the middle of the pic

7 are the coffins

8 is the crib, where the little boy was killed