[Johnny Alias]

Originally Posted by Oswald2001 ↗

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

Or the horror that happened four years before.. never mind the craziness that was happening between communists and Nazis at the time.

Those Munich detectives were probably just overworked with murder at the time

[downunder]

[pancrasefan]

Read about this on Reddit from an in depth findings report. Apparently a few days after the murder, a guy passing by tried to check up at night but a man appeared with a lantern and shined it in his face, so he couldn’t see who it was. He got scared so he left. That’s kinda creepy. Wonder if it was one of the murderers and what they were doing back at the house days later.

[Johnny Alias]

Originally Posted by pancrasefan ↗

Read about this on Reddit from an in depth findings report. Apparently a few days after the murder, a guy passing by tried to check up at night but a man appeared with a lantern and shined it in his face, so he couldn’t see who it was. He got scared so he left. That’s kinda creepy. Wonder if it was one of the murderers and what they were doing back at the house days later.

The light flashing by the killer occurred during the weekend of the killings, not after the bodies were discovered. It was one of the major clues/witness recollections that proved the killer stayed at the farm the whole weekend.

And yes it was just one killer - we know this because he had to lure the family to the barn to be killed one by one.

One of the farm’s cows was witnessed wandering outside of the gate after the bodies were found .. that’s how the killer lured each victim to the barn: by letting out the cow, someone from inside the house would come out to lock the wandering cattle back in; first the father, then his wife, then finally the daughter and granddaughter together. That’s probably why the daughter lived so long (for hours) after the initial attack; Viktoria entered the barn with her daughter and during the frenzied attack on the two, most of the killer’s fury was focused on Viktoria, the main target of our killer. This was a lust killing, and the strangulation marks on Viktoria is evidence that her killing was extra close and personal.

Nothing to see here, it’s more than obvious that the neighbour did it. The police academy review of the case didn’t name him out of respect to his surviving relatives, but the leading questions in its case material makes it more than obvious the police were referring to Lorenz Schlittenbauer (LS).

- He had the motive, since he was paying child support for a child that the whole town knew was most probably sired not by him but by Viktoria’s own father. The big argument witnessed by the fighter involving her mother, I’m thinking was an argument involving her and LS concerning either the child’s true paternity, or Viktoria’s refusal to end her well documented incestuous relationship with her father.

- The footprints in the snow leading to the house from the forest (but not back) was an attempt by someone local (that would be Lorenz) to make it appear as if the farm was being visited by a foreign outsider.

- just after finding six mutilated bodies he eats a sandwich in the kitchen. Ok he was a WWI veteran but I mean come on his baby son has his head bashed upstairs in a crib and he makes a sandwich? This reeks of a level of comfort only a killer who had already spent a lot of time in the kitchen. He probably even made the sandwich out of habit since he had been doing it all weekend.

- the killer stayed in the house of his victims the whole weekend after the murders in order to get rid of evidence. That’s was the primary reason witnessed confirmed the chimney had smoke coming out of it all weekend; it was the killer burning all his blood-covered clothes.

- the animals and dog were all well fed and taken care of (the cows even had been milked) because big hungry animals in large open farmland spaces tend to make noises and attract inquisitive local farmers.

- the animals were well taken care of also because the killer had some kind of other interest in keeping them alive and well cared for: after the murders, Lorenz was made the executor of the dead family’s estate, and although he did not end up inheriting the farm (maybe he thought he would have), he did end up owning the farm animals as reward for being the state executor.

- another thing, Lorenz had lots of kids with several different women. One of those little boys died just before the Gruber family was murdered, and this I believe was the extremely stressful event that caused all his hidden anger to finally come out and violently explode.

- from the evidence, it seems that Lorenz was extremely angry that his preferred son died, while the son he repeatedly denied (yet still had to pay child support for, and that he knew was very likely the result of incest between Viktoria and her father (in their 1915 court case for incest, both Viktoria and her dad were convicted of carrying on an incestuous relationship since 1907).

- it’s interesting to note that witnesses at the crime scene heard Lorenz state he was going to the house to check on his son - which was surprising to the witnesses since Lorenz had repeatedly denied paternity. This may have been a subconscious (or planned) attempt by the killer to obtain sympathy.

- Lorenz claimed that he offered his gun to the father after hearing about the weird footprints and scratches on the lock. But this could be because, as a war veteran, he knew the elderly Gruber was more of an abuser of women and not a fighter of men (the elderly Gruber served WWI in prison, and not in any wartime capacity)

Only reason this case wasn’t solved at the time was because:

1. The murder weapons weapons were not found until a year later - the mattock in the attic and the penknife in the barn’s hay - making even an arrest difficult let alone trial and conviction.

2. Lorenz obviously had a lot of clout at that time in the village .. even today they’ve managed to pressure the German police into not naming him in public.

3. Police on this matter had to come in from Munich, quite a while away. There was no police or specialized support in the area, which I believe is the reason the coroner Harv to conduct the autopsy right there in the barnyard.

And the Munich police were likely overworked already due to the wave of political murders and street battles/killings occurring at that time in Bavaria due to fighting between Nazis and communists, and general post-WWI 1920s German anarchy.

[Marsofwar]

This story and the Villisca axe murder story can consume me for hours.

[Budd Dwyer]

For some reason, this is one of the scariest unsolved cases for me....the pics are bone chilling, even if you can barely make out the actual bodies....but the scene is like a glimpse of hell