An entire family, and their maid, were murdered on a small German farmstead in 1922. As of March, 2021, we still have no answers for what happened at Hinterkaifeck in March and April of 1922.
Hinterkaifeck was a small farmstead located roughly 70 kilometers north of Munich, near the town of Gröbern, and just behind (in German, hinter) the town of Kaifeck, near modern-day Waidhofen. The farmstead was built in roughly 1863, and was home to the Gruber family.
The Grubers consisted of Andreas (63), his wife Cäzilia (72), their daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35), and Viktoria’s two children Cäzilia (7) named after her grandmother, and Josef (2), the toddler. Also living on the farm was Maria Baumgartner (44), who began her employment with the family as a maid on March 31st, 1922.
The Gruber family were known to keep to themselves, and enjoy their isolation. They worked hard, and their land thrived. The farm was extremely successful, though the family was also known to be stingy with money.
In late 1921, the long-time maid of the Gruber family, Kreszenz Rieger, abruptly quit her employment and left the farm. She heard strange sounds throughout the house, but mostly coming from the attic. The sounds were especially loud at night.
Kreszenz brought her concerns to Andreas, who brushed her off, telling her it was nothing. When the sounds didn’t stop, she believed the farm to be haunted, and left.
However, other strange goings on were apparent around Hinterkaifeck. Andreas found a strange newspaper from Munich, dating March 1922. He brought the newspaper back to the postman, believing it to have been lost, only to discover that no one in the vicinity subscribed to that particular paper.
A few days later, Andreas told neighbours that he found footsteps leading from the woods heading towards the farm, but he didn’t find any footprints heading back. He also reported hearing noises in the attic, but seeing no one when he went to investigate. He also said that a key to the house was missing.
He also noticed that the cows were restless, and one cow had escaped a couple of times, despite Andreas swearing that the stable doors were securely closed.
Despite the strangeness of these events, Andreas refused to accept assistance. One neighbour tried to give Andreas a gun for protection, but he was rebuffed. Andreas also refused to go to the police with his concerns.
On March 31st, 1922, the younger Cäzilia was tired at school, and fell asleep in class. When asked why, she explained that the family had spent the night searching the woods for her mother, who had run out of the house, screaming that someone was watching and chasing her. They found her hours later, still convinced that someone else had been in the house.
Later that afternoon, Maria Baumgartner was escorted by her sister to Hinterkaifeck to begin her work as a live-in maid. Maria’s sister was most likely the last person to see the Gruber family alive.
Sometime during the night, Andreas, Cäzilia, Viktoria, and Cäzilia were lured to the barn one by one. It’s speculated that they were lured out to the barn either by strange noises, or by the recent restlessness, or escape, of the cows. Once in the barn, one by one, they were hit over the head several times with a heavy object.
They were then stacked, one on top of the other, in a corner, and covered with straw. The perpetrator, or perpetrators, then moved into the home, where he murdered Josef in his stroller, and Maria in her bedroom. Josef was covered with his mother’s skirt, and Maria was covered with a blanket.
The following day, Hans Schirovsky and Eduard Schirovsky, coffee sellers, arrived at Hinterkaifeck expecting the family to place an order with them. However, no one answered their knocks, and no one was seen around the farm, despite the cows mooing, and smoke coming from the chimney.
When Cäzilia missed school, and the whole family missed Sunday mass, neighbours thought it odd, but didn’t investigate further. They saw the farm animals were tended to, and that smoke was wafting from the chimney. They just assumed that the family had come down with an illness, and left the farmstead be.
A few days later, on April 4th, 1922, Albert Hofner arrived at Hinterkaifeck in order to repair some equipment. Albert was expected, as he had made an appointment with Andreas. No one answered his knocks or shouts, but the machine he was due to repair was out. Hearing the sounds of the cows and the family dog inside the barn, Albert figured the family was just out, and set about his repairs.
Roughly four and a half hours later, Albert completed the repairs, and walked across the farm’s courtyard. Then, he noticed that the barn door, which had been locked earlier, was wide open, and the family dog was tied up out front, barking and snarling.
Albert was confused as to why no one had approached him if they’d returned home. So, he went to the neighbouring Schlittenbauer farm, and reported to Lorenz Schlittenbauer about the strange things he’d observed at Hinterfaifeck.
At around 3:30 PM that same day, Lorenz sent his sons to Hinterkaifeck to try and make contact with the family. When his sons reported back that they hadn’t seen or heard anyone, Lorenz set off for the farm with Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl.
The group of men searched around the farm, and discovered the barn had been relocked. They broke down the door, and found the four bodies stacked one on top of the other in the corner.
Schlittenbauer then began moving the bodies. One of his companions was asked to stop, that they should tell the police and wait for them before they did anything else. Schlittenbauer was having none of it. “I’m looking for my son,” he said. But Josef wasn’t in the barn.
Lorenz Schlittenbauer and Viktoria Gabriel had had a short romance a few years prior to the murders. Viktoria was a widow, and Lorenz a widower. Though Josef’s paternity has never been definitively determined, it is believed that Lorenz Schlittenbauer was the father.
And Schlittenbauer wanted to find his son. From the barn, he approached the stables, where he found a pickaxe leaning against the door. In the stables, he also found the family dog, which Albert Hofner had told him had been tied up outside. The dog appeared to have a wound over his right eye, and trembled as Schilttenbauer, Pöll, and Sigl approached the stables, clearly terrified and hurt.
From the stables, Schlittenbauer approached the door that connected the stables to the rest of the living quarters. To the other two men, it appeared as though Schlittenbauer produced a key, and entered the building. Later, he would state that the key had been left in the lock.
Once inside the house, Schlittenbauer began searching. He found Josef’s stroller in a bedroom, and a woman’s skirt pulled over the top. Peering inside the stroller, they find Josef dead from a severe blow to the head. He then opened the rear door of the house to let the other two men inside.
A further search of the house leads them to discover Maria in her quarters. The mattress had been pulled from the bed onto the floor, where she lay, head bashed in, covered in a blanket.
The men also noticed that the farm animals appeared to have been cared for, and that the kitchen had been used to make food.
News of the massacre spread quickly among the community. The mayor of the town alerted police, who had a treacherous journey from Munich.
By 6:00 PM, a crowd had gathered at Hinterkaifeck, where Schlittenbauer had taken it upon himself to give ‘tours’ to the onlookers, pointing out the bodies, and walking through the house. One onlooker warned him that he really should wait for police to arrive, and that no one should be allowed inside so as to preserve the crime scenes. Schlittenbauer replied that the visitors were already there, and there was nothing else he could do.
Police arrived from Munich at around 1:30 AM on April 5th, 1922. They opted to rest at the mayor’s home, as it was dark out, and wait until first light to investigate. When they arrived at 5:30 AM, they found Schlittenbauer still watching over the farm, almost obsessively.
Inspector Georg Reingruber was the lead investigator into the murders, and was troubled by how many people had trampled in and out of the crime scenes. The bodies had been moved, which meant they would not know in which order the family was murdered, things around the house had been moved, and people had helped themselves to snacks in the kitchen.
There was no blood spatter to be found, except for on the door that led to the stables. Police found the pickaxe, but noticed that, aside from a couple of brown-ish stains on the handle, it was clean. Schlittenbauer suggested that the pickaxe might, in fact, be the murder weapon, but that the cattle in the stables had licked it clean.
As police investigated the house, they found the bodies of Josef and Maria. They also noticed that a layer of hay had been spread out around the attic, with impressions in it as if someone, or multiple someones, had been lying down there. They also found bacon rinds on the floor, and human excrement in the corner.
And just to make things even creepier, investigators found that floor tiles in the attic were loose, which could allow for whomever had been up there to spy on the family downstairs, in the living quarters.
Upon completing the investigation of the Hinterkaifeck farmstead, Inspector Reingruber wrote in his report that were were no discernible details as to the identity of the attacker.
A court physician was dispatched to Hinterkaifeck, where he performed the autopsies right in the barn. Johann Baptist Aumüller determined that the family had been murdered by blows to the head by a mattock – a tool that looks like a pickaxe, with a blade on one side, and a pick on the other. It was also discovered that 7-year-old Cäzilia had been alive for a length of time after the attack, as she had pulled out her own hair, and clumps of it were found in her hands.
72-year-old Cäzilia had signs of strangulation around her neck, and suffered an estimated seven blows to her head. Andreas and Viktoria also suffered several blows to the head, and Viktoria’s head also showed nine ‘star-shaped’ wounds. Maria and Josef also suffered blows to the head.
Aumüller then removed the heads, and sent them on to Munich for further examination. The skulls were later lost during the chaos of World War II.
As police began their investigation, they believed that robbery may have been the motive for the massacre. However, a large sum of money was found in the house, and many of the individuals they interviewed, including travelling craftsmen, neighbours, transient farm workers, and other inhabitants of the nearby towns, didn’t indicate that anything out of the ordinary had occurred during the time when the family was murdered, and their bodies were discovered.
Police believed that the perpetrator, or perpetrators, had lived in the house for a few days after the murders. It was also likely that this person, or persons, had knowledge of farm work, as the animals were all fed and cared for. They also found that the pantry had been raided, and the kitchen had been used. This theory also accounted for the smoke the neighbours saw rising from the chimney.
Police then speculated that the perpetrator, or perpetrators, likely had been hiding around Hinterkaifeck in the weeks leading up to the murder. They believed this based on information they’d gotten from the neighbours about the strange incidents that Andreas had told them about.
As the weeks and months wore on, the investigation seemed to go nowhere. Over 100 suspects were questioned, but there just wasn’t enough evidence to go forward with an arrest.
Roughly a year after the murders, Hinterkaifeck was demolished. Police were once again brought back to the farm as new evidence was discovered. They found the murder weapon, a mattock, and a pen-knife. The mattock had a screw on the handle that matched the star-shaped wounds on Viktoria’s head.
The investigation was prolonged, and thorough. In speculating that restless farm animals drew the family to the barn, this theory was tested. It was found that, at least, human screams from the barn could not be heard from the living quarters of the house.
Many individuals also noticed movement around the farm in the days after the murders. One man reported that as he walked by Hinterkaifeck, someone approached him with a lantern, which they drew near his face to blind him, sending the man hastily on his way.
A nearby farmer also reported seeing two men near the forest on the edge of the Hinterkaifeck property. When they noticed him walking by, they turned away so as to hide their faces.
In May of 1927, a rumour was spread through Waidhofen that a stranger approached a local during the night, asked questions about the Hinterkaifeck murders, then shouted that he was the murderer, and ran into the woods. This stranger has never been identified.
Despite the lack of evidence, and the outlandish tale above, police had a few key suspects.
The first suspect was Karl Gabriel. Karl had been married to Viktoria, but was reportedly killed in action during a shell attack in France in December of 1914 during World War I. His body had never been recovered.
It was rumoured that Karl had returned after living in hiding, but flew into a rage when he discovered that Vikrotia had had another child, and murdered the entire family.
Admittedly, this theory runs a little thin.
For a long time, Lorenz Schlittenbauer was believed to be the prime suspect in the Hinterkaifeck murders.
After the death of his wife in 1918, Schlittenbauer and Viktoria were in a romantic relationship. He was believed to be the father of 2-year-old Josef.
Many of Schlittenbauer’s actions were deemed suspicious the day the murders were discovered. The way he moved the bodies, and walked around the property seemed deliberate to some, as though he wanted to contaminate the crime scenes.
He also unlocked a door with a key – his companions on that day said they saw him take the key out of his pocket, while he maintained that the key was already in the lock. However, he was a known neighbour, and had been in a relationship with Viktoria, it could be possible that he’d been given a key at some point. But this does not account for Andreas claiming to have lost a key to the house a few days prior to the murders.
It was also rumoured that Schlittenbauer was unhappy when Viktoria asked for child support for Josef, when their relationship broke down due to Andreas’s interference.
Over the years, Schlittenbauer seemed to make strange comments, and seemed oddly attached to the Hinterkaifeck land, even after the demolition of the farmstead. He would find his way there, look out over the land, and just seem strange.
However, up until his death in 1941, he took legal action, winning several civil claims in court for slander against anyone who referred to him as ‘the murderer of Hinterkaifeck’, or alluded that he was responsible.
Despite the strange behaviour, seemingly strong motive, and intensive police questioning, Lorenz Schlittenbauer was never arrested.
Another, extremely unlikely theory, posited that the murders were committed by Andreas himself, and then he killed himself.
In 1915, Andreas and Viktoria had been arrested and convicted of incest. Viktoria had spend a month in jail, while Andreas was sentenced to a year.
Rumours were rampant around the neighbouring communities that Andreas was horrendously abusive towards his family. In fact, Viktoria was the only child between himself and Cäzilia to have survived his rough treatment. The others did not survive past infancy.
Andreas was obsessed with his daughter, and was extremely upset when she married Karl Gabriel. Upon Karl’s reported death, Andreas controlled Viktoria, and refused to let her go. It was rumoured that Josef was actually Andreas’s son, not Schlittenbauer’s.
During Schlittenbauer’s relationship with Viktoria, he asked Andreas for his blessing to propose to Viktoria. Andreas would have none of it, and refused to let Viktoria leave him.
These rumours seemed to bolster the murder-suicide theory for some locals, however the wounds on the bodies are inconsistent with this.
In 1951, another theory cropped up. Kreszentia Mayer claimed on her death bed that her brothers, Adolf and Anton Gump, had committed the murders. Adolf was already dead, but Anton was investigated. No evidence could support this theory, and the case against him was dropped.
In 1971, a woman wrote a letter claiming that as a young girl, she witnessed a visit between her mother, and the mother of brothers Karl and Andreas S. The mother of the two brothers claimed that her sons were the Hinterkaifeck murderers. The mother claimed that Andreas regretted losing his pen-knife during the attack.
This letter could not be corroborated, and this line of questioning was quickly dropped.
In his book The Man from the Train, author Bill James, along with his daughter Rachel McCarthy James, posit that a German man, Paul Mueller, was the murderer. The book suggests that Mueller was responsible for a string of axe attacks on secluded farmsteads across the United States, and may have returned to his homeland of Germany when American authorities began investigating him. The Hinterkaifeck murders share similarities with the alleged farmstead attacks committed by Meuller.
In 2007, the Fürstenfeldbruck Police Academy investigated the Hinterkaifeck murders as a cold case, using modern policing and investigative strategies to investigate the original case file.
This investigation was hindered by missing evidence, and the deaths of witnesses and suspects. Despite these challenges, they managed to narrow their investigation down to one suspect, and one theory.
However, they have never publicly stated the identity of the suspect, nor have they given details to their theory of what happened out of respect for the living descendents of those related to the crime.
So close, yet so far. The mystery of the Hinterkaifeck murders has fascinated people around the world for nearly 100 years. Despite the Fürstenfeldbruck Police Academy’s claims of having a solid theory and a suspect, it is highly unlikely that this information will ever be made public, leaving us all to continue to speculate.
Nearly 100 years later, I can’t help but ask: What the hell happened at Hinterkaifeck?
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Sources:
The Chilling Story of the Hinterkaifeck Killings, Germany’s Most Famous Unsolved Crime – Sonya Vatomsky – Mental Floss
The unsolved Hinterkaifeck farm murders are creepy AF – Bianca Myrtil – Film Daily
11 Disturbing Facts About The Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders – Cat McAuliffe – Ranker
The Gruesome Tale of the Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders – Katie Serena – All That’s Interesting
Casefile podcast – Case 124: Hinterkaifeck
Hinterkaifeck Murders Wikipedia page