In the spring of 1922 an event occurred in Germany that shocked the whole country. What happened inside the small farm of Hinterkaifeck remains one of the great unresolved mysteries of the country's history. This was the sequence of terrifying deeds.
Andreas Gruber was a German farmer who lived in a remote farm known as Hinterkaifeck. At the beginning of March 1922, the man began to notice a series of strange events. At first he did not give much importance, but as soon as the days went by he decided to tell some close friends.
Apparently, Gruber had found traces that came out of the forest behind his house, but the strangest thing was that none of them showed the way back. Besides, he thought he had heard footsteps in the attic of his house, and he had also found a newspaper that seemed to have come from nowhere. The keys to his house also disappeared for a while.
The curious thing is that despite all these clichés of horror films, Gruber never informed the police, only to some friends. The farmer lived with his wife Cäzilia, his daughter Viktoria and their two children, Cäzilia and Josef. The family also had a maid employed. A woman who had the bad luck to be in the house at the time of violence.
Although no one knows exactly how the brutal events unfolded on March 31, the results were well documented.
Death in Hinterkaifeck
Hinterkaifeck was a lonely place. Located near the forests outside the Bavarian town of Gröbern, an hour by car from Munich and half a kilometer away from the city of Kaifeck.
The family was known for keeping up with the farm's resources. Also, they were not given much to get out of there. However, neighbors worried on April 1, 1922 when the young Cäzilia missed school. In addition, the family did not show up at the church where Viktoria was a member of the choir.
Doubts widened when Cäzilia again missed classes on 3 April. By that time, the family mail had begun to pile up at the local post office. On April 4, neighbors and friends of the family decided to investigate exactly what happened. Lorenz Schlittenbauer, a farmer living nearby, led the search for the Gruber.
What this first group was about to discover was going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. Schlittenbauer came first to the barn. There was a Dantesque scene: four brutally beaten bodies covered with hay. In the interior of the house they discovered the bodies of Josef, of 2 years, and the maid, Maria Baumgartner. By the way, the woman who had taken her place before had left the farm because she had a firm belief that she was haunted.
Autopsy and research
The report of the family autopsies drew a frightening scenario about their deaths. The mother of the family, Cäzilia, showed signs of strangulation and up to seven blows to the head, leaving her skull cracked. The face of her husband, Andreas, was covered in blood, and his cheeks came out of flesh from the blows he had received.
Viktoria's skull was also broken; his head showed up to nine "all star-shaped" wounds, and the right side of his face had been struck with a blunt object. Cäzilia's lower jaw was also shattered, her face and neck covered with open, circular wounds.
Schlittenbauer came first to the barn. There was a Dantesque scene: four brutally beaten bodies covered with hay. In the interior of the house they discovered the bodies of Josef, of 2 years, and the maid, Maria Baumgartner
While Cäzilia (mother), Andreas and Viktoria were probably killed instantly by the blows produced by some type of weapon (some tool used to dig and cut was pointed out), the autopsy found that young Càzilia probably remained alive and in state of shock for several hours after his attack. In fact, the girl had ripped off parts of her hair.
Inside the farm, little Josef and Maria Baumgartner had a similar fate. Maria was killed by a series of blows to the head, and Josef by a strong blow on the face inside her crib in Viktoria's room. Like the bodies in the barn, theirs were also covered: Mary with her sheets, and Josef with one of her mother's dresses.
The farm animals and a guard dog that had the family remained uninjured. Moreover, in a strange way, the investigators verified that somebody had attended them and fed them in the following days that passed between the murders and the terrible discovery.
The first suspects were some well-known vagabonds from the area and petty criminals in the region, but any theory about any of them collapsed a few days later. The police had found large sums of money inside the house.
Viktoria's skull was also broken; his head showed up to nine wounds "all star-shaped", and the right side of his face had been struck with a blunt object
Theft theory lost its strength as the investigation progressed. In addition to the bodies and the hay and the sheets covering them, the farm was intact. However, they had no doubts, authorities knew that the killer remained clearly on the farm for several days, feeding the animals, eating and lighting fires at home.
When police questioned the former maid about her belief that the property was "haunted," the woman said she had come to that conclusion after constantly listening to sounds in the attic and experiencing a strange and bewildering feeling of being watched.
Andreas, the patriarch of the farm, never believed her. However, and as we said at the outset, the farmer had commented to his near circle some events of difficult explanation. To make things even stranger, one of the two family keys disappeared shortly before the murder. If we do a count of the number of unusual details, only with that we have for a mini novel of mystery and terror.
Adding the strange traces that led to the house, the sounds in the attic and the chimney that smoke came in the days following the crime, one could calmly imagine a horrible scenario, with a ruthless sadist who, after committing several murders, had resided on the farm.
Common suspects
As the weeks passed, the case was closed as to the number of suspects. Police established a table where several men were connected with the family.
The daughter of the family, Viktoria, was a widow. Her husband had died in World War I, and the kinship of her son Josef remains a mystery to this day. She had had a relationship with Lorenz Schlittenbauer, the guy who had led the search and who discovered the bodies. In fact, both had publicly referred to Josef as his son.
The couple planned to get married until Andreas interfered and the relationship was over. Lorenz married shortly afterwards with another woman and they had a baby, although it died a few weeks later.
For this reason, the police concentrated on Lorenz as the main suspect. Theorized that, possibly traumatized by the death of his baby and unwilling to pay Josef's support, he had come to the farm and killed Viktoria and the rest of his family.
The theory was reinforced by the fact that they had found their suspicious behavior during the initial investigation; the man had acted indifferently as he saw the bodies, without the slightest sign of repulsion. He also knew the area around the farm better than anyone else.
The police interrogated him several times, but he was unable to locate him conclusively at the scene of the crime. They reasoned that his behavior could be explained by the shock that produced him what he saw, and his knowledge of the farm by his relationship with Viktoria.
Adding the strange traces that led to the house, the sounds in the attic and the chimney that smoke came in the days following the crime, one could calmly imagine a horrible scenario, with a ruthless sadist who, after committing several murders, had resided on the farm
After removing Lorenz, the police considered Viktoria's husband, Karl Gabriel, as a suspect. Authorities theorized that he could have returned from the war and killed them all. Obviously, this theory did not last long: they soon discovered that Karl, indeed, had been murdered in France almost a decade before.
Then another theory started: Josef was actually the son of Viktoria and his own father, Andreas, and probably one of them had killed the whole family before committing suicide. Andreas's theory, incest and abuse was discussed for a long time in the area.
However, this theory also fell rapidly. None of the injuries and wounds in their bodies could be explained as self-inflicted, so it was not possible that the crimes were perpetrated by Viktoria or Andreas.
So who the hell was it? There was only one thing that could be said: the crimes had been committed by someone who knew the farm, as evidenced by continued maintenance after the murders. The brutality of the murders also suggested that they were committed by someone with personal vengeance against one or more of the Gruber.
However, the police did not get answers and finally closed the case. It then reopened not once, several times, in the last 95 years. The bodies of the Gruber family and the maid were beheaded shortly after the original autopsies. In fact, the skulls were sent to Munich, where they were examined by a variety of "healers" and "witches" who said they could solve the crime.
Sadly, the Gruber heads never spoke from beyond. In 1923 the farm was demolished, and the entire family was buried. With one caveat: the heads were missing. Skulls were lost during World War II and never found.
Police believe that with current forensic advances and technology, the so-called "Germany's most famous unsolved crime" could come to an end. However, nobody knows where the Gruber heads are. Perhaps, as they point in the village, have their own killer. [Wikipedia, AtlasObscura, MisteriousU, Hinterkaifeck]