The Hinterkaifeck Murder Mystery

2021-01-07 20:32:14 Written by Kashif wasli

The Hinterkaifeck Murder Mystery.

 

Hinterkaifeck, a small remote farmstead, which is situated between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen, and about 45 miles north of Munich, was the spectacle of one of the most dreadful and still unsolved crimes in German history.                                                                        

 On the evening of March 31, 1922, the six residents of the farm were all brutally killed with a pickaxe. The six fatalities were farmer Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia, their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel and her two children, Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2) and the maid Maria Baumgartner. The two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuous relationship.                                                                         

 A few days before the crime, farmer Andreas Gruber said neighbours that he had noticed footprints in the snow leading from the edge of the jungle to the farm, but none leading back. He also talked about hearing footsteps in the attic and discovering an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm. Also, the house keys went missing many days before the killings. None of this was reported to the police before the assault.                                                             

 Six months earlier, the previous maid had left the farm, contending that it was haunted and the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, only come on the farm on the day of the massacres and was murdered just hours later.                            

 On the Friday evening of March 31st 1922, someone managed to attract 4 members of the family to the barn one by one, Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia, their daughter Viktoria, and her daughter, 7-year-old Cäzilia, where they were murdered. The perpetrator then went into the home where they murdered two‑year‑old Josef who was sleeping in his cot in his mother's bedroom, as well as the maid, Maria Baumgartner, in her bedchamber.                       

 Shockingly, the autopsy disclosed that young Cäzilia had been alive for quite some time after being assaulted, tearing her hair out in big clumps as she lay dying in the barn. On the following Tuesday, April 4, concerned neighbours went up to the farmstead because none of its residents had been noticed for a few days and young Cäzilia had not attended school and found the bodies. After substantial police investigations, an attainable suspect was not discovered despite more than 100 suspects being questioned.                                                                  

 The police had in the first instance doubted the intention to have been a robbery and investigated various residents from the surrounding villages, as well as travelling craftsmen and wanderers. The robbery theory was, nonetheless, abandoned when a huge amount of money and valuables were discovered to still be in the house.                                                     

 It is thought that the families murderer stayed at the farm for various days after the killings, as neighbours saw smoke billowing from the chimney, and someone had fed the cattle, and eaten food in the kitchen. Anyone looking for money would certainly have ransacked the place and found it, but as to why anyone would stay at the murder scene for many days afterwards remains a total mystery, particularly as no struggle was made to hide the bodies. The casualty of Karl Gabriel, Viktoria's husband who had been reported murdered in action in the French trenches in World War I, was even called into question as his corpse had never been discovered. Despite this, most of his fellow soldiers reported seeing him perish and their reports were believed by police, although rumours persist he found out about his wife's incestuous connection with her father and went back to the farmstead and murdered the whole family in a crime of passion.                                                                  

 Nonetheless, most sources agree he was already looking to leave his wife long before actually going to war, and almost clearly did die in action. Suspicion then fell on Lorenz Schlittenbauer who had been a former partner of Viktoria’s. Viktoria had always contended that 2 year old Josef had been Schlittenbauer’s son, and it was believed that Schlittenbauer could have lashed out in a jealous fit of anger having found the child was the result of her incestuous relationship with her father Andreas. Another possible intention was that Viktoria had been on the verge of suing Schlittenbauer for alimony payments shortly before the killings occurred.                                            

 He also just happened to be one of the members of the actual search party who had gone to the farm to look for the Gruebers after they had gone missing. While he had been there, it was noted that the dog tied up in the barn had taken a special dislike to Schlittenbauer, and had barked profusely at him the entire time he had been there. 

 Also, one witness said later that Schlittenbauer had appeared to be extremely unperturbed by the sight of the bloodied bodies, and had been eligible to unstack the corpses in the barn without indicating any indication of disgust. When he had been asked why he was disturbing the bodies before police arrived, he was reported to have said that he wanted to find his boy. Schlittenbauer also ascertained a beyond normal familiarity with the farm and was able to steer his way around the property easily, as if he had spent a lot of time there.             

                               

 All of this raised eyebrows and Schlittenbauer was interviewed vastly by police, but in the end, they simply did not have enough substantial evidence to link him to the crime. The bodies of the six killed victims were beheaded, and the skulls sent to Munich, where clairvoyants assessed them, but to no avail. The skulls were never returned from Munich, after having been lost during World War II.                                                         

 The farm was destroyed in 1923, a year after the attacks, and the casualties were laid to rest in Waidhofen, where there is a memorial in the graveyard.                           

 Close to where the farm was located, there is now a shrine dedicated the casualties.