The Hinterkaifeck murders occurred on the evening of 31 March 1922, when six inhabitants of a small Bavarian farmstead, located approximately north of Munich, Germany, were murdered by an unknown assailant. The six victims were Andreas Gruber (aged 63), his wife Cäzilia Gruber (aged 72), their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (aged 35), Viktoria's children, Cäzilia (aged 7) and Josef (aged 2), and the maid, Maria Baumgartner (aged 44). They were all found struck dead with a mattock, also known as a "grub axe". The perpetrator(s) lived with the six corpses of their victims for three days. The murders are considered one of the most gruesome and puzzling unsolved crimes in German history.
Four of the dead bodies were found stacked up in the barn, the victims having been lured there, one by one. Prior to the incident, the family and their former maid reported hearing strange noises coming from the attic, which led to that maid leaving. The case remains unsolved to this day.
Location
The farm at Hinterkaifeck was built around 1863.
Less than a year after the murders, and the murder investigation, the farm was completely demolished. Additional evidence was revealed, including a mattock hidden in the attic and a pen-knife found in the hay in the barn.
Murders
Prelude
There were some strange occurrences in and around Hinterkaifeck sometime shortly before the attack. Six months prior to the attack, the family maid had quit. It has been widely claimed that her reason for leaving was that she had heard strange sounds in the attic and believed the house to be haunted. Andreas Gruber found a strange newspaper from Munich on the property in March 1922. He could not remember buying it and initially believed that the postman had lost the newspaper. This was not the case, however, as no one in the vicinity subscribed to the paper. Just days before the murders, Gruber told neighbours he had discovered tracks in the fresh snow that led from the forest to a broken door lock in the farm's machine room.
Later, during the night, they heard footsteps in the attic, but Gruber found no one when he searched the building. Although he told several people about these alleged observations, he refused offers of help and the details went unreported to the police. According to a school friend of the seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel, the young girl reported that her mother Viktoria had fled the farm the night before the act after a violent quarrel and only hours later had been found in the forest.
31 March to 1 April 1922
On the afternoon of Friday 31 March 1922, the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived at the farm. Maria's sister had escorted her there and left the farm after a short stay. She was most likely the last person to see the inhabitants alive. It appears that in the late evening, Viktoria Gabriel, her seven-year-old daughter Cäzilia, and her parents Andreas and Cäzilia, were lured to the family barn through the stable, where they were murdered, one at a time. The perpetrator(s) used a mattock belonging to the family farm and killed the family with blows to the head. The perpetrator(s) then moved into the living quarters, where—with the same murder weapon—they killed Josef, sleeping in his bassinet, and Baumgartner, in her bedchamber.
Discovery
Four days passed between the murders and the discovery of the bodies. On 1 April, coffee sellers Hans Schirovsky and Eduard Schirovsky arrived in Hinterkaifeck to take an order. When no one responded to the knocks on the door and the window, they walked around the yard but found no one. They noticed that the gate to the machine house was open, then decided to leave. Cäzilia Gabriel was absent from school without excuse for the next few days, and the family failed to show up for Sunday worship.
Assembler, Albert Hofner, went to Hinterkaifeck on 4 April to repair an engine. He stated that he had not seen any of the family and had heard nothing but the sounds of the farm animals and the dog inside the barn. After waiting for an hour, he decided to start his repair, which he completed in roughly four and a half hours.
Around 3:30 p.m., Lorenz Schlittenbauer sent his son Johann (16) and stepson Josef (9) to Hinterkaifeck to see if they could make contact with the family. When they reported that they had not seen anyone, Schlittenbauer headed to the farm the same day with Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl. Entering the barn, they found the bodies of Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia Gruber, his daughter Viktoria Gabriel, and his granddaughter Cäzilia. Shortly afterwards, they found the chambermaid, Maria Baumgartner, and the youngest family member, Josef, murdered in the homestead.