On April 4, 1922, Lorenz Schlittenbauer made his way over to his neighbors farm to check in on the family. The Hinterkaifeck farm in Germany had been completely silent for several days and Lorenz had grown concerned. He wasn’t prepared for the horrific scene that was waiting for him inside.
There were six bodies, Andreas Gruber, his wife, Cäzilia Gruber, their daughter, Viktoria Gabriel, and Viktoria’s children, Cäzilia Jr. and Josef. The family’s maid, Maria Baumgartner, was also found dead at the scene. The murders were gruesome, the work of an obviously sick and twisted person or persons.
The family and maid were killed during the night, with all suffering a blow to the head except Cäzilia Jr., whose throat was slit. The suspected murder weapon was a mattock. What’s most disturbing is the fact that it appears the killer or killers had continued living in the house for three days after the murders.
But who could do such a thing? And why was the Gruber family targeted? All authorities had to go on was the crime scene and a series of strange occurrences that had happened at the farm in the months prior.
Weird things were happening at Hinterkaifeck before the murders
In the months leading up to the murders, the family experienced what in hindsight seems like dark foreshadowing. It almost seems as if the family were being watched by the killer(s) for a while before their murders.
Six months before that fateful night, the family’s maid at the time, Kreszenz Rieger, just up and left. She quit her job, and sources claim that she believed the house to be haunted. Rieger had supposedly heard noises in the attic as well as mumbling voices. Could this have been the suspected murderer, hiding within the very walls of the house months before they decided to strike?
Days before the murders, tracks were found in the snow leading to a part of the Hinterkaifeck farm with the lock on a door being broken. No intruder was found on the property, but there were no tracks leaving the property either.
On the night of March 31 or the early hours of April 1, the killer(s) struck, leaving nobody alive to tell the tale.
The suspects
There is a long list of suspected murderers but nobody was ever convicted. One theory suggests that Viktoria’s husband, Karl Gabriel, was the killer. He had supposedly died during WW1 but some claimed to have seen him after the war. There were rumors that Viktoria was in an incestuous relationship with her father, if true, Karl returning from war and discovering this could certainly be a motive for him to kill.
But the prime suspect was Lorenz Schlittenbauer, the neighbor who discovered the bodies. Schlittenbauer had supposedly been in a relationship with Viktoria and it’s possible that baby Josef was his. Theories as to motive range from his antagonistic relationship with Andreas, to Lorenz attempting to take the land of the Grubers (if Josef truly was his son he would be the only family left to inherit the land).
The list of suspects goes on but whatever the case, authorities were never able to find enough solid evidence to convict anyone for the crime. It remains one of Germany’s most perplexing unsolved mysteries.
