On March 31, 1922, an unknown person — or potentially multiple people — lured each of the five members of the Gruber family and their maid to their deaths on the Hinterkaifeck farm in Germany.

On March 31, 1922, an unknown person — or potentially multiple people — lured each of the five members of the Gruber family and their maid to their deaths on the Hinterkaifeck farm in Germany.

On March 31, 1922, an unknown person — or potentially multiple people — lured each of the five members of the Gruber family and their maid to their deaths on the Hinterkaifeck farm in Germany. It wasn't until days later that the grisly scene was discovered, and it took even longer before the investigation officially began. By that point, the crime scene had been thoroughly compromised, with bodies moved, items touched, and even the kitchen used. Police eventually built a suspect list with over 100 names, including one victim's supposedly deceased husband, Karl, and her rumored lover and neighbor, Lorenz. None stuck, however, and the files were closed in 1955, leaving the mysterious Hinterkaifeck murders unsolved over 100 years later. Read more about this baffling case by clicking hte link in our profile.⁠

The Hinterkaifeck murders occurred on the evening of 31 March 1922, when six inhabitants of a small Bavarian farmstead, located approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) 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.
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.[4] 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.
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.
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 and stepson Josef 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
Inspector Georg Reingruber, and his Department, investigated the killings. Initial investigations were hampered by the number of people who had interacted with the crime scene, moved bodies and items around, and even cooked and eaten meals in the kitchen. The day after the discovery of the bodies, court physician Johann Baptist Aumüller performed autopsies in the barn. It was established that a mattock was the most likely murder weapon, although the weapon itself was not found at the scene. Evidence showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault—she had torn her hair out in tufts while lying in the straw. The skulls of the victims were removed and sent to Munich for further examination.
First suspecting the motive to be robbery, the police interrogated travelling craftsmen, vagrants, and several inhabitants from the surrounding villages, but they abandoned this theory when a large amount of money was found in the house. It was clear that the perpetrator(s) had remained at the farm for several days; someone had fed the cattle, consumed the entire supply of bread from the kitchen, and had recently cut meat from the pantry.
With no clear motive to be gleaned from the crime scene, the police began to formulate a list of suspects. Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955. The last interrogations took place in 1986, before detective chief superintendent Konrad Müller retired
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