Hinterkaifeck — the six murders of 1922

OVERVIEW

Hinterkaifeck ('behind Kaifeck') was a farmstead built around 1863 about one kilometre north of the hamlet of Kaifeck, bordered by dense woods, some 70 km north of Munich. On the evening of 31 March 1922 its six inhabitants were murdered by an unknown assailant: Andreas Gruber (63), his wife Cäzilia (72), their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35), her children Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2), and the maid Maria Baumgartner (44), who had arrived that same afternoon. It remains unsolved.

HISTORY

Four of the family were lured one by one into the barn and killed there; Josef was killed in his bassinet and the maid in her room, all with the family's own mattock. For several days afterwards someone fed the animals, ate the bread and cut meat from the pantry; a large sum of money was left in the house, so robbery was ruled out as the motive. Visitors came and went without finding anyone; on 4 April the neighbour Lorenz Schlittenbauer and two others found the bodies. Onlookers contaminated the scene. A night traveller had seen two figures at the forest edge; another passer-by was blinded by a lantern and smelled foul smoke from the oven, which was never examined. Suspects over the years included Schlittenbauer, the Gump brothers, Viktoria's husband Karl Gabriel (reported killed in action in France, his body never recovered), and others; none was ever charged to conviction. The farm was demolished in 1923, when the bloodied mattock was found in the attic. The case was officially closed in 1955.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

HEARSAY — what is said, not what is shown. It has been widely claimed that the first maid, Kreszenz Rieger, left about six months before the murders because she heard strange noises in the attic and believed the house haunted. Days before the murders, Andreas Gruber told neighbours of footprints in fresh snow leading from the forest to the machine-room door, of footsteps in the attic at night (a search found no one), of a missing key, and of a Munich newspaper on the property that no one in the area took; he refused offers of help and did not tell the police. These are reports of an intruder rather than a ghost, and nothing supernatural is recorded after the crime. Filed UNVETTED: an unsolved murder, mapped for the record and in case more evidence appears. The victims are real people; their memorial is a place of remembrance.

VISITING

The farm no longer exists. A small memorial, the Hinterkaifeck Andachtsstätte, stands near the site, in open country near Waidhofen.