Horror at Hinterkaifeck — Part I
Intruders murdered five family members and their maid, then lived among the corpses for the next 3 days. Were they hiding in the house all along?
By Kimberly Parr
Trigger warning: This story contains disturbing images.
SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT
Andreas Gruber sat bolt upright and stared into the dark. He’d heard it again: footsteps, somewhere in the farmhouse. His wife Cäzilia was sleeping peacefully beside him; she obviously hadn’t heard a thing.
Andreas carefully stood up, lit an oil lamp and began to search the house. It was mid-March, a blizzard raged outside, and the plank floors were freezing cold. At 63, Andreas was a bit stooped and arthritic from a lifetime of farming, but still a powerful man. An intruder would find him a force to be reckoned with.
He peeked in on his daughter, Viktoria Gabriel, 35, who shared a bedroom with her children, seven-year-old Cäzilia (named after her grandmother), and two-year-old Josef. All were asleep. In the stable next door, the family dog, a vigilant German spitz, lay snoring on a pile of hay. Cows dozed in their stalls. Outside, a gust of wind rattled the windows and blew wisps of snow through chinks in the stable wall. Nothing was amiss.
Back indoors, Andreas stared at the ladder leading to the attic. This was where the family stored smoked meats and flour. There was a cot up there, too, for seasonal farmhands who sometimes needed to spend the night. He listened closely for several minutes, heard nothing, and thought briefly about climbing up for a look. But now he was shivering from cold, and not sure he could safely climb the ladder while holding aloft a swaying lamp.
Andreas Gruber returned to his bed that March night in 1922, but sleep did not come. The footsteps he’d heard that night were just the latest in a series of unusual events at the German farmstead known as Hinterkaifeck.
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Hinterkaifeck bordered a forest in Bavaria, Germany, 40 miles north of Munich. The living quarters, stable, and barn were all under the same roof, separated by interior walls and doors. The attic upstairs was completely open and accessible by ladder from both the residence and the barn.
In March of 1922, Andreas began telling neighbors about odd happenings at Hinterkaifeck. He found a discarded Munich newspaper on the property, an unfamiliar publication no one in the family had ever read. Two keys disappeared; a door lock was broken. The footsteps he’d heard had also been heard by the family maid, who complained she felt like she was constantly being watched. She had quit six months prior, convinced the farm was haunted.
Even more disturbing were the footprints that appeared one day in the newly-fallen snow, an unmistakable line of human tracks led from the forest to the farm. No footprints led back.
Neighbors were alarmed. They urged Andreas to contact the police, and offered to help him search the property. The tough, old farmer scoffed at the idea that he and his family might be in danger. He did not believe in ghosts, and was confident he could handle any earthly intruders just fine.
Despite his neighbors’ concerns Andreas Gruber never notified the police.
On the afternoon of Friday, March 31, 1922, the former maid returned to Hinterkaifeck with her sister, Maria Baumgartner. She offered Maria as a replacement, and Andreas saw at once that the good-natured, middle-aged Maria would be a good fit for the family. She certainly didn’t seem like the type to believe in ghosts.
Maria moved her belongings into the tiny bedroom off the kitchen. Her sister wished her well, said goodbye to her former employers, and departed Hinterkaifeck. She was the last person to see any of them alive.
SMOKE AND SILENCE
Very early Saturday morning around 3 a.m., a neighbor passing by Hinterkaifeck spotted two strangers standing near the edge of the forest. When they realized they’d been seen, both turned away to hide their faces.
A few hours later, two coffee salesmen arrived at the farm to take the family’s usual order. No one answered the door or responded to their calls. A few hours later, two hunters stopped by to purchase items from the farm. After looking around and finding no one, they, too, departed.
The postman arrived, and when nobody responded to his calls, he left mail and newspapers on a windowsill. He wondered if something had happened to the family dog, since it usually hailed his arrival with a cacophony of furious barking.
Late that night, a farmer walking by noticed a light inside the residence and saw smoke coming from the chimney. Suddenly, a man appeared in the courtyard; he was carrying a lantern and began walking quickly toward the farmer. Blinded by the lantern, and startled, the neighbor hurried away.
On Sunday, April 2, church members in the nearby village noticed the Grubers did not attend services. Neighbors again saw smoke rising from the chimney.
On Monday and Tuesday, teachers noticed young Cäzilia did not come to school. The postman came by each day as usual, dropping off more mail and newspapers.
On the morning of Tuesday, April 4, a hired mechanic came to Hinterkaifeck to repair an engine. He spent the next four hours working on the site, only occasionally wondering why he didn’t see anyone or hear anything other than some farm animals. He completed his work and left.
That afternoon, a neighbor noticed mail piling up at Hinterkaifeck, and finally realized the family hadn’t been seen in four days. Alarmed, he persuaded two other neighbors to join him, and the three men cautiously approached the farm. Aware they were intruding, they decided to enter the barn instead of the residence.
They men slid back the heavy north door, and immediately recoiled. Just inside the entrance lay several bodies. Someone had dragged them into a pile, covered them with loose straw, and placed an old stable door on top. A pair of legs extended beyond the door, and the men recognized the worn denim overalls and work boots of their neighbor, Andreas Gruber.
They immediately tossed the door aside, exposing the bodies of Andreas, his wife Cäzilia, their daughter Viktoria, and granddaughter Cäzilia. Each had suffered devastating, disfiguring injuries to their heads and faces. Only the toddler Josef was missing.
The men ran through the stable and into the residence, where they discovered the new maid, Maria, dead on the floor of her room, her still-unpacked bags beside her. In Viktoria’s bedroom down the hall, they found little Josef, killed in his bassinet by a violent blow to the face. Whoever wielded the weapon drove it straight through the stroller top of the bassinet, destroying it.
The neighbors raised the alarm, and a swarm of police, doctors, village officials, and curious onlookers soon descended on Hinterkaifeck. The bodies were each brought out into the courtyard so they could be examined in better light, then returned to the barn. Strangers walked through all buildings on the farmstead, looking for clues. The killers, whoever they were, had apparently spared the farm animals.
As darkness fell, searchers found the family’s beloved German spitz huddled in a corner of the stable, seriously injured, but alive. Of all the family members attacked at Hinterkaifeck, only the dog survived.
LURED TO THEIR DEATHS
Autopsies were performed in the barn the next day. The examining physician determined that all the victims had been killed by blows to the head which shattered their skulls. Three were smashed with a heavy object on the right sides of their faces, and some had been pierced with a sharp object. The weapon was likely a mattock, a common farm tool and type of pick axe, with a blade on one end and a sharp pick on the other.
The Gruber women appeared to have been particularly targeted: Both 72-year-old Cäzilia and 35-year-old Viktoria were strangled in addition to being struck multiple times in the head. Seven-year-old Cäzilia also had her throat slashed, and tufts of hair were found clutched in her tiny fists. The physician concluded she had survived for several hours after the assault, pulling out her own hair as she lay dying.
Although the crime scene had been badly contaminated by first responders, investigators were able to determine that the family was murdered on the evening of March 31, 1922, not long after the new maid Maria arrived. All the victims except Maria and Josef had been killed in the barn, as blood splatter was found nowhere else in in the complex. Whoever did it had somehow lured the family members to the barn one by one, killed them, covered them with hay and an old door, then returned to the residence to finish off Maria and the baby.
But it was what happened after the murders that made Hinterkaifeck a crime like no other.
