Hinterkaifeck

Hinterkaifeck, a small farmstead situated between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen (approximately 70 km north of Munich),was the scene of one of the most puzzling crimes in German history. On the evening of the 31st of March 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a pickaxe, and the murder is still unsolved.

The six victims were: the farmer Andreas Gruber (63) and his wife Cäzilia (72); their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35) and her two children Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2); as well as the maid Maria Baumgartner. The two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas: it was common knowledge that they had an incestuous relationship.

The crime

A few days prior to the crime, the farmer Andreas Gruber told neighbours of discovering traces in the snow leading from the forest to the farm, but none leading back. He also told of hearing footsteps in the attic and finding an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm. The farm keys also went missing in the days leading up to the murders, but none of this was reported to the police.

Six months earlier, the previous maid had left the farm, claiming that it was haunted; the new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived on the farm on 31 March, only a few hours before her death.

Exactly what happened on that Friday evening cannot be said for certain. It is believed that the older couple, as well as their daughter Viktoria and her daughter Cäzilia, were somehow all lured into the barn where they were killed. The perpetrator(s) then went to the house where the two-year-old Josef was killed in his cot in his mother’s bedroom, and the maid in the servant’s chamber.

On the following Tuesday, on the 4th of April, some neighbours went to the farm, as none of the inhabitants had been seen for several days. The postman had noticed that the post from the previous Saturday was still where he had left it, and the young Cäzilia had not turned up for school on the Monday, nor had she been there on the Saturday. The family had also not gone to the Sunday church service, as was their custom. A mechanic, Albert Hofner, spent a full five hours on the Tuesday repairing a feeding machine on the farm, without seeing anyone at home. When the neighbours arrived, they found that all the doors of the farm were locked; after breaking into the barn, the bodies of four of the victims were found. The other two victims were found in the house.

The investigation

Inspector Georg Reinbruber and his colleagues from the Munich Police Department made immense efforts investigating the killings. More than 100 suspects have been questioned through the years, but to no avail. The most recent questioning took place in 1986, but even that was fruitless.

To this day, many hobby investigators continue to investigate the case.

The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, and interrogated several inhabitants from the surrounding villages, as well as travelling craftsmen and vagrants. The robbery theory was, however, abandoned when a large amount of money was found in the house. It is believed that the perpetrator(s) remained at the farm for several days – someone had fed the cattle, and eaten of the food in the kitchen: the neighbours had also seen smoke from the chimney during the weekend – and anyone looking for money would have found it.

Even the death of Karl Gabriel, Viktoria’s husband who had been reported killed in the French trenches in 1914, was put into question. His body had never been found.

The following day, on the 5th of April, court physician Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller performed the autopsies in the barn. It was established that a pickaxe was the most likely murder weapon. The corpses were beheaded, and the skulls sent to Munich, where clairvoyants examined them [ Leuschner, Peter (1997): Hinterkaifeck. Spuren eines mysteriösen Verbrechens. P. 76 ff.] without result. The autopsy also showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault. Lying in the straw, next to the bodies of her grandparents and her mother, she had torn her hair out in tufts.

The funeral

The six victims are buried in Waidhofen, where there is a memorial in the graveyard. The skulls were never returned from Munich, after being lost during the chaos of WWII. Close to where the farm was located, there is now a shrine.

The farm was demolished the following year, in 1923. It is said that during the demolition, the murder weapon, a pickaxe, was found under the floorboards of the attic.

Media

There are two movies with the name “Hinterkaifeck”: one by Hans Fegert from 1981, and the other by Kurt K. Hieber in 1991.

Director Esther Gronenborn and producer Monika Raebel are in the process of planning a mystery thriller called “Kaifeck Murder”. Production is to start in October 2007.

In 2006, German writer Andrea Maria Schenkel wrote a novel with the title "Tannöd" where she tells the story of Hinterkaifeck using different names for the locations and people involved. Also the novel "The Murdered House", written by French writer Pierre Magnan, is allegedly inspired by this case. In this novel, the youngest victim of the massacre survives and returns to the farm as an adult to investigate the crime.

Munich journalist Peter Leuschner wrote two books with the title "Hinterkaifeck. Der Mordfall. Spuren eines mysteriösen Verbrechens." in 1979 and 1997. The second book is an extension of the first book. The title means "Hinterkaifeck. The Murder Case. Traces of a mysterious crime". In this book, Leuschner quotes the original police files.

External links

* [http://www.hinterkaifeck.net/ Lots of interviews, pictures, maps and theories] (German)
* [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6865/hi.html Page with pictures of the scene and the victims] (German)
* [http://www.geocities.com/hinterkaifeck/ English coverage of this case] (English)
* [http://www.stevenhuff.net/archives/379/ Article by Steven Huff] (English)
* [http://withmovies.blogspot.com/2007/08/two-films-over-hinterkaifeck.html Two new films about Hinterkaifeck] (English)

References