On the night of March 31, 1922, six people were murdered at Hinterkaifeck, a remote farmstead north of Munich in rural Bavaria: farmer Andreas Gruber and his wife Cäzilia, their widowed daughter Viktoria, Viktoria's two young children, and Maria Baumgartner, a maid who had arrived at the farm only hours earlier. All six were killed with a mattock, a pickaxe-like farm tool. In the days before the murders, Andreas had told neighbors about footprints in the snow leading from the forest to the farm — but none leading back — and about noises in the attic. In the days after, the farm appeared strangely alive: smoke rose from the chimney, the cattle were fed, and food had been eaten — signs that whoever killed the family stayed at Hinterkaifeck with the dead before vanishing. The bodies were found on April 4, 1922.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Hinterkaifeck murders
- Mental Floss — “The Chilling Story of the Hinterkaifeck Killings”
- Fürstenfeldbruck Police Academy, 2007 case review (secondary reporting)