So I had some bad luck this week – Mystery Machine broke down. Because it’s a legacy Volkswagen model, and because all the goddamn Pacific Northwest hippies don’t seem to wanna share their spare transmission parts, I had to get myself to Germany to get her all repaired. Fortunately for me, a new gearshift later and she’s better than ever. At any rate, after a consciousness-cleansing session with a couple mechanics and their wives… I’ll withhold details for now… I got some recommendations about a spot I needed to check out while I was in the country. God damn, are Germans some strange people. Read on…

THE HINTERKAIFECK MURDERS

Location: Waidhofen, Bavaria, Germany

Date: March 31st, 1922

The Story: On a quiet Saturday in early spring, on a remote farm some 70 kilometres north of Munich, some unknown person snuck onto the Hinterkaifeck property and murdered the entire Gruber family and their maid – six deaths in all. Despite the horrific deaths and massive investigation that ensued upon the discovery of the bodies a few days later, the crime remains unsolved. The victims are listed as follows: Andreas Gruber (63), Cäzilia Gruber (72), their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35), her children Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2), and the maid, Maria Baumgartner (44).

What’s Weird: There’s so many strange things that are going on with this story. Let’s take a look at this evidence piece by piece:

• Several days before the attacks, Andreas Gruber, the owner of the farm and patriarch of the family, had noticed that the keys of the farm had gone missing; he also noticed sets of footprints that led to the farm, but didn’t lead away from it at all. He had also heard footsteps in the attic and found an unfamiliar newspaper on the farm.
• The farm’s previous maid had left the farm six months prior, claiming that it was haunted. The new maid arrived on the day of the attack, literally hours before it happened. Talk about poor timing…
• The maid was found in her chambers in the farmhouse, while the young boy, Josef, was found in his crib in his mother’s bedroom. The rest of the victims were found out in the barn.
• Evidence suggests that the victims in the barn would have been lured out there one by one, as opposed to all at once… What could have compelled each of them to venture out there is entirely unknown.
• The murder weapon of choice appears to have been a mattock, a small type of pickaxe that would have been readily available as a tool around the farm; all of the victims were found with impacts in their skulls.
• The younger Cäzilia is believed to have been alive for several hours after the attack… and was apparently so scared about something that she tore out all of her own hair before she finally passed.
• Evidence also suggests that whoever had killed the family lived in their house for a couple of days afterwards; none of the farm animals were harmed, and it appears that they were also fed and cared for as well, chillingly enough.
• Despite Munich police arresting hundreds of people in relation to this horrifying crime, not a single person was charged with anything, and the crime remains unsolved to this very day. The farm was demolished in 1923, and the family lays interred in a plot together in nearby Waidhofen, all without their heads – they had been sent to Munich to be investigated by clairvoyants… who were unable to find anything. The skulls were later lost in World War II.

What might have happened? It’s been almost a hundred years since this curious case took place, and people are STILL talking about it. Police were still interviewing suspects as late as 1986, and an elderly woman called the cops with a lead in 1999 (which they were unfortunately unable to do anything with). Due to the lack of modern forensic techniques that were used in the initial investigation, there’s virtually no new evidence available that has allowed this case to be solved. There, are, however, a few popular theories that have gained some traction:

• Initial motives for the case prominently featured robbery, but considering that police found a large stash of cash in the house, it seems extremely unlikely that this was the case, especially since the killer is believed to have been living in the house for a time after the murders and thus they likely would have discovered it as well.
• The parentage of Josef has been called into question; it’s believed that a neighbor, Lorenz Schlittenbauer, was the child’s father, and he was intending to marry the widowed Viktoria until her father intervened and prevented the marriage. Some have accredited the murders to Lorenz for any number of reasons; he married another woman around 1920 or 1921 and had a baby with her, but it died in infacy. Some have speculated that his grief and rage over his own dead child along with his being unable to be with Viktoria may have caused him to fly into a rage and kill the whole family. His behaviour certainly seems suspect, as he seemed rather nonchalant about the entire matter when talking with police, although ultimately, he was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing.
• Viktoria’s first husband, Karl Gabriel, fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War, where he died on the battlefields in France. Despite numerous soldiers in his batallion vouching for the fact that they had seen him die in battle, a few people today still believe that he may have been behind the murders, secretly coming back from the war to find his wife in the arms of another man, also plotting his revenge until the time was right.
• The weirdest yet: Viktoria and her father Andreas may have had an incestuous relationship. Yup. Andreas’ erratic nature was the talk of several towns of the area, and he may have had other children in addition to Viktoria, although in addition to being a child-raping monster, he may also have been a mass murderer as well. Allegedly, Viktoria was the only one of his children who survived into adulthood; the rest apparently perished at Andreas’ hands. While the murder aspect of Andreas’ behavior seems very difficult to prove, there’s apparently enough evidence out there to suggest that Josef may actually have been Andreas’ son and grandson at the same time. For whatever reason, some have speculated that either Andreas or Viktoria may have lost their mind and killed the whole family, but considering the violent, traumatic nature of the wounds found on the bodies, it is thus virtually impossible that the death of either Andreas or Viktoria could have been a suicide.

Coach Carroll’s Hypothesis: Murder? Incest? People back from the dead? Fuck me, this is a doozy. What I wanna know is WHY they destroyed the farm so fast. That doesn’t make sense to me. We don’t even tear down our own rosters that quick after flaming out on a Super Bowl run. What are the cops hiding? All’s I know is that it seems unlikely to have been a German who murdered them – the whole thing’s not methodical enough. We sure it wasn’t time-travelling Vikings? No guns, no cars, no machine sounds… YOU CAN’T NOT RULE IT OUT. [mainlines mescaline]

Information for this article taken from here, here, here and here.

Banner image courtesy of Low Commander of the Super Soldiers.