The Hinterkaifeck Mystery
This is the shocking story of the murders of six people at the Hinterkaifeck farmstead.
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 March 31, 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a mattock.
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); and the maid Maria Baumgartner (44). The two-year-old Josef was rumored to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuous relationship.
The Gruber family lived at Hinterkaifeck, which was situated next to a forest. Maria was new to the farm, having only just arrived oddly, that day, as a replacement for the previous maid that had left claiming that she thought the farm was haunted by a demon.
Strange things!
A few days prior to the crime, farmer Andreas Gruber told neighbours about discovering footprints in the snow leading from the edge of the forest to the farm, but none leading back.
