Germany Germany - Gruber Farm Murders, Waidhofen, Bavaria, 31 March 1922

[poppygirl]

wow - what a creepy case...I feel for those little children who got caught up in all this.
Thanks for all the work on this ausgirl though I wish I hadn't read some of it, I couldn't help myself!!! I agree with you, LS is looking quite guilty.

 

[Ausgirl]

Quite a good article:

http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/1173786

In September 1919 Viktoria gives birth to her son, Josef. The woman refuses to reveal the boy's father. It is known that she had a short affair with her (widowed) neighbour, Lorenz Schlittenbauer. Schlittenbauer confirms his paternity on a certificate to the authorities (he later confirms his affair with Viktoria during a police interview, but insists that he slept with her only five times and that she had "forced herself unto him"). Shortly after confirming being Josef's father, he seems to have second thoughts and withdraws. On the day of the murder, Lorenz Schlittenbauer and Viktoria Gabriel are spotted quarreling on a road, he urging her to reveal the name of the boy's father at long last, which she refuses vehemently. On the same day she mentions to another neighbour that she'd now finally do the job properly and reveal the boy's father or (the witness wasn't sure anymore) she mentions that she would see to it that Lorenz again pays alimony for her (their?) son.

 

[dogperson]

This may be an odd idea but I came across an article about the murders yesterday and got to thinking about Mr. Gruber telling folks about the strange things happening on the farm and it made me wonder if we can be certain Mr. Gruber was the male victim found. The account says the ride side of his face/head was smashed in and that the skin of his face appeared shredded and was covered in blood. Maybe I've watched too many weird mystery shows but if by any chance Mr. Gruber planned to kill his own family (I have no idea why he would), inventing the stories of the strange happenings would be a good way to lead up to it and later have people think an intruder did it. Of course, this would involve planting the body of some other man there of similar age and size, dressed in his own clothes, with face destroyed beyond recognition.

I know this is pretty off-the-wall but might explain why the animals were fed and so forth for several days afterwards.

 

[Ausgirl]

dogperson, it's good to look at mysteries like this from all angles, and to be honest the murder/suicide thing crossed my mind more than once. Couple things turned me away from it though, mainly the extent of Gruber's injuries, and all of them being to the head/face - I've never seen that in any murder/suicide that didn't involve a gunshot to the head.

Gruber's injuries were mainly to the right side of his face, say the documents, so I'm supposing the left side made him identifiable.

It's really interesting to me that ALL of the victims (except little Josef) had severe injuries primarily to the right side of their bodies.

 

[Ausgirl]

As for the animals being fed, fire in the hearth, etc - my immediate question to that is "WHO would benefit from the murders remaining undiscovered for several days, and WHY?"

Don't really have a clear answer at present, but I think it's a very good question.

 

[mandersdawn]

This is one of those cases that sticks with you. I first learned about it a couple of years ago and come back to it every couple of months to see if I can find anything new. I must say, this thread and the linked sources have been the most enlightening source I've come upon yet. I didn't know they found the mattock in the attic--this makes me wonder how well the scenes could have been searched after the discovery of the bodies if they overlooked that!

My initial, gut reaction to all of this new (to me) information is that I really am liking LS for these murders... I'm also wondering if there could be a religious aspect as well because of the incest and the beatings. Mostly though, I'm finding myself really caught on Josef being killed and on the dog being handled for so long after the killings. With Josef, it makes me wonder why he was killed--was it because of the questionable paternity, because he saw and recognized the killer (that seems suspect to me simply because if he was just going to kill the others, he had already done so and could have just fled and left Josef and the maid none the wiser until the next day when he was long gone), or was he a planned victim all along? My gut suspects the latter.

One of the things that really makes me suspect LS is his insistent denial that Josef is his son until he is at the crime scene looking for the boy. Could he have been trying to play on sympathy? Trying to play a fatherly role to make himself seem less suspect? I don't know, but either way it just seems really strange to me.

I do believe it was someone who knew the family. The rage displayed through the brutal killings and the covering up of the bodies indicate this and so does the fact that he was able to stay there for so long afterwards with a notoriously cranky dog. I am not sure about why he took care of the farm (although I did read a comment on one of the articles posted here that made the excellent point that hungry animals make a lot of noise which could have attracted unwanted attention) although I am inclined to agree with the theory about it being about control.

One final thought (also taken from a comment on one of these sources)--a lot has been made of the first maid quitting because she was hearing footsteps in the attic. Is it all possible that the footsteps she heard may have been Viktoria and Andreas on their way for a tryst? Or perhaps there were no footsteps but she had simply stumbled upon the pair and wanted to leave but needed an excuse so that she wouldn't receive a bad recommendation that could have cost her further work? Another theory might be that Andreas had approached her and she was going to lose her job if she didn't accept his advances so she invented a haunting as a way to get out without revealing anything. I just thought that was an interesting angle to look at it from.

Overall, I do believe that I will be mulling this one over for a good long time to come... but I really do think LS is a very, very likely suspect. It's really too bad that we can't find out the results of the more modern investigation. But then again, I get irritated with all of these Ripper accusations because of the descendants and how unfair it is to them so I have respect for them keeping the results undisclosed since there's no definitive proof.

 

[wfgodot]

Plenty of in-depth stuff above, but here's a good synopsis, for those new to the case.

Hidden in the woods: the Hinterkaifeck murders

 

[jon70]

I have been studying Hinterkaifek for awhile, and I may have found something interesting? A serial killing cannibal, Karl Denke, who was german and still living at the time(died 1924, wiki.) I beleive Denke may have possibly be responsible. As you all know smoke was seen, dog tied up supposedly after family was killed. to shorten this up! Denke most likely tried to scare most of family away, didn't happen, so he had to kill them all. Most serial killers kill and most likely leave body in close vicinity, yet, the victims were stacked near the door to be cooked later, assuming Denke thought he had a lot of time to chill and grub without being bothered. Something or somebody spooked him before he could do latter and fled leaving family and nanny there.

 

[scriptgirl]

How do we know he was gonna eat the family?

 

[jon70]

How do we know he was gonna eat the family?

They were neatly stacked, and not randomly left scattered?

 

[scriptgirl]

That doesn't mean anything.

 

[jon70]

That doesn't mean anything.

what do you do with trash? put in can or drop on ground. what do you do with food? put in fridge or stack in cupboard. everyone that died was conveniently, hit in head leaving rest of bodies intact(eww). they were also stacked next to the kitchen door for easy access.

 

[scriptgirl]

I still don't buy it.

 

[Cryptic]

Barvaria, and Germany as a whole, was not a stable place in the early 1920s.

Their defeat in WWI was immediately followed by a mini civil war in which right wing and left wing German militias fought each other in the streets. Hitler became the head of one of these many factions. At times, the fighting got very personal as 'hit squads" of right / left wing militants sought out and killed real and imagined enemies as individuals. In addition, internal disputes between factions on the same general side could lead to violence.

I wonder if the head of the household was a supporter of a political group and this led to the whole family being placed on an "enemies" list? Or, perhaps, a death squad with orders to "only" kill the adults took the orders several steps further?

 

[Catmommy]

Follow the money. Who had the most to gain by the family being dead and the most to lose by them being alive? Caring for the animals made sense because they were now assets to be sold or distributed. Anything is possible but who is the most probable suspect? Do I really have to spell it out?

 

[sallye818]

I have to acknowledge all your hard work, Ausgirl, and say that you make an excellent case for LS being the murderer. I don't believe, at all, that this was a political murder...definitely personal.

 

[ColyH]

Whoever the murderer was they were known to the family. I don't think a stranger or someone they felt was dangerous would be able to lure the family one by one into the barn.

Does anyone have any information on the maid that left right before the murders? She may have had information that could of helped solve this crime.

 

[CastlesBurning]

BEWARE: These 50 Strangest Unsolved Mysteries of All Time Are Seriously Spooky!

10. The Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders

On the evening of March 31, 1922, on Hinterkaifeck Farm in Bavaria, Germany, six residents were murdered with a pickaxe. The victims included husband and wife, Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel, Viktoria’s children, Cäzilia and Josef, and the family’s maid Maria Baumgartner. 2-year-old Josef was killed in his crib and Maria was killed in her bed while the rest of the family was then murdered in the barn and stacked on top of each other.

Upon the discovery, authorities concluded that the murderer actually lived on the farm for 6 days after they committed the crime. Even after the family had died, cattle were still being fed, meals were being eaten in the kitchen, neighbors reported seeing smoke rising from the chimney, and the family dog was tied up to a post when the mailman came on Saturday. The bodies were discovered the next day.

What makes this crime even more chilling was that Maria was actually hired the same day she was killed, replacing the previous maid who had quit 6 months earlier due to the house “being haunted.” She reported to the family of hearing footsteps in the attic and voices. Around the time the previous maid had quit, the Gruber family had also begun to hear voices from the attic. Andreas had also noticed a set of house keys had gone missing, an unfamiliar newspaper in the house that he had never seen before, plus scratches on the family’s tool shed like someone had tried to pick the lock. He had also reported seeing a pair of unfamiliar footsteps leading from the woods towards the back entrance of the family’s home.

Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955 and the house was demolished.