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Hinterkaifeck murders
The Hinterkaifeck murders occurred on the evening of 31 March 1922, when six inhabitants of a small Bavarian farmstead, located approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) north of Munich, Germany, were murdered by an unknown assailant. The six victims were Andreas Gruber (aged 63), his wife Cäzilia Gruber (aged 72), their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (aged 35), Viktoria's children, Cäzilia (aged 7) and Josef (aged 2), and the maid, Maria Baumgartner (aged 44). They were all found struck dead with a mattock, also known as a "grub axe". The perpetrator(s) lived with the six corpses of their victims for three days. The murders are considered one of the most gruesome and puzzling unsolved crimes in German history.
Four of the dead bodies were found stacked up in the barn, the victims having been lured there, one by one. Prior to the incident, the family and their former maid reported hearing strange noises coming from the attic, which led to that maid leaving. The case remains unsolved to this day.
There were some strange occurrences in and around Hinterkaifeck sometime shortly before the attack. Six months prior to the attack, the family maid had quit. It has been widely claimed that her reason for leaving was that she had heard strange sounds in the attic and believed the house to be haunted. Andreas Gruber found a strange newspaper from Munich on the property in March 1922. He could not remember buying it and initially believed that the postman had lost the newspaper.[3] This was not the case, however, as no one in the vicinity subscribed to the paper.[4] Just days before the murders, Gruber told neighbours he had discovered tracks in the fresh snow that led from the forest to a broken door lock in the farm's machine room.[3]
Later, during the night, they heard footsteps in the attic, but Gruber found no one when he searched the building. Although he told several people about these alleged observations, he refused offers of help and the details went unreported to the police.[3] According to a school friend of the seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel, the young girl reported that her mother Viktoria had fled the farm the night before the act after a violent quarrel and only hours later had been found in the forest.
First suspecting the motive to be robbery, the police interrogated travelling craftsmen, vagrants, and several inhabitants from the surrounding villages, but they abandoned this theory when a large amount of money was found in the house.[3] It was clear that the perpetrator(s) had remained at the farm for several days; someone had fed the cattle, consumed the entire supply of bread from the kitchen, and had recently cut meat from the pantry.[3]
With no clear motive to be gleaned from the crime scene, the police began to formulate a list of suspects. Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955. The last interrogations took place in 1986, before detective chief superintendent Konrad Müller retired.
Another reason for the enduring fascination with the Hinterkaifeck murders is the mystery that surrounds the identity of the murderer(s). Despite the fact that numerous suspects have been identified over the years, none of them have been definitively linked to the crime. This has led to a number of wild theories and speculations, which only add to the intrigue surrounding the case.
Ultimately, the Hinterkaifeck murders remain one of the most perplexing and haunting unsolved crimes in German history. Despite the passage of nearly a century, the case continues to defy resolution, and the identity of the murderer(s) remains a mystery. While advances in forensic science and technology may one day shed new light on the case, for now the Hinterkaifeck murders remain a chilling reminder of the dark potential of human nature.
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