Hinterkaifeck: The Unsolved Horror of 1922

On the morning of March 31, 1922, four-year-old Josef Gruber was found dead in a remote farmhouse on the edge of the Bavarian woods. His skull had been split with a heavy mattock, and his body was tucked beside the corpses of his mother, father, grandmother, his older sister, and the family maid. All six people in that household—known as Hinterkaifeck—had been killed in a single night by an unknown assailant, and no one has ever been brought to justice.

Andreas Gruber was the patriarch of the family. He was in his sixties in 1922, a stubborn, deeply private farmer who’d lived on the Hinterkaifeck property for decades. The farm sat half an hour’s walk from the nearest neighbor, isolated by dense pine forest and muddy tracks. Andreas and his wife Cäzilia ran the farm with their daughter Viktoria, who was widowed after World War I. Viktoria had two children: seven-year-old Cäzilia and four-year-old Josef. They also employed a live-in maid, Maria Baumgartner, who had only arrived at the farm on the day of the murders.

Neighbors described Andreas as a difficult man. He was known for his temper and his suspicious nature. There were persistent rumors in the village of incest between him and his daughter Viktoria. These rumors were bolstered by a 1915 court case where both Andreas and Viktoria were convicted of incest and served prison time. The paternity of Josef, Viktoria’s younger child, was widely questioned. Some villagers believed Andreas himself was the father, while others suspected Lorenz Schlittenbauer, a neighbor and former suitor of Viktoria.

The Hinterkaifeck farm was modest but well-maintained. The family kept cows, pigs, and chickens. They sold milk and eggs in the nearby town of Gröbern. Despite their seclusion, they had regular contact with the community—children attended school, Viktoria sang in the church choir, and Andreas sold produce at the market.

In the weeks leading up to the murders, Andreas reported a series of unsettling events. He told neighbors he’d found footprints in the snow leading from the woods to the farmhouse, but none leading back. He also found a newspaper on the property that no one in the family subscribed to. One night he heard footsteps in the attic, but after searching with a lantern, he found nothing. The key to the tool shed disappeared, and then reappeared a few days later. The former maid, who’d left the farm in 1921, claimed she’d felt the house was haunted.

On March 31, 1922, Maria Baumgartner arrived to begin work as the Grubers’ new maid. It was her first and only day on the job. That afternoon, the last known visitors to Hinterkaifeck—a repairman and a few passing villagers—later described nothing amiss. At dusk, silence fell over the farm. Sometime that evening, as the sun set behind the pines, the killer made his move.

The killer’s first targets were Andreas, Cäzilia, Viktoria, and young Cäzilia. Each was lured one by one into the barn behind the main house. The attack was methodical and brutal. The weapon was a heavy mattock—a type of pickaxe common on Bavarian farms. Each victim received crushing blows to the head. Seven-year-old Cäzilia’s face was marred with deep wounds, and some of her hair had been torn out, suggesting she survived for several hours after the initial assault.

After killing the four in the barn, the murderer entered the house. Maria Baumgartner, the maid, was asleep in her bed. She was struck and killed instantly. Josef, the youngest, was murdered in his cot. The killer covered all the bodies with sheets or items of clothing, and in the barn, with hay.

The next day, April 1, the postman noticed that no one collected the family’s mail. Over the weekend, the Grubers failed to appear at church. Viktoria missed choir practice, and young Cäzilia was absent from school. By Monday, neighbors grew concerned. Several men went to the property, where they discovered the bodies in the barn. They called the police from the neighboring village.

The first officers on the scene were from the Munich Kriminalpolizei, led by Inspector Georg Reingruber. They quickly realized the scale of the crime. The entire family and the new maid were dead, killed with extraordinary violence. Reingruber and his team examined the barn, farmhouse, and the surrounding grounds.

The killer had stayed on the property for days after the murders. Neighbors reported seeing smoke rising from the chimney all weekend. The farm animals had been fed, and someone had eaten food from the kitchen. The dog was found tied up in the stable, unharmed. This suggested that the murderer had remained at Hinterkaifeck, living alongside the corpses, perhaps for up to four days.

Investigators found the murder weapon concealed in the attic. The tool had traces of blood and hair on the blade, confirming it as the instrument of death. Forensic science in 1922 was still in its infancy. There were no fingerprints or DNA tests, and the crime scene had been contaminated by curious neighbors before police arrived.

The sequence of the crime was pieced together from blood spatters, the arrangement of the bodies, and the evidence left behind. The killer had first enticed Andreas, then Cäzilia, followed by Viktoria and her daughter, into the barn. Each had come out individually, perhaps drawn by the sounds of distress. The maid and Josef were likely killed last, in their beds.

Autopsies were performed in the barn by Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller, the court physician. He determined that all six victims died from blunt force trauma to the head, caused by a mattock or similar tool. Seven-year-old Cäzilia had torn out clumps of her own hair, likely in agony. Josef was suffocated after being struck.

The investigation focused first on the family’s acquaintances. Lorenz Schlittenbauer, the neighbor and rumored lover of Viktoria, came under scrutiny. He was among the first to discover the bodies. Police noted his strange behavior at the scene—he moved the bodies and handled evidence without permission. He claimed to be searching for his missing son, Josef, who he believed was his own child. Though questioned repeatedly, Schlittenbauer had a watertight alibi for the night of the murders and was released.

Rural Bavaria in 1922 was deeply insular. The villagers believed the killer had to have been someone familiar with the farm—perhaps even someone trusted by the family. The barn was built in such a way that only a person who knew its layout could have acted with such stealth. The lack of forced entry suggested the victims were lured outside by someone they didn’t fear.

Another theory arose from the prior maid’s claim that she’d felt the house was haunted. Some suggested that a vagrant or drifter had watched the family for weeks, hiding in the attic and living off their supplies. The missing key, the newspaper, and the attic noises all pointed to the presence of an interloper. Yet no one saw a stranger in the area.

Inspector Reingruber interviewed hundreds of people. He ordered a search of the woods for clues, but the ground was muddy and the killer had left no clear tracks. The only footprints found in the snow weeks earlier had already melted away. Reingruber eventually ruled out robbery as a motive. Large sums of money and valuables were left untouched in the house.

The murder weapon, a mattock, was identified as belonging to the farm. The killer must have found it on the property. This further suggested an inside job or someone who knew the family’s routines and possessions.

Rumors swirled throughout the region. Some suspected that Andreas’s abusive nature or the rumored incest had provoked someone into vengeance. Others accused Lorenz Schlittenbauer, despite his alibi, insisting he had the strongest motive. More than 100 suspects were formally interviewed in the months after the crime.

The funerals were attended by crowds from miles around. The Hinterkaifeck farmhouse stood empty, regarded as cursed. Relatives demolished the house in 1923.

In the decades since, the Hinterkaifeck case has spawned countless theories. Some point to the incest rumors and claim Viktoria’s husband, presumed dead in the war, had returned for revenge. Others suspect a serial killer traveling by train, striking at random. The murdered maid, Maria Baumgartner, had no known enemies. The timing of her arrival—just hours before her death—could be coincidence or evidence that the killer chose that night precisely because she was a stranger.

No one was ever charged with the crime. The Bavarian police continued to review the case sporadically throughout the twentieth century. Files were lost in World War II, and most of the people involved died without answers.

The Hinterkaifeck murders exposed the weaknesses of rural policing in Weimar-era Germany. The crime scene was contaminated before police arrived. Local superstitions and gossip interfered with the investigation, and forensic techniques were primitive. Autopsies were performed in the barn, not in a proper morgue, and neighbors handled evidence.

The case remains unsolved more than a century later. The isolated location of the farmhouse, the lack of surviving witnesses, and the absence of forensic evidence mean the true identity of the killer may never be known. The murders at Hinterkaifeck mark one of the darkest and most puzzling chapters in German criminal history.

The exact amount of Andreas Gruber’s estate was never made public, fueling speculation that financial motives might have played a role. The farmhouse itself was less than five kilometers from the nearest rail line, making it accessible to an outsider who could vanish quickly after committing the crime.

The original murder weapon was rediscovered in 1923, hidden in the attic rafters during demolition. The bloodstained mattock was displayed in the local police station for years.

The surviving relatives of the Gruber family received anonymous letters for several years after the murders, some hinting at inside knowledge. Police traced several letters to distant acquaintances but could not identify the sender.

A monument was erected near the site of the old farmhouse, inscribed with the names of all six victims. Today, the place where the Hinterkaifeck house once stood is a silent field, visited by true-crime enthusiasts from around the world.

In 2007, a group of German police trainees attempted to solve the case using modern investigative techniques and criminal profiling. Their final report suggested a suspect known to the family, but with all principals dead, no charges could be filed.

Seven-year-old Cäzilia’s death certificate recorded her time of death as several hours after the initial attack, based on the wounds to her face and the state of her body. This detail led some investigators to believe she may have witnessed the murder of her family before succumbing to her injuries.

The Hinterkaifeck murders remain Germany’s most infamous unsolved crime, and the case file is still open in the Bavarian police archives.