The Hinterkaifeck Mystery
The Hinterkaifeck Mystery is one of the strangest occurances ever known to man. To this day the case still remains unsolved.
Hinterkaifeck is a very small farmstead between the towns Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen in Bavaria. This is where one the most strange happenings ever occured.
On the night of March 31st, 1922, the 6 people living on the farm were killed with a type of pick-axe called a mattock.
The 6 people who were murdered were as follows.
Farmer Andreas Gruber (63)
His wife Cäzilia (72)
Their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35)
Viktoria's two children, Cäzilia (7) and Josef (2)
Their maid Maria Baumgartner (44).
It is believed by many who have researched this story, that Josef, the 2 year old, was infact the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuos relationship.
The Gruber family home was situated in a deserted part of town. Surrounded by land and forest. Maria was a member of staff to the family, however they had not known her very long before hiring her as their maid. It is believed that she replaced the homes previous maid, who quit her job as she believed the home was haunted.
Here's where the story gets interested. Before the family were murdered, Andreas, the father, claims he was working outside his home when he found footprints leading up to house. However, he told neighbours that there were no footprints leading back, assuming that whoever it was must have gone inside. He also claimed that at night he could hear footsteps coming from the attic and found non-local newspapers up there that he did not recognise. His keys to the family home had gone missing too, but he chose not to report any of it to police, assuming he had just misplaced them.
On the night of March 31st, 1922, someone managed to lure 4 of the family members into the barn, before murdered them all with an axe handle.
They then proceeded to make their way inside of the house and murdered the two year old boy, Josef. After killing Josef while he slept, they made their way to the maid's room and murdered her also.
After an autopsy it was revealed that Cäzilia was still alive for a lengthy amount of time after the attack and laid there tearing her hair out, out of desperation.
The family was noticed as missing several days later when none of them had been seen for a few days, and young Cäzilia had not attended school. Neighbors went to check on them and discovered the bodies
Though an intense investigation was held out for a number of months, police could not identify the killer.
And surprisingly, it got worse.
It was suspected that someone may have snook into the families home using the missing keys of Andreas and lived in their attic. Hence the footsteps and newspapers. Whoever it was, then came out of hiding and murdered the family in the dead of night.
To further prove this theory, as the bodies lay dead, neighbours claimed that they saw smoke coming from the homes chimney as if someone had lit a fire. Someone had also fed the animals on the farm days after the family were killed. Whoever murdered them, stayed there for a few more days.
No one knows what happened to the previous maid and why she really quit the job in their home. As no one has found the killer, there is speculation this could have been her. Or, she really was telling the truth that the home was haunted.
