Six Murders, No Answers: What Happened at Hinterkaifeck?

A Quiet Farm, a Troubled Home

In 1922, deep in the Bavarian countryside, nestled among rolling fields and medieval towns, was Hinterkaifeck—a small farming community where everyone knew everyone. And on one of its remote farms lived the Gruber family.

Andreas Gruber, the stern and notoriously difficult patriarch, ran the household alongside his wife, Cäzilia. Their widowed daughter, Viktoria Gabriel, lived with them, raising her two children: seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel (named after her grandmother) and two-year-old Josef. The family managed the farm with occasional help from seasonal workers, but their only permanent employee was their live-in maid, Kresznenz Rieger.

That was until 1921, when Kresznenz had enough. And it wasn’t the backbreaking labor or Andreas’ impossible personality that drove her away. It was the house itself.

The
Sounds No One Could Explain

For months, the Gruber household had been plagued by something—or someone—they couldn’t see. Footsteps creaked through the attic at night. Unexplained thumps echoed through the house. Workers whispered about spirits, and the family started to believe them. Each time Andreas checked the attic, he found nothing. But the noises never stopped.

Kresznenz finally quit, refusing to spend another night in a place she was convinced was haunted.

For months, the family struggled without a maid, but by spring of 1922, they finally found a replacement. Maria Baumgartner arrived in March, settling in for her first night on the job. It would also be her last.

Because as it turned out, the thing lurking in the attic may not have been supernatural at all.

Signs of an Unseen Visitor

Shortly before the tragedy at Hinterkaifeck, Andreas Gruber noticed something strange—something that should have sent alarm bells ringing. A newspaper from Munich had appeared at the farm. It wasn’t theirs. In fact, no one in town subscribed to that paper. Andreas assumed it was just a mix-up, an innocent mistake by the postman.

Then, the next day, something far less easy to dismiss: two sets of footprints in the fresh snow. They led from the dense forest straight to the farm’s machine room. There were no tracks leading back out. The lock had been broken.

Andreas told his neighbors, who immediately offered to help him search the property. He refused.

If he had accepted, maybe they would have found something—or someone—hiding in the barn. Maybe they would have seen where someone had been sleeping in the hay or noticed the indentations on the attic insulation where a body had clearly been lying.

But Andreas didn’t check. And we can only wonder how differently things might have played out if he had.

Maybe he was just being difficult, as he was known to be. Or maybe he had bigger things on his mind. Because inside the house, tensions were rising.

A House on Edge

By the next morning, seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel arrived at school with a story. Her family had spent the night locked in a brutal argument—so bad that her mother, Viktoria, fled the house. Hours later, she was found hiding in the forest and brought back home. Whatever happened that night, tensions inside the Gruber household had reached a breaking point.

But whatever Viktoria was running from, she didn’t escape it for long.

One by One, They Walked to Their Deaths

That night, while the Grubers’ new maid, Maria Baumgartner, settled in for her first evening on the job, something was happening outside. One by one, members of the family were lured into the barn. Maybe they heard a noise. Maybe someone called for help.

We still don’t know.

But we do know that once they stepped inside, they never walked back out.

Each was struck over the head with a farm tool, likely a pickaxe. There were no defensive wounds, no sign of a struggle—whoever did this, the victims either didn’t see it coming, or they knew their killer.

All but one died instantly.

Seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel survived long enough to suffer. When her body was found, her small hands were tangled in her own hair—she had ripped out entire tufts, likely in pain or terror before she finally succumbed.

Inside the house, Maria never woke up. She was killed in her sleep, just hours into her new job. In his bassinet, two-year-old Josef was also murdered where he lay.

By morning, the Gruber farm had fallen completely silent.

The Killer Didn’t Flee—They Moved In

The night after the murders, a local man passing by the Gruber farm noticed something strange. Someone was tending the oven inside the house. The figure, appearing to be a man, held up a lantern. But when the passerby tried to get a closer look, the man turned the lantern toward him, blinding him with the light. The local walked away, unsettled. He later recalled a foul smell coming from the chimney.

That moment was never properly investigated, but it should have been. Because whoever had wiped out the entire Gruber family hadn’t left the scene. They stayed.

For days, the killer lived inside the farmhouse, eating the family’s food, lighting their fires, and even tending to their livestock. Maybe they were buying time. Maybe they wanted to make sure no one came looking too soon.

Local merchants and craftsmen visited the farm, some of them noticing movement inside but receiving no response at the door. Others went about their business, not realizing the entire household was dead inside.

Four days passed before a neighbor, Lorenz Schlittenbauer, decided enough was enough.

The Discovery

Lorenz, increasingly concerned, sent his 16-year-old son to check on the Grubers. The boy returned, saying the farm was eerily silent. No one was there.

That was enough to send Lorenz himself, along with two other men, to investigate.

He was the first to step into the barn. And the first to trip over a body.

Andreas Gruber lay lifeless in the hay. Nearby, the rest of his family—stacked together, murdered the same way. Inside the house, Maria Baumgartner and two-year-old Josef were found in their beds, killed in their sleep.

And then Lorenz did something odd.

He pulled out a key to the farmhouse, unlocked the door, and walked in—alone, unarmed, and without hesitation. If the killer had still been inside, he didn’t seem worried.

“I’m going to get my son,” he told the others.

Because Josef? The baby who had just been found murdered in his crib? Lorenz had signed his birth certificate, claiming him as his own.

A Scandal Beneath the Surface

Everyone in town knew the real story. Lorenz and Viktoria had been involved. Maybe they still were. But Josef wasn’t his son. That much was clear.

The true father? Likely Andreas Gruber himself.

This wasn’t some town rumor. It was documented. Andreas had already been accused of having an incestuous relationship with Viktoria, and it wasn’t a secret that she hated it. But with her husband dead and two children to raise, she had nowhere else to go. When she became pregnant with Josef, she begged Lorenz to claim the baby as his own. He did—for a while.

But keeping Andreas’ secret didn’t make things easier. If anything, it made them worse. Andreas remained just as cruel, and tensions between him and Lorenz continued to escalate.

When the truth about the incest finally became public, Lorenz testified against Andreas in court. Both Andreas and Viktoria were convicted. And after the murders, people started asking the obvious question—was this revenge?

Theories and Accusations

Initially, investigators thought the motive might have been robbery. The Grubers were wealthy, rumored to have gold stashed somewhere on the farm. But when police searched the property, the gold was still there. Whoever did this wasn’t after money.

So, the town came up with their own explanations.

Some believed Viktoria’s husband hadn’t actually died in the war. That he had returned, found her raising another man’s child, and killed the entire family in a jealous rage. Others thought Viktoria had started demanding child support from Lorenz, and he snapped.

Lorenz himself never confirmed these theories—and he successfully sued several people who accused him of being the killer.

But if Lorenz didn’t do it, then who did?

A Deathbed Confession That Went Nowhere

Of all the suspects, two names stood out: Anton and Karl Bichler. Seasonal farmhands who had once worked at Hinterkaifeck, they knew the land well. But more importantly, they had a personal connection to the Grubers.

Their sister, Kreszenz Rieger, had been the Grubers’ former maid. And on her deathbed, she made a confession that should have changed the case forever.

She told her priest she believed her brothers had committed the murders. That she had tried to tell the police before, but no one had listened. During her official statement, she had mentioned that her brothers hated the family—especially Andreas.

They had worked under his supervision during the potato harvest, and anyone who knew Andreas knew he wasn’t exactly pleasant to work for. Add in the widely known incest rumors, and the Bichler brothers had more than enough reasons to despise the man.

Police had wanted to question them back in 1922. But by the time the investigation heated up, Anton and Karl had disappeared.

And that was where things ended.

Kreszenz begged the priest to take her confession to the authorities, to finally reveal what she knew. But he didn’t. Too much time had passed. The case was already cold.

And so, the mystery of the Hinterkaifeck murders was left unsolved.

What Remains

The farm was eventually demolished. The case was closed. And all that’s left today is a concrete memorial, standing where an entire family lost their lives to a crime that, over a century later, still has no definitive answer.