October 24, 2025 • 52 mins
SEASON 9 BEGINS FRIDAY OCTOBER 31ST
Our final journey into the archive takes us to the remote Bavarian countryside in 1922, to a lonely farmstead and the family who lived there, where something unspeakable was about to unfold. It was a place where shadows seemed to linger a little too long, and where the boundary between safety and terror proved to be as fragile as a footprint in fresh snow.
The word "tenebrous" means dark, shadowy, and obscure - and no word better captures what descended upon this isolated family in those final, terrifying days.
What happened at their remote farm would become one of Germany's most notorious unsolved mysteries, a case so disturbing that it continues to defy explanation a century later…
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here with Unexplained on an
end of season break. This is our final archive episode
before season nine begins next Friday, October thirty first, and
with Halloween only a week away, this week's episode takes
a suitably dark and chilling turn. It is perhaps the
(00:20):
darkest story ever covered or unexplained. Our final journey into
the archive takes us to the remote Bavarian countryside in
nineteen twenty two, to a lonely farmstead and the family
who lived there, where something unspeakable was about to unfold.
It was a place where shadows seemed to linger a
(00:41):
little too long, and where the boundary between safety and
terror proved to be as fragile as a footprint in
fresh snow. The word tenebris means dark, shadowy, and obscure,
an apt word to capture what descended upon this isolated
family in those final terrifying days. Just what exactly happened
(01:05):
at their remote farm would become one of Germany's most
notorious unsolved mysteries, a case so disturbing it continues to
defy explanation a century later. This is Unexplained Season five
episode nine, Tenebrous The following episode involves scenes of sexual
(01:27):
abuse that some may find disturbing. Parental discretion is advised.
There was once a place deep in the rural hinterland
of Bavaria in southern Germany, Positioned half a kilometer to
(01:50):
the west of the village of Greerben. It sat quiet
and still alone in the fields, surrounded by thick pine forest.
House made of stone and painted white. The farm, known
as hinter Kaifek, had passed through many hands over the years,
all of which had, at one time or another worked
(02:12):
the rich, dark earth that surrounded it, sewing it, tilling it,
and pulling from it. Fingers plunged deep into the black
of it, and all had, in one way or another,
left a piece of themselves in it too. By eighteen
eighty six, the property had been passed to Cecilia Assam
(02:34):
and Andreas Gruber, the pair having taken ownership of it
shortly after the death of Cecilia's first husband, Joseph, for
Cecilia left to run the farm and raise two young
children alone. Andreas was an apt partner, a farm laborer
with an intense and quiet disposition. His hands were strong
(02:56):
and his shoulders broad enough for them all not that
Cecilia's weren't also, and so in April eighteen eighty six,
Cecilia Assam became Cecilia Gruber, and together she and Andreas
worked the farm and the surrounding fields, maintaining a fine
and stable business. In eighteen eighty seven, new life arrives
(03:19):
in the form of a baby girl named Victoria. She
is joined by Sophie two years later, and for those
first few years joy threatens to rain at hint Kaifek,
but the joy is short lived. Like almost twenty percent
of children in the local district at the time, Sophie
(03:39):
does not live to see her second birthday. And now
a cloud is descending over this dark white property, cast
a drift from the nearby town and seeming to move
further away with each passing day, the forests surrounding it
seeming to grow ever denser, and the trees looming ever taller.
(04:02):
It is a natural habit of humans to project onto
all that we see, and no more so than with
our interpretations of the forest. For some, the forest is
foreboding a locusts for unknown dangers that lurk deep within.
But the forest does not think itself foreboding. The forest
(04:23):
just is, And yet for hinter Chaifek, it is hard
not to read those tall, thick pines that surrounded the farm,
and the gloom of the forest beyond, as some kind
of psychic projection emanating from the darkness festering inside that
white stone building, a darkness that would one day come
(04:44):
to define that land in more ways than one. How
fitting too that the patch of woodland closest to the
farm should be called Hexenholtz, or the Witch's forest, the
notion of the witch often being just a projection of
our own innate fears of the other, but also two
(05:04):
as women. Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage once noted the fear
of women. But perhaps it isn't just fear that manifests
this patriarchal image of the malevolent witch, but guilt too.
You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The
(05:33):
couple looked happy enough as they stood reciting their vows
under the watchful eyes of the priest. As they stepped
out at the church, arm in arm, Some say for
a brief moment, the clouds above parted and a ray
of sunshine slipped through. Perhaps the bride a now twenty
six year old Victoria saw it too, and perhaps for
(05:57):
a moment there was even the hint of a smile
as she looked into the eyes of her new husband,
Carl Gabriel, and saw there the hope of a better future,
a future safe from harm and full of warmth for
the child that would surely come. But such thoughts were
never kept long in her mind before the sight of
(06:18):
her father, Andreas Gruber dissolved them instantly, that unmoving, impassive face,
ever present, always watching the sight of him, never failing
to catch in her throat, congealing like thick black tar.
There had long been rumors about the man, about how
(06:40):
he regularly beat his wife, Cecilia, now sixty four years
old and nine years his senior, but that wasn't all.
It was said to be common knowledge amongst the local
farming community and in the village of Gurban, that Andreas
regularly raped his daughter, although it wasn't called rape at
(07:02):
the time. Perhaps Carl knew this too when he married Victoria,
and perhaps there was a hope that their marriage might
put an end to the abuse. Or perhaps, as some
have suggested, the union was more pragmatic than that that
it merely offered a buffer for Victoria and an opportunity
for Carl and indeed the wider Gabriel family to gain
(07:26):
access to a successful, if modest business. Only a month
before their wedding, Andreas transferred all the rights to the
farm to his daughter, making her the sole heir to
the property. By marrying Victoria, Karl had guaranteed that any
children of theirs would inherit the land. But for some possessions,
(07:49):
or at least what they consider to be their possessions,
are not so easy to let go of, and no
matter where they turned, nor what time of day, there
would be Andreas, who, along with Cecilia, remained living at
the property, standing watch stone, faced deep in thought. Barely
(08:16):
weeks after the wedding, Carl moved back home to his parents,
complaining that he was being bullied and that the fierce
and uncompromising Andreas had even taken to starving him. But
just as Andreas cast his shadow over hint Kaifek, so
too were other larger shadows being steadily drawn across the land.
(08:38):
In late June of nineteen fourteen, comes the news that
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria, Hungary
has been shot dead. The rickety stumbling wheel of human
civilization takes another lurch from the path and wobbles inexorably
toward war. And so the men are summoned by a
(09:00):
appeals to duty and valor. Perhaps it is with trepidation
that Karl packs up the few belongings he'll need and
marches out of the farm toward Munich to sign up,
leaving behind and now four months pregnant Victoria. Or perhaps
at the site of the stone faced Andreas, pausing briefly
(09:20):
from his work in the field to nod goodbye to
his son in law, it is with relief before long.
It is December twelfth, nineteen fourteen, eight hundred kilometers to
the northwest of hinter Kaifec. A crow swoops down above
a field just north of the town of Arras, coming
(09:41):
to rest on what remains of an old beech tree.
In the field below, freshly scarred and pock marked by shelling,
there lies a body, its forehead split open and the
lower jaw obliterated, its pale vacant eyes staring up to
war a slowly darkening sky. The crow calls and swoops
(10:05):
down for closer inspection, but a hand quickly shows it away.
Joseph Bickler, a farmer from Vadhoffen, a town close to Gerban,
stands over the body, recognizing it instantly as that of
his old school friend Carl Gabriel. The following week, back
at hinter Kaifek, a now heavily pregnant, Victoria watches from
(10:29):
the window as postal worker Joseph Meyer draws near to
the house. With him, he carries a copy of Andreas's
regular paper and a letter addressed to Victoria written by
Joseph Bickler, informing her of her husband's death. But Victoria
has little time to grieve when three weeks later she
(10:50):
gives birth to her first child, whom she names Cecilia
after her mother. But still the rumors refuse to go away,
as many in the village are left wandering is the
child Carl's or is it her father's. At some point
(11:13):
in early nineteen fifteen, a complaint is brought to the
local police that Andreas was committing incest with his daughter.
After a formal investigation, rumor becomes fact when on May
twenty eighth, Andreas is convicted for the offense with the
court deciding to limit the period of the crime to
the years nineteen oh seven to nineteen ten, when Victoria
(11:36):
was aged twenty to twenty three. This was most likely
an arbitrary decision to avoid looking into accusations that it
had in fact been going on much longer than that,
and thereby allowing Andreas the opportunity to escape the accusation
of child abuse. He is sentenced to one year in prison.
(11:56):
Such was the attitude of the day. Victoria was considered
to be a willing participant in the abuse, and as
such was also convicted for the crime. On January tenth,
nineteen sixteen, the day after her daughter's first birthday, Victoria
was taken to Neuberg Prison to spend the first of
thirty days behind bars for one relatively blissful year. Victoria
(12:23):
and her mother Cecilia run the farm with help from
their maid Cretchens Raiger. Together they manage all the livestock
and harvest the fields. On Sundays, Victoria makes the short
journey to the village of Vaidhoffen to attend the trade
fair and on occasion joins the church choir to sing.
(12:44):
She is praised widely for her voice and is known
by the nickname the Lark of hint Kaifek. But in
February nineteen seventeen, Andreas returns, and though Victoria continues to sing,
something of her voice has changed. In nineteen eighteen, Victoria
begins a relationship with Lorenz Schlittenbauer, her neighbour from the
(13:07):
next farm over, who is only recently widowed. The affair
is brief, with some blaming the presence of Andreas for
Lorenz's reluctance to pursue the relationship. However, by the end
of December, Victoria discovers she is pregnant again, and in
July nineteen nineteen, gives birth to a son, whom she
(13:29):
names Joseph. Now a single mother with two young children,
Victoria is convinced that Lorenz is the father and approaches
him for financial support. In response, Lorenz, who suspects the
child might instead be Andreas, reports her and her father
again to the police. With Andreas July arrested and awaiting
(13:52):
a second trial, Victoria pleads with Lorenz to drop the
charge and claim paternity of the child to help an
end toward the salacious rumors. Lorenz later said that despite
agreeing to the claim Victoria paid him to say it. Meanwhile, Cretchence,
the family's maid, is growing increasingly anxious. At night, she
(14:17):
hears unusual sounds in the house and what seem like
footsteps moving about the place. Sometimes her door even seems
to open on its own accord. One morning in the
summer of nineteen twenty one, after pulling up water from
the well, cretchens is walking across the courtyard when she
hears a strange noise coming from the barn, unlike any
(14:40):
of the usual animal cries. Moving slowly into the barn,
she catches sight of something in the corner and recoils
in horror. It is Andreas raping his daughter, who lies
motionless underneath him. Crechence leaves the farm the following week.
(15:05):
The winter of nineteen twenty one is especially cruel, with
freezing temperatures lasting well into the following year. By mid March,
there is still no end in sight, with frost and
snow of frequent occurrence. One gray afternoon, Victoria is walking
across the courtyard when she is distracted by a movement
(15:26):
to the south. Looking up, she can just make out
a lone figure standing at the edge of Witch's Wood
that appears to be watching her. Looking away for a moment,
she turns back to find that the figure has gone.
A few days later, when postal worker Joseph Meyer arrives
at the property, he is met by Andreas waving a
(15:49):
paper around a damp and muddy copy of the munich Zeitung.
He'd found it while out in the field close to
witches Wood. He wants to know if Joseph is dropped it, perhaps,
but Joseph has never seen it before, and neither has
he ever delivered one like it. Whose evers it was,
he suggests, was not local to the area. It is
(16:13):
early in the morning of March twenty ninth when Andreas
is disturbed from bed by what sounds like footsteps shuffling
about in the attic above. Grabbing his rifle and a flashlight,
he makes his way through the darkness toward the attic
stairs and climbs up into the opening above, each step
(16:33):
creaking as he goes. Pointing the light into the roof,
he could see the hole attic stretched out in both directions,
empty save for some old patches of straw that were
scattered about, and the pieces of meat hanging in the
smokehouse above the kitchen. On the morning of Thursday, March thirtieth,
(16:55):
Andreas heads toward the engine room, where much of the
farm's heavy equipment is kept. The room is located at
the southwest tip of the L shaped farm, tacked on
to the end of the barn. The snow is still
thick on the ground as Andreas approaches, to find that
the padlock on the door is missing. What's more, there
(17:17):
are two sets of footprints in the snow leading inside
the building, but none coming out. A confused Andreas stares
down at the tracks and then up toward Whiches Wood,
where they seem to have come from. Andrea shouts for
whoever is inside to come out, but there is no reply.
(17:40):
Pulling the door open, he's relieved to find the place
completely deserted and everything as he'd left it. Later, however,
he will find one of his two house keys has
gone missing. Later that night, after a violent altercation with
(18:03):
her husband, Cecilia Gruber is found to be missing, prompting
the rest of the family, including seven year old Cecilia,
to search or night for her. Concern that she may
have drowned herself leads the family to the banks of
the river par a kilometer to the south of the farm,
but there is no sign of her in the dark,
(18:24):
icy water. The seventy two year old Cecilia is finally
found sitting silently on a tree stump in the forest,
and is eventually coaxed back to the farm. The following day,
with things appearing to have abated, the family adjoined by
forty five year old Maria Baumgartner, who arrives accompanied by
(18:45):
her sister Francisca to take on the role of a
living housemaid. Francisca had helped secure the job for her sister, who,
due to her learning difficulties and the slight physical disability
of having one leg short end and the other, had
often struggled for work, her most recent job in the
nearby town of ent Wittelsbach having been terminated simply because
(19:10):
the town's mayre deemed her too unsightly for the local community.
And though Francisca had heard much about the Gruber family
and what was rumored to take place at hint Kifek,
it was an opportunity too good to refuse from Maria.
Even still, it was hard not to feel a little
trepidation when, after helping her sister settle in. She made
(19:33):
her goodbyes and headed out of the property, with the
wind picking up and thick storm clouds beginning to gather
in the sky above. Francisca was approaching the main road
when she heard the voice of her sister calling out
from behind her. Turning round, she saw Maria racing toward
(19:53):
her for one final goodbye before they parted. After a
brief hug, Maria asked her sister to visit again soon,
then turned and headed back to the farm. It is
late the following night when local carpenter Michael Blockl trudges
(20:16):
past the property and spots a fire burning in the
outdoor oven and smoke billowing out of its chimney. Perhaps
it was the nauseating smell like burnt rags that caused
him to stop, or perhaps it was just something in
the quiet of the night. But as he stares, he
is taken aback by the sudden movement of a figure
(20:39):
stepping into the courtyard. Michael watches as the figure slams
the oven door, shut points a flashlight in his direction,
and then begins steadily making his way toward him, Frozen
with fear at first, as the figure draws closer and closer,
Michael finally pulls his hands from his pocket and speeds
(21:01):
off in the opposite direction. It is two days later
when Joseph Mayer arrives at the property to deliver Andreas's paper,
only to find the place completely deserted, with no sign
of Andreas or anyone else for that matter, to be found.
The courtyard unnervingly quiet save for the gentle lowing of
(21:24):
the cattle coming from inside the barn. Assuming they are
out working the field somewhere. Joseph leaves the paper on
the kitchen windowsill and heads off to continue his round.
It is sometime around midday on Tuesday, April fourth when
machinist Albert Hofner arrives at hinto Kaifek to make repairs
(21:47):
to the family's threshing machine. A cold wind whips around
him as he pulls up to the courtyard gate on
his bicycle, surprised to find that it's still locked. After
waiting unsuccessfully for over an hour for someone to meet him,
Albert makes his way to the engine room. Grateful to
(22:07):
find the lock is broken, he lets himself inside and
sets to work on the machine. Four and a half
hours later, there is still no sign of the family.
With the work completed, Albert heads into the courtyard and
notices for the first time that the barn door is
wide open. I'm sure if it was before. He moves
(22:29):
toward it, calling out for Andreas or Victoria, but is
met with only silence. Peering into the darkness beyond, he
sees only the cattle inside and some hay piled up
in the far corner. Hearing the dog suddenly barking manically,
he wanders round to the front of the house and
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finds it tied up by the front door. Ignoring its cries.
Albert cups his hands over the glass and peers inside
to the kitchen, but sees nothing untoward. Turning back, he
takes one final look at the empty field to the
stretch of forest beyond, then heads off to find his bicycle.
(23:19):
It's just gone five p m. When farmer Michael Pearl,
another neighbor of the Grubers, hears a knock at his door.
He opens it to find a nervous looking Lorenz Schlittenbauer
and their neighbor Jakob Sig, waiting for him. After hearing
about Albert Hofnan's strange experience at the farm, Lorenz had
(23:40):
grown increasingly concerned about the Gruber family and his apparent
son Joseph's whereabouts. With the young Cecilia not having been
seen at school since Saturday, all was eerily quiet as
the three men stepped into hint Kyfec's deserted courtyard, the
silence only coming more deafening when their desperate cause for
(24:03):
Victoria and Andreas brought no reply. Finding all doors to
the property now completely shut and locked up save for
the engine room, the men made their way inside from
the back, only to find that through door to the
barn had been deliberately blocked from behind with a beam
of wood. After finally managing to dislodge it, and with
(24:26):
the light quickly beginning to fade, the men carried on
into the barn beyond the sudden appearance of a cow
wandering freely around inside startled them momentarily as they continued
forward into the dark, feeling for obstacles with their feet,
when suddenly Michael cried out, Hey, there's something here. Michael
(24:51):
pulled back and realized with horror it was a foot.
Whoever it was, was lying under a large plank of
wood that had been put on top of them. Together,
the men pulled the wood to the side and revealed
the body of Andreas Gruber underneath, dressed in trousers and undershirt,
(25:12):
thickly matted with blood and crudely covered over with hay.
Pulling the body out, the men recoiled at the sight
of its face. The right side of it was completely
smashed in, its cheekbones clearly visible. But then Lorenz saw
the other limbs all packed underneath. Together. Pulling out one
(25:35):
after the other, the men revealed the bodies of seven
year old Cecilia, dressed in her night skirt, her mother.
Victoria and her mother Cecilia, both fully dressed and hideously mutilated,
their clothes and faces black with blood. Michael and Jakob
(25:56):
wretched at the sight of them and stumbled back into
the courtyard, desperate for air. A moment later, Lorenz appeared
in the yard, having opened the front door to the
main house from inside, and beckoned for the other two
to help him search for his son. They found him
in the stroller at the foot of Victoria's bed, his
(26:17):
body partially covered with one of Victoria's jackets. He'd been
killed by a heavy blow to the face. Finally, after
almost missing her. At first, Michael noticed a pair of
legs peeking out from under the bed in the maid's quarters.
It was Maria, her clothes and face also soaked black
(26:39):
with blood. As Michael and Jakob struggled to make sense
of it all, an eerily calm Lawrence returned to Victoria's bedroom, and,
having found a candle, sat down quietly on the bed
and lit it. Outside, all about the land was silent
(27:01):
and still, save for the gentle rustle of wind in
the pines and the occasional wail of cattle coming from
that solitary white stone building of hinter Kaifek. The cars
turned off the main road and headed deeper into the fields,
(27:24):
toward the small solitary light in the distance. Behind it,
a vast wall of trees, silhouetted under a pale half moon,
stood still and black, growing ever taller the closer they got,
and on they continued, toward the light that seemed to
be luring them in like a silent, haunting beacon, toward
(27:46):
an unfathomable horror. Inside the cars, a team of investigators
from Eunich, led by fifty five year old George Hinruber,
as well as mayor gregor of Wangen, the next village
East German, prepared themselves for the worst. The local district police,
having been first to arrive on the scene at hint Kaifek,
(28:08):
had quickly realized they were woefully out of their depth.
They had called in the Munich force in a desperate
plea for help. Ryan Gruber's team hadn't arrived in the
area until after one am, prompting them to spend the
night at the mayor's residence in Vangen before making their
way to the farm first thing in the morning. It
(28:29):
had just gone six a m. When the cars finally
pulled into the courtyard on Wednesday, April fifth. As the
seven officers, two police dogs, and the mayor stepped out
into the chilly morning air, Lorenz Schlittenbauer appeared at the
front door of the main house, his footsteps echoing about
the courtyard as he approached. Lorenz quickly introduced himself as
(28:53):
one of the men who'd first found the bodies, and
that he'd been there all night guarding the scene for them.
Ryan was struck immediately by the man's odd nervous energy,
a natural consequence perhaps of the fact he hadn't slept
since the night before, but as to why he'd taken
it on himself to stay at the property, he was
less sure. As Lorenz continued to babble about everything he
(29:17):
knew of the family and how he discovered the bodies,
Brian Gruber eventually interrupted. Perhaps he said, we should take
a look for ourselves, and so as the first light
of dawn began to break, Lorenz turned and led the
investigator and his team into the barn. The bodies of
(29:45):
Andreas and the young Cecilia had been placed against the
far wall, a small pool of blood on the hay,
in the spot where they'd first been found. The other
two bodies, those of Victoria and the elder Cecilia, had
been pulled through a doorway into a stable corridor linking
the barn to the main house. When asked why the
(30:06):
bodies had been moved, Lorenz explained that he was looking
for his son, who at first he thought might be
there too. Ryan Gruper made a quick inspection of their injuries,
then turned his attention to the door between the two areas.
It was covered in blood splatter. There was something else,
said Lawrence, leading the inspector through to the stable corridor that,
(30:30):
he said, pointing to a pickaxe leaning up against a
feeding trough in the corner. He'd found it the day before,
he said. The inspector took a closer look, noticing a
few dark spots on the handle, but little else. Perhaps
the cattle had licked it clean, suggested Lorenz. Perhaps, said
(30:51):
Ryan Grueber in reply. Lorenz then led the team into
the kitchen while two of the officers made their way
into the attic. Ryan Gruber took note of the now
moldy food that had been left out in a pan
and blood spots on the stone floor as they continued through,
arriving at the doorway to maria the maid's room. Running
(31:15):
his hand over the door frame, the inspector spotted a
few splatters and some more on the ground, but no
bloody hand or footprints. Looking through, he saw Maria's body
partially obscured by a mattress, lying in a fetal position.
Evidently she had been attacked while preparing for bed, perhaps
(31:35):
crouching down for cover in a vain attempt to protect herself.
Next was Victoria's room. The place appeared to have been ransacked,
with cupboards flung open and the bed unmade a watch,
(31:56):
and an empty purse had been left out on top
of it, prompting ryin Gruber to wonder if theft had
been the motive. Lorenz informed him that the family was
said to have kept around one hundred thousand marks at
the property, close to four thousand US dollars in today's money.
The inspector approached the baby stroller at the end of
(32:17):
the bed and pulled back the dress that was draped
over it to reveal the blood soaked baby Joseph underneath,
his face, unrecognizable from the blows. The hood of the
pram had also been torn apart, suggesting it had been
closed when the killer struck. Perhaps even they had found
(32:37):
the thought of killing a baby too much and couldn't
bear to have to see what they were doing. That
all the bodies had been covered over without any real
attempt to hide them was an indication, perhaps of the
killer's sense of shame, a shame likely only felt by
someone who knew the victims. Ryan Gruper stared up at
(33:00):
the three religious icons hanging on the wall above the
bed and the three crucifixes hanging underneath them. Then a
call came down from the attic above Ryin. Gruber's men
were standing to the side in a section of the
(33:21):
attic above the stable corridor, pointing at something on the
hay covered floor. As Ryan Gruber drew near, he caught
the unmistakable noxious whiff of it. It was human excrement.
There were also bacon rines scattered about two and two
indentations in the hay, suggesting the possibility of two perpetrators.
(33:46):
Then one of the officers noticed a kink of light
coming through the roof. Moving toward it, he found that
a number of tiles there had been loosened. A similar
set of loose tiles were found in another section of
the attic over the main bar. Anyone looking out of
the gaps in the roof would have had a clear
view of the courtyard and the entrance to the main
(34:06):
house had they been watching the family. Ryan Gruber thought
the family's bread supply, usually well stocked, was empty, while
some smoked meat appeared to have been taken after their
deaths in their absence. The livestock had also been watered
and fed, all in all, suggesting that whoever had done
(34:28):
this had not been gone long. After a thorough search
of the house investigators uncovered around fifteen thousand marks in
various denominations of cash and gold, but no sign of
the one hundred thousand marks that Lorenz claimed was kept
at the property. With the bodies having been moved, it
(34:48):
was difficult to ascertain who had been murdered first, but
aside from baby Joseph and Maria, it seemed reasonable to
assume the victims had been lured into the barn one
by one and then bludgeoned violently to death. Since seven
year old Cecilia hadn't been seen at school on Saturday,
the murders were considered to have taken place on the
(35:10):
night of Friday, March thirty first, only hours after Maria
Baumgartner had arrived at the farm to begin her new job.
Just then, Ryan Gruber heard a commotion outside and stepped
into the courtyard to find a small crowd of onlookers
had gathered at the edge of the property, desperate to
see the murder scene for themselves. It was early in
(35:40):
the afternoon when doctor Johann al Mulla, the district court doctor,
arrived from the nearby town of Neuburg at Donau, to
carry out the autopsies one by one The bodies were
taken from out of the farmhouse and laid side by
side in the middle of the courtyard as the ever
growing crowd of onlookers jostled for the best view. A
(36:03):
door was placed over two wooden trestles as a makeshift table,
and then, with the help of two porters and Clark
assistant twenty seven year old Heinrich Neay, the first of
the bodies was lifted on to it. The bodies were
pale and gray, the skin like rubber, with liver mortise
and dark patches underneath where the blood had pulled. For Andreas,
(36:28):
death had come quickly, having been bludgeoned to death with
a blunt object that pulverized the right side of his face.
Maria Baumgartner and the young Joseph were similarly killed with
heavy blows to the head and face. Victoria and her
mother's injuries, however, were subtly different, suggesting they'd endured something
(36:50):
even worse. Both displayed bruising around the neck as if
they'd been strangled before being beaten. Both their skulls had
been smashed, but Victoria also had nine peculiar star shaped
puncture wounds in hers. The crowd gasped as seven year
old Cecilia's body was lifted from the ground and placed
(37:12):
on the table. The lower jaw was shattered and her
head smashed, but there was also a huge gaping wound
on her neck, suggesting the weapon had not only been blunt,
but sharp too. Doctor al Mulla noticed something scrunched up
in her right hand. Prying the fingers open, he found
(37:33):
a clump of Cecilia's hair inside. The doctor concluded that
she'd likely survived for some time after the attack and
had clawed it out of her own head in the
agony and confusion. Having finished his investigations, doctor al Mulla
reached for his surgical sore and began methodically to remove
(37:55):
Cecilia's head from the body, a thick, bluish blood oozing
onto the table as he went. The process was repeated
for each of the bodies, with the heads being bagged
up and sent to the Pathology Institute at the University
of Munich for further investigation. With the autopsies complete, Heinrich
(38:21):
and the porters gathered each headless body onto a stretcher
and returned them to the barn, Having brought the rest
of the bodies in the young Cecilias was the last
to be returned, placing the headless corpse onto the stretcher.
The porters each grabbed an end and headed toward the
barn as Heinrich Neay followed close behind. As the porters
(38:44):
stepped inside, one of them cried out in horror and
dropped the stretcher, knocking the body to the floor. Heinrich
ran inside and found them pointing toward a thick line
of rope hanging down from a beam at the base
of the hayloft above. Heinrich stared up in utter amusement,
then looked to the others in stunned silence. The rope
(39:07):
had not been there when they last came into the barn.
Taking a breath, Heinrich pulled a ladder from the side
and carefully made his way up to the loft. Pulling
at the knot, he could feel just how tight it was,
as if a significant weight had only just been applied
to it, and there, right next to it in the
(39:29):
dust on the beam was a set of freshly made handprints.
With police rushing in to investigate, the search dog sniffed
eagerly at the rope for a cent and though an
effort was made to track it, it was quickly lost
out in the fields. With the investigation of the crime
(39:54):
scene finished, lead investigator Rhyin Gruber turned his attention to Loreen,
Schlittenback and the two other men Michael Pearl and Jacob Siegel,
who'd first discovered the bodies. After explaining again why he'd
moved the bodies and decided to stay overnight at the property,
Lorenz was keen to justify his decision, insisting that his
(40:16):
being there had helped to keep anyone else from entering
the house until Ryan Gruber and his team arrived. This, however,
was a lie, as reported by many others. As soon
as word had got out, a number of villagers had
descended on the property, keen to see the murder scene.
Lorenz had not only welcomed them, but shown them around
(40:38):
the property himself. One man had even paused in the
kitchen to fix himself a snack. But there were other
concerning things too. It was strange, thought Michael Pearl when
giving his statement later how Lawrence had managed to unlock
the front door and let them into the property in
the first place. Lawrence himself had told him that Andreas
(41:01):
had complained about one of his house keys going missing.
Lorenz maintained that he'd merely found it sticking out of
the lock when he went to open the door for
Jakob Siegel. It was the strangeness of Lorenz's calm demeanor
and eagerness to move the bodies that most stuck out
to him. Despite his and Michael's protestations that they should
(41:24):
leave the scene untouched, Lorens ignored them immediately after finding
the bodies. As Siegel explained, he'd set about fetching milk
from the cellar to feed the pigs and rearranging other
parts of the house. At one point, he'd even suggested
that Yakob go into the hayloft and throw down some
(41:44):
hay for the cattle to eat, but Yakob refused, and
he and Michael left the property soon after, wanting nothing
more to do with it. Michael was so suspicious of
Lorence's behavior, according to Yakob, that he accused him then
and there of being the murderer, although in his own
statement Michael neglected to apportion any blame. It was certainly
(42:13):
well known amongst the community what Lawrence's feelings were toward
Victoria as it turned out, he'd actually gone as far
as to ask for her hand in marriage, only to
be denied it by her father Andreas. Investigator Ryan Gruber
also spoke to Francisca, Maria Baumgartner's sister, and Bernard Gruber,
(42:34):
Andreas's brother, but nothing valuable was ascertained. In the end,
Ryan Grueber concluded that although Lorenz's behavior was bizarre, it
wasn't in itself evidence that the man was guilty of
the crime. On the morning of Saturday, April eighth, a
(42:54):
crowd of up to three thousand people watched as six
coffins were transported to the cemetery of vader Hoffen parish Church,
where only seven years previously Victoria and Carl had been married.
The five bodies of the Gruber and Gabriel family and
that of their maid, Maria Baumgartner, the adults on the
(43:14):
outside and the two children in the middle, were lowered
down into a mass grave and buried there together with
no fresh leads. Munich police announced a reward of one
hundred thousand marks to anyone offering information that might lead
to the arrest of a perpetrator, equivalent to twenty thousand
U s. Dollars in today's money. This was soon increased
(43:38):
to half a million marks, likely due to the hyperinflation
that had begun to take hold of the country in
the aftermath of defeat in the First World War, and
though a flurry of suspects were offered by numerous locals,
spurred on by the promise of the reward, nothing came
of them. In the evening of May two, nineteen twenty two,
(44:05):
three people are gathered round a table in a dark,
oak paneled room somewhere in Nuremberg. On the table sit
a number of unopened packages. Two of the group a
retired public prosecutor and parapsychologist Dr Joseph Boehm, which on
in quiet expectation as the third, self described medium Elen Jurgen's,
(44:30):
or Miss Hugh, as she prefers to be known, sits
deep in concentration with her eyes closed, when suddenly she
opens them. There is something there, she says, pointing at
the largest of the packages. A man that does not belong.
He looks small, poor and depraved. I see a village,
(44:54):
a house like a farmhouse. There is a room that
goes out at the back, and someone hears something Monsieur
gathers the package in her arms. It's deadly cold and eerie.
She says. There is a small child, a boy strangled, suffocated,
(45:14):
crushed in a bed, a young woman, old woman, old man,
another child. Are the people Catholic? Doctor Baum moves forward
with excitement. Yes, he says, yes. Someone screams something about
the child six years Is there a six year old child? Close,
(45:36):
says Baum again. Monsieur places the large package back on
the table, inside which are the five skulls of the
Gruber and Gabriel family. Then she grabs a smaller package.
This one has Marie's skull inside it. There is someone
else there too. Her name is Marie, looks like a maid.
(45:59):
Does she have anything to do with it or not?
Is she dead too, Marie? Yes, I have the feeling
that she is dead too. She talked to a man
at the front door. He had high boots with trousers
tucked inside them, made from something like leather. He has
no beard, but used to have one. He was suspicious
(46:21):
of the farmer. There came a few days beforehand to
figure everything out. Like God, they'd watched all the people
saying to themselves that it must be done. It was
over in five minutes, and standing watch over the bodies
as each one fell, Monsieur sensed another man or his spirit,
(46:44):
at least the father of the young girl, who'd wanted
nothing more than to intervene, but could only watch on
helplessly from the other realm. The self described medium Elene Jurgens,
had contacted the police to offer her services, and with
(47:06):
little else to go on, there seemed no harm in
seeing what she had to say. After providing her with
the skulls, she and her partner in trade, Miss Burr,
spent two days attempting to discern clues from the spirit world.
Despite both painting a compelling picture of a possible suspect
in a highly theatrical performance, they provided little of significance
(47:30):
to the police, with the exception of one thing. Both
Miss Yeur and Miss Burr were adamant that two murder
weapons had been used, one described strangely as being both
blunt and sharp, something hideous that was more wide than narrow.
(47:50):
In June, a fierce battle for ownership of the farm
was fought out by the Gruber and Gabriel families, with
Victoria Gabriel's parents in law in Cis that since the
young Cecilia had been the last to die, technically she
was the final living owner of the property. Therefore the
Gabriel family were now its legal owners. Eventually an agreement
(48:13):
was made in which the Gabriels brought the farm from
the grubers, but still no perpetrator could be found, and
though some tourists of the still continued to visit the property,
for most of the following year, the white Stone farm
yard stood empty and still giving nothing away. Then in
(48:36):
March nineteen twenty three, Carl Gabriel's father did what many
had been hoping for, as he began the process of
tearing the place down. At some point in the process,
two carpenters who were disassembling the roof at the time
noticed a couple of loose floorboards at the top of
the stairs. After clearing away the hay, pulling them back,
(48:58):
they were astonished to find a large mattock underneath. The
farm tool that was used mainly for digging and chopping
was comprised of a long wooden handle and a stout
iron head with a small vertical blade on one side
and a larger horizontal blade on the other. It was
stained all over with blood. A large screw protruding from
(49:22):
the base of the head matched exactly with the strange
star shaped puncture wounds on Victoria's skull. A few days later,
while excavating the barn, a penknife was also found close
to where the bodies in the barn had been discovered.
(49:46):
The discovery of the weapons renewed focus on the case.
Even Victoria's supposedly deceased husband, Carl Gabriel, was considered a suspect,
with some speculating that perhaps he'd faked his death during
the war and turn to exact revenge on Andreas and
his family. Former soldier Adolf Gump also became a leading
(50:07):
suspect at one point, having been accused of participating in
the massacre of nine farmers in a politically motivated attack
in nineteen twenty one. Then in nineteen thirty seven, two
brothers of Carl Gabriel was said to have confess to
their maid that they had committed the crime. The pair
were arrested and released without charge, but before long, with
(50:31):
the rise of Adolf Hitler's government and a Second World
War on the horizon, the events at hint Kifec were
soon to be dwarfed in comparison by even greater horrors.
Lauren Schlittenbauer, whom Many considered the prime suspect in the case,
died in nineteen forty one. The following year, a bombing
(50:51):
raid on Munich destroyed most of the case evidence, taking
with it two the six skulls of the victims. Case
would be reopened again once the dust of war had settled,
and though more suspects were proposed by then, there was
little hope of finding anything significant enough to make a
successful conviction. Today, the killings at hinter Kaifak Farm are
(51:16):
widely considered to be one of Germany's most infamous unsolved murders.
And though the farmhouse has long gone from that quiet
patch of central Bavaria, the earth soaked with the sweat
and blood of those who have come before, and those tall,
dark pines that care not for the foibles of humankind remain,
(51:48):
thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy
Club production, the podcast created by Richard mclin Smith. All
other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Unexplained. The book and
audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please
(52:12):
subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts,
and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your
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at Unexplained podcast dot com and reach uses online through
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(52:34):
Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast
Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here with Unexplained on an
end of season break. This is our final archive episode
before season nine begins next Friday, October thirty first, and
with Halloween only a week away, this week's episode takes
a suitably dark and chilling turn. It is perhaps the
(00:20):
darkest story ever covered or unexplained. Our final journey into
the archive takes us to the remote Bavarian countryside in
nineteen twenty two, to a lonely farmstead and the family
who lived there, where something unspeakable was about to unfold.
It was a place where shadows seemed to linger a
(00:41):
little too long, and where the boundary between safety and
terror proved to be as fragile as a footprint in
fresh snow. The word tenebris means dark, shadowy, and obscure,
an apt word to capture what descended upon this isolated
family in those final terrifying days. Just what exactly happened
(01:05):
at their remote farm would become one of Germany's most
notorious unsolved mysteries, a case so disturbing it continues to
defy explanation a century later. This is Unexplained Season five
episode nine, Tenebrous The following episode involves scenes of sexual
(01:27):
abuse that some may find disturbing. Parental discretion is advised.
There was once a place deep in the rural hinterland
of Bavaria in southern Germany, Positioned half a kilometer to
(01:50):
the west of the village of Greerben. It sat quiet
and still alone in the fields, surrounded by thick pine forest.
House made of stone and painted white. The farm, known
as hinter Kaifek, had passed through many hands over the years,
all of which had, at one time or another worked
(02:12):
the rich, dark earth that surrounded it, sewing it, tilling it,
and pulling from it. Fingers plunged deep into the black
of it, and all had, in one way or another,
left a piece of themselves in it too. By eighteen
eighty six, the property had been passed to Cecilia Assam
(02:34):
and Andreas Gruber, the pair having taken ownership of it
shortly after the death of Cecilia's first husband, Joseph, for
Cecilia left to run the farm and raise two young
children alone. Andreas was an apt partner, a farm laborer
with an intense and quiet disposition. His hands were strong
(02:56):
and his shoulders broad enough for them all not that
Cecilia's weren't also, and so in April eighteen eighty six,
Cecilia Assam became Cecilia Gruber, and together she and Andreas
worked the farm and the surrounding fields, maintaining a fine
and stable business. In eighteen eighty seven, new life arrives
(03:19):
in the form of a baby girl named Victoria. She
is joined by Sophie two years later, and for those
first few years joy threatens to rain at hint Kaifek,
but the joy is short lived. Like almost twenty percent
of children in the local district at the time, Sophie
(03:39):
does not live to see her second birthday. And now
a cloud is descending over this dark white property, cast
a drift from the nearby town and seeming to move
further away with each passing day, the forests surrounding it
seeming to grow ever denser, and the trees looming ever taller.
(04:02):
It is a natural habit of humans to project onto
all that we see, and no more so than with
our interpretations of the forest. For some, the forest is
foreboding a locusts for unknown dangers that lurk deep within.
But the forest does not think itself foreboding. The forest
(04:23):
just is, And yet for hinter Chaifek, it is hard
not to read those tall, thick pines that surrounded the farm,
and the gloom of the forest beyond, as some kind
of psychic projection emanating from the darkness festering inside that
white stone building, a darkness that would one day come
(04:44):
to define that land in more ways than one. How
fitting too that the patch of woodland closest to the
farm should be called Hexenholtz, or the Witch's forest, the
notion of the witch often being just a projection of
our own innate fears of the other, but also two
(05:04):
as women. Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage once noted the fear
of women. But perhaps it isn't just fear that manifests
this patriarchal image of the malevolent witch, but guilt too.
You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The
(05:33):
couple looked happy enough as they stood reciting their vows
under the watchful eyes of the priest. As they stepped
out at the church, arm in arm, Some say for
a brief moment, the clouds above parted and a ray
of sunshine slipped through. Perhaps the bride a now twenty
six year old Victoria saw it too, and perhaps for
(05:57):
a moment there was even the hint of a smile
as she looked into the eyes of her new husband,
Carl Gabriel, and saw there the hope of a better future,
a future safe from harm and full of warmth for
the child that would surely come. But such thoughts were
never kept long in her mind before the sight of
(06:18):
her father, Andreas Gruber dissolved them instantly, that unmoving, impassive face,
ever present, always watching the sight of him, never failing
to catch in her throat, congealing like thick black tar.
There had long been rumors about the man, about how
(06:40):
he regularly beat his wife, Cecilia, now sixty four years
old and nine years his senior, but that wasn't all.
It was said to be common knowledge amongst the local
farming community and in the village of Gurban, that Andreas
regularly raped his daughter, although it wasn't called rape at
(07:02):
the time. Perhaps Carl knew this too when he married Victoria,
and perhaps there was a hope that their marriage might
put an end to the abuse. Or perhaps, as some
have suggested, the union was more pragmatic than that that
it merely offered a buffer for Victoria and an opportunity
for Carl and indeed the wider Gabriel family to gain
(07:26):
access to a successful, if modest business. Only a month
before their wedding, Andreas transferred all the rights to the
farm to his daughter, making her the sole heir to
the property. By marrying Victoria, Karl had guaranteed that any
children of theirs would inherit the land. But for some possessions,
(07:49):
or at least what they consider to be their possessions,
are not so easy to let go of, and no
matter where they turned, nor what time of day, there
would be Andreas, who, along with Cecilia, remained living at
the property, standing watch stone, faced deep in thought. Barely
(08:16):
weeks after the wedding, Carl moved back home to his parents,
complaining that he was being bullied and that the fierce
and uncompromising Andreas had even taken to starving him. But
just as Andreas cast his shadow over hint Kaifek, so
too were other larger shadows being steadily drawn across the land.
(08:38):
In late June of nineteen fourteen, comes the news that
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria, Hungary
has been shot dead. The rickety stumbling wheel of human
civilization takes another lurch from the path and wobbles inexorably
toward war. And so the men are summoned by a
(09:00):
appeals to duty and valor. Perhaps it is with trepidation
that Karl packs up the few belongings he'll need and
marches out of the farm toward Munich to sign up,
leaving behind and now four months pregnant Victoria. Or perhaps
at the site of the stone faced Andreas, pausing briefly
(09:20):
from his work in the field to nod goodbye to
his son in law, it is with relief before long.
It is December twelfth, nineteen fourteen, eight hundred kilometers to
the northwest of hinter Kaifec. A crow swoops down above
a field just north of the town of Arras, coming
(09:41):
to rest on what remains of an old beech tree.
In the field below, freshly scarred and pock marked by shelling,
there lies a body, its forehead split open and the
lower jaw obliterated, its pale vacant eyes staring up to
war a slowly darkening sky. The crow calls and swoops
(10:05):
down for closer inspection, but a hand quickly shows it away.
Joseph Bickler, a farmer from Vadhoffen, a town close to Gerban,
stands over the body, recognizing it instantly as that of
his old school friend Carl Gabriel. The following week, back
at hinter Kaifek, a now heavily pregnant, Victoria watches from
(10:29):
the window as postal worker Joseph Meyer draws near to
the house. With him, he carries a copy of Andreas's
regular paper and a letter addressed to Victoria written by
Joseph Bickler, informing her of her husband's death. But Victoria
has little time to grieve when three weeks later she
(10:50):
gives birth to her first child, whom she names Cecilia
after her mother. But still the rumors refuse to go away,
as many in the village are left wandering is the
child Carl's or is it her father's. At some point
(11:13):
in early nineteen fifteen, a complaint is brought to the
local police that Andreas was committing incest with his daughter.
After a formal investigation, rumor becomes fact when on May
twenty eighth, Andreas is convicted for the offense with the
court deciding to limit the period of the crime to
the years nineteen oh seven to nineteen ten, when Victoria
(11:36):
was aged twenty to twenty three. This was most likely
an arbitrary decision to avoid looking into accusations that it
had in fact been going on much longer than that,
and thereby allowing Andreas the opportunity to escape the accusation
of child abuse. He is sentenced to one year in prison.
(11:56):
Such was the attitude of the day. Victoria was considered
to be a willing participant in the abuse, and as
such was also convicted for the crime. On January tenth,
nineteen sixteen, the day after her daughter's first birthday, Victoria
was taken to Neuberg Prison to spend the first of
thirty days behind bars for one relatively blissful year. Victoria
(12:23):
and her mother Cecilia run the farm with help from
their maid Cretchens Raiger. Together they manage all the livestock
and harvest the fields. On Sundays, Victoria makes the short
journey to the village of Vaidhoffen to attend the trade
fair and on occasion joins the church choir to sing.
(12:44):
She is praised widely for her voice and is known
by the nickname the Lark of hint Kaifek. But in
February nineteen seventeen, Andreas returns, and though Victoria continues to sing,
something of her voice has changed. In nineteen eighteen, Victoria
begins a relationship with Lorenz Schlittenbauer, her neighbour from the
(13:07):
next farm over, who is only recently widowed. The affair
is brief, with some blaming the presence of Andreas for
Lorenz's reluctance to pursue the relationship. However, by the end
of December, Victoria discovers she is pregnant again, and in
July nineteen nineteen, gives birth to a son, whom she
(13:29):
names Joseph. Now a single mother with two young children,
Victoria is convinced that Lorenz is the father and approaches
him for financial support. In response, Lorenz, who suspects the
child might instead be Andreas, reports her and her father
again to the police. With Andreas July arrested and awaiting
(13:52):
a second trial, Victoria pleads with Lorenz to drop the
charge and claim paternity of the child to help an
end toward the salacious rumors. Lorenz later said that despite
agreeing to the claim Victoria paid him to say it. Meanwhile, Cretchence,
the family's maid, is growing increasingly anxious. At night, she
(14:17):
hears unusual sounds in the house and what seem like
footsteps moving about the place. Sometimes her door even seems
to open on its own accord. One morning in the
summer of nineteen twenty one, after pulling up water from
the well, cretchens is walking across the courtyard when she
hears a strange noise coming from the barn, unlike any
(14:40):
of the usual animal cries. Moving slowly into the barn,
she catches sight of something in the corner and recoils
in horror. It is Andreas raping his daughter, who lies
motionless underneath him. Crechence leaves the farm the following week.
(15:05):
The winter of nineteen twenty one is especially cruel, with
freezing temperatures lasting well into the following year. By mid March,
there is still no end in sight, with frost and
snow of frequent occurrence. One gray afternoon, Victoria is walking
across the courtyard when she is distracted by a movement
(15:26):
to the south. Looking up, she can just make out
a lone figure standing at the edge of Witch's Wood
that appears to be watching her. Looking away for a moment,
she turns back to find that the figure has gone.
A few days later, when postal worker Joseph Meyer arrives
at the property, he is met by Andreas waving a
(15:49):
paper around a damp and muddy copy of the munich Zeitung.
He'd found it while out in the field close to
witches Wood. He wants to know if Joseph is dropped it, perhaps,
but Joseph has never seen it before, and neither has
he ever delivered one like it. Whose evers it was,
he suggests, was not local to the area. It is
(16:13):
early in the morning of March twenty ninth when Andreas
is disturbed from bed by what sounds like footsteps shuffling
about in the attic above. Grabbing his rifle and a flashlight,
he makes his way through the darkness toward the attic
stairs and climbs up into the opening above, each step
(16:33):
creaking as he goes. Pointing the light into the roof,
he could see the hole attic stretched out in both directions,
empty save for some old patches of straw that were
scattered about, and the pieces of meat hanging in the
smokehouse above the kitchen. On the morning of Thursday, March thirtieth,
(16:55):
Andreas heads toward the engine room, where much of the
farm's heavy equipment is kept. The room is located at
the southwest tip of the L shaped farm, tacked on
to the end of the barn. The snow is still
thick on the ground as Andreas approaches, to find that
the padlock on the door is missing. What's more, there
(17:17):
are two sets of footprints in the snow leading inside
the building, but none coming out. A confused Andreas stares
down at the tracks and then up toward Whiches Wood,
where they seem to have come from. Andrea shouts for
whoever is inside to come out, but there is no reply.
(17:40):
Pulling the door open, he's relieved to find the place
completely deserted and everything as he'd left it. Later, however,
he will find one of his two house keys has
gone missing. Later that night, after a violent altercation with
(18:03):
her husband, Cecilia Gruber is found to be missing, prompting
the rest of the family, including seven year old Cecilia,
to search or night for her. Concern that she may
have drowned herself leads the family to the banks of
the river par a kilometer to the south of the farm,
but there is no sign of her in the dark,
(18:24):
icy water. The seventy two year old Cecilia is finally
found sitting silently on a tree stump in the forest,
and is eventually coaxed back to the farm. The following day,
with things appearing to have abated, the family adjoined by
forty five year old Maria Baumgartner, who arrives accompanied by
(18:45):
her sister Francisca to take on the role of a
living housemaid. Francisca had helped secure the job for her sister, who,
due to her learning difficulties and the slight physical disability
of having one leg short end and the other, had
often struggled for work, her most recent job in the
nearby town of ent Wittelsbach having been terminated simply because
(19:10):
the town's mayre deemed her too unsightly for the local community.
And though Francisca had heard much about the Gruber family
and what was rumored to take place at hint Kifek,
it was an opportunity too good to refuse from Maria.
Even still, it was hard not to feel a little
trepidation when, after helping her sister settle in. She made
(19:33):
her goodbyes and headed out of the property, with the
wind picking up and thick storm clouds beginning to gather
in the sky above. Francisca was approaching the main road
when she heard the voice of her sister calling out
from behind her. Turning round, she saw Maria racing toward
(19:53):
her for one final goodbye before they parted. After a
brief hug, Maria asked her sister to visit again soon,
then turned and headed back to the farm. It is
late the following night when local carpenter Michael Blockl trudges
(20:16):
past the property and spots a fire burning in the
outdoor oven and smoke billowing out of its chimney. Perhaps
it was the nauseating smell like burnt rags that caused
him to stop, or perhaps it was just something in
the quiet of the night. But as he stares, he
is taken aback by the sudden movement of a figure
(20:39):
stepping into the courtyard. Michael watches as the figure slams
the oven door, shut points a flashlight in his direction,
and then begins steadily making his way toward him, Frozen
with fear at first, as the figure draws closer and closer,
Michael finally pulls his hands from his pocket and speeds
(21:01):
off in the opposite direction. It is two days later
when Joseph Mayer arrives at the property to deliver Andreas's paper,
only to find the place completely deserted, with no sign
of Andreas or anyone else for that matter, to be found.
The courtyard unnervingly quiet save for the gentle lowing of
(21:24):
the cattle coming from inside the barn. Assuming they are
out working the field somewhere. Joseph leaves the paper on
the kitchen windowsill and heads off to continue his round.
It is sometime around midday on Tuesday, April fourth when
machinist Albert Hofner arrives at hinto Kaifek to make repairs
(21:47):
to the family's threshing machine. A cold wind whips around
him as he pulls up to the courtyard gate on
his bicycle, surprised to find that it's still locked. After
waiting unsuccessfully for over an hour for someone to meet him,
Albert makes his way to the engine room. Grateful to
(22:07):
find the lock is broken, he lets himself inside and
sets to work on the machine. Four and a half
hours later, there is still no sign of the family.
With the work completed, Albert heads into the courtyard and
notices for the first time that the barn door is
wide open. I'm sure if it was before. He moves
(22:29):
toward it, calling out for Andreas or Victoria, but is
met with only silence. Peering into the darkness beyond, he
sees only the cattle inside and some hay piled up
in the far corner. Hearing the dog suddenly barking manically,
he wanders round to the front of the house and
(22:50):
finds it tied up by the front door. Ignoring its cries.
Albert cups his hands over the glass and peers inside
to the kitchen, but sees nothing untoward. Turning back, he
takes one final look at the empty field to the
stretch of forest beyond, then heads off to find his bicycle.
(23:19):
It's just gone five p m. When farmer Michael Pearl,
another neighbor of the Grubers, hears a knock at his door.
He opens it to find a nervous looking Lorenz Schlittenbauer
and their neighbor Jakob Sig, waiting for him. After hearing
about Albert Hofnan's strange experience at the farm, Lorenz had
(23:40):
grown increasingly concerned about the Gruber family and his apparent
son Joseph's whereabouts. With the young Cecilia not having been
seen at school since Saturday, all was eerily quiet as
the three men stepped into hint Kyfec's deserted courtyard, the
silence only coming more deafening when their desperate cause for
(24:03):
Victoria and Andreas brought no reply. Finding all doors to
the property now completely shut and locked up save for
the engine room, the men made their way inside from
the back, only to find that through door to the
barn had been deliberately blocked from behind with a beam
of wood. After finally managing to dislodge it, and with
(24:26):
the light quickly beginning to fade, the men carried on
into the barn beyond the sudden appearance of a cow
wandering freely around inside startled them momentarily as they continued
forward into the dark, feeling for obstacles with their feet,
when suddenly Michael cried out, Hey, there's something here. Michael
(24:51):
pulled back and realized with horror it was a foot.
Whoever it was, was lying under a large plank of
wood that had been put on top of them. Together,
the men pulled the wood to the side and revealed
the body of Andreas Gruber underneath, dressed in trousers and undershirt,
(25:12):
thickly matted with blood and crudely covered over with hay.
Pulling the body out, the men recoiled at the sight
of its face. The right side of it was completely
smashed in, its cheekbones clearly visible. But then Lorenz saw
the other limbs all packed underneath. Together. Pulling out one
(25:35):
after the other, the men revealed the bodies of seven
year old Cecilia, dressed in her night skirt, her mother.
Victoria and her mother Cecilia, both fully dressed and hideously mutilated,
their clothes and faces black with blood. Michael and Jakob
(25:56):
wretched at the sight of them and stumbled back into
the courtyard, desperate for air. A moment later, Lorenz appeared
in the yard, having opened the front door to the
main house from inside, and beckoned for the other two
to help him search for his son. They found him
in the stroller at the foot of Victoria's bed, his
(26:17):
body partially covered with one of Victoria's jackets. He'd been
killed by a heavy blow to the face. Finally, after
almost missing her. At first, Michael noticed a pair of
legs peeking out from under the bed in the maid's quarters.
It was Maria, her clothes and face also soaked black
(26:39):
with blood. As Michael and Jakob struggled to make sense
of it all, an eerily calm Lawrence returned to Victoria's bedroom, and,
having found a candle, sat down quietly on the bed
and lit it. Outside, all about the land was silent
(27:01):
and still, save for the gentle rustle of wind in
the pines and the occasional wail of cattle coming from
that solitary white stone building of hinter Kaifek. The cars
turned off the main road and headed deeper into the fields,
(27:24):
toward the small solitary light in the distance. Behind it,
a vast wall of trees, silhouetted under a pale half moon,
stood still and black, growing ever taller the closer they got,
and on they continued, toward the light that seemed to
be luring them in like a silent, haunting beacon, toward
(27:46):
an unfathomable horror. Inside the cars, a team of investigators
from Eunich, led by fifty five year old George Hinruber,
as well as mayor gregor of Wangen, the next village
East German, prepared themselves for the worst. The local district police,
having been first to arrive on the scene at hint Kaifek,
(28:08):
had quickly realized they were woefully out of their depth.
They had called in the Munich force in a desperate
plea for help. Ryan Gruber's team hadn't arrived in the
area until after one am, prompting them to spend the
night at the mayor's residence in Vangen before making their
way to the farm first thing in the morning. It
(28:29):
had just gone six a m. When the cars finally
pulled into the courtyard on Wednesday, April fifth. As the
seven officers, two police dogs, and the mayor stepped out
into the chilly morning air, Lorenz Schlittenbauer appeared at the
front door of the main house, his footsteps echoing about
the courtyard as he approached. Lorenz quickly introduced himself as
(28:53):
one of the men who'd first found the bodies, and
that he'd been there all night guarding the scene for them.
Ryan was struck immediately by the man's odd nervous energy,
a natural consequence perhaps of the fact he hadn't slept
since the night before, but as to why he'd taken
it on himself to stay at the property, he was
less sure. As Lorenz continued to babble about everything he
(29:17):
knew of the family and how he discovered the bodies,
Brian Gruber eventually interrupted. Perhaps he said, we should take
a look for ourselves, and so as the first light
of dawn began to break, Lorenz turned and led the
investigator and his team into the barn. The bodies of
(29:45):
Andreas and the young Cecilia had been placed against the
far wall, a small pool of blood on the hay,
in the spot where they'd first been found. The other
two bodies, those of Victoria and the elder Cecilia, had
been pulled through a doorway into a stable corridor linking
the barn to the main house. When asked why the
(30:06):
bodies had been moved, Lorenz explained that he was looking
for his son, who at first he thought might be
there too. Ryan Gruper made a quick inspection of their injuries,
then turned his attention to the door between the two areas.
It was covered in blood splatter. There was something else,
said Lawrence, leading the inspector through to the stable corridor that,
(30:30):
he said, pointing to a pickaxe leaning up against a
feeding trough in the corner. He'd found it the day before,
he said. The inspector took a closer look, noticing a
few dark spots on the handle, but little else. Perhaps
the cattle had licked it clean, suggested Lorenz. Perhaps, said
(30:51):
Ryan Grueber in reply. Lorenz then led the team into
the kitchen while two of the officers made their way
into the attic. Ryan Gruber took note of the now
moldy food that had been left out in a pan
and blood spots on the stone floor as they continued through,
arriving at the doorway to maria the maid's room. Running
(31:15):
his hand over the door frame, the inspector spotted a
few splatters and some more on the ground, but no
bloody hand or footprints. Looking through, he saw Maria's body
partially obscured by a mattress, lying in a fetal position.
Evidently she had been attacked while preparing for bed, perhaps
(31:35):
crouching down for cover in a vain attempt to protect herself.
Next was Victoria's room. The place appeared to have been ransacked,
with cupboards flung open and the bed unmade a watch,
(31:56):
and an empty purse had been left out on top
of it, prompting ryin Gruber to wonder if theft had
been the motive. Lorenz informed him that the family was
said to have kept around one hundred thousand marks at
the property, close to four thousand US dollars in today's money.
The inspector approached the baby stroller at the end of
(32:17):
the bed and pulled back the dress that was draped
over it to reveal the blood soaked baby Joseph underneath,
his face, unrecognizable from the blows. The hood of the
pram had also been torn apart, suggesting it had been
closed when the killer struck. Perhaps even they had found
(32:37):
the thought of killing a baby too much and couldn't
bear to have to see what they were doing. That
all the bodies had been covered over without any real
attempt to hide them was an indication, perhaps of the
killer's sense of shame, a shame likely only felt by
someone who knew the victims. Ryan Gruper stared up at
(33:00):
the three religious icons hanging on the wall above the
bed and the three crucifixes hanging underneath them. Then a
call came down from the attic above Ryin. Gruber's men
were standing to the side in a section of the
(33:21):
attic above the stable corridor, pointing at something on the
hay covered floor. As Ryan Gruber drew near, he caught
the unmistakable noxious whiff of it. It was human excrement.
There were also bacon rines scattered about two and two
indentations in the hay, suggesting the possibility of two perpetrators.
(33:46):
Then one of the officers noticed a kink of light
coming through the roof. Moving toward it, he found that
a number of tiles there had been loosened. A similar
set of loose tiles were found in another section of
the attic over the main bar. Anyone looking out of
the gaps in the roof would have had a clear
view of the courtyard and the entrance to the main
(34:06):
house had they been watching the family. Ryan Gruber thought
the family's bread supply, usually well stocked, was empty, while
some smoked meat appeared to have been taken after their
deaths in their absence. The livestock had also been watered
and fed, all in all, suggesting that whoever had done
(34:28):
this had not been gone long. After a thorough search
of the house investigators uncovered around fifteen thousand marks in
various denominations of cash and gold, but no sign of
the one hundred thousand marks that Lorenz claimed was kept
at the property. With the bodies having been moved, it
(34:48):
was difficult to ascertain who had been murdered first, but
aside from baby Joseph and Maria, it seemed reasonable to
assume the victims had been lured into the barn one
by one and then bludgeoned violently to death. Since seven
year old Cecilia hadn't been seen at school on Saturday,
the murders were considered to have taken place on the
(35:10):
night of Friday, March thirty first, only hours after Maria
Baumgartner had arrived at the farm to begin her new job.
Just then, Ryan Gruber heard a commotion outside and stepped
into the courtyard to find a small crowd of onlookers
had gathered at the edge of the property, desperate to
see the murder scene for themselves. It was early in
(35:40):
the afternoon when doctor Johann al Mulla, the district court doctor,
arrived from the nearby town of Neuburg at Donau, to
carry out the autopsies one by one The bodies were
taken from out of the farmhouse and laid side by
side in the middle of the courtyard as the ever
growing crowd of onlookers jostled for the best view. A
(36:03):
door was placed over two wooden trestles as a makeshift table,
and then, with the help of two porters and Clark
assistant twenty seven year old Heinrich Neay, the first of
the bodies was lifted on to it. The bodies were
pale and gray, the skin like rubber, with liver mortise
and dark patches underneath where the blood had pulled. For Andreas,
(36:28):
death had come quickly, having been bludgeoned to death with
a blunt object that pulverized the right side of his face.
Maria Baumgartner and the young Joseph were similarly killed with
heavy blows to the head and face. Victoria and her
mother's injuries, however, were subtly different, suggesting they'd endured something
(36:50):
even worse. Both displayed bruising around the neck as if
they'd been strangled before being beaten. Both their skulls had
been smashed, but Victoria also had nine peculiar star shaped
puncture wounds in hers. The crowd gasped as seven year
old Cecilia's body was lifted from the ground and placed
(37:12):
on the table. The lower jaw was shattered and her
head smashed, but there was also a huge gaping wound
on her neck, suggesting the weapon had not only been blunt,
but sharp too. Doctor al Mulla noticed something scrunched up
in her right hand. Prying the fingers open, he found
(37:33):
a clump of Cecilia's hair inside. The doctor concluded that
she'd likely survived for some time after the attack and
had clawed it out of her own head in the
agony and confusion. Having finished his investigations, doctor al Mulla
reached for his surgical sore and began methodically to remove
(37:55):
Cecilia's head from the body, a thick, bluish blood oozing
onto the table as he went. The process was repeated
for each of the bodies, with the heads being bagged
up and sent to the Pathology Institute at the University
of Munich for further investigation. With the autopsies complete, Heinrich
(38:21):
and the porters gathered each headless body onto a stretcher
and returned them to the barn, Having brought the rest
of the bodies in the young Cecilias was the last
to be returned, placing the headless corpse onto the stretcher.
The porters each grabbed an end and headed toward the
barn as Heinrich Neay followed close behind. As the porters
(38:44):
stepped inside, one of them cried out in horror and
dropped the stretcher, knocking the body to the floor. Heinrich
ran inside and found them pointing toward a thick line
of rope hanging down from a beam at the base
of the hayloft above. Heinrich stared up in utter amusement,
then looked to the others in stunned silence. The rope
(39:07):
had not been there when they last came into the barn.
Taking a breath, Heinrich pulled a ladder from the side
and carefully made his way up to the loft. Pulling
at the knot, he could feel just how tight it was,
as if a significant weight had only just been applied
to it, and there, right next to it in the
(39:29):
dust on the beam was a set of freshly made handprints.
With police rushing in to investigate, the search dog sniffed
eagerly at the rope for a cent and though an
effort was made to track it, it was quickly lost
out in the fields. With the investigation of the crime
(39:54):
scene finished, lead investigator Rhyin Gruber turned his attention to Loreen,
Schlittenback and the two other men Michael Pearl and Jacob Siegel,
who'd first discovered the bodies. After explaining again why he'd
moved the bodies and decided to stay overnight at the property,
Lorenz was keen to justify his decision, insisting that his
(40:16):
being there had helped to keep anyone else from entering
the house until Ryan Gruber and his team arrived. This, however,
was a lie, as reported by many others. As soon
as word had got out, a number of villagers had
descended on the property, keen to see the murder scene.
Lorenz had not only welcomed them, but shown them around
(40:38):
the property himself. One man had even paused in the
kitchen to fix himself a snack. But there were other
concerning things too. It was strange, thought Michael Pearl when
giving his statement later how Lawrence had managed to unlock
the front door and let them into the property in
the first place. Lawrence himself had told him that Andreas
(41:01):
had complained about one of his house keys going missing.
Lorenz maintained that he'd merely found it sticking out of
the lock when he went to open the door for
Jakob Siegel. It was the strangeness of Lorenz's calm demeanor
and eagerness to move the bodies that most stuck out
to him. Despite his and Michael's protestations that they should
(41:24):
leave the scene untouched, Lorens ignored them immediately after finding
the bodies. As Siegel explained, he'd set about fetching milk
from the cellar to feed the pigs and rearranging other
parts of the house. At one point, he'd even suggested
that Yakob go into the hayloft and throw down some
(41:44):
hay for the cattle to eat, but Yakob refused, and
he and Michael left the property soon after, wanting nothing
more to do with it. Michael was so suspicious of
Lorence's behavior, according to Yakob, that he accused him then
and there of being the murderer, although in his own
statement Michael neglected to apportion any blame. It was certainly
(42:13):
well known amongst the community what Lawrence's feelings were toward
Victoria as it turned out, he'd actually gone as far
as to ask for her hand in marriage, only to
be denied it by her father Andreas. Investigator Ryan Gruber
also spoke to Francisca, Maria Baumgartner's sister, and Bernard Gruber,
(42:34):
Andreas's brother, but nothing valuable was ascertained. In the end,
Ryan Grueber concluded that although Lorenz's behavior was bizarre, it
wasn't in itself evidence that the man was guilty of
the crime. On the morning of Saturday, April eighth, a
(42:54):
crowd of up to three thousand people watched as six
coffins were transported to the cemetery of vader Hoffen parish Church,
where only seven years previously Victoria and Carl had been married.
The five bodies of the Gruber and Gabriel family and
that of their maid, Maria Baumgartner, the adults on the
(43:14):
outside and the two children in the middle, were lowered
down into a mass grave and buried there together with
no fresh leads. Munich police announced a reward of one
hundred thousand marks to anyone offering information that might lead
to the arrest of a perpetrator, equivalent to twenty thousand
U s. Dollars in today's money. This was soon increased
(43:38):
to half a million marks, likely due to the hyperinflation
that had begun to take hold of the country in
the aftermath of defeat in the First World War, and
though a flurry of suspects were offered by numerous locals,
spurred on by the promise of the reward, nothing came
of them. In the evening of May two, nineteen twenty two,
(44:05):
three people are gathered round a table in a dark,
oak paneled room somewhere in Nuremberg. On the table sit
a number of unopened packages. Two of the group a
retired public prosecutor and parapsychologist Dr Joseph Boehm, which on
in quiet expectation as the third, self described medium Elen Jurgen's,
(44:30):
or Miss Hugh, as she prefers to be known, sits
deep in concentration with her eyes closed, when suddenly she
opens them. There is something there, she says, pointing at
the largest of the packages. A man that does not belong.
He looks small, poor and depraved. I see a village,
(44:54):
a house like a farmhouse. There is a room that
goes out at the back, and someone hears something Monsieur
gathers the package in her arms. It's deadly cold and eerie.
She says. There is a small child, a boy strangled, suffocated,
(45:14):
crushed in a bed, a young woman, old woman, old man,
another child. Are the people Catholic? Doctor Baum moves forward
with excitement. Yes, he says, yes. Someone screams something about
the child six years Is there a six year old child? Close,
(45:36):
says Baum again. Monsieur places the large package back on
the table, inside which are the five skulls of the
Gruber and Gabriel family. Then she grabs a smaller package.
This one has Marie's skull inside it. There is someone
else there too. Her name is Marie, looks like a maid.
(45:59):
Does she have anything to do with it or not?
Is she dead too, Marie? Yes, I have the feeling
that she is dead too. She talked to a man
at the front door. He had high boots with trousers
tucked inside them, made from something like leather. He has
no beard, but used to have one. He was suspicious
(46:21):
of the farmer. There came a few days beforehand to
figure everything out. Like God, they'd watched all the people
saying to themselves that it must be done. It was
over in five minutes, and standing watch over the bodies
as each one fell, Monsieur sensed another man or his spirit,
(46:44):
at least the father of the young girl, who'd wanted
nothing more than to intervene, but could only watch on
helplessly from the other realm. The self described medium Elene Jurgens,
had contacted the police to offer her services, and with
(47:06):
little else to go on, there seemed no harm in
seeing what she had to say. After providing her with
the skulls, she and her partner in trade, Miss Burr,
spent two days attempting to discern clues from the spirit world.
Despite both painting a compelling picture of a possible suspect
in a highly theatrical performance, they provided little of significance
(47:30):
to the police, with the exception of one thing. Both
Miss Yeur and Miss Burr were adamant that two murder
weapons had been used, one described strangely as being both
blunt and sharp, something hideous that was more wide than narrow.
(47:50):
In June, a fierce battle for ownership of the farm
was fought out by the Gruber and Gabriel families, with
Victoria Gabriel's parents in law in Cis that since the
young Cecilia had been the last to die, technically she
was the final living owner of the property. Therefore the
Gabriel family were now its legal owners. Eventually an agreement
(48:13):
was made in which the Gabriels brought the farm from
the grubers, but still no perpetrator could be found, and
though some tourists of the still continued to visit the property,
for most of the following year, the white Stone farm
yard stood empty and still giving nothing away. Then in
(48:36):
March nineteen twenty three, Carl Gabriel's father did what many
had been hoping for, as he began the process of
tearing the place down. At some point in the process,
two carpenters who were disassembling the roof at the time
noticed a couple of loose floorboards at the top of
the stairs. After clearing away the hay, pulling them back,
(48:58):
they were astonished to find a large mattock underneath. The
farm tool that was used mainly for digging and chopping
was comprised of a long wooden handle and a stout
iron head with a small vertical blade on one side
and a larger horizontal blade on the other. It was
stained all over with blood. A large screw protruding from
(49:22):
the base of the head matched exactly with the strange
star shaped puncture wounds on Victoria's skull. A few days later,
while excavating the barn, a penknife was also found close
to where the bodies in the barn had been discovered.
(49:46):
The discovery of the weapons renewed focus on the case.
Even Victoria's supposedly deceased husband, Carl Gabriel, was considered a suspect,
with some speculating that perhaps he'd faked his death during
the war and turn to exact revenge on Andreas and
his family. Former soldier Adolf Gump also became a leading
(50:07):
suspect at one point, having been accused of participating in
the massacre of nine farmers in a politically motivated attack
in nineteen twenty one. Then in nineteen thirty seven, two
brothers of Carl Gabriel was said to have confess to
their maid that they had committed the crime. The pair
were arrested and released without charge, but before long, with
(50:31):
the rise of Adolf Hitler's government and a Second World
War on the horizon, the events at hint Kifec were
soon to be dwarfed in comparison by even greater horrors.
Lauren Schlittenbauer, whom Many considered the prime suspect in the case,
died in nineteen forty one. The following year, a bombing
(50:51):
raid on Munich destroyed most of the case evidence, taking
with it two the six skulls of the victims. Case
would be reopened again once the dust of war had settled,
and though more suspects were proposed by then, there was
little hope of finding anything significant enough to make a
successful conviction. Today, the killings at hinter Kaifak Farm are
(51:16):
widely considered to be one of Germany's most infamous unsolved murders.
And though the farmhouse has long gone from that quiet
patch of central Bavaria, the earth soaked with the sweat
and blood of those who have come before, and those tall,
dark pines that care not for the foibles of humankind remain,
(51:48):
thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy
Club production, the podcast created by Richard mclin Smith. All
other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
produced by me Richard McLean Smith. Unexplained. The book and
audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please
(52:12):
subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts,
and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your
own you'd like to share. You can find out more
at Unexplained podcast dot com and reach uses online through
x and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at
(52:34):
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