July 25, 2021 • 51 mins
Welcome back to Victimology!
I am joined in this week's episode by the lovely ladies of the Ye Olde Crime podcast talking about the Hinterkaifeck Murders.
Make sure to check out Ye Olde Crime -
Ye Olde Crime- https://www.yeoldecrimepodcast.com/
Want a chance to win a signed copy of Dr. Engel's book?
Enter the contest here - the winner will be chosen next week!-
https://form.jotform.com/212057969530056
Visit theoracl3network.com to check out other awesome indie shows!
Please make sure to like and follow Victimology on social media as well as subscribing to Victimology on your favorite podcast platform.
Victimology is always accepting case suggestions, please reach out via email or social media.
Sources:
https://grimhappenings.com/the-hinterkaifeck-murders
https://www.historicmysteries.com/hinterkaifeck-murders/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/hinterkaifeck-murders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterkaifeck_murders#Discovery
I am joined in this week's episode by the lovely ladies of the Ye Olde Crime podcast talking about the Hinterkaifeck Murders.
Make sure to check out Ye Olde Crime -
Ye Olde Crime- https://www.yeoldecrimepodcast.com/
Want a chance to win a signed copy of Dr. Engel's book?
Enter the contest here - the winner will be chosen next week!-
https://form.jotform.com/212057969530056
Visit theoracl3network.com to check out other awesome indie shows!
Please make sure to like and follow Victimology on social media as well as subscribing to Victimology on your favorite podcast platform.
Victimology is always accepting case suggestions, please reach out via email or social media.
Sources:
https://grimhappenings.com/the-hinterkaifeck-murders
https://www.historicmysteries.com/hinterkaifeck-murders/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/hinterkaifeck-murders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterkaifeck_murders#Discovery
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Due to the graphic nature and contentof this podcast, listener discretion is advised.
(01:11):
Well, welcome back to Victimology.I'm your host, Melissa Lee.
I hope everyone out there on podcastland is doingjust well, and please tell
me you all are continuing to washyour hands for the love of God.
So remember how I mentioned in lastweek's episode we'd be doing a book give
(01:33):
away. Well that is now liveand active and ready to go. So
if you are interested in earning afree copy a free signed copy of the
Power of Truth by Tristan Ingles,please make sure to use the jot form
down below to fill out your informationand then by next week I'll reach out
if you're the winner. Remember also, how I mentioned we have to take
(01:55):
mandatory ad breaks with this hosting service. I'm gonna go I had an insert
one right here. We'll be rightback. All right, everyone, Welcome
back. So on this week's episode, I'm joined by another podcast that is
actually also on the Oracle Network andthey happen to be the Oracle Network Podcast
of the Month for July. Sowithout further ado, this is my episode
(02:19):
with ye Old Crime talking about thehinter Kaifek murders. So On this week's
episode, I am joined by Lindsayand Madison from the year old Crime podcast.
(02:43):
Lindsay Madison, thank you guys somuch for joining me, Thanks so
much for inviting us. Yeah,thank you very much. So we're gonna
be talking about a pretty interesting casetoday. Do you guys want to kind
of give a little synopsis of it? Sure? So this is one of
my favorite unsolved cases from history,and I'm very excited to cover it today
(03:07):
because we can't really cover it onour show just because our show, like
the parameters are, they're all casespre nineteen hundred and this one just so
happens to be in nineteen twenty two. So I'm very excited that I have
the opportunity to talk about it now. So Okay, so, how do
(03:30):
you pronounce the actual name? BecauseI've tried for probably a good ten minutes
now and I failed. I'm assumingmiserably. How do you pronounce the name?
Hinter kaifek yep, hinter kaifek.Okay, Yeah, I was definitely
off, hello, very off,very off. But that's okay. So,
(03:51):
um, do you want to kindof like dive into it. Let's
get to talk in some hinter Kaifekmurders. Sure, so we kind of
broke it up where I'm going tobe covering like the gruesome beginning part of
it, and Maddie's going to gothrough all of the different like theories and
suspects and stuff. Sounds good,okay, So obviously I love a good
(04:15):
mystery, and no cold case hasgripped my attention quite like the hinter Kaythik
murders. So, like I mentionedbefore, you know, we're traveling back
in time to nineteen twenty two toa small Bavarian farm that's located near Gruben
or modern day Veiehoven in Germany.So the nearest large city is Munich,
(04:36):
which is about forty three miles orabout seventy kilometers north of there. And
the story centers around the Gruber family, and the Gruber has lived on a
farm named hinter Kaythik, which hadoriginally been built in eighteen sixty three.
So this is like a super old, creepy farm and like, like if
(04:57):
you look at pictures of it,it looks like something out of your nightmares,
Like you can totally see how someonecould be murdered there. Oh absolutely,
yeah, I'm looking at the pictureright now it is very creepy looking.
Yeah. Yeah, I will definitelyinclude some pictures when this episode comes
out too, because it is kindof the thing of nightmares. I agree,
it's very eerie. So the nameitself comes from the word hinter,
(05:18):
which means behind in German and Kaifik, which is the name of the nearby
hamlet. And the family consisted ofAndreas who was sixty three and his wife
Cazilia, who was seventy two,and then their widowed daughter, Victoria Gabriel,
who was thirty five. And Victoria'schildren, her daughter who's also named
(05:40):
Cazilia and she was seven and Joseph, who is two. And the groupers
also had a maid that lived withthem named Maria Baumgartner who was forty four.
And contrary to what was the normof the time, Victoria actually owned
and operated the farm and her parentslived with her. So I'm not sure
(06:01):
if that was something where she gotit from her deceased husband, like she
just kind of took over the farm, or if she had purchased it,
like I couldn't find that information anywhere, but I was so yeah, in
any other case, her father wouldhave been the owner. Yeah, so
that I thought that was a veryinteresting detail that she actually owned the property
(06:25):
and it wasn't her dad. We'revery progressive for the time, clearly,
it's very progressive. Yeah. Yeah. So in town, her father,
Andreas was a pretty unpopular person,and many thought he was quarrelsome ill tempered,
and just pretty much an asshole.So people tended to try to like
(06:47):
avoid him if possible, and overtime, rumors surrounding the family started to
get kind of bad. So thepeople of Kai effects speculating about Andrea's relationship
with his daughter Victoria, and innineteen fifteen, Andreas was sentenced to a
year in prison for committing incests andVictorious. Yeah, Victorias served a month
(07:13):
in prison for the same offense.And at this time, Andreas was fifty
six and Victoria was twenty eight.Oh so yeah, yeah, it's one
of those stories. It's one ofthose layers that you're like, oh,
yeah, I take back what Isaid about being progressive for the time.
(07:33):
Yeah, right, I almost Iwanted to say something, but I was
like, I'm just gonna let you. We're just gonna unfold. You'll get
it in a second here about howunprogressive and kind of gross they are,
yeah, allegedly allegedly yeah, okay, okay. So claims were made that
(07:55):
Andreas was in fact the father ofhis own grandson, Joseph, and even
though a neighbor named Laurenz Schlittenbauer waslisted on Joseph's birth certificate as the father,
the rumors surrounding Andreas and Victoria kindof refused to die down, and
part of that was Lorenz's fault,because he would claim to pretty much anybody
(08:18):
who would listen in town, buthe wasn't Joseph's father, and that he
had merely allowed Victoria to list himas the father due to the fact that
they'd had a brief relationship at onetime. Andreas was so pissed about this
gossip that he threatened to sue Lawrens, but that didn't stop him from reporting
the continued incest to authorities. Sothen Andreas and Victoria face charges of incests
(08:43):
again in nineteen nineteen, but werelater acquitted in nineteen twenty, and in
a bit of a strange twist,Lorenz recanted his story, claiming that he
was, in the famous words ofMore, in fact the father of Joseph.
(09:03):
So a boy, yeah so there'slike child Mari Povich. Yeah,
so there's like all these weird twistsand turns and layers to this story.
There were claims that Victoria offered topay off Lorenz if he agreed to claim
he was the father, while anotherclaim circulated that she promised to marry him
if he agreed. So I'm goingto play devil's advocate for just one second
(09:28):
before we get to the good partof the story. There is no way
that Andreas fathered Joseph unless he didit after they were already acquitted, because
Joseph was two at the time themurders took place. And if Andreas fathered
anyone, my money would be onKazelia, the seven year old, just
(09:48):
because as far as when she wasborn, it coincides more with when they
were first charged with incest. Butin everything I read, they listed it
more like he was the father ofJoseph, But I tend to think it's
the other way around, that heactually fathered the daughter. Yeah, that
seems to kind of make more sense. Yeah, So after the fun incest
(10:15):
charges were dropped in nineteen twenty,things seemed to quiet down a little bit
on the farm, at least untilabout six months before the murders took place,
so prior to Maria becoming the Grouper'sfamily maid, there was another made
of Heaven living with the family,and she quit around October of nineteen twenty
one after telling Andreas that she hadbeen hearing strange noises, like noises that
(10:41):
sounded like footsteps in the attic,and she believed that the house was haunted
and she felt at times that shewas being watched, even though she knew
she was alone, and Andreas thoughtshe was just being crazy and pretty much
like bitter Good Riddance and like chalkedher claims up to just her being SuperShoes,
(11:01):
and whether he was willing to admitit or not, she might have
actually been onto something, because inMarch of nineteen twenty two, Andreas found
a strange newspaper from Munich on hisproperty, and it was a paper that
he had no recollection of ever purchasingany obvious he definitely didn't have a subscription
to it, so when he nextran into the postman, who was a
(11:24):
man named Joseph Mayer, he askedhim about it, thinking, you know,
maybe it had been delivered to hisfarm by accident, and the postman
confirmed that no one in the vicinityof hinter Kaifek had a subscription to that
paper, which kind of added tothe mystery of why and how it ended
ended up there in the first place. Ghost paper, Ghost paper. There
(11:48):
were other odd occurrences as well.So one of the keys to the house
had gone missing, and after atime Andreas himself heard footsteps in the attic,
but after conducting a thorough search ofthe building, he couldn't find anyone
or anything that could have been responsiblefor the noises. And another event that
(12:09):
seemed strange, one that Andreas himselftalked to his friends about. By friends,
I mean probably his neighbors. Hedidn't really he didn't really have friends.
He was kind of an asshole,was that he discovered a set of
tracks in the fresh snow that startedin the forest that bordered his property and
(12:31):
led to the farm's machine room,which had a broken door lock. And
even with all of these odd andif it was me, I would consider
them extremely unsettling circumstances, Andreas neverinvolved the police, never once claimed anything
(12:52):
to any of the local law enforcement. He'd still told several people about the
strange goings on, but he wasone of those people that refuse to have
help, even though one of them, at least to me, involved property
damage and potential theft when he wentto the barn and the lock was broken.
(13:13):
So about the third week of March, Andreas noticed another set of footprints
leading from the woods behind the barntoward the house, but there weren't any
sets that headed back into the woodsor anywhere else on the property. So
on Friday March thirty first, nineteentwenty two, Maria Baumgartner arrived at hinter
(13:33):
Kaifek to start work as their newmaid. Maria's sister brought her to the
farm and left after like a shortvisit with the family, and it is
very likely that she was the lastperson other than the killer or killers to
see her sister and the groupers alive. Oh yeah, so the groupers were
(13:56):
known to keep to themselves, buttalents people well became concerned when the young
Kazilia missed school the next day,and additionally, coffee sellers Hans and Eduard
Shirovski stopped by the farmstead to takean order from Andreas. I think they
sapped bi weekly, but no oneresponded to their knocks on the door.
(14:18):
They did notice that the gate tothe machine house was open, but they
left soon after when no one cameto the door. When the groupers didn't
attend church on Sunday, April second, which was a church where Victoria was
a member of the choir, peoplestarted to notice because they never missed service.
And then when Monday, April thirdrolled around and Kazilia missed another day
(14:41):
of school, people knew something wasn'tquite right. So on Tuesday, April
fourth, nineteen twenty two, amechanic named Albert Hoffner came to the farm
to work on a feeding machine andhe spent several hours fixing it without encountering
anybody. When he arrived property,he tried to get the attention of the
family, but the only sounds heheard were the family dog barking and I'm
(15:05):
assuming the dog was in the house. Once Albert had finished his work,
he tried to get the attention ofthe family again with no success, so
he headed to one of the neighborsto let them know that he hadn't seen
them, and then later that eveninga search party of neighboring families was assembled
and it was led by Lawrence.So when the search party arrived at hinter
(15:28):
Kaifek, they probably had no ideawhere they were going to be stumbling into
Lawrence was joined by neighbors yeah calledSiegel and Michael Pool. And when they
first arrived at the property, itwas super quiet, like eerily quiet,
(15:48):
and the group went to the homefirst, but noticed that all the doors
were locked so they couldn't get inside. So the group next went to the
barn, where they noticed that theentrance to the machinery room was open as
the room that had the broken lock, So after entering, they went into
the stable and it wasn't long intothe search of the barn that they discovered
(16:08):
four of the six members of thefamily under a board that was barely covered
by hay. And this is thetrigger warning. It's going to be pretty
graphic, but it's going to bevery short. So Andreas's face had been
brutally slashed and his cheekbones were visiblethrough the cuts, and obviously his face
(16:30):
was covered in blood. His wife, Cozilia's skull was cracked from seven blows
to the head and her neck poorsigns of strangulation. Victoria also suffered from
a shattered skull and her face hadmarkings consistent with it being hit with a
blunt object, and the nine woundswere described as star shaped, which was
(16:52):
a little unique. Little Cozilia hada shattered jaw and her face and neck
were covered in gaping, circular wounds. The hallway connected the barn to the
homestead, so Lawrence entered the livingroom and unlocked the door from inside the
home to allow the other two mento enter. Inside, the bodies of
(17:15):
young Joseph and Maria were found.Joseph had been bludgeoned to death in his
bassinet in Victoria's room, but witha heavy blow to the face, and
Maria had been murdered in her bedchamber, having suffered several blows to the head.
Joseph's body had been covered up byone of his mother's dresses, and
Maria's body had been covered up byone of her sheets, So all the
(17:38):
bodies had been covered or yield.Yes, not well, but yes,
it's one of those things that youhear about sometimes, especially in historical crimes,
where it reminds me of the storiesthat you'd hear of people like covering
up the mirrors and stuff too afterthey committed crime as if I don't want
(18:00):
anyone to see them and like lookat them. So that's what it kind
of reminded me of with the coveringup of the bodies. So an autopsy
was conducted by court physician doctor JohannBaptist al Muhler, and it revealed that
all but one of the victims likelydied instantly, and all of them except
(18:22):
for the young Kauzelia, it's believedthat she lived for several hours after the
rest of her family had been slaughtered. There were clumps of hair her own
hair found in her hands, whichled investigators to believe that she had torn
out her own hair in shock beforeshe died. He also noted that they
had likely been murdered between the eveningof March thirty first and the early morning
(18:47):
of April first, and in areally weird twist, doctor al Mueller decided
it made sense to remove the headsof all six victims to set yeah to
study them further in Munich because itwas the best way to preserve the evidence,
and they also allowed clairvoyance access tothem to see if they could narrow
(19:10):
down who committed the crime, which, okay, I've never heard of a
clairvoyant, like talking to it disembodiedhead to figure out what happened. But
all right, it's like that's oneway to do it. I mean,
you know, if you're if you'regonna bringing a clarivoyant, why not.
Yeah, it's a different time,you know. I didn't even know though.
(19:34):
I mean, that's pretty interesting thatthey would bring a clarivoyant in being.
You know, obviously I don't knowhow it was back then, but
you know, with our like modernday psychic detective TV shows and whatnot,
Yeah, it's basically the same.Like you know, they've been using clairvoyance
since even back then. Yeah,very interesting. Yeah, fun fact years
(20:00):
later, all of the heads wouldgo missing during an air raid on the
Oxford Court of Justice building during WorldWar Two and they would never be found.
It's not a super fun fact,but like, wow, how do
six heads go missing? Like that'sa lot of heads. It seems like
(20:22):
a weird thing to steal from abuilding if you're gonna like go ransack a
place after it's bombed, you know, you know what I mean. But
I wonder though, if if therewere people in that building, I wonder
if they just thought it was debrisfrom the raid and just threw their heads
away without realizing that there were nobodies next attached to the heads. That's
(20:48):
a good point. That's a reallygood point. Possibly. Yeah, thank
you by try. You did agood job. Yeah. So, perhaps
most disturbing of all was the factthat even with the shocking deaths of the
Grouper family, the farm had stillbeen operating as usual, like the animals
had all been fed and cared forafter the murders had likely taken place,
(21:11):
and even the family's Pomeranian dog hadbeen taken care of. Neighbors recall seeing
smoke coming from the chimney prior tothe discovery of the bodies, which led
many to believe that their killer,slash killers had been living in the home
with two of the bodies for daysafter committing the crime. And the postman
(21:33):
noted that all of the mail thathe had delivered from Saturday, April first
through Tuesday, April fourth had notbeen touched and was found right where he'd
left it, and robbery was ruledout as a motive because almost as soon
as the investigations of the house started, Andrea's supply of cash was immediately found
in the house, and in fact, if rumors and the former maid are
(21:56):
to be believed, then it's entirelypossible that whoever committed this crime had been
living undetected on the hinter Kaifect propertyfor over six months and lured each of
the victims into the barn one byone with the exception of Joseph and Maria.
And there was even evidence that theperson who committed the crime had made
(22:21):
meals at the home following their deaths. Good lord, So this person was
most likely or a person flash peoplewho were just living as if nothing had
happened. Yeah, oh my god, for a few days. That's terrifying.
Yeah, that's the part where I'mlike, yeah, the murders are
really bad, but this is alsosuper creepy, like to have everything continued
(22:45):
well, and it's like, whoeverit was clearly new enough to keep it
going, and how to keep itgoing? You know, Yeah, we'nning
a farm isn't easy, I don'tthink, I mean necessarily intuitive. No,
No, if you've been living atthe property undetected for six months,
you'd be very well versed and theday to day you're right, Yeah,
(23:08):
from watching and knowing and learning andoh that is that's pretty pretty scary.
Yeah, okay, So the murderweapon that they assume was used is what
they call a madic, which issimilar to a pickaxe, and a year
(23:29):
after the murders, the pickaxe thatthey thought was the murder weapon was actually
found in the attic of the housewhen they tore it down, so also
kind of fuels that theory of somebodyjust living up in the attic a madic
right now, so I have anidea. Yeah, to me, it
(23:51):
looks like it's it looks like ahammer with instead of a blunt edge,
it's still sharp. So it's gottwo sharp bitch is. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's that. That's exactly whatit looks like. And I'll share
a picture of it too, sopeople have a good idea. Here's a
picture of what a pick and amaddock looks like like back to back.
(24:11):
And that's kind of the theory ofwhat could have created the star shapes in
their skulls. Super fun. Yeah, Now, maybe wondering if it was
the creepy ghost person, a neighbor, maybe a vagrant. I'll break down
kind of what the Munich police departmentwent through. So Munich was the largest
(24:38):
city close by, so they wereThey were the department that took over the
case, and they were headed byInspector George Ryan Gruber. And they had
not been able to get a cleancrime scene because by the time they got
there a number of people had alreadycome by the house. They continue to
work on the farm. They movedthe bodies around to make it more convenient.
(25:03):
Like my sister said, they cookedand ate meals in the kitchen and
they assumed that it was the killer, but you never know, maybe somebody
working the house was unlocked and theydidn't see that their bodies and just had
some bread or something. I don'tknow. But to move the bodies to
continue working, Yeah, that's horrible, but it's not great. I mean,
(25:29):
like, could you imagine though,being in that position, Like,
wow, I gotta keep chugging alonghere, so I'm gonna oh, that's
horrible. Well, and if youthink about it too, like you're moving
your boss that would have paid you, that's not going to pay you now
because he's dead. So what isthe why are you working? So Initially
police suspected that the killer could havemurdered from money, so they spent a
(25:55):
good amount of time in tarrogating localand traveling craftsmen, workers and vagrants.
When they were able to find themoney Andreas left in the house, they
quickly dropped that theory. Then theyreally began to inspect the home. They
noted that the murderers had most likelylived at the farm for several days after
the killings. They ate pretty muchall of the bread from the kitchen,
(26:18):
and then they had recently cut meatfrom the pantry, so they really just
kind of made themselves at home.Gotta have those tmcandwhiches. I can't have
those ham sandwiches, like Lindsay said. The investigators assumed the majority of the
victims were drawn to the barn bynoise from the animals. This was quickly
(26:40):
debunked, however, because no oneactually heard screams coming from the barn at
the time they would have been killed. One neighbor that passed the hinter Kaifek
the night after the medical examiner predictedtheir desks noted that the oven was on.
He said a person allegedly came athim with a lantern and blinded him,
which made him run away. Healso mentioned that the fire itself had
(27:03):
a putrid smell. But no onefollowed up on what could have been burning
in the oven, So nobody checkedthe oven to see if like cannibalistic like
things that could have been in there. Yeah, the putrid smell is a
little disconcerting. Yeah, that's thatdoesn't just happen. No, not typically,
especially if they had like normal meatin the pantry. Another local noticed
(27:29):
two figures on the edge of theforest near hinter Kaifek on his way home
near Brennan on April first, butthe figures quickly turned away so that they
wouldn't be recognized. He didn't thinkanything of it until he heard about the
murders. Five years later. Astranger was said to stop a resident of
Whiteholfen in the middle of the night, asked him questions about the murder,
(27:51):
then screamed he was the murderer andran into the woods, never to be
seen again. So that's fun andtotally safe. I would love totally normal
after that. Normal. Yeah,that doesn't happen to you guys on a
daily basis. No, not typically. No. I also don't typically stroll
(28:14):
near the woods at night in themiddle of the night or talk to somebody
that came out of the woods.Oh, hey, hey, man,
like I did, like all thethings you're not supposed to do, going
out in the middle of the nighttalking to some stranger that came out of
the woods. Yep. So theyactually had interviewed over a hundred suspects,
(28:37):
but here are the top contenders.So the first suspect they thought of was
Andreas himself, the father. Rumorsabout town claimed Andreas killed the whole family
before turning the matic on himself,but none of the family's wounds were self
inflicted, and this would have beensuper difficult, really awful way to kill
(28:59):
yourself based on how Andreas was found, Like they said, his cheeks were
like shredded, So I don't knowhow you could continually do that to yourself
until you die. That'd be veryextreme. Another suspect was Carl Gabriel.
He was Victoria's first husband, andhe was reported as killed in action by
(29:23):
a shell attack in December nineteen fourteenin World War One, but his body
was never recovered. Oddly enough,at the end of World War Two,
some soldiers released from Soviet captivity claimedthat they were released by a German speaking
Soviet claiming to be the murderer ofHinter Kaifek. They revised the story later,
(29:44):
but many believed that Carl fled toRussia after the murders. So,
in a strange twist, her firsthusband, who potentially didn't die from the
war, came back, saw whatwas happening, loss his mind, murdered
all of them, and then wentto Russia became a Soviet as one does
(30:08):
you know? The lovely Lawrence wasnext, the man who was and was
not the father of Joseph. Hewas alleged to be in a relationship with
Victoria and had Joseph after he becamea widower in nineteen eighteen. Townspeople were
really suspicious of him because of hisactions after the bodies were found. He
(30:30):
was initially a part of that team, but he had to break the gate
to the barn because all the doorswere locked. After finding the bodies in
the barn, he magically came upwith a key, and there was a
key missing to the house earlier,and he went into the house alone first,
so he didn't tell anybody had thekey unlocked. The door went in,
(30:52):
he was like, oh, Iwas just unlocking it so you guys
could come in. Theories of himhaving his own key was potentially because he
was Victoria's bow and could have beenlike sneaking in and out before the murders.
He claimed that he went inside thehouse first to look for his son
Joseph, but he disturbed the bodiesand totally compromised the crime scene. One
(31:18):
interesting thing too, was they maynote that he was not disturbed at all
by how the bodies looked. Andthey said that he decided to off the
family after Victoria demanded child support,essentially, but he won several civil slander
cases after the murders, calling himthe murderer of hinter Kaifek. So it
(31:42):
followed him like his entire life,and he kept suing people to try to
make it stop, but it didn'twork. I just think it's interesting that.
I mean, if that was yourson, wouldn't you be pretty emotional
at finding son like bludgeoned to death? And if he would think and if
(32:04):
he was there and he was justlike, well these guys were murdered,
you know, like and wasn't superupset about it. That's a little telling.
Well, well, they said itcould have been shock, like he
was in a state of complete shock, but a lot of people knew him
well and they were like m heacted as if it was something he had
seen before. Well, and Imean, do we know what his whereabouts
(32:30):
were the days after the crime tookplace, because if somebody was supposedly,
you know, living amongst the farmand yeah, at least he would have
been there most likely before. Youknow, if he was you know,
supposedly her lover, he would haveknown the area and probably would have had
(32:50):
a good idea of how to howto keep things running well. And he
was their neighbor too, so itwould have been it wouldn't have been outside
of the real of possibility him tojust go next door and take care of
the animals after he committed the crime. Yeah. So we also have the
Gump brothers, so Lump Gump said, Glump, No brother's okay, okay,
(33:22):
yes. So Munich police looked intoAdolph's brother, Anton Gump, because
his sister claimed that her brothers Adolphand Anton, committed the crimes while she
was on her deathbed. Anton wasarrested, but Adolph was already dead by
the time this came to light.Police couldn't place him at the scene and
couldn't prove that he did it,so they released him very soon after they
(33:45):
arrested him. Carl S and Andreas s Our next suspects. It said
in the nineteen seventies a woman claimedthat when she was twelve, she and
her mother were visited by the motherof the brothers Carl and Andreas s.
The mother claimed her sons were themurderers of hinter Kaifek and said that Andreas
(34:06):
lamented the loss of his pen knifeat the scene. When the farm was
torn down in nineteen twenty three,a pocket knife was found with no known
owner, but the former maid,krizenz Riiger, was certain that they already
had a pen knife strawn about inthe yard before the murders happened. She's
like, people drop tools all thetime, like like the matic, Yeah,
(34:29):
just around, just pickaxe, rightnext to the cow poop. It's
fine. Peter Webber is another suspect. Peter Webber told his flatmate Joseph Bets
that he worked at hinter kaifek knewabout the incest and suggested killing Andreas to
get his money. When Joseph declinedthe offer of assisting the murder, Peter
(34:51):
never spoke about them again, soJoseph Betts was super schemed out, and
he was like, why aren't youtalking about it anymore? And and they
got murdered, and he was like, why aren't you talking about it anymore?
But there wasn't much after that,so they dropped that lead. The
next is the Bickler brothers and GeorgeSiegel. Chris Ends, the former maid,
(35:15):
suspected that brothers Anton and Carl Bicklercommitted the crime. They worked on
the farm during potato season and knewthe lay of the land. Anton allegedly
also hated the family and thought thatthey all should die. She also noted
that the family's Pomeranium barked at everyoneexcept Anton, and she claimed she spoke
(35:37):
to a stranger in the window ofthe house the night the family died.
She believed she was talking to CarlAnton's brother and that they committed the slayings
with George Siegel, another former workerof the farm, that all wanted the
family fortune. George denied his involvement, but he carved the handle of the
murder weapon the maddock himself, andhe knew where it was in the barn.
(36:00):
M Yeah, so fishy, thetaller brothers, like there was another
there were so many brothers and liketwo dudes like constantly and this whole thing
the Taller brothers presents throughout Riiger andJoseph Taller because they creepily stood outside of
(36:21):
her home window one night and askeda bunch of questions about the family that
she didn't respond to. The brothersclaimed they knew where each family member slept
in the house and noted that thefamily had a lot of money. So
there were a lot of people,a lot of people that worked for them
that hated them and wanted them dead. So it was really hard to kind
(36:45):
of narrow it down because they werereally not liked. So it's really unfortunate.
Like when you hear about like likeI know where they sleep at night,
it's like, oh, no,okay. The most extreme one that
I heard was they were murdered byextremists from the right or left wing of
(37:07):
German politics. So theories of thefamily being killed by an extreme political group
surface due to the Communists and Nazisengaging in fighting and bloodshed for a decade
after World War One. Because ofhinter Kaifex's location, it would have been
the perfect place for a hideout ormeeting place. Locals claimed the family could
(37:30):
have been collateral damage when the othergroup of extremists took action, but no
family members were known to have anyextremist political affiliations, so kind of debunked.
But of course somebody has to throwpolitics into a murder, you know,
And finally we have Paul Mueller.So an author by the name of
(37:54):
Bill James claims that pal Mueller wasthe killer due to similar crimes he committed
in the US, which was bymurdering an entire family in their home with
a pickaxe he found in their barn. He also didn't steal a single thing
during that murder. James alleges thatPaul fled to Germany from the US after
(38:14):
journalists noticed patterns and his family murdersacross state lines in Colorado and Kansas.
He killed two families in one nightin Colorado, and one wildly known alleged
murder Meeler committed was the Valiska axemurders in Valiska, Iowa. So that
(38:35):
was kind of a similar thing wherean entire family was just annihilated in their
home with a pickax, and whoeverwas there like ate the food and just
kind of lived there for a littlebit and then he left so it was
a super similar m So that's kindof the running theory. But the case
(38:59):
was actually closed by German authorities innineteen fifty five and it has not been
solved since. So that's weird howsimilar those cases are. I mean,
I think, you know, it'snatural for us to want to create patterns
and you know, find things thatmatch, but it still is kind of
(39:20):
strange that the cases are very,very similar and very similar. And what
was like you had said, Yeah, one of the theories was he was
starting to kind of get some heatin the United States, so he went
back to his homeland in Germany,and the dates matched up nice enough that
(39:43):
people were like, yep, that'shim, he did it. But I
just the hiding out for six monthsis something that I just that's so much
time to just be hidden in somebody'shouse. That's a long time to be
on a at four which was along time also kind of fairly common though,
(40:06):
especially post war, pre war,I mean, people had like twelve
families at that time. But atthe same time, like, if he
didn't know this family, why wouldhe be like, I'm gonna hide out
in this family's house for six months? These people that I don't know.
Well, they hired people. Theyhired strangers all the time to do stuff
(40:27):
on the farm. So if hehad a way with a pickaxe and was
on the farm for a period oftime and then quote unquote left, Yeah,
if he was like hired for aseason or something. Yeah, because
all the all the potential suspects werehired for like a brief period of time,
and it was super common to likehave traveling craftsmen go farm to farm
(40:52):
to find work. That's true.Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, something
you don't want to believe. Butlike stranger things have happened. I mean
it's like, is it completely impossible, No, but is it likely not
necessarily, Yeah, it's probably morelikely than the Soviet defector. Yeah,
(41:21):
the the X husband political group.Oh yeah, the ex husband that was
like I'm alive, Oh my god, you're cheating, I mean with your
dad murder. I'm gonna be aRussian now like that at a little a
little far fetched. That's a doubleO seven movie. Yeah. So I
(41:43):
mean at the end of the day, like what really was the motive behind
this murder? These murders, likeno, we really don't know. I
mean, like they were all murderedin like such a horrible fashion, Like
you know, it makes me thinkthat it was passion motivated. I mean,
that's just my personite, gut feeling, and especially with the you know,
sheer brutality of the crimes itself.And I don't know the covering.
(42:07):
I know you said it was popularof the time, you know, with
crime they would cover the victims.But it makes me say, like we
know nowadays, when they typically covervictims, it's because they knew them.
So it makes me wonder how personalthe actual person responsible was to the family.
(42:27):
And you gotta wonder too, ifthis was something where it started out,
say they want they only wanted tokill Andreas and then maybe they were
seen, so then they had tokill the mom or you know, like
you gotta wonder what, like yousaid, what the motive was. Was
(42:49):
it a matter of just getting ridof the dad because he was the one
perpetrating all these crimes against Victoria?Like is this someone who liked Victor Krea
and was trying to save her?Is this someone who wanted the farm and
didn't think that anyone would come lookingfor the family because they kind of kept
to themselves, you know, likeyou said, what is the motive?
(43:13):
If it wasn't cash, why itwasn't So it's like that is I'm sure
that was the first thing they lookedat, and you know when they realized
that everything was still there, youknow, it's just it makes you makes
you scratch your head. It's like, what what was going on? Well?
Very interesting? Very interesting? Soso yeah, So, like we
(43:34):
had said, the case has notbeen solved, they tried to reopen it.
You had mentioned. Yeah, theyactually kept it open until nineteen fifty
five to just see if they hadany leads, and people were still giving
them that one woman in nineteen seventywho said she she met those two men.
(43:57):
People were still giving them evidence ortips. Well passed when the case
was closed. But I don't thinkit has been reopened last I heard,
and I might have read it whenI was doing my research early in the
two thousands. They looked into itagain because some new evidence came to light
(44:17):
and they think they may have narroweddown who the suspect is. But because
descendants of the families are still alive, they're hesitant to release who actually did
it because they're concerned that of retaliationof retaliation against the people who committed the
crimes, just because the crimes areso famous in that area. Really Yeah,
(44:40):
yeah, like I want to killyou because my uncle killed your family.
I mean, I guess, butyeah, it wasn't that wasn't you.
I mean, people do strange thingswhen they feel like when a crime
is personal to them. Yeah,and that was for sure super personal.
(45:00):
Yeah. I think what's so sadis that there were too many suspects because
of how disliked this family was.Hmm when you actually got into it.
I think a lot of people didn'trealize the full scope of how many people
resented them and their wealth. MYeah, especially given how small of a
(45:22):
talent it was. It's interesting justhow many suspects were actually interviewed. Yeah,
over a hundred is a lot.M Well, and you had said
most of them had even worked forthem, So I think that says something
as well, that just how manypeople, you know, this family employed,
and for them to not be wellliked and the shady incests stopped going
(45:45):
on like there was, this wasquite quite the case. It sounds like,
Yeah, you see now why it'sone of Lindsay's favorites, Because I
understand now. Yeah, Yeah,there's so many layers of craziness there is,
and like, what's the deal withthe woods? Yeah, who was
(46:06):
hiding in the woods? The twopeople that turned away and they're like,
oh, I guess they don't wantus to say their face better keep walking
home. Yeah, Like just theidea that like, yeah, I know
this case was covered on Lore andif you've ever watched the Amazon Prime series
(46:28):
that he did too, I thinkthere was also it was also covered on
the Amazon Prime series. It's socreepy and it's again like there's so many
layers to this case. I don'teven know where you would start to start
unraveling it and start investigating it becausepeople in the woods, crazy wood people,
(46:50):
people in the attic, the ghostsin the attic. Yeah, like
and like he said, so manypeople didn't like him and it could have
had something to gain by getting thefarm after they were gone. You know,
it was this motivated by greed.Was this moment like just wanting the
land, the property right, andand they didn't take the money because they
(47:13):
thought that they would eventually get itif they got the land. Who did
the land end up with? Dowe know? Well, they tore the
building down in nineteen twenty three,so they tore the farm the house at
least shortly after the investigation, whichalso hindered the investigation. Yeah. Yeah,
(47:35):
it's like so much for anything atthat point. Like once that happens,
it's like gone, you know,there goes all the evidence, potential
evidence. And I always think it'sso interesting too, how the older cases,
how people would just be like inand about the actual like crime scenes.
Oh yeah, that blows my mind. I mean, like obviously now
nowadays we know, you know,they should be secured. Although I'm looking
(47:59):
at you, John Benne mc case. Yeah that one was not secured,
but one off the top of myhead, you know, it's it's kind
of funny how people would just begoing about their business, like we'd set
work in and there's just some deadbodies hanging out in the in the side
of the room, and it's prettycrazy. M hmmm. I found online
(48:20):
that says the former land of Hinnarchaifekis now an open agricultural area. Oh
so it's owned by everyone now.H And the town that goes by the
name of Why often beat often.Yeah, thank you. I don't try
to pronounce anything. I'm not.Um, yeah, I've there's an article
(48:44):
too. It says the old structuresno longer exist on the farm, but
there is a memorial where visitors canstop and pay their respects. M Well,
what an interesting case you guys.Oh my gosh, yeah, hoy.
So thank you so much for joiningmex episode. So where can people
listen to your show? Even thoughI talk about it somewhat on on my
(49:07):
show? All right, will belet's put it that way. Yeah,
you can find us pretty much onevery podcasting platform. You can also find
us on yield Crime podcast dot com. We're on Twitter at yield Crime Pod.
We're on Instagram at yield Crime Podcast. We also publish our content on
(49:29):
YouTube, so we're just kind ofall over the place. Yeah, and
you guys our podcast of the monthon the Oracle Network. Well who ya
ny when when Lindsay said that wewere I was like, that's not true.
That can't be a real thing.So awesome. All right, Well,
(49:49):
thank you guys so much for joiningme on this week's episode of Victimology.
Yeah, thank you so much forhaving us. Yeah, thank you
for having us once again. Ahuge thank YouTube. The Lovely ladies of
the year old crime podcast make sureto check out their show down below.
Well, guys, that about doesit. For this week's episode, I'm
Melissa Lee and this has been Victimology. Victimology is partnered with the Oracle Network.
(50:19):
Make sure to subscribe to Victimology onyour favorite podcast platform, Like and
follow Victimology on Facebook, Twitter,and Instagram. And if you like what
we do, please consider giving Victimologya five star review on iTunes. Victimology
is always accepting case suggestions. Pleasereach out via social media or email Victimology
pod at gmail dot com.
Due to the graphic nature and contentof this podcast, listener discretion is advised.
(01:11):
Well, welcome back to Victimology.I'm your host, Melissa Lee.
I hope everyone out there on podcastland is doingjust well, and please tell
me you all are continuing to washyour hands for the love of God.
So remember how I mentioned in lastweek's episode we'd be doing a book give
(01:33):
away. Well that is now liveand active and ready to go. So
if you are interested in earning afree copy a free signed copy of the
Power of Truth by Tristan Ingles,please make sure to use the jot form
down below to fill out your informationand then by next week I'll reach out
if you're the winner. Remember also, how I mentioned we have to take
(01:55):
mandatory ad breaks with this hosting service. I'm gonna go I had an insert
one right here. We'll be rightback. All right, everyone, Welcome
back. So on this week's episode, I'm joined by another podcast that is
actually also on the Oracle Network andthey happen to be the Oracle Network Podcast
of the Month for July. Sowithout further ado, this is my episode
(02:19):
with ye Old Crime talking about thehinter Kaifek murders. So On this week's
episode, I am joined by Lindsayand Madison from the year old Crime podcast.
(02:43):
Lindsay Madison, thank you guys somuch for joining me, Thanks so
much for inviting us. Yeah,thank you very much. So we're gonna
be talking about a pretty interesting casetoday. Do you guys want to kind
of give a little synopsis of it? Sure? So this is one of
my favorite unsolved cases from history,and I'm very excited to cover it today
(03:07):
because we can't really cover it onour show just because our show, like
the parameters are, they're all casespre nineteen hundred and this one just so
happens to be in nineteen twenty two. So I'm very excited that I have
the opportunity to talk about it now. So Okay, so, how do
(03:30):
you pronounce the actual name? BecauseI've tried for probably a good ten minutes
now and I failed. I'm assumingmiserably. How do you pronounce the name?
Hinter kaifek yep, hinter kaifek.Okay, Yeah, I was definitely
off, hello, very off,very off. But that's okay. So,
(03:51):
um, do you want to kindof like dive into it. Let's
get to talk in some hinter Kaifekmurders. Sure, so we kind of
broke it up where I'm going tobe covering like the gruesome beginning part of
it, and Maddie's going to gothrough all of the different like theories and
suspects and stuff. Sounds good,okay, So obviously I love a good
(04:15):
mystery, and no cold case hasgripped my attention quite like the hinter Kaythik
murders. So, like I mentionedbefore, you know, we're traveling back
in time to nineteen twenty two toa small Bavarian farm that's located near Gruben
or modern day Veiehoven in Germany.So the nearest large city is Munich,
(04:36):
which is about forty three miles orabout seventy kilometers north of there. And
the story centers around the Gruber family, and the Gruber has lived on a
farm named hinter Kaythik, which hadoriginally been built in eighteen sixty three.
So this is like a super old, creepy farm and like, like if
(04:57):
you look at pictures of it,it looks like something out of your nightmares,
Like you can totally see how someonecould be murdered there. Oh absolutely,
yeah, I'm looking at the pictureright now it is very creepy looking.
Yeah. Yeah, I will definitelyinclude some pictures when this episode comes
out too, because it is kindof the thing of nightmares. I agree,
it's very eerie. So the nameitself comes from the word hinter,
(05:18):
which means behind in German and Kaifik, which is the name of the nearby
hamlet. And the family consisted ofAndreas who was sixty three and his wife
Cazilia, who was seventy two,and then their widowed daughter, Victoria Gabriel,
who was thirty five. And Victoria'schildren, her daughter who's also named
(05:40):
Cazilia and she was seven and Joseph, who is two. And the groupers
also had a maid that lived withthem named Maria Baumgartner who was forty four.
And contrary to what was the normof the time, Victoria actually owned
and operated the farm and her parentslived with her. So I'm not sure
(06:01):
if that was something where she gotit from her deceased husband, like she
just kind of took over the farm, or if she had purchased it,
like I couldn't find that information anywhere, but I was so yeah, in
any other case, her father wouldhave been the owner. Yeah, so
that I thought that was a veryinteresting detail that she actually owned the property
(06:25):
and it wasn't her dad. We'revery progressive for the time, clearly,
it's very progressive. Yeah. Yeah. So in town, her father,
Andreas was a pretty unpopular person,and many thought he was quarrelsome ill tempered,
and just pretty much an asshole.So people tended to try to like
(06:47):
avoid him if possible, and overtime, rumors surrounding the family started to
get kind of bad. So thepeople of Kai effects speculating about Andrea's relationship
with his daughter Victoria, and innineteen fifteen, Andreas was sentenced to a
year in prison for committing incests andVictorious. Yeah, Victorias served a month
(07:13):
in prison for the same offense.And at this time, Andreas was fifty
six and Victoria was twenty eight.Oh so yeah, yeah, it's one
of those stories. It's one ofthose layers that you're like, oh,
yeah, I take back what Isaid about being progressive for the time.
(07:33):
Yeah, right, I almost Iwanted to say something, but I was
like, I'm just gonna let you. We're just gonna unfold. You'll get
it in a second here about howunprogressive and kind of gross they are,
yeah, allegedly allegedly yeah, okay, okay. So claims were made that
(07:55):
Andreas was in fact the father ofhis own grandson, Joseph, and even
though a neighbor named Laurenz Schlittenbauer waslisted on Joseph's birth certificate as the father,
the rumors surrounding Andreas and Victoria kindof refused to die down, and
part of that was Lorenz's fault,because he would claim to pretty much anybody
(08:18):
who would listen in town, buthe wasn't Joseph's father, and that he
had merely allowed Victoria to list himas the father due to the fact that
they'd had a brief relationship at onetime. Andreas was so pissed about this
gossip that he threatened to sue Lawrens, but that didn't stop him from reporting
the continued incest to authorities. Sothen Andreas and Victoria face charges of incests
(08:43):
again in nineteen nineteen, but werelater acquitted in nineteen twenty, and in
a bit of a strange twist,Lorenz recanted his story, claiming that he
was, in the famous words ofMore, in fact the father of Joseph.
(09:03):
So a boy, yeah so there'slike child Mari Povich. Yeah,
so there's like all these weird twistsand turns and layers to this story.
There were claims that Victoria offered topay off Lorenz if he agreed to claim
he was the father, while anotherclaim circulated that she promised to marry him
if he agreed. So I'm goingto play devil's advocate for just one second
(09:28):
before we get to the good partof the story. There is no way
that Andreas fathered Joseph unless he didit after they were already acquitted, because
Joseph was two at the time themurders took place. And if Andreas fathered
anyone, my money would be onKazelia, the seven year old, just
(09:48):
because as far as when she wasborn, it coincides more with when they
were first charged with incest. Butin everything I read, they listed it
more like he was the father ofJoseph, But I tend to think it's
the other way around, that heactually fathered the daughter. Yeah, that
seems to kind of make more sense. Yeah, So after the fun incest
(10:15):
charges were dropped in nineteen twenty,things seemed to quiet down a little bit
on the farm, at least untilabout six months before the murders took place,
so prior to Maria becoming the Grouper'sfamily maid, there was another made
of Heaven living with the family,and she quit around October of nineteen twenty
one after telling Andreas that she hadbeen hearing strange noises, like noises that
(10:41):
sounded like footsteps in the attic,and she believed that the house was haunted
and she felt at times that shewas being watched, even though she knew
she was alone, and Andreas thoughtshe was just being crazy and pretty much
like bitter Good Riddance and like chalkedher claims up to just her being SuperShoes,
(11:01):
and whether he was willing to admitit or not, she might have
actually been onto something, because inMarch of nineteen twenty two, Andreas found
a strange newspaper from Munich on hisproperty, and it was a paper that
he had no recollection of ever purchasingany obvious he definitely didn't have a subscription
to it, so when he nextran into the postman, who was a
(11:24):
man named Joseph Mayer, he askedhim about it, thinking, you know,
maybe it had been delivered to hisfarm by accident, and the postman
confirmed that no one in the vicinityof hinter Kaifek had a subscription to that
paper, which kind of added tothe mystery of why and how it ended
ended up there in the first place. Ghost paper, Ghost paper. There
(11:48):
were other odd occurrences as well.So one of the keys to the house
had gone missing, and after atime Andreas himself heard footsteps in the attic,
but after conducting a thorough search ofthe building, he couldn't find anyone
or anything that could have been responsiblefor the noises. And another event that
(12:09):
seemed strange, one that Andreas himselftalked to his friends about. By friends,
I mean probably his neighbors. Hedidn't really he didn't really have friends.
He was kind of an asshole,was that he discovered a set of
tracks in the fresh snow that startedin the forest that bordered his property and
(12:31):
led to the farm's machine room,which had a broken door lock. And
even with all of these odd andif it was me, I would consider
them extremely unsettling circumstances, Andreas neverinvolved the police, never once claimed anything
(12:52):
to any of the local law enforcement. He'd still told several people about the
strange goings on, but he wasone of those people that refuse to have
help, even though one of them, at least to me, involved property
damage and potential theft when he wentto the barn and the lock was broken.
(13:13):
So about the third week of March, Andreas noticed another set of footprints
leading from the woods behind the barntoward the house, but there weren't any
sets that headed back into the woodsor anywhere else on the property. So
on Friday March thirty first, nineteentwenty two, Maria Baumgartner arrived at hinter
(13:33):
Kaifek to start work as their newmaid. Maria's sister brought her to the
farm and left after like a shortvisit with the family, and it is
very likely that she was the lastperson other than the killer or killers to
see her sister and the groupers alive. Oh yeah, so the groupers were
(13:56):
known to keep to themselves, buttalents people well became concerned when the young
Kazilia missed school the next day,and additionally, coffee sellers Hans and Eduard
Shirovski stopped by the farmstead to takean order from Andreas. I think they
sapped bi weekly, but no oneresponded to their knocks on the door.
(14:18):
They did notice that the gate tothe machine house was open, but they
left soon after when no one cameto the door. When the groupers didn't
attend church on Sunday, April second, which was a church where Victoria was
a member of the choir, peoplestarted to notice because they never missed service.
And then when Monday, April thirdrolled around and Kazilia missed another day
(14:41):
of school, people knew something wasn'tquite right. So on Tuesday, April
fourth, nineteen twenty two, amechanic named Albert Hoffner came to the farm
to work on a feeding machine andhe spent several hours fixing it without encountering
anybody. When he arrived property,he tried to get the attention of the
family, but the only sounds heheard were the family dog barking and I'm
(15:05):
assuming the dog was in the house. Once Albert had finished his work,
he tried to get the attention ofthe family again with no success, so
he headed to one of the neighborsto let them know that he hadn't seen
them, and then later that eveninga search party of neighboring families was assembled
and it was led by Lawrence.So when the search party arrived at hinter
(15:28):
Kaifek, they probably had no ideawhere they were going to be stumbling into
Lawrence was joined by neighbors yeah calledSiegel and Michael Pool. And when they
first arrived at the property, itwas super quiet, like eerily quiet,
(15:48):
and the group went to the homefirst, but noticed that all the doors
were locked so they couldn't get inside. So the group next went to the
barn, where they noticed that theentrance to the machinery room was open as
the room that had the broken lock, So after entering, they went into
the stable and it wasn't long intothe search of the barn that they discovered
(16:08):
four of the six members of thefamily under a board that was barely covered
by hay. And this is thetrigger warning. It's going to be pretty
graphic, but it's going to bevery short. So Andreas's face had been
brutally slashed and his cheekbones were visiblethrough the cuts, and obviously his face
(16:30):
was covered in blood. His wife, Cozilia's skull was cracked from seven blows
to the head and her neck poorsigns of strangulation. Victoria also suffered from
a shattered skull and her face hadmarkings consistent with it being hit with a
blunt object, and the nine woundswere described as star shaped, which was
(16:52):
a little unique. Little Cozilia hada shattered jaw and her face and neck
were covered in gaping, circular wounds. The hallway connected the barn to the
homestead, so Lawrence entered the livingroom and unlocked the door from inside the
home to allow the other two mento enter. Inside, the bodies of
(17:15):
young Joseph and Maria were found.Joseph had been bludgeoned to death in his
bassinet in Victoria's room, but witha heavy blow to the face, and
Maria had been murdered in her bedchamber, having suffered several blows to the head.
Joseph's body had been covered up byone of his mother's dresses, and
Maria's body had been covered up byone of her sheets, So all the
(17:38):
bodies had been covered or yield.Yes, not well, but yes,
it's one of those things that youhear about sometimes, especially in historical crimes,
where it reminds me of the storiesthat you'd hear of people like covering
up the mirrors and stuff too afterthey committed crime as if I don't want
(18:00):
anyone to see them and like lookat them. So that's what it kind
of reminded me of with the coveringup of the bodies. So an autopsy
was conducted by court physician doctor JohannBaptist al Muhler, and it revealed that
all but one of the victims likelydied instantly, and all of them except
(18:22):
for the young Kauzelia, it's believedthat she lived for several hours after the
rest of her family had been slaughtered. There were clumps of hair her own
hair found in her hands, whichled investigators to believe that she had torn
out her own hair in shock beforeshe died. He also noted that they
had likely been murdered between the eveningof March thirty first and the early morning
(18:47):
of April first, and in areally weird twist, doctor al Mueller decided
it made sense to remove the headsof all six victims to set yeah to
study them further in Munich because itwas the best way to preserve the evidence,
and they also allowed clairvoyance access tothem to see if they could narrow
(19:10):
down who committed the crime, which, okay, I've never heard of a
clairvoyant, like talking to it disembodiedhead to figure out what happened. But
all right, it's like that's oneway to do it. I mean,
you know, if you're if you'regonna bringing a clarivoyant, why not.
Yeah, it's a different time,you know. I didn't even know though.
(19:34):
I mean, that's pretty interesting thatthey would bring a clarivoyant in being.
You know, obviously I don't knowhow it was back then, but
you know, with our like modernday psychic detective TV shows and whatnot,
Yeah, it's basically the same.Like you know, they've been using clairvoyance
since even back then. Yeah,very interesting. Yeah, fun fact years
(20:00):
later, all of the heads wouldgo missing during an air raid on the
Oxford Court of Justice building during WorldWar Two and they would never be found.
It's not a super fun fact,but like, wow, how do
six heads go missing? Like that'sa lot of heads. It seems like
(20:22):
a weird thing to steal from abuilding if you're gonna like go ransack a
place after it's bombed, you know, you know what I mean. But
I wonder though, if if therewere people in that building, I wonder
if they just thought it was debrisfrom the raid and just threw their heads
away without realizing that there were nobodies next attached to the heads. That's
(20:48):
a good point. That's a reallygood point. Possibly. Yeah, thank
you by try. You did agood job. Yeah. So, perhaps
most disturbing of all was the factthat even with the shocking deaths of the
Grouper family, the farm had stillbeen operating as usual, like the animals
had all been fed and cared forafter the murders had likely taken place,
(21:11):
and even the family's Pomeranian dog hadbeen taken care of. Neighbors recall seeing
smoke coming from the chimney prior tothe discovery of the bodies, which led
many to believe that their killer,slash killers had been living in the home
with two of the bodies for daysafter committing the crime. And the postman
(21:33):
noted that all of the mail thathe had delivered from Saturday, April first
through Tuesday, April fourth had notbeen touched and was found right where he'd
left it, and robbery was ruledout as a motive because almost as soon
as the investigations of the house started, Andrea's supply of cash was immediately found
in the house, and in fact, if rumors and the former maid are
(21:56):
to be believed, then it's entirelypossible that whoever committed this crime had been
living undetected on the hinter Kaifect propertyfor over six months and lured each of
the victims into the barn one byone with the exception of Joseph and Maria.
And there was even evidence that theperson who committed the crime had made
(22:21):
meals at the home following their deaths. Good lord, So this person was
most likely or a person flash peoplewho were just living as if nothing had
happened. Yeah, oh my god, for a few days. That's terrifying.
Yeah, that's the part where I'mlike, yeah, the murders are
really bad, but this is alsosuper creepy, like to have everything continued
(22:45):
well, and it's like, whoeverit was clearly new enough to keep it
going, and how to keep itgoing? You know, Yeah, we'nning
a farm isn't easy, I don'tthink, I mean necessarily intuitive. No,
No, if you've been living atthe property undetected for six months,
you'd be very well versed and theday to day you're right, Yeah,
(23:08):
from watching and knowing and learning andoh that is that's pretty pretty scary.
Yeah, okay, So the murderweapon that they assume was used is what
they call a madic, which issimilar to a pickaxe, and a year
(23:29):
after the murders, the pickaxe thatthey thought was the murder weapon was actually
found in the attic of the housewhen they tore it down, so also
kind of fuels that theory of somebodyjust living up in the attic a madic
right now, so I have anidea. Yeah, to me, it
(23:51):
looks like it's it looks like ahammer with instead of a blunt edge,
it's still sharp. So it's gottwo sharp bitch is. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's that. That's exactly whatit looks like. And I'll share
a picture of it too, sopeople have a good idea. Here's a
picture of what a pick and amaddock looks like like back to back.
(24:11):
And that's kind of the theory ofwhat could have created the star shapes in
their skulls. Super fun. Yeah, Now, maybe wondering if it was
the creepy ghost person, a neighbor, maybe a vagrant. I'll break down
kind of what the Munich police departmentwent through. So Munich was the largest
(24:38):
city close by, so they wereThey were the department that took over the
case, and they were headed byInspector George Ryan Gruber. And they had
not been able to get a cleancrime scene because by the time they got
there a number of people had alreadycome by the house. They continue to
work on the farm. They movedthe bodies around to make it more convenient.
(25:03):
Like my sister said, they cookedand ate meals in the kitchen and
they assumed that it was the killer, but you never know, maybe somebody
working the house was unlocked and theydidn't see that their bodies and just had
some bread or something. I don'tknow. But to move the bodies to
continue working, Yeah, that's horrible, but it's not great. I mean,
(25:29):
like, could you imagine though,being in that position, Like,
wow, I gotta keep chugging alonghere, so I'm gonna oh, that's
horrible. Well, and if youthink about it too, like you're moving
your boss that would have paid you, that's not going to pay you now
because he's dead. So what isthe why are you working? So Initially
police suspected that the killer could havemurdered from money, so they spent a
(25:55):
good amount of time in tarrogating localand traveling craftsmen, workers and vagrants.
When they were able to find themoney Andreas left in the house, they
quickly dropped that theory. Then theyreally began to inspect the home. They
noted that the murderers had most likelylived at the farm for several days after
the killings. They ate pretty muchall of the bread from the kitchen,
(26:18):
and then they had recently cut meatfrom the pantry, so they really just
kind of made themselves at home.Gotta have those tmcandwhiches. I can't have
those ham sandwiches, like Lindsay said. The investigators assumed the majority of the
victims were drawn to the barn bynoise from the animals. This was quickly
(26:40):
debunked, however, because no oneactually heard screams coming from the barn at
the time they would have been killed. One neighbor that passed the hinter Kaifek
the night after the medical examiner predictedtheir desks noted that the oven was on.
He said a person allegedly came athim with a lantern and blinded him,
which made him run away. Healso mentioned that the fire itself had
(27:03):
a putrid smell. But no onefollowed up on what could have been burning
in the oven, So nobody checkedthe oven to see if like cannibalistic like
things that could have been in there. Yeah, the putrid smell is a
little disconcerting. Yeah, that's thatdoesn't just happen. No, not typically,
especially if they had like normal meatin the pantry. Another local noticed
(27:29):
two figures on the edge of theforest near hinter Kaifek on his way home
near Brennan on April first, butthe figures quickly turned away so that they
wouldn't be recognized. He didn't thinkanything of it until he heard about the
murders. Five years later. Astranger was said to stop a resident of
Whiteholfen in the middle of the night, asked him questions about the murder,
(27:51):
then screamed he was the murderer andran into the woods, never to be
seen again. So that's fun andtotally safe. I would love totally normal
after that. Normal. Yeah,that doesn't happen to you guys on a
daily basis. No, not typically. No. I also don't typically stroll
(28:14):
near the woods at night in themiddle of the night or talk to somebody
that came out of the woods.Oh, hey, hey, man,
like I did, like all thethings you're not supposed to do, going
out in the middle of the nighttalking to some stranger that came out of
the woods. Yep. So theyactually had interviewed over a hundred suspects,
(28:37):
but here are the top contenders.So the first suspect they thought of was
Andreas himself, the father. Rumorsabout town claimed Andreas killed the whole family
before turning the matic on himself,but none of the family's wounds were self
inflicted, and this would have beensuper difficult, really awful way to kill
(28:59):
yourself based on how Andreas was found, Like they said, his cheeks were
like shredded, So I don't knowhow you could continually do that to yourself
until you die. That'd be veryextreme. Another suspect was Carl Gabriel.
He was Victoria's first husband, andhe was reported as killed in action by
(29:23):
a shell attack in December nineteen fourteenin World War One, but his body
was never recovered. Oddly enough,at the end of World War Two,
some soldiers released from Soviet captivity claimedthat they were released by a German speaking
Soviet claiming to be the murderer ofHinter Kaifek. They revised the story later,
(29:44):
but many believed that Carl fled toRussia after the murders. So,
in a strange twist, her firsthusband, who potentially didn't die from the
war, came back, saw whatwas happening, loss his mind, murdered
all of them, and then wentto Russia became a Soviet as one does
(30:08):
you know? The lovely Lawrence wasnext, the man who was and was
not the father of Joseph. Hewas alleged to be in a relationship with
Victoria and had Joseph after he becamea widower in nineteen eighteen. Townspeople were
really suspicious of him because of hisactions after the bodies were found. He
(30:30):
was initially a part of that team, but he had to break the gate
to the barn because all the doorswere locked. After finding the bodies in
the barn, he magically came upwith a key, and there was a
key missing to the house earlier,and he went into the house alone first,
so he didn't tell anybody had thekey unlocked. The door went in,
(30:52):
he was like, oh, Iwas just unlocking it so you guys
could come in. Theories of himhaving his own key was potentially because he
was Victoria's bow and could have beenlike sneaking in and out before the murders.
He claimed that he went inside thehouse first to look for his son
Joseph, but he disturbed the bodiesand totally compromised the crime scene. One
(31:18):
interesting thing too, was they maynote that he was not disturbed at all
by how the bodies looked. Andthey said that he decided to off the
family after Victoria demanded child support,essentially, but he won several civil slander
cases after the murders, calling himthe murderer of hinter Kaifek. So it
(31:42):
followed him like his entire life,and he kept suing people to try to
make it stop, but it didn'twork. I just think it's interesting that.
I mean, if that was yourson, wouldn't you be pretty emotional
at finding son like bludgeoned to death? And if he would think and if
(32:04):
he was there and he was justlike, well these guys were murdered,
you know, like and wasn't superupset about it. That's a little telling.
Well, well, they said itcould have been shock, like he
was in a state of complete shock, but a lot of people knew him
well and they were like m heacted as if it was something he had
seen before. Well, and Imean, do we know what his whereabouts
(32:30):
were the days after the crime tookplace, because if somebody was supposedly,
you know, living amongst the farmand yeah, at least he would have
been there most likely before. Youknow, if he was you know,
supposedly her lover, he would haveknown the area and probably would have had
(32:50):
a good idea of how to howto keep things running well. And he
was their neighbor too, so itwould have been it wouldn't have been outside
of the real of possibility him tojust go next door and take care of
the animals after he committed the crime. Yeah. So we also have the
Gump brothers, so Lump Gump said, Glump, No brother's okay, okay,
(33:22):
yes. So Munich police looked intoAdolph's brother, Anton Gump, because
his sister claimed that her brothers Adolphand Anton, committed the crimes while she
was on her deathbed. Anton wasarrested, but Adolph was already dead by
the time this came to light.Police couldn't place him at the scene and
couldn't prove that he did it,so they released him very soon after they
(33:45):
arrested him. Carl S and Andreas s Our next suspects. It said
in the nineteen seventies a woman claimedthat when she was twelve, she and
her mother were visited by the motherof the brothers Carl and Andreas s.
The mother claimed her sons were themurderers of hinter Kaifek and said that Andreas
(34:06):
lamented the loss of his pen knifeat the scene. When the farm was
torn down in nineteen twenty three,a pocket knife was found with no known
owner, but the former maid,krizenz Riiger, was certain that they already
had a pen knife strawn about inthe yard before the murders happened. She's
like, people drop tools all thetime, like like the matic, Yeah,
(34:29):
just around, just pickaxe, rightnext to the cow poop. It's
fine. Peter Webber is another suspect. Peter Webber told his flatmate Joseph Bets
that he worked at hinter kaifek knewabout the incest and suggested killing Andreas to
get his money. When Joseph declinedthe offer of assisting the murder, Peter
(34:51):
never spoke about them again, soJoseph Betts was super schemed out, and
he was like, why aren't youtalking about it anymore? And and they
got murdered, and he was like, why aren't you talking about it anymore?
But there wasn't much after that,so they dropped that lead. The
next is the Bickler brothers and GeorgeSiegel. Chris Ends, the former maid,
(35:15):
suspected that brothers Anton and Carl Bicklercommitted the crime. They worked on
the farm during potato season and knewthe lay of the land. Anton allegedly
also hated the family and thought thatthey all should die. She also noted
that the family's Pomeranium barked at everyoneexcept Anton, and she claimed she spoke
(35:37):
to a stranger in the window ofthe house the night the family died.
She believed she was talking to CarlAnton's brother and that they committed the slayings
with George Siegel, another former workerof the farm, that all wanted the
family fortune. George denied his involvement, but he carved the handle of the
murder weapon the maddock himself, andhe knew where it was in the barn.
(36:00):
M Yeah, so fishy, thetaller brothers, like there was another
there were so many brothers and liketwo dudes like constantly and this whole thing
the Taller brothers presents throughout Riiger andJoseph Taller because they creepily stood outside of
(36:21):
her home window one night and askeda bunch of questions about the family that
she didn't respond to. The brothersclaimed they knew where each family member slept
in the house and noted that thefamily had a lot of money. So
there were a lot of people,a lot of people that worked for them
that hated them and wanted them dead. So it was really hard to kind
(36:45):
of narrow it down because they werereally not liked. So it's really unfortunate.
Like when you hear about like likeI know where they sleep at night,
it's like, oh, no,okay. The most extreme one that
I heard was they were murdered byextremists from the right or left wing of
(37:07):
German politics. So theories of thefamily being killed by an extreme political group
surface due to the Communists and Nazisengaging in fighting and bloodshed for a decade
after World War One. Because ofhinter Kaifex's location, it would have been
the perfect place for a hideout ormeeting place. Locals claimed the family could
(37:30):
have been collateral damage when the othergroup of extremists took action, but no
family members were known to have anyextremist political affiliations, so kind of debunked.
But of course somebody has to throwpolitics into a murder, you know,
And finally we have Paul Mueller.So an author by the name of
(37:54):
Bill James claims that pal Mueller wasthe killer due to similar crimes he committed
in the US, which was bymurdering an entire family in their home with
a pickaxe he found in their barn. He also didn't steal a single thing
during that murder. James alleges thatPaul fled to Germany from the US after
(38:14):
journalists noticed patterns and his family murdersacross state lines in Colorado and Kansas.
He killed two families in one nightin Colorado, and one wildly known alleged
murder Meeler committed was the Valiska axemurders in Valiska, Iowa. So that
(38:35):
was kind of a similar thing wherean entire family was just annihilated in their
home with a pickax, and whoeverwas there like ate the food and just
kind of lived there for a littlebit and then he left so it was
a super similar m So that's kindof the running theory. But the case
(38:59):
was actually closed by German authorities innineteen fifty five and it has not been
solved since. So that's weird howsimilar those cases are. I mean,
I think, you know, it'snatural for us to want to create patterns
and you know, find things thatmatch, but it still is kind of
(39:20):
strange that the cases are very,very similar and very similar. And what
was like you had said, Yeah, one of the theories was he was
starting to kind of get some heatin the United States, so he went
back to his homeland in Germany,and the dates matched up nice enough that
(39:43):
people were like, yep, that'shim, he did it. But I
just the hiding out for six monthsis something that I just that's so much
time to just be hidden in somebody'shouse. That's a long time to be
on a at four which was along time also kind of fairly common though,
(40:06):
especially post war, pre war,I mean, people had like twelve
families at that time. But atthe same time, like, if he
didn't know this family, why wouldhe be like, I'm gonna hide out
in this family's house for six months? These people that I don't know.
Well, they hired people. Theyhired strangers all the time to do stuff
(40:27):
on the farm. So if hehad a way with a pickaxe and was
on the farm for a period oftime and then quote unquote left, Yeah,
if he was like hired for aseason or something. Yeah, because
all the all the potential suspects werehired for like a brief period of time,
and it was super common to likehave traveling craftsmen go farm to farm
(40:52):
to find work. That's true.Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, something
you don't want to believe. Butlike stranger things have happened. I mean
it's like, is it completely impossible, No, but is it likely not
necessarily, Yeah, it's probably morelikely than the Soviet defector. Yeah,
(41:21):
the the X husband political group.Oh yeah, the ex husband that was
like I'm alive, Oh my god, you're cheating, I mean with your
dad murder. I'm gonna be aRussian now like that at a little a
little far fetched. That's a doubleO seven movie. Yeah. So I
(41:43):
mean at the end of the day, like what really was the motive behind
this murder? These murders, likeno, we really don't know. I
mean, like they were all murderedin like such a horrible fashion, Like
you know, it makes me thinkthat it was passion motivated. I mean,
that's just my personite, gut feeling, and especially with the you know,
sheer brutality of the crimes itself.And I don't know the covering.
(42:07):
I know you said it was popularof the time, you know, with
crime they would cover the victims.But it makes me say, like we
know nowadays, when they typically covervictims, it's because they knew them.
So it makes me wonder how personalthe actual person responsible was to the family.
(42:27):
And you gotta wonder too, ifthis was something where it started out,
say they want they only wanted tokill Andreas and then maybe they were
seen, so then they had tokill the mom or you know, like
you gotta wonder what, like yousaid, what the motive was. Was
(42:49):
it a matter of just getting ridof the dad because he was the one
perpetrating all these crimes against Victoria?Like is this someone who liked Victor Krea
and was trying to save her?Is this someone who wanted the farm and
didn't think that anyone would come lookingfor the family because they kind of kept
to themselves, you know, likeyou said, what is the motive?
(43:13):
If it wasn't cash, why itwasn't So it's like that is I'm sure
that was the first thing they lookedat, and you know when they realized
that everything was still there, youknow, it's just it makes you makes
you scratch your head. It's like, what what was going on? Well?
Very interesting? Very interesting? Soso yeah, So, like we
(43:34):
had said, the case has notbeen solved, they tried to reopen it.
You had mentioned. Yeah, theyactually kept it open until nineteen fifty
five to just see if they hadany leads, and people were still giving
them that one woman in nineteen seventywho said she she met those two men.
(43:57):
People were still giving them evidence ortips. Well passed when the case
was closed. But I don't thinkit has been reopened last I heard,
and I might have read it whenI was doing my research early in the
two thousands. They looked into itagain because some new evidence came to light
(44:17):
and they think they may have narroweddown who the suspect is. But because
descendants of the families are still alive, they're hesitant to release who actually did
it because they're concerned that of retaliationof retaliation against the people who committed the
crimes, just because the crimes areso famous in that area. Really Yeah,
(44:40):
yeah, like I want to killyou because my uncle killed your family.
I mean, I guess, butyeah, it wasn't that wasn't you.
I mean, people do strange thingswhen they feel like when a crime
is personal to them. Yeah,and that was for sure super personal.
(45:00):
Yeah. I think what's so sadis that there were too many suspects because
of how disliked this family was.Hmm when you actually got into it.
I think a lot of people didn'trealize the full scope of how many people
resented them and their wealth. MYeah, especially given how small of a
(45:22):
talent it was. It's interesting justhow many suspects were actually interviewed. Yeah,
over a hundred is a lot.M Well, and you had said
most of them had even worked forthem, So I think that says something
as well, that just how manypeople, you know, this family employed,
and for them to not be wellliked and the shady incests stopped going
(45:45):
on like there was, this wasquite quite the case. It sounds like,
Yeah, you see now why it'sone of Lindsay's favorites, Because I
understand now. Yeah, Yeah,there's so many layers of craziness there is,
and like, what's the deal withthe woods? Yeah, who was
(46:06):
hiding in the woods? The twopeople that turned away and they're like,
oh, I guess they don't wantus to say their face better keep walking
home. Yeah, Like just theidea that like, yeah, I know
this case was covered on Lore andif you've ever watched the Amazon Prime series
(46:28):
that he did too, I thinkthere was also it was also covered on
the Amazon Prime series. It's socreepy and it's again like there's so many
layers to this case. I don'teven know where you would start to start
unraveling it and start investigating it becausepeople in the woods, crazy wood people,
(46:50):
people in the attic, the ghostsin the attic. Yeah, like
and like he said, so manypeople didn't like him and it could have
had something to gain by getting thefarm after they were gone. You know,
it was this motivated by greed.Was this moment like just wanting the
land, the property right, andand they didn't take the money because they
(47:13):
thought that they would eventually get itif they got the land. Who did
the land end up with? Dowe know? Well, they tore the
building down in nineteen twenty three,so they tore the farm the house at
least shortly after the investigation, whichalso hindered the investigation. Yeah. Yeah,
(47:35):
it's like so much for anything atthat point. Like once that happens,
it's like gone, you know,there goes all the evidence, potential
evidence. And I always think it'sso interesting too, how the older cases,
how people would just be like inand about the actual like crime scenes.
Oh yeah, that blows my mind. I mean, like obviously now
nowadays we know, you know,they should be secured. Although I'm looking
(47:59):
at you, John Benne mc case. Yeah that one was not secured,
but one off the top of myhead, you know, it's it's kind
of funny how people would just begoing about their business, like we'd set
work in and there's just some deadbodies hanging out in the in the side
of the room, and it's prettycrazy. M hmmm. I found online
(48:20):
that says the former land of Hinnarchaifekis now an open agricultural area. Oh
so it's owned by everyone now.H And the town that goes by the
name of Why often beat often.Yeah, thank you. I don't try
to pronounce anything. I'm not.Um, yeah, I've there's an article
(48:44):
too. It says the old structuresno longer exist on the farm, but
there is a memorial where visitors canstop and pay their respects. M Well,
what an interesting case you guys.Oh my gosh, yeah, hoy.
So thank you so much for joiningmex episode. So where can people
listen to your show? Even thoughI talk about it somewhat on on my
(49:07):
show? All right, will belet's put it that way. Yeah,
you can find us pretty much onevery podcasting platform. You can also find
us on yield Crime podcast dot com. We're on Twitter at yield Crime Pod.
We're on Instagram at yield Crime Podcast. We also publish our content on
(49:29):
YouTube, so we're just kind ofall over the place. Yeah, and
you guys our podcast of the monthon the Oracle Network. Well who ya
ny when when Lindsay said that wewere I was like, that's not true.
That can't be a real thing.So awesome. All right, Well,
(49:49):
thank you guys so much for joiningme on this week's episode of Victimology.
Yeah, thank you so much forhaving us. Yeah, thank you
for having us once again. Ahuge thank YouTube. The Lovely ladies of
the year old crime podcast make sureto check out their show down below.
Well, guys, that about doesit. For this week's episode, I'm
Melissa Lee and this has been Victimology. Victimology is partnered with the Oracle Network.
(50:19):
Make sure to subscribe to Victimology onyour favorite podcast platform, Like and
follow Victimology on Facebook, Twitter,and Instagram. And if you like what
we do, please consider giving Victimologya five star review on iTunes. Victimology
is always accepting case suggestions. Pleasereach out via social media or email Victimology
pod at gmail dot com.
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