100 Murder Cases

The Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders

On the evening of March 31, 1922, on Hinterkaifeck Farm in Bavaria, Germany, six residents were murdered with a pickaxe. The victims included husband and wife, Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel, Viktoria's children, Cäzilia and Josef, and the family's maid Maria Baumgartner. 2-year-old Josef was killed in his crib and Maria was killed in her bed while the rest of the family was then murdered in the barn and stacked on top of each other.

Upon the discovery, authorities concluded that the murderer actually lived on the farm for 6 days after they committed the crime. Even after the family had died, cattle were still being fed, meals were being eaten in the kitchen, neighbors reported seeing smoke rising from the chimney, and the family dog was tied up to a post when the mailman came on Saturday. The bodies were discovered the next day.

What makes this crime even more chilling was that Maria was actually hired the same day she was killed, replacing the previous maid who had quit 6 months earlier due to the house "being haunted." She reported to the family of hearing footsteps in the attic and voices. Around the time the previous maid had quit, the Gruber family had also begun to hear voices from the attic. Andreas had also noticed a set of house keys had gone missing, an unfamiliar newspaper in the house that he had never seen before, plus scratches on the family's tool shed like someone had tried to pick the lock. He had also reported seeing a pair of unfamiliar footsteps leading from the woods towards the back entrance of the family's home.

Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955 and the house was demolished.