Hinterkaifeck: The Killer Who Stayed After Six People Died

On 4 April 1922, neighbours broke into an isolated farm near Waidhofen in Bavaria, Germany. They found six dead people: Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia, their daughter Viktoria Gabriel, her two children Cäzilia and Josef, and the maid Maria Baumgartner. The Bavarian State Archives records severe blows to the head during the night of 31 March, between about 7 and 10 p.m. The weapon was a mattock, but it stayed lost until workers demolished the farm in 1923 and found it hidden beneath a false floor.

Hinterkaifeck does not look like a burglary followed by a quick escape. Before the killings, someone saw footprints leading from the forest to the farm with no tracks going back. Locks on an outbuilding had been forced. A Munich newspaper appeared on the property even though the family had not ordered it. Footsteps were heard in the attic at night. These details appear in witness accounts and local reports, mixed with later rumours. Put in order, they tell a sharper story: someone approached the farm, watched the family's routine, and knew how to move around without being seen. The trail did not stop on the night of the murders. The killer stayed on for several more days inside the house among the six bodies, and left only when outsiders began knocking at the door.