MAy 7,2025
The Hinterkaifeck Murders
Trigger warning: home invasion, mass murder, and child murder.
Unsolved homicides are one of, if not the most terrifying concept to come out of the true crime genre. Whether they occur within the U.S. or not, these crimes often leave many questions unanswered and keep citizens on edge for years, which only adds to their unsettling nature. Coming out of Waidhofen, Bavaria, Germany, our case this week, known only as the Hinterkaifeck murders, surrounds the gruesome slaughter of the Gruber family, a family of five, and their maid by an unknown assailant at their Bavarian farmstead on March 31, 1922.
On the evening of March 31, 1922, four of the six victims: Andreas Gruber (63), Cäzilia Gruber (72), Viktoria Gabriel (35), and Cäzilia Gabriel (7) were lured one by one into the family barn on the property and killed by the assailant who struck each of them in the head with a mattock (a small pickaxe). After murdering the first four members of the Gruber family, the assailant hid their bodies in the barn under a large mound of hay and moved into their home. Once inside, the assailant immediately located and killed two-year-old Joseph Gabriel with the mattock as he slept in his bassinet. After murdering Joseph, they silently crept into the bedroom of the family’s maid, 44-year-old Maria Baumgartner, and, with a few powerful blows to the head, murdered her in her sleep, as well.
Following the murders, the assailant lived in the home for three days with the six bodies of his victims hidden away in the barn right outside. During this time, they ate food from the fridge and around the house, fed the property’s barn animals, and started fires in the home’s fireplace. After the three days had passed, they simply walked off the property and were never located. German police wouldn’t launch any
investigation until days later when the bodies were finally discovered. They considered and investigated many suspects as a part of the search for answers; however, due to several inconsistencies between them and what was known based off the evidence from the crime scene, no one was arrested and formally charged in the Gruber family’s murders. To this day, this case remains unsolved and is considered to be one of the most gruesome and puzzling unsolved crimes in German history.