The Hinterkaifeck Murders: Evidence, Myths, and the Unsolved 1922 Cold Case

The 1922 reward poster of the Neuburg prosecutor states the core facts: in the night of 31 March to 1 April 1922 everyone living at the Einödhof Hinterkaifeck, Gemeinde Wangen, Bezirksamt Schrobenhausen, was killed “in bestialischer Weise.”⁶ The Historisches Lexikon Bayerns adds the four-day gap before discovery, the cared-for livestock and the smoke from the chimney.¹

The number of killers, the order of the killings, the motive and the identity of anyone involved were never established.¹³ The poster’s word “Raubmord” (robbery-murder) was the first working theory. Later writers doubt it because money and jewellery were left behind.⁶²

Hinterkaifeck was a single farm on its own (an Einödhof), about 500 m south-west of Gröbern and about 6 km from Schrobenhausen.¹ It was officially house no. 27½ of the then Gemeinde Wangen, belonging to Gröbern, and is now in the municipality of Waidhofen, Landkreis Neuburg-Schrobenhausen, Upper Bavaria.³ “Hinterkaifeck” was only a house name. The farm did not belong to the hamlet of Kaifeck, about 1 km to the south.³⁴

The farm was built around 1863. In 1922 it was a long single-storey building with the living quarters and the stable, joined at a right angle by a larger barn, with one high attic running over the whole L.³ The April 1922 photograph below shows the house range and the barn from the south. The farm was pulled down in 1923, and its stones were reused in a neighbouring village.¹⁴ The site is now farmland.³²

Andreas Gruber and his daughter Viktoria were convicted of incest: he was sentenced to a year in a Zuchthaus and she to a month in prison.⁹³ Viktoria’s husband, Karl Gabriel, was killed as a soldier in France in December 1914.¹⁸ After his death Viktoria had a relationship with Lorenz Schlittenbauer, the widowed Ortsführer of Gröbern. He told police on 5 April 1922 that he had acknowledged himself as the father of her two-year-old son.¹²⁸ The Augsburger Allgemeine reports that Viktoria turned down his proposal of marriage.⁹

Later accounts describe a run of strange events in the weeks before the killings. A copy of a Munich newspaper no one nearby subscribed to was found near the farm. Andreas Gruber found footprints in the snow leading to the farm and none leading away. A house key went missing, the padlock on the machine house was broken, and the family heard footsteps in the attic. Gruber is said to have told several people but refused help from neighbours or the police.³ SZ reports that Viktoria and her father said they saw someone watching the farm from the edge of the wood.⁸

An earlier maid left the farm in 1921 “fluchtartig” (as if fleeing), SZ reports, because she felt watched.⁸ German Wikipedia names a former maid, Kreszenz Rieger, as working at the farm from November 1920 to about September 1921. She later named several men as suspects (§14).³

Maria Baumgartner, from Kühbach, arrived at the farm on the afternoon of Friday, 31 March, brought by her sister. The sister stayed a short time and left. She was very probably the last outsider to see the household alive.³⁶

The Historisches Lexikon Bayerns summarizes the reconstruction: Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, Viktoria Gabriel and the girl Cäzilia were probably drawn into the barn one after another and killed there. The killer or killers then went from the barn into the house, where the maid and the little boy were killed.¹ The order is a reconstruction from where the bodies lay. One version has Viktoria first, then Cäzilia Gruber, Andreas and the girl.³ Tests later showed that screams from the barn could not be heard in the living quarters.³

The killings were done with blows to the head. Later analysis found that the weapon belonged to the farm.¹³³ The victims were covered: the four in the barn under a door, the maid under a bedcover.² Covering the bodies has been read as a sign that the killer knew them, an interpretation, not a finding (§16).²

In Gröbern Hofner told Schlittenbauer’s daughters that the repair was done and that he had seen no one; he also told Georg Greger, the mayor of Wangen.³ Schlittenbauer sent his sons Johann and Josef to look, then went in himself that day with Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl.¹³ They found four bodies in the barn and two in the house.⁸ By his own later account Schlittenbauer went into the house alone and unlocked the front door from inside.³

The police took Schlittenbauer’s statement the next day. The typed record is headed “Kaifeck hinter Gröbern 5.4.22” and “Betreff: Mord an der Bauernfamilie Gabriel hinter Kaifeck bei Gröbern.” In it he says he knew the Grubers and the widow Viktoria Gabriel well, that she had a two-year-old illegitimate child whose father he had acknowledged himself to be, and that on Saturday, 1 April, a coffee seller had come to his farm.¹²

Gendarmes from the Hohenwart station came first, mainly to keep onlookers away. Munich detectives arrived in the night of 4 April.¹ German Wikipedia says Kriminaloberinspektor Georg Reingruber and five officers, two with police dogs, reached Wangen at 1:30 a.m. and went to the farm at 5:30 with the court commission from Schrobenhausen.³

Four days after the discovery the 1st Staatsanwalt in Neuburg an der Donau put up a poster headed “Sechsfacher Raubmord · 100,000 M. Belohnung!” It offered the reward “für die Ergreifung der Täter oder die sichere Ermöglichung ihrer Ergreifung” (for catching the perpetrators or making their capture certain) and asked for information under file ref. A 169/1922 to the Staatsanwaltschaft Neuburg, the Polizeidirektion München or any Gendarmerie station.⁶ The Munich press was still calling the case a “Raubmord” weeks later.¹⁴

Robbery was the first working motive, so vagrants, hoarders, pedlars and people with criminal records from the area were checked first.¹ The theory never fitted well. No one could establish how much money had been on the farm, and a considerable sum was found even though the killers had had time to search.¹ German Wikipedia puts it at about 1,800 Goldmark in a cupboard.³ Peter Leuschner: “Die Akten wurden lange unter dem Betreff Raubmord geführt. Aber man weiß, dass es kein Raubmord war, weil nichts geraubt wurde.” (The files were long kept under the heading robbery-murder. But we know it was not one, because nothing was taken.)²

Only five photographs were taken at the scene.³ No fingerprints were secured, although that was usual practice in 1922.²¹³ Konrad Müller, the retired detective, said the method had been mature since 1909.⁹ SZ adds that names were sometimes written down wrongly.⁸ Some witnesses were not questioned until years later: Hofner in 1925.³

The victims’ heads were removed at the autopsy.⁵³ Spiritualist sessions with mediums were held using the skulls, without result.³⁴ At one, a medium identified a photograph of Josef Bärtl as the killer, which made him a suspect (§14).¹

Strangulation marks are reported for one woman, but the documents disagree on which: the telephone note gives them to Cäzilia Gruber, Renner’s report to Viktoria Gabriel. German Wikipedia says the evidence is “nicht eindeutig” (not clear-cut).⁵³ Ney’s 1953 statement speaks of an “11-jährige Viktoria Gabriel,” evidently meaning the girl Cäzilia, which shows how far memory had drifted after 31 years.⁵

The first reports said the killers used a “Kreuzhacke” (pickaxe).¹⁰ Prof. Hermann Merkel, the Munich forensic pathologist, examined a Kreuzhacke as the suspected weapon in 1922.¹¹ The Augsburger Allgemeine still wrote “Kreuzhacke” in 2012, and BR “Spitzhacke” in 2022.⁹²

When the farm was demolished in 1923, the weapon was found hidden in the attic.¹ German Wikipedia describes it as a Reuthaue (a grubbing mattock) belonging to Andreas Gruber, hidden under the floorboards near the chimney and found in or after February 1923, when Karl Gabriel senior, the father of Viktoria’s late husband, began pulling the farm down.³ A protruding screw from a makeshift repair is said to match marks in the wounds.³ Merkel examined it in 1923.¹¹ A Reuthaue was shown as the “mutmaßliche Mordwaffe” (presumed murder weapon) at an exhibition in the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in March 2026; the Commons record does not say whether it is the original or a reconstruction. The Fürstenfeldbruck students had a replica made.¹³

Because no one was tried, there is no indictment, verdict or appeal to cite. The legal record consists of the prosecutor’s file, the arrests and releases, and the decision to close the investigation in 1955.⁶² The only court rulings connected with the case are civil: Schlittenbauer’s slander suits, and the plagiarism suit over the novel Tannöd, which the Landgericht München and the Oberlandesgericht rejected (§20).³²

In 2007 fifteen trainee police officers at the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung und Rechtspflege in Bayern, in Fürstenfeldbruck, re-examined the case as a study project, working through the surviving documents again.²⁸ German Wikipedia describes the result as a 188-page report.³ The project was led by Polizeihauptmeisterin Michaela Forderberg-Zankl.²

The students showed how carelessly the case had been investigated: “Nicht einmal Fingerabdrücke wurden genommen, obwohl das 1922 durchaus üblich war.” (Not even fingerprints were taken, although that was quite usual in 1922.)² Their case analysis concluded that “Auslöser für die Tat war ein persönlicher, emotionaler Konflikt” (the trigger for the crime was a personal, emotional conflict).⁹ SZ reports their view that with today’s forensic methods the killer or killers would very probably have been caught.⁸ The report names no murderer. Its June 2007 conclusion, quoted by BR, says that one name “wird immer im Zusammenhang mit diesem mehrfachen Mord von Hinterkaifeck in unseren Köpfen auftauchen” (will always come to mind in connection with this multiple murder).²

Forderberg-Zankl summed up in 2012: proof of the crime can definitely no longer be produced. “Es gibt keine Tatortspuren mehr. Das ist das Problem.” (There are no scene traces any more. That is the problem.) For the same reason, the Augsburger Allgemeine noted, DNA analysis doesn’t help.⁹ In 2022 she told BR that the covered bodies suggested the killer knew the victims and wanted to make some kind of amends, an interpretation, not a finding.²

The Historisches Lexikon Bayerns cites the Hinterkaifeck file as Staatsarchiv München, Polizeidirektion 8091 b, and credits its images of the farm, a police special bulletin and a wanted poster to that file.¹ The Augsburger Allgemeine says the files Peter Leuschner used came from the Staatsarchive in Augsburg and Munich and are now online.⁹ The prosecuting office was the Staatsanwaltschaft Neuburg an der Donau.⁶

Many files burned in Augsburg during the Second World War.²⁴ No full autopsy report is known; it may have been lost or never written.⁵ The skulls are lost (§10).⁴ Witnesses were often questioned decades later; the last interviews are reported in 1986.³

A Marterl (wayside shrine) near the site read “Gottloser Mörderhand fiel am 31. März 1922 die Familie Gabriel-Gruber von hier zum Opfer” (by a godless murderer’s hand the Gabriel-Gruber family of this place fell victim on 31 March 1922), followed by the six names.¹⁵ It stood until 2022.¹ A new memorial was set up at the end of March 2025 where the Marterl had been.³ The victims lie in the cemetery at Waidhofen.⁴