There seems to be limited information about this crime online, mainly due to the age (1920’s). There is one excellent website in German, which I can’t read, however Google translator does a good enough job to get a lot of info you won’t find anywhere else:
http://hinterkaifeck.net/index.php?menuid=1
As I say, there is something very unsettling about the crime scene photos. Reminds me of the JTR Mary Kelly pictures.

After reading about the case – it is even more creepy than the ‘Robinson’: It’s the creepiest case ever.

There are approximately 200 different evidential details of what had happened at the crime scene, so it’s sort of impossible to summarize..cows licking blood from a murder weapon, witness moving away bodies after arriving at the scene, gunpowder found in the room of the maid although belonging to the farm owner, footsteps in the snow etc…an incredible read. It appears as if two men went into the farm, stayed in the attica and managed it to kill six (!) people one after another. All without being noticed by the others. And then they had stayed for even some more days in the farm house.

Blood on the floor but no foot prints there. Incestous relationships, money borrowing, a family dispute one night before the murder and finally a crying victim sitting near a river. Reading about the case is like reading Alice in Wonderland. All victims, known family members as well as the new maid, covered slightly after being killed. Strangulated and hacked to death, so you wonder why someone had done so. Impossible to say who had done it, even to reconstruct the events at the scene would take days if not weeks (if possible at all).

Great find, it’s the most creepy one for sure.

QT

Yeah, CREEPY, that describes this crime for me. It sounds more like a horror movie plot. This one has the potential to give me nightmares.

I’m normally quite good at putting crimes out of my mind but I must admit this one has been haunting me day and night since I read about it, especially the poor 7 year old girl who took hours to die. I would dearly love to see a resolution to this one but I suspect that will never happen.

Thoughts about Hinterkaifeck…

First about the baby, Josef. One theory might be that he was the reason for the whole homicide case. Wrong fathership, alimony payments, this could have been a motive for Lorenz Schlittenbauer.

Another theory, however, is that the baby was killed for crying too loud for his mom. This being the saddest part, but if the toddler’s parents had already been dead, after a few hours Josef would have started to cry. The attackers then wouldn’t have been able to handle that situation, therefore had killed him, too.

Why attackers? There were two footprints in the snow, two sleeping places in the straw and, finally, two different killing modus operandi. The women had been strangled and hacked to death. Doing only one of this would have been enough. Instead, they killed them sort of ‘twice’. Strangling is one thing, possibly because the attackers tried to avoid any noise, not to alarm the others. Hacking them to death after being strangled would not make any sense at all. Nevertheless it was done so. It therefore might be assumed that one of the attackers choked the victims, with another one meanwhile hacking them to death. A secure method to kill someone, even involving both, for sure and ‘safety’ reasons. I firmly do believe that two people went to the machine house, that two people slept in the straw and that two people had killed the family.

This, for some reason, would free Lorenz Schlittenbauer from any guilt, if he wasn’t one of those two people. Definitely disturbing is the issue with the money. 700 goldmark being found in the church, payments to Lorenz Schlittenbauer, a crying mother close to the river etc. This indeed is weird and somehow rules out the option that e.g. two transients went into the house (winter) to find a safe place for a few days. No need to kill for such a reason. Instead there were other issues. A father who refused a marriage. A daughter who might have ended a liason. An illegitimate child. And payments for both, the church and the illegitimate father. Plus a long-year conflict between the father and his neighbor, Schlittenbauer. What else do you need? Well, life being not easy enough: The wife of Schlittenbauer already had left. Then a new wife, Anna appears in his life. A child is born – and dies. The child of Schlittenbauer is getting buried one day before the attackers enter the farm of Hinterkaifeck. Wonder what Andreas Gruber’s, the father, comment was on that one (they possibly were at the burial ceremony, too). Reasons enough to freak out.

Then, at the scene, the first one who finds the bodies is Lorenz Schlittenbauer. With two guys who, as soon as possible, had left the scene. Meanwhile, Schlittenbauer walks around, moves bodies and destroys evidence. Asking me, this was a contract murder. Schlittenbauer who had known that he would be a suspect sooner or later, tried to get some alibi. And got it, from the prosecutor. But two of his ‘friends’, Pöll and Sigl, disappear. Schlittenbauer was able to pay them in advance, with a few hundreds to thousands (1800+) of goldmark he verifiably had received from Viktoria. And there was an alibi for the two friends, too: The ‘Schmaderer’ family, known for robbing farms after loosening some cattle, were some good scapegoats to give his two friends some alibi – together with a statement of Schlittenbauer this would be enough to keep them out of trouble.

So or so, the victim herself had financed, willingly or not, this tricky, cruel and unconscionable homicide.

‘Wie Plöckl mir sagte, passt die Gestalt dieser Mannsperson auf Schlittenbauer.’
‘As Plöckl (carpenter) had told me, the shape of this male person matched to Schlittenbauer’
(Sebastian Maier about Plöckl mentioning a man with a flashlight)

When finding the bodies, Schlittenbauer pulls the foot of Andreas Gruber – so he can ‘see him’ that he is not alive. Afterwards he checks – and moves – some of the other bodies. He also had lied regarding the key (‘there is only one’) but owns it (a second one?) when opening the main entrance from inside. Also, the dog, trustful and injured as he was, is later tied in front of the farm although earlier been seen inside by the mechanic.

IMO Schlittenbauer simply went mad, after having lost his child, and had ordered Pöll or Sigl or both or two of the Schmaderer family to kill them all.

QT

Thanks QT – reading your summary it becomes clear that the google-translated pages miss out some of the finer points that you’ve raised. For example, after you said that there were likely 2 perpetrators it took me a lot of digging to find a reference to that in the English text.
I think the neighbour has got to be involved somehow, his actions with the bodies and crime scene would raise a lot of red flags these days despite the fact that individually each action could simply be shrugged off as unusual behaviour.

Thanks QT – reading your summary it becomes clear that the google-translated pages miss out some of the finer points that you’ve raised. For example, after you said that there were likely 2 perpetrators it took me a lot of digging to find a reference to that in the English text.
I think the neighbour has got to be involved somehow, his actions with the bodies and crime scene would raise a lot of red flags these days despite the fact that individually each action could simply be shrugged off as unusual behaviour.

And the large cash payments that had been payed to him only weeks before the murder..

QT