October 27, 2016 • 46 mins
In 1922, a little farm in the woods of Bavaria became the site of what would become Germany’s most famous unsolved murder, when six people were brutally killed with a pick axe. What led up to it and followed is nothing short of bizarre.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know Friendhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hay,
and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark, Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Ye should know. Yeah. I would
(00:23):
say this is a bonus Halloween episode in a way
you can all look forward to our regular um add
free Halloween show on Halloween, the real bonus episode. Yeah,
exactly where we do our traditional reading. It's all gussied
up by Jerry. But you were like, hey, since this
is Hallo weekend, almost right, why don't we just tell
(00:48):
the story of an X murdered family. Yeah? I hope
it didn't spoil it. I don't think so. I think
we probably would have gotten to that point eventually, right, Yeah,
So we decided to just do a little creepy episode
this one. If you have your children, you may want
to vet this one because it's definitely about an X
murdered family. Don't be a sick Oh, it's up to
(01:08):
you whether or not you want to expose them to
this kind of treachery. This is bad stuff. Are you
ready for it? If you get your German pronunciation down.
By the way, should we talk about Ki Chang hintet? Yeah, chung.
(01:31):
More specifically, the irony of all this, why should I
ever get it right at all? The irony of all
this is I was almost right when I first said
it and said I don't think Chinese pronounces the X.
But um, this one is just a little more. Stings
a little more because we made such a big deal
about it being correct and the pronunciation wasn't correct, but
(01:53):
we were misled on the internet. Yeah, and now that happens,
it happens. Still got averything else, right, A dixia chang
is really chung sort of okay, And hinter kfec hinter
kaifek yeah right, Yeah, I looked over these. My German
(02:14):
is rusty, but I think I got them all. Yeah,
most of them. I bet you're gonna stumble on one.
But under that I don't even know which when you're talking,
you know, this is what's gonna make it exciting. Man.
Maybe we should have a sound effect when it happens,
and I'll just like a boring Sure, okay, that'll disrupt
the spookiness. Well, let's get spooky, chuck, shall we. Because
(02:38):
there's a little town Um in Bavaria. That's correct, it's
Um between the towns of Ingle and Schrobenhausen, is that
either one of the ones he thought was gonna stumble on? No,
I mean technically used to say like stot instead of stott.
Oh well, I didn't realize we're getting technical. But you
(02:59):
know you're you're not in Germany. That's how an American
might say it, right, and by god, I'm an American. Um,
although it's much closer to vad Hoffen, is that the
one I'm just gonna ask every time I said something
in German? Don't hear the sound effect. But there's a
little little tiny village, a town called Kafek and um no, well,
(03:24):
the town, the village is called Kaifek. There was a
ranch basically you'd call it in America a dude ranch
maybe even, but not really. It's just a farm um
called hinter Kaifek. It was located a little bit outside
of this village, in the hinter land, you might call it.
So this the name of this farm was hinter Kfek Kaifek.
(03:46):
And on this farm lived a man, a woman, another woman,
some little kids. This is going terribly, isn't it. No?
I think it's great. So the family who made up
this uh, the tendency of this farm. They were the groupers.
Andreas Grouper was the father his wife. Um is this one? Okay?
(04:13):
All right, let me do this then you're ready. H
m hmmmmmm Uh. The wife's name was Cazelia Jelia Frank. No,
if I'm not mistaken, If you begin a word with
C in German and it's pronounced like a like a
T s, yes for me, I think that would be
(04:36):
cet Celia. What that's not fair, Come on Germany. Um,
tet Celia. Okay, Well let me ask you this. So
tet Celia? Yeah? Am I saying it right now? I
think cet Celia. Well that's Italian. It does sound so
te Celia is his wife. That's to be determined. Uh.
(05:00):
Their daughter Victoria. So if there's a K instead of
a C, is it something else entirely? Or is it
Victoria Victoria? Okay? And there's two grandchildren. The oldest was
a granddaughter. Now she has an umlaut over her name,
even though it's spelled otherwise, the exact same as her grandmother,
Todd Celia. How would you say that? It would be?
(05:20):
Uh Celia to Celia? Yeah, Celia Celia and Todd Celia,
Todd Celia, and cert Celia, so it would be like
toad Celia and tad Celia Jr. I don't know. I mean,
I've never seen anyone name there. It just seemed unusual
(05:42):
to me. I didn't know if the first name was missing,
the um out, or if they really named her after
her grandmother but added the um out. Maybe there's a
story there. Well, you know, Chuck as we'll find a
lot of the the details and facts of this case
have been lost to time. That's right. Lastly, there was
a little boy, two year old named Josef that was
(06:02):
Victoria's son, and Victoria Um was widowed. She was thirty five.
I believe at the time that we come into hinter
Kaifek and Um, they all lived together relatively isolated actually
because they the groupers. Although they were wealthy and from
what I saw, held in somewhat high esteem or at
(06:24):
least treated Um with respect to their station, they were
very very much disliked as a family. Yeah, and there's
quite a few reasons for this. One is that, uh,
the patter Familius Andreas was Um. He was not friendly,
like to keep to himself, and apparently he was very
(06:44):
abusive to his wife and children children. He only had
one living child still at this point, was Victoria, And
we're in the way back machine, by the way, and
it's nineteen two. Oh, we didn't say that. I don't
think so. So he was abusive. I don't know the
(07:06):
story of the passing of his other children, lost the time,
lost the time. My immediate reaction was like, well, if
he was abusive and they're no longer round, maybe he
had something to do with it. Maybe, but totally Also
the time when like people routinely died from the flu. Sure,
you know, that's a good point. Uh, so he was
(07:27):
a loner, he was abusive. Uh. There was the matter
of Yosef, the two year old daughter of Victoria. Uh, yeah,
she's daughter. I don't know where else going with that,
um And he was rumored to have been born from
an incestuous relationship with her father Andreas Right, that was
the rumor in town, which smacks it to me of
(07:51):
small town nineteen twenties stuff. I'm not sure if I
bought that. No, but that was definitely the rumor in town. Yeah,
but there was a significant number of people in town
who either believed that or we're very much aware that
other people believed that, Yeah, because he apparently was very
controlling of Victoria, kind of to the level of being
(08:11):
characterized as obsessed with her. Yeah, so it could very
well be true. Could loss of time could also have
not been true. And there's other reports that Joseph was
the son of another man in town who will meet
later on. Um, who at one point claimed paternity but
later on said no way. Especially I think when the
(08:33):
concept of alimony payments was brought up, he's like, no,
it was a product of incests instead. So Victoria was
the only one supposedly that kind of spent a lot
of time in town and that people seem to care
for much because she sang in the choir apparently was
a very good singer, uh, in the church choir. And um,
so this is the scene here in semi rule Bavaria. Yeah,
(08:58):
and we we want to give a shout out. We've
given um. We We've found some other articles about the
case itself, but the main one that we started with
was from Mysterious Universe dot org, not a normal place
where we would get our stuff, but it's a good article. Yeah,
and we everything else I read about it, it's sort
(09:19):
of all checked out as being the same. So way
to go, Mysterious Universe dot Org. Good job, thanks for it.
So things start to get a little weird on the
farm when the maid at the farm, whose name may
or may not be Maria, we don't know. Uh, she said,
I'm out of here. I quit because this house is
(09:40):
uh haunted. Yeah, I'm hearing weird noises in the attic,
hearing weird sounds all around the place. I'm hearing footsteps. Uh,
I'm out of here. Yeah. And apparently she left pretty
quickly and suddenly, and the family so much so was like, yeah,
I think she was mentally disturbed. Sure, that's an easy
(10:01):
way to quiet the townspeople if you don't want to. Yeah,
you don't what people thinking, like a, I'm abusive and
be also living a haunted house, right, Yeah, you don't
want that. That's where you endow the line incest abuse.
Sure that's allowable, but you don't want people to think
you've got ghosts, you know. Right. So the maid leaves
and that kind of sets the tone like that kicks
(10:22):
off this season of dread. Oh that settles over. Hinterkiek
would be a good name for the movie version of
this season of Dread. Yeah, I can't believe there's not
a number of like blockbuster movies about this. Yeah, I
looked it up. Apparently there were a couple that weren't
very big, um, but nothing, nothing that ever started rape fines. Well,
(10:46):
if it doesn't have him, who care? He would clearly
be one of the dudes in this, you know, maybe
even Andreas Gruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans.
I'm gonna go ahead and nit, mate. You see the
name Drewber, and that's what jumps to mind. So the
maid leaves, and like I said, this, weird things start happening. Um.
(11:09):
A few months later, Andreas is um wandering around his
property around, wandering around right, just looking aimlessly for something
to do. I think there was a snowstorm and he
was looking around to see, you know, if there had
(11:30):
been any damage, anything that need repairing, And he noticed
that there was a set of tracks in the snow,
human tracks, footprints, I guess it's a better way to
call him, leading to the house. And they went right
up to the house. But he looked around and he
could not find any tracks leading away from the house.
Super creepy, Just a single set though, Right, Yeah, it
(11:52):
wasn't like the footsteps like God carried him from there point. Well,
that would be a single step set. Uh. Well, you
know the adage there were two sets of footprints and
then when there were only one. It wasn't that God
left you. It was when he was carrying you. Right,
You're sorry. That's a great story. Whether even if you're
(12:13):
not religious, you got to see that and be like, man,
that makes me feel good because anytime you get to
that point, Jesus goes zing. Doubt me, will you? Uh,
it's the footprints leading to the house, not leading away. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Right,
He was a little creeped out, so he said, let
(12:35):
me wander around more and see if I can find Well,
at this point he wasn't wandering. He had purpose, So
let me not wander aimlessly, but let me go from
room to room and barn to barn room, barn room
to barn room, and find out this person that is
clearly on my property somewhere. Yeah, he did like a
hard target search, looking for somebody, either somebody hiding out
(12:58):
on his property or evidence that whoever left that track,
those tracks leading to his house had left looking for
other tracks away from that, and he didn't find anything.
He found nothing, no evidence of anybody, certainly didn't find anybody,
didn't There was just nothing. Um. One thing though that
he did find that was kind of off putting to
(13:19):
him enough so that he mentioned it to neighbors was
that on his tool shed, which is separate from the barn,
the tool shed had a lock on it, and the
lock had scratches or evidence that somebody had been trying
to either break it or pick it, and they were
trying to get into the tool shed, and he did
not like that. So this is this is again, this
(13:42):
is following on the heels of their they're made leaving
citing ghosts is the reason she left. Somebody has come
to their farm and not left. They tried to get
into the tool shed. The things are getting a little creepy.
So in that case, it was a ghost sighting. See
I t I right, another accidental pun? Yeah was that accidental? Sure? Okay,
(14:07):
you didn't mean that, did you? Did I say that? Yeah?
He said that she saw a ghost sighting. Oh wow, yeah,
I guess that happens. Yeah. Um, I wondered, by the way,
really quickly, if these footprints. If whoever did that did
the old shining trick, a little Danny was so smart
he doubled back in his footprints and it worked. Oh,
(14:30):
it worked big time. Anyonce you've seen the end of
the Shining, can tell you. It sounds a lot like
I've been drinking today. I haven't at all of you.
I've seen what you're drinking. You're drinking water. Uh. And
that's not the only weird thing that happened on Um,
so that was in March. I'm sorry. Two more weird
things happened. So a set of keys go missing in March,
(14:55):
and um, I don't know that one to me. People
lose keys, yeah, but if you're suddenly like there's is
there somebody like bringing around a property trying to get
into the tool shed? Now there's keys missing? Yeah, yeah,
I could see that, the scratchy lock. And then the
other final weird thing in that month, they found a
(15:16):
strange newspaper on the porch and I looked up because
I didn't know what strange newspaper meant. So I tried
to find out what the deal was, and everywhere I
went just said it was it was a newspaper that
I couldn't get if it was like, was it from
Russia or was it super greety um? And all I
(15:38):
found was that it was. That I could gather was
that it was a newspaper that they did not expect
to be there for some reason or another. Either they
didn't subscribe to, it wasn't in their town, or just
some just random newspaper being on their porch with what matters. Yeah,
I couldn't find anything beyond that as well. Yeah, there
was one other last thing. And all of this is
now starting to take place over just the of a
(16:00):
couple of dates. Things are getting like weirder at a
much faster pace. Uh. Andreas himself, who I've not taken
to be a very superstitious person um started to notice
sounds coming from the attic, the same kind of like
disembodied footfalls that the maid had sighted um as a
ghost sighting. So he's sitting there like, okay, keys are missing,
(16:26):
somebody's trying to get into tools shed. Those tracks are
really messing with me. And now I'm hearing things. I'm
hearing people in my own house and there's a Chicago
Tribune from Things have gotten weird. Al Right, Should we
take a break. Yeah, alright, things are weird. This is
(17:07):
in March, the last day of March nine. All right, Uh,
a new maid comes on the scene named Maria for sure. Yeah,
this one's confirmed. Okay. She on her first day on
the job. It proved to not be a very good
(17:28):
first day at work for one really good reason. Ah
that we'll get to in a minute. Okay, we'll tease
it out a little bit more. Okay, So she comes
to work, she's working. Everything's totally normal. Uh, as far
as anyone around the hinter Kaifek Farm is concerned, like
the neighbors and all, that is just a totally normal day.
(17:51):
But in a few days they would realize that this day,
March thirty one, was the last day anyone could say
for sir and that they had seen any of the
groupers alive. Correct. So flash forward a few days April four. Uh,
people were a little weird. They were like, you know what, uh,
(18:13):
st Celia, it's not in school, which is unusual. Um,
no one's been to church. We missed that sweet sweet
voice of Victoria up there. Yeah that was highly unusual
as well, Like Victoria did not miss church, did not
miss squire. I'm assuming not only did she love to sing,
but this is like her one weekly excuse to get
out of the house. I could see that. Uh, and
(18:37):
so they said. And also the male had been piling
up supposedly right at the post office because they didn't
use stamps dot com. Right, they would have if they'd
had the technology. Believe me, that's right. That was free.
So the neighbors say, no, let's go check on them. Um,
apparently they went at that other neighbors, right, really they do.
(19:02):
You should like him that much and just lets it go.
It's a neighborly thing to do. We're Bavarians. So what
we do so that this little search party goes to
the house to go check on things. And the house
is just the The whole farm is just eerily quiet.
(19:22):
Everything's just kind of there's not a sign of life.
There's a dog barking that the grouper dog was a
Pomeranian actually, and this is the time of Pomeranians were
a little bigger and stockier and uh, but barked nonetheless
just as just like any other pomeranian then. And stock here, yeah,
(19:43):
German stock. And the Pomeranian was barking its head off.
It was well known to be pretty just kind of
a jerky little watchdog, but it was good for that.
But what was odd was that it was tied up
in the far in the barn. This is a house
dog that the groupers caps. That was a little weird,
but otherwise it seemed okay. The horses in the other
(20:06):
livestock seemed okay and well fed or whatever. And then
somebody looked a little further into the barn and they
made what would be the first of a couple really
really gruesome discoveries. They found some of the groupers bludgeoned
to death. That's right, Andreas, the papa, daughter of Victoria,
(20:29):
and dear old set Celia the granddaughter in the barn,
stacked one on top of the other, bled to death,
bludgeoned to death only in the head area, largely in
the head area, like the the attacks were. The attacks
were definitely concentrated on their head and face. Yeah uh.
(20:51):
And they were covered with hay um, not completely covered.
There are pictures of this, by the way, did you
look at the crime scene creepy? Oh yeah, and see
them in the barn with the hay very graphic, So
be aware if you're googling that right now. Uh, so
they were they were dead and had been dead for
(21:12):
a little while, which we'll get to. Uh. They go
inside and they find poor little Joseph, just horrific two
year old was found dead, also bludge into death in
his cot in mom's bedroom. And then the maid on
her first day on the job, was killed in her
bed as well. And um, andreas his wife said, Zelia,
(21:38):
she was in the barn as well. Oh did I
miss that? Okay, So four of them in the barn,
two in the house, all killed in the same manner,
and all covered up in some way, whether it was
hay or sheets or clothing. Um, which is a weird
thing to do. Yeah, it's very weird. Although it would, um,
it would become evident why in a little bit once
(22:00):
they started questioning the neighbors. So the day after the
bodies were found, uh, doctor Dr Johann Ar Mueller performed
the autopsies in the barn, and he decided that what
had been used as a murder weapon was a type
of pick axe called the matic um. Although the murder
(22:20):
weapon wasn't found for another year actually after that, um,
the doctor concluded quite rightly that it was a magic
that had been used. And if you've ever seen you know,
like a pick axe, but the other end is like
blunt and wide, that's a matic. And whoever killed the
groupers and the maid did it with that, which is horrific.
(22:45):
Even worse than that, though, they found um in Zelia's
hands clenched in her fists tufts of her own hair,
so there was evidence that she had survived, for they
think several hours after she was attacked and watched her
other family members attacked in and pulled out her own
(23:05):
hair for whatever reason, I let'ld say that was a
good enough reason. Victoria showed signs of strangulation, but they
determined that was not the cause of death, and by
all accounts, everyone else died pretty much immediately upon receiving
that pick axe to the head. Um Most of the
victims were in bed clothes, except for Victoria and to
(23:28):
Celia there were in the regular clothes, which seemed to
indicate that its probably happened in the evening. Some people
were already getting ready for bed, some people had not yet.
And they also think that the the groupers were lured
one by one out to the barn kind of Scooby
Doo fashion. Yeah, because clearly when't all them killed at once,
(23:49):
because there was no signs of struggle, like uh yeah,
maybe one person went out and died and then then
the other person was like it hadn't been back for
a while, and then they died, and then again and again. Horrific,
So there was some other, Um, there was weirdness beyond that,
beyond these the just the horrific nous of the crime
(24:10):
and the fact that the bodies were covered up. Um,
this was April fourth, right, they figured out that the
bodies had been killed or the people have been killed
on March thirty one, that was the last time anybody
had seen them alive. But the neighbors said, well, wait
a minute, that's really weird because like we saw signs
of life coming from the farm all weekend. There was
(24:32):
smoke coming out of the chimney the whole weekend. The
the live stock has been fed. The dogs clearly eaten,
Like if if they hadn't been fed or cared for
in four or five days, they'd be showing signs of
it by now. But you can tell that they they were.
They were tended to like this whole time. So what
(24:52):
is that even the house itself, it showed evidence that
someone had eaten a meal there recently, were more recently
than four or five days ago. Uh, the bed looked
like it had been slept in since that time. Uh.
And like we mentioned earlier that Pomeranian was tied up. Um,
I saw different accounts on whether the dog was somewhat
injured or not. Um, so let's just say the dog
(25:14):
might have been hurt some but ultimately was fine and
like you know, wasn't killed or anything. Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was not injured, I think, right. So what this
all signs point to the fact that someone killed this
family and then hung out there for a few days.
But even even more stirring is the idea that the
person who killed them may have been the one who
(25:38):
left the footprints and stayed in their house waiting to
kill them, perhaps killed them and then stayed in the
house for a few days after taking care of everything. Yeah,
just living the living the life. Very strange. Yeah, So
the police started looking around pretty quickly for suspects and realizing, um,
(25:59):
well first we got to go with motive, I think
is what they said to themselves. Sure, like occasionally it
happens that there's a vagrant that comes through and kills
for money and robs and uh. The thing they found
out was that there was a little bit of fold
and money taken from the bodies, but there was a
lot of valuable jewelry and gold coins and other money
(26:21):
in the house that was not taken. So things weren't
quite adding up on the robbery front. Yeah, and especially
if somebody the person who killed them, if they were
planning on robbing them, they had four days to look
around and amuse themselves by robbing the whole house blind.
They certainly wouldn't leave this this stuff behind. Um. They
(26:41):
also found out in the investigation that Victoria Um had
emptied her bank account and had left a donation to
the church, But there was also a substantial amount that
just wasn't accounted for. Who knows what that was never
turned up lost of time, So robbery was kind of
(27:02):
discarded as a as a um A motive. But another
one would come to light soon. We'll talk about that
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So to me, it's this guy. Yeah, I think so. Uh,
we'll go ahead and talk about this dude. There was
a neighboring man, a neighbor as you might call it,
(28:34):
for a neighboring man. You're a normal human, Hello, neighboring man,
how are you today? If you're all means, if you're
a professional broadcaster, you should say neighboring man? Right. Uh
So his name is laurenz Schlittenbauer and he was a
like I said, lived nearby. He was a suitor for
Victoria and she had always said, Uh, this guy's who
(28:59):
knocked me up, you know Yo's father. And like you
said earlier, he was like, for a little while, I
think he claimed paternity. But then when it's when he
found out what that meant he had to pay for that,
he's like, that's an English way. I didn't understand exactly
what is what is his paternity? So he backed off
of that claim, and later it was emerged emerged that Um,
(29:22):
she was about to sue him for a paternity when
before this murder took place. Right, So some people say, oh, well,
that probably set him off because he was remarried and
had a kid that had died sadly by that point,
so he didn't want this kind of scandal on his household. Sure,
and he didn't want to make the payments, right, especially
(29:43):
if he wasn't an under percent Sure it was his kid.
So if you look at the Schlittenbauer guy, some really
weird stuff starts to emerge. In addition to that motive
of not wanting to pay alimony for a little yosef,
the way he behaved um in the immediate wake of
the discovery of these murders was very bizarre. He was
(30:05):
part of the original search party that searched the house.
Suspicious first thing, Yeah, because a lot of criminals like
to do that. They like to go to the scene
of the crime as part of the search party. Right,
based on TV they did. Everything I learned from the
Flintstones points to this guy being suspicious. Uh. He also
um immediately started disturbing the crime scene, right, Like he
(30:28):
unstacked the stacked bodies. And when he did it, apparently
there were a couple of other guys there, and the
other guys were real shaken up by just being in
the presence of these horribly mangled bodies. Apparently, Schlittenbauer was
totally fine handling them. He's like, I got the head,
you get the legs. Uh. One of the men was
quoted as saying he disturbed everything there was to disturb,
(30:51):
so he had no qualms about going in there and
just having his way with that crime scene. Apparently he
was super familiar with the house itself. Um, which isn't
necessarily a It doesn't necessarily Yeah, if if, especially if
he was you know, dating Victoria, Yeah, well true, I
(31:12):
would call this part of the body of evidence though,
so he apparently went into the house from the barns,
which meant he knew they were connected. He unlocked the
front door from the inside, which is like did he
have a key or did he know where the key was? Uh?
Remember the missing keys? Uh. And then he also apparently
knew the maid's room handle was unusual and he had
(31:35):
to lift it up to enter and not press it down,
And apparently he just went right to it and lifted
it up. Um. Again, maybe he spent some time over
there with Victoria and knew these things. Like a lot
of this can be explained away, um in some ways.
They also said that the dog went nuts when he
was around. Yeah, Like that's him exactly, the wild You take,
(31:57):
take or leave that. That seems like local folklore to me.
The dog and he said it was because he had
blood all over issues from uh, disrupting the crime scene,
and the dog was like barking at that, which, by
the way, the two other searchers who were with him
while he was disturbing the crime scene asked him what
(32:19):
he was doing, and he said, he's looking for his son. YEA.
A couple of things weird about all this right. So,
if he's disturbing the crime scene to cover his tracks.
If he was the killer and the killer stayed behind
for several days, he had all the time in the
world to cover up his tracks. Why would he do
it in the presence of a couple of fellow searchers. Weird?
(32:41):
And then secondly, if he was the killer and he
was not trying to act um unaware, why would he
be looking for his son and the stack of bodies
when he knew full well his son was in his
room in the house. I guess this guy seemed like
he was not very good at misdirection. Uh, he had
(33:03):
no alibi for the night, apparently, his family said, And
this is where it gets I don't want I want
to say obvious. Maybe the obvious, it gets really suspicious
to me. His family said, Oh, no, he's the night
they were murdered. He's spent the night in the barn
because he knew that there was weirdness going on over
there and he was looking out for burglars. So he
spent the night in the barn that night. Okay, so
(33:24):
he spent the night in the grouper's barn, is what
what they're saying? No, no, no, their own barn. So um.
He apparently though had asthma, so that people were like,
why would he spend the night in the barn if
he had asthma? Smarty right, but that was his alibi,
which is pretty weak. Uh. He only lived fifty meters away,
(33:46):
which I think that's like nineteen miles. I'm just kidding,
what is it. It's like three football fields, right, Yeah,
I looked up the conversis it's not too far. Yeah. Um,
So he could have he could have been the one
coming back and forth. Like the fact that that there
were footprints leading one way doesn't to me signified that
(34:09):
someone spent six months hiding there. It could have been he.
He could have come and gone as he pleased and
then not been like away from his house too long
that anyone noticed. Sure, and maybe he walked in the
same footprints. Maybe he did do the Danny. Maybe you know,
he was the one who originated the Danny. He was
(34:29):
Danny before Danny was even born, that's true. Or maybe
he was Danny. Oh man, this this keeps getting and
the more we make up about it. That's true. The
other thing that he said that I thought was, I mean,
this is just I don't even know if I believe this. Apparently,
many years later, uh, when the murder was talked about
(34:52):
in like the bars and the beer gardens, he would
talk about it in the first person. When he speculated
about the killings. I don't buy that necessarily, don't either.
That sounds like something that people would make up in
a pub. He used to say, I killed them. No
one ever cared. Sure, I guess, so that was he
(35:12):
was the main living suspect. There was another suspect who
was brought back from the dead to be paraded around
as a suspect in this case. Yeah, not literally in
some ways, but no, not literally. This guy's name was
Carl Gabriel and he used to be married to Victoria.
But he died in World War One in the trenches. Um.
(35:35):
And the reason that he was brought back as a
possible suspect is that people said, well, his body was
never shipped back home. We don't actually know that he
really did die. Maybe maybe follow me on, this is
what they said. Maybe he came back to reclaim his
wife found out that she had had an incestuous relationship.
(35:57):
He snaps, he kills everybody. Yeah, I don't buy this
at all. Well, no, they started the police, I think
in the Munich police department really apparently went to town
trying to get to the bottom of his murder over
the years. Yeah. And one of the other things that
pointed to him, supposedly was that in World War two,
another whole war later, uh, supposedly some people came forward
(36:21):
and said, uh, you know what, we met this Russian
German speaking Russian soldier that used to claim to be
the Hinokifet killer, and we think that that's Carl, right,
I guess, Okay, Yeah. The thing is the Munich police
apparently spoke to some of the men who were there
when he died and they described me and died. People
(36:43):
witnessed his his death. Even though his body didn't make
it back, it wasn't recovered, people saw him die, so
it was verified that he was died to I guess
at least the satisfaction of the police. And that was
a pretty weak link anyway, because supposedly the reason that
he fled for the war was to h it was
to fake his death, not why he fled for the war,
(37:05):
but that he faked his death to get out of
the marriage. So why would he get fake his death,
get out of the marriage, come back years later and
killed them all. Great, great question, Chuck. Yeah. I think
they answer that is he wouldn't or maybe it's the
perfect crime. Yeah, it's so nonsensical. He's listening right now.
Last it's the perfect crime. Uh? What else people talking about? Paranormal?
(37:28):
You know that it was ghosts and these strange noises
in this mysterious newspaper and all these footprints. Is because
there was some supernatural force out to get the family. Well,
that would account for the ghost say that you could
say that accounts for everything. That's why it's bunk. Yeah.
Um No, that one's not not a not a big one.
(37:51):
Although the Munich police very early on decapitated, had the
family decapitated, and their schools were sent for friends analysis,
and we're handled by clairvoyant who apparently was not able
to come to any conclusions about their faith or the killer. Yeah,
and those bodies were buried headless, because those heads eventually
(38:12):
went missing. Apparently they kept them in the Nuremberg I
guess in there one of their city government buildings, and
it was leveled in World War two. I think that's
where the skulls were lost. They think that was mixed
them with the other skulls. Is either that or the
ghost they did it. So for the cops part, they
(38:34):
interviewed over a hundred suspects over the years, including the
clear killer. To me um the neighboring man, Lawrence Schlittenbauer.
I just think it all points to him. He apparently
years later two was like God did the right thing
with his family, like they were awful people. And he
(38:56):
didn't say except for my possible son, the two year old.
He said, all of them they deserved it. So it
just kind of seems obvious to me that it was him,
because there was someone stayed there, someone knew the house,
someone took great care covering the bodies. It just doesn't
seem like a random burglary. No, that is a very
bizarre thing to do to stick around afterward unless you
(39:17):
feel like you're within your own safe zone. And if
you lived three and fifty meters away, yeah, maybe you
would feel safe there, Yeah, that you could retreat very quickly, yeah,
or know that, like I know, no one comes by here,
whereas if it was a burglary, they probably wouldn't feel
so comfy hanging out for days on end. So, yeah,
(39:38):
you're right, it probably was him, but no one will
ever be able to prove it one way or another. No,
they didn't have any hard evidence. No, and and the
evidence they did take, a lot of it was lost. Um.
This is nineteen twenty two, so a lot of they
a lot of forensic techniques hadn't been invented yet. It
(39:58):
was still being developed swear in the world. So in
two thousand seven, UM a police academy in Munich got
their hands on the case. Some students did the Gutenberg
Police Academy, the first in feld Brooke. I'm just throwing
Brooke after you know, why not let's throw in another syllable.
(40:20):
Um that students from that police academy investigated this crime
and in Germany like it's pretty this is an enormously
famous crime. Huge there, it's there, Jack the Ripper. For sure.
It will never be solved, it's not possible being solved.
And this is the conclusion from those students at the
first in feld Brook police Academy. They said, we think
(40:42):
we know who it is, we're not. Since this is
unsolvable and it will never be able to be proven,
we're not going to name the person because they still
have relatives alive, but you can't guess it's the one
living suspect that anyone's ever really raised. It was helping him. Yeah,
they didn't say that. That was my conclusion of their conclusions.
(41:04):
And then they said, thank you Police Academy for your findings.
And where's the guy that makes all the funny noises
in his mouth? You know? Steve Guttenberg follows us on Twitter?
No way, yeah? Really yeah at Steve gut buck really yeah,
and he um is in like a Sharknado esque movie.
(41:28):
I'm not sure what what the name of it is,
but he's in it with the guy who does the voices.
Oh really, uh poison. His name Michael Something makes Michael something.
I will say that, And I think I mentioned this
on the show. Maybe that's why he follows us. Steve
Guttenberg was in one of the very best episodes of
one of my favorite TV shows, Party Down and Uh
(41:50):
did you ever see that? Joe Boy? It was good. Yeah,
it was really really funny. Had the great Adam Scott
and Lizzie Kaplan and one of my hero os, Ken
Marino from the State and Martin star Mega. Mallally was great. Well,
they were caterers, like cater waiters all actors and writers
(42:12):
and stuff in Hollywood, and each episode was its own
thing on catering event. And they had one where they
showed up to Steve Guttenberg's house for his birthday party
and he pulled up and he's like, oh, Man, like
I forgot to cancel. I really had the party a
couple of days ago with my friends. He's like, but
since you're all here, why don't we just have a party.
And so the waiters end up having a party with
(42:32):
Guttenberg and he like does some scene acting with them
and give them great wine, and he has great art
and he's just really really funny in it. Yeah, I
can imagine a dude. He seems so awesome. After watching
this episode, I was like, man, Goods is the best.
And I think they called them goots in the show
even this. Yeah, anyway, good shout shout out to party down,
(42:54):
great great show and Steve Gutenberg. Yeah, uh, do you
have a listener? Meal? Was this too spooky? For one?
He did great work on that bibleh Yeah, I gotta
listener to mail. Okay, Well, if you want to know
more about hinter kaifek um. You can go listen to
stuff you missed in history class. I think they did
an episode that covered it as well. Uh you can
(43:16):
search Mysterious universe dot org and all sorts of other
places for it. And since I said, uh, hinter kaifek,
it's time for listening mail. Before we do listener mail,
we want to give a very special thank you to
uh Margaret and Mike in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah, thanks guy. Yeah,
they stepped forward and helped Jerry out in a big
(43:36):
way as the stuff you should know Army is uh
often does. And uh, it's all we're gonna say other
than big, big thanks to you guys for helping out
for real? How about that? Yeah? All right, I'm gonna
call this listener mail squirrel shooting. Hey, guys, been listening
for about a year. I love the show. I was
listening to the Polar Bears episode and I stopped dead
(43:56):
in my tracks when Chuck told the story about shooting
a squirrel. When I was about thirteen, I too, thought
I was a tough guy and wanted to hunt animals.
My grandparents lived on some land and agreed to let
my cousin I shoot a squirrel as long as we
agreed to skin it and eat it. They're like building
that redo it. Yeah, you gotta love those depression eary grandparents, like, sure,
(44:17):
skin and need it. It's all yours. I have envisioned
him as hippies, like passing a joint, like joking about
how stupid their grandkids were. Wow, depression eary, Sure, I
see that one too, all right, So we were very excited.
We dressed up in camo, walked to property and because uh,
you know, I got a dress in camout squirrels. H
eventually found a squirrel in a tree. I should know
(44:38):
that we were using a pellet gun, not like a
real bullet gun. I took the first shot and hit
the squirrel fell from the tree, and much to my chagrin,
he did not die. He made a noise I hope
to never hear again. It was that awful. I had
to hand the gun to my cousin. I just could
not do it and take the other shot. We ended
up skinning it and needing it, though he said it
(44:59):
tastes like sick and so why bother? Uh, like we
promised that we would do. Uh. That was the last
time I considered killing an animal for sport. I've always
loved animals, so I'm not sure where this urge came
from to begin with. Actually run a small online candle
company now that sells dog fame candles. Uh. They donate
ten percent of all profits to animal shelters and rescues.
(45:20):
And so, Stephen, I am going to plug your company
over my wife's candle company even which is Mama Back
and Body. Uh. And you can go to www. Dot
Knox Favorite k n o x s Knox's favorite dot
com and Knox was their dog in the company after
(45:43):
that's sweet. These are soy candles. I looked it up there.
Good from dog. Uh No, Nathan Dog. Thanks again for
everything you do your daily listen for me. I hope
to can hope you continue for years to come. That
is Stephen, Stephen, way to go, Stephen, Thank you for that.
We appreciate you learning us share your horrible story with everybody. Uh.
(46:06):
If you have a horrible story you want to share.
Oh man, I mean I regret saying that. You can
tweet to us that that's y SK podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know.
You can send us an email. The Stuff podcast that
how Stuff Works dot Com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff You Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(46:31):
Does it How stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff you should know Friendhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hay,
and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark, Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Ye should know. Yeah. I would
(00:23):
say this is a bonus Halloween episode in a way
you can all look forward to our regular um add
free Halloween show on Halloween, the real bonus episode. Yeah,
exactly where we do our traditional reading. It's all gussied
up by Jerry. But you were like, hey, since this
is Hallo weekend, almost right, why don't we just tell
(00:48):
the story of an X murdered family. Yeah? I hope
it didn't spoil it. I don't think so. I think
we probably would have gotten to that point eventually, right, Yeah,
So we decided to just do a little creepy episode
this one. If you have your children, you may want
to vet this one because it's definitely about an X
murdered family. Don't be a sick Oh, it's up to
(01:08):
you whether or not you want to expose them to
this kind of treachery. This is bad stuff. Are you
ready for it? If you get your German pronunciation down.
By the way, should we talk about Ki Chang hintet? Yeah, chung.
(01:31):
More specifically, the irony of all this, why should I
ever get it right at all? The irony of all
this is I was almost right when I first said
it and said I don't think Chinese pronounces the X.
But um, this one is just a little more. Stings
a little more because we made such a big deal
about it being correct and the pronunciation wasn't correct, but
(01:53):
we were misled on the internet. Yeah, and now that happens,
it happens. Still got averything else, right, A dixia chang
is really chung sort of okay, And hinter kfec hinter
kaifek yeah right, Yeah, I looked over these. My German
(02:14):
is rusty, but I think I got them all. Yeah,
most of them. I bet you're gonna stumble on one.
But under that I don't even know which when you're talking,
you know, this is what's gonna make it exciting. Man.
Maybe we should have a sound effect when it happens,
and I'll just like a boring Sure, okay, that'll disrupt
the spookiness. Well, let's get spooky, chuck, shall we. Because
(02:38):
there's a little town Um in Bavaria. That's correct, it's
Um between the towns of Ingle and Schrobenhausen, is that
either one of the ones he thought was gonna stumble on? No,
I mean technically used to say like stot instead of stott.
Oh well, I didn't realize we're getting technical. But you
(02:59):
know you're you're not in Germany. That's how an American
might say it, right, and by god, I'm an American. Um,
although it's much closer to vad Hoffen, is that the
one I'm just gonna ask every time I said something
in German? Don't hear the sound effect. But there's a
little little tiny village, a town called Kafek and um no, well,
(03:24):
the town, the village is called Kaifek. There was a
ranch basically you'd call it in America a dude ranch
maybe even, but not really. It's just a farm um
called hinter Kaifek. It was located a little bit outside
of this village, in the hinter land, you might call it.
So this the name of this farm was hinter Kfek Kaifek.
(03:46):
And on this farm lived a man, a woman, another woman,
some little kids. This is going terribly, isn't it. No?
I think it's great. So the family who made up
this uh, the tendency of this farm. They were the groupers.
Andreas Grouper was the father his wife. Um is this one? Okay?
(04:13):
All right, let me do this then you're ready. H
m hmmmmmm Uh. The wife's name was Cazelia Jelia Frank. No,
if I'm not mistaken, If you begin a word with
C in German and it's pronounced like a like a
T s, yes for me, I think that would be
(04:36):
cet Celia. What that's not fair, Come on Germany. Um,
tet Celia. Okay, Well let me ask you this. So
tet Celia? Yeah? Am I saying it right now? I
think cet Celia. Well that's Italian. It does sound so
te Celia is his wife. That's to be determined. Uh.
(05:00):
Their daughter Victoria. So if there's a K instead of
a C, is it something else entirely? Or is it
Victoria Victoria? Okay? And there's two grandchildren. The oldest was
a granddaughter. Now she has an umlaut over her name,
even though it's spelled otherwise, the exact same as her grandmother,
Todd Celia. How would you say that? It would be?
(05:20):
Uh Celia to Celia? Yeah, Celia Celia and Todd Celia,
Todd Celia, and cert Celia, so it would be like
toad Celia and tad Celia Jr. I don't know. I mean,
I've never seen anyone name there. It just seemed unusual
(05:42):
to me. I didn't know if the first name was missing,
the um out, or if they really named her after
her grandmother but added the um out. Maybe there's a
story there. Well, you know, Chuck as we'll find a
lot of the the details and facts of this case
have been lost to time. That's right. Lastly, there was
a little boy, two year old named Josef that was
(06:02):
Victoria's son, and Victoria Um was widowed. She was thirty five.
I believe at the time that we come into hinter
Kaifek and Um, they all lived together relatively isolated actually
because they the groupers. Although they were wealthy and from
what I saw, held in somewhat high esteem or at
(06:24):
least treated Um with respect to their station, they were
very very much disliked as a family. Yeah, and there's
quite a few reasons for this. One is that, uh,
the patter Familius Andreas was Um. He was not friendly,
like to keep to himself, and apparently he was very
(06:44):
abusive to his wife and children children. He only had
one living child still at this point, was Victoria, And
we're in the way back machine, by the way, and
it's nineteen two. Oh, we didn't say that. I don't
think so. So he was abusive. I don't know the
(07:06):
story of the passing of his other children, lost the time,
lost the time. My immediate reaction was like, well, if
he was abusive and they're no longer round, maybe he
had something to do with it. Maybe, but totally Also
the time when like people routinely died from the flu. Sure,
you know, that's a good point. Uh, so he was
(07:27):
a loner, he was abusive. Uh. There was the matter
of Yosef, the two year old daughter of Victoria. Uh, yeah,
she's daughter. I don't know where else going with that,
um And he was rumored to have been born from
an incestuous relationship with her father Andreas Right, that was
the rumor in town, which smacks it to me of
(07:51):
small town nineteen twenties stuff. I'm not sure if I
bought that. No, but that was definitely the rumor in town. Yeah,
but there was a significant number of people in town
who either believed that or we're very much aware that
other people believed that, Yeah, because he apparently was very
controlling of Victoria, kind of to the level of being
(08:11):
characterized as obsessed with her. Yeah, so it could very
well be true. Could loss of time could also have
not been true. And there's other reports that Joseph was
the son of another man in town who will meet
later on. Um, who at one point claimed paternity but
later on said no way. Especially I think when the
(08:33):
concept of alimony payments was brought up, he's like, no,
it was a product of incests instead. So Victoria was
the only one supposedly that kind of spent a lot
of time in town and that people seem to care
for much because she sang in the choir apparently was
a very good singer, uh, in the church choir. And um,
so this is the scene here in semi rule Bavaria. Yeah,
(08:58):
and we we want to give a shout out. We've
given um. We We've found some other articles about the
case itself, but the main one that we started with
was from Mysterious Universe dot org, not a normal place
where we would get our stuff, but it's a good article. Yeah,
and we everything else I read about it, it's sort
(09:19):
of all checked out as being the same. So way
to go, Mysterious Universe dot Org. Good job, thanks for it.
So things start to get a little weird on the
farm when the maid at the farm, whose name may
or may not be Maria, we don't know. Uh, she said,
I'm out of here. I quit because this house is
(09:40):
uh haunted. Yeah, I'm hearing weird noises in the attic,
hearing weird sounds all around the place. I'm hearing footsteps. Uh,
I'm out of here. Yeah. And apparently she left pretty
quickly and suddenly, and the family so much so was like, yeah,
I think she was mentally disturbed. Sure, that's an easy
(10:01):
way to quiet the townspeople if you don't want to. Yeah,
you don't what people thinking, like a, I'm abusive and
be also living a haunted house, right, Yeah, you don't
want that. That's where you endow the line incest abuse.
Sure that's allowable, but you don't want people to think
you've got ghosts, you know. Right. So the maid leaves
and that kind of sets the tone like that kicks
(10:22):
off this season of dread. Oh that settles over. Hinterkiek
would be a good name for the movie version of
this season of Dread. Yeah, I can't believe there's not
a number of like blockbuster movies about this. Yeah, I
looked it up. Apparently there were a couple that weren't
very big, um, but nothing, nothing that ever started rape fines. Well,
(10:46):
if it doesn't have him, who care? He would clearly
be one of the dudes in this, you know, maybe
even Andreas Gruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans.
I'm gonna go ahead and nit, mate. You see the
name Drewber, and that's what jumps to mind. So the
maid leaves, and like I said, this, weird things start happening. Um.
(11:09):
A few months later, Andreas is um wandering around his
property around, wandering around right, just looking aimlessly for something
to do. I think there was a snowstorm and he
was looking around to see, you know, if there had
(11:30):
been any damage, anything that need repairing, And he noticed
that there was a set of tracks in the snow,
human tracks, footprints, I guess it's a better way to
call him, leading to the house. And they went right
up to the house. But he looked around and he
could not find any tracks leading away from the house.
Super creepy, Just a single set though, Right, Yeah, it
(11:52):
wasn't like the footsteps like God carried him from there point. Well,
that would be a single step set. Uh. Well, you
know the adage there were two sets of footprints and
then when there were only one. It wasn't that God
left you. It was when he was carrying you. Right,
You're sorry. That's a great story. Whether even if you're
(12:13):
not religious, you got to see that and be like, man,
that makes me feel good because anytime you get to
that point, Jesus goes zing. Doubt me, will you? Uh,
it's the footprints leading to the house, not leading away. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Right,
He was a little creeped out, so he said, let
(12:35):
me wander around more and see if I can find Well,
at this point he wasn't wandering. He had purpose, So
let me not wander aimlessly, but let me go from
room to room and barn to barn room, barn room
to barn room, and find out this person that is
clearly on my property somewhere. Yeah, he did like a
hard target search, looking for somebody, either somebody hiding out
(12:58):
on his property or evidence that whoever left that track,
those tracks leading to his house had left looking for
other tracks away from that, and he didn't find anything.
He found nothing, no evidence of anybody, certainly didn't find anybody,
didn't There was just nothing. Um. One thing though that
he did find that was kind of off putting to
(13:19):
him enough so that he mentioned it to neighbors was
that on his tool shed, which is separate from the barn,
the tool shed had a lock on it, and the
lock had scratches or evidence that somebody had been trying
to either break it or pick it, and they were
trying to get into the tool shed, and he did
not like that. So this is this is again, this
(13:42):
is following on the heels of their they're made leaving
citing ghosts is the reason she left. Somebody has come
to their farm and not left. They tried to get
into the tool shed. The things are getting a little creepy.
So in that case, it was a ghost sighting. See
I t I right, another accidental pun? Yeah was that accidental? Sure? Okay,
(14:07):
you didn't mean that, did you? Did I say that? Yeah?
He said that she saw a ghost sighting. Oh wow, yeah,
I guess that happens. Yeah. Um, I wondered, by the way,
really quickly, if these footprints. If whoever did that did
the old shining trick, a little Danny was so smart
he doubled back in his footprints and it worked. Oh,
(14:30):
it worked big time. Anyonce you've seen the end of
the Shining, can tell you. It sounds a lot like
I've been drinking today. I haven't at all of you.
I've seen what you're drinking. You're drinking water. Uh. And
that's not the only weird thing that happened on Um,
so that was in March. I'm sorry. Two more weird
things happened. So a set of keys go missing in March,
(14:55):
and um, I don't know that one to me. People
lose keys, yeah, but if you're suddenly like there's is
there somebody like bringing around a property trying to get
into the tool shed? Now there's keys missing? Yeah, yeah,
I could see that, the scratchy lock. And then the
other final weird thing in that month, they found a
(15:16):
strange newspaper on the porch and I looked up because
I didn't know what strange newspaper meant. So I tried
to find out what the deal was, and everywhere I
went just said it was it was a newspaper that
I couldn't get if it was like, was it from
Russia or was it super greety um? And all I
(15:38):
found was that it was. That I could gather was
that it was a newspaper that they did not expect
to be there for some reason or another. Either they
didn't subscribe to, it wasn't in their town, or just
some just random newspaper being on their porch with what matters. Yeah,
I couldn't find anything beyond that as well. Yeah, there
was one other last thing. And all of this is
now starting to take place over just the of a
(16:00):
couple of dates. Things are getting like weirder at a
much faster pace. Uh. Andreas himself, who I've not taken
to be a very superstitious person um started to notice
sounds coming from the attic, the same kind of like
disembodied footfalls that the maid had sighted um as a
ghost sighting. So he's sitting there like, okay, keys are missing,
(16:26):
somebody's trying to get into tools shed. Those tracks are
really messing with me. And now I'm hearing things. I'm
hearing people in my own house and there's a Chicago
Tribune from Things have gotten weird. Al Right, Should we
take a break. Yeah, alright, things are weird. This is
(17:07):
in March, the last day of March nine. All right, Uh,
a new maid comes on the scene named Maria for sure. Yeah,
this one's confirmed. Okay. She on her first day on
the job. It proved to not be a very good
(17:28):
first day at work for one really good reason. Ah
that we'll get to in a minute. Okay, we'll tease
it out a little bit more. Okay, So she comes
to work, she's working. Everything's totally normal. Uh, as far
as anyone around the hinter Kaifek Farm is concerned, like
the neighbors and all, that is just a totally normal day.
(17:51):
But in a few days they would realize that this day,
March thirty one, was the last day anyone could say
for sir and that they had seen any of the
groupers alive. Correct. So flash forward a few days April four. Uh,
people were a little weird. They were like, you know what, uh,
(18:13):
st Celia, it's not in school, which is unusual. Um,
no one's been to church. We missed that sweet sweet
voice of Victoria up there. Yeah that was highly unusual
as well, Like Victoria did not miss church, did not
miss squire. I'm assuming not only did she love to sing,
but this is like her one weekly excuse to get
out of the house. I could see that. Uh, and
(18:37):
so they said. And also the male had been piling
up supposedly right at the post office because they didn't
use stamps dot com. Right, they would have if they'd
had the technology. Believe me, that's right. That was free.
So the neighbors say, no, let's go check on them. Um,
apparently they went at that other neighbors, right, really they do.
(19:02):
You should like him that much and just lets it go.
It's a neighborly thing to do. We're Bavarians. So what
we do so that this little search party goes to
the house to go check on things. And the house
is just the The whole farm is just eerily quiet.
(19:22):
Everything's just kind of there's not a sign of life.
There's a dog barking that the grouper dog was a
Pomeranian actually, and this is the time of Pomeranians were
a little bigger and stockier and uh, but barked nonetheless
just as just like any other pomeranian then. And stock here, yeah,
(19:43):
German stock. And the Pomeranian was barking its head off.
It was well known to be pretty just kind of
a jerky little watchdog, but it was good for that.
But what was odd was that it was tied up
in the far in the barn. This is a house
dog that the groupers caps. That was a little weird,
but otherwise it seemed okay. The horses in the other
(20:06):
livestock seemed okay and well fed or whatever. And then
somebody looked a little further into the barn and they
made what would be the first of a couple really
really gruesome discoveries. They found some of the groupers bludgeoned
to death. That's right, Andreas, the papa, daughter of Victoria,
(20:29):
and dear old set Celia the granddaughter in the barn,
stacked one on top of the other, bled to death,
bludgeoned to death only in the head area, largely in
the head area, like the the attacks were. The attacks
were definitely concentrated on their head and face. Yeah uh.
(20:51):
And they were covered with hay um, not completely covered.
There are pictures of this, by the way, did you
look at the crime scene creepy? Oh yeah, and see
them in the barn with the hay very graphic, So
be aware if you're googling that right now. Uh, so
they were they were dead and had been dead for
(21:12):
a little while, which we'll get to. Uh. They go
inside and they find poor little Joseph, just horrific two
year old was found dead, also bludge into death in
his cot in mom's bedroom. And then the maid on
her first day on the job, was killed in her
bed as well. And um, andreas his wife said, Zelia,
(21:38):
she was in the barn as well. Oh did I
miss that? Okay, So four of them in the barn,
two in the house, all killed in the same manner,
and all covered up in some way, whether it was
hay or sheets or clothing. Um, which is a weird
thing to do. Yeah, it's very weird. Although it would, um,
it would become evident why in a little bit once
(22:00):
they started questioning the neighbors. So the day after the
bodies were found, uh, doctor Dr Johann Ar Mueller performed
the autopsies in the barn, and he decided that what
had been used as a murder weapon was a type
of pick axe called the matic um. Although the murder
(22:20):
weapon wasn't found for another year actually after that, um,
the doctor concluded quite rightly that it was a magic
that had been used. And if you've ever seen you know,
like a pick axe, but the other end is like
blunt and wide, that's a matic. And whoever killed the
groupers and the maid did it with that, which is horrific.
(22:45):
Even worse than that, though, they found um in Zelia's
hands clenched in her fists tufts of her own hair,
so there was evidence that she had survived, for they
think several hours after she was attacked and watched her
other family members attacked in and pulled out her own
(23:05):
hair for whatever reason, I let'ld say that was a
good enough reason. Victoria showed signs of strangulation, but they
determined that was not the cause of death, and by
all accounts, everyone else died pretty much immediately upon receiving
that pick axe to the head. Um Most of the
victims were in bed clothes, except for Victoria and to
(23:28):
Celia there were in the regular clothes, which seemed to
indicate that its probably happened in the evening. Some people
were already getting ready for bed, some people had not yet.
And they also think that the the groupers were lured
one by one out to the barn kind of Scooby
Doo fashion. Yeah, because clearly when't all them killed at once,
(23:49):
because there was no signs of struggle, like uh yeah,
maybe one person went out and died and then then
the other person was like it hadn't been back for
a while, and then they died, and then again and again. Horrific,
So there was some other, Um, there was weirdness beyond that,
beyond these the just the horrific nous of the crime
(24:10):
and the fact that the bodies were covered up. Um,
this was April fourth, right, they figured out that the
bodies had been killed or the people have been killed
on March thirty one, that was the last time anybody
had seen them alive. But the neighbors said, well, wait
a minute, that's really weird because like we saw signs
of life coming from the farm all weekend. There was
(24:32):
smoke coming out of the chimney the whole weekend. The
the live stock has been fed. The dogs clearly eaten,
Like if if they hadn't been fed or cared for
in four or five days, they'd be showing signs of
it by now. But you can tell that they they were.
They were tended to like this whole time. So what
(24:52):
is that even the house itself, it showed evidence that
someone had eaten a meal there recently, were more recently
than four or five days ago. Uh, the bed looked
like it had been slept in since that time. Uh.
And like we mentioned earlier that Pomeranian was tied up. Um,
I saw different accounts on whether the dog was somewhat
injured or not. Um, so let's just say the dog
(25:14):
might have been hurt some but ultimately was fine and
like you know, wasn't killed or anything. Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was not injured, I think, right. So what this
all signs point to the fact that someone killed this
family and then hung out there for a few days.
But even even more stirring is the idea that the
person who killed them may have been the one who
(25:38):
left the footprints and stayed in their house waiting to
kill them, perhaps killed them and then stayed in the
house for a few days after taking care of everything. Yeah,
just living the living the life. Very strange. Yeah, So
the police started looking around pretty quickly for suspects and realizing, um,
(25:59):
well first we got to go with motive, I think
is what they said to themselves. Sure, like occasionally it
happens that there's a vagrant that comes through and kills
for money and robs and uh. The thing they found
out was that there was a little bit of fold
and money taken from the bodies, but there was a
lot of valuable jewelry and gold coins and other money
(26:21):
in the house that was not taken. So things weren't
quite adding up on the robbery front. Yeah, and especially
if somebody the person who killed them, if they were
planning on robbing them, they had four days to look
around and amuse themselves by robbing the whole house blind.
They certainly wouldn't leave this this stuff behind. Um. They
(26:41):
also found out in the investigation that Victoria Um had
emptied her bank account and had left a donation to
the church, But there was also a substantial amount that
just wasn't accounted for. Who knows what that was never
turned up lost of time, So robbery was kind of
(27:02):
discarded as a as a um A motive. But another
one would come to light soon. We'll talk about that
after break. You know, starting your own business can be
(27:25):
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(28:10):
Google and Squarespace make it professional, make it beautiful, all right?
So to me, it's this guy. Yeah, I think so. Uh,
we'll go ahead and talk about this dude. There was
a neighboring man, a neighbor as you might call it,
(28:34):
for a neighboring man. You're a normal human, Hello, neighboring man,
how are you today? If you're all means, if you're
a professional broadcaster, you should say neighboring man? Right. Uh
So his name is laurenz Schlittenbauer and he was a
like I said, lived nearby. He was a suitor for
Victoria and she had always said, Uh, this guy's who
(28:59):
knocked me up, you know Yo's father. And like you
said earlier, he was like, for a little while, I
think he claimed paternity. But then when it's when he
found out what that meant he had to pay for that,
he's like, that's an English way. I didn't understand exactly
what is what is his paternity? So he backed off
of that claim, and later it was emerged emerged that Um,
(29:22):
she was about to sue him for a paternity when
before this murder took place. Right, So some people say, oh, well,
that probably set him off because he was remarried and
had a kid that had died sadly by that point,
so he didn't want this kind of scandal on his household. Sure,
and he didn't want to make the payments, right, especially
(29:43):
if he wasn't an under percent Sure it was his kid.
So if you look at the Schlittenbauer guy, some really
weird stuff starts to emerge. In addition to that motive
of not wanting to pay alimony for a little yosef,
the way he behaved um in the immediate wake of
the discovery of these murders was very bizarre. He was
(30:05):
part of the original search party that searched the house.
Suspicious first thing, Yeah, because a lot of criminals like
to do that. They like to go to the scene
of the crime as part of the search party. Right,
based on TV they did. Everything I learned from the
Flintstones points to this guy being suspicious. Uh. He also
um immediately started disturbing the crime scene, right, Like he
(30:28):
unstacked the stacked bodies. And when he did it, apparently
there were a couple of other guys there, and the
other guys were real shaken up by just being in
the presence of these horribly mangled bodies. Apparently, Schlittenbauer was
totally fine handling them. He's like, I got the head,
you get the legs. Uh. One of the men was
quoted as saying he disturbed everything there was to disturb,
(30:51):
so he had no qualms about going in there and
just having his way with that crime scene. Apparently he
was super familiar with the house itself. Um, which isn't
necessarily a It doesn't necessarily Yeah, if if, especially if
he was you know, dating Victoria, Yeah, well true, I
(31:12):
would call this part of the body of evidence though,
so he apparently went into the house from the barns,
which meant he knew they were connected. He unlocked the
front door from the inside, which is like did he
have a key or did he know where the key was? Uh?
Remember the missing keys? Uh. And then he also apparently
knew the maid's room handle was unusual and he had
(31:35):
to lift it up to enter and not press it down,
And apparently he just went right to it and lifted
it up. Um. Again, maybe he spent some time over
there with Victoria and knew these things. Like a lot
of this can be explained away, um in some ways.
They also said that the dog went nuts when he
was around. Yeah, Like that's him exactly, the wild You take,
(31:57):
take or leave that. That seems like local folklore to me.
The dog and he said it was because he had
blood all over issues from uh, disrupting the crime scene,
and the dog was like barking at that, which, by
the way, the two other searchers who were with him
while he was disturbing the crime scene asked him what
(32:19):
he was doing, and he said, he's looking for his son. YEA.
A couple of things weird about all this right. So,
if he's disturbing the crime scene to cover his tracks.
If he was the killer and the killer stayed behind
for several days, he had all the time in the
world to cover up his tracks. Why would he do
it in the presence of a couple of fellow searchers. Weird?
(32:41):
And then secondly, if he was the killer and he
was not trying to act um unaware, why would he
be looking for his son and the stack of bodies
when he knew full well his son was in his
room in the house. I guess this guy seemed like
he was not very good at misdirection. Uh, he had
(33:03):
no alibi for the night, apparently, his family said, And
this is where it gets I don't want I want
to say obvious. Maybe the obvious, it gets really suspicious
to me. His family said, Oh, no, he's the night
they were murdered. He's spent the night in the barn
because he knew that there was weirdness going on over
there and he was looking out for burglars. So he
spent the night in the barn that night. Okay, so
(33:24):
he spent the night in the grouper's barn, is what
what they're saying? No, no, no, their own barn. So um.
He apparently though had asthma, so that people were like,
why would he spend the night in the barn if
he had asthma? Smarty right, but that was his alibi,
which is pretty weak. Uh. He only lived fifty meters away,
(33:46):
which I think that's like nineteen miles. I'm just kidding,
what is it. It's like three football fields, right, Yeah,
I looked up the conversis it's not too far. Yeah. Um,
So he could have he could have been the one
coming back and forth. Like the fact that that there
were footprints leading one way doesn't to me signified that
(34:09):
someone spent six months hiding there. It could have been he.
He could have come and gone as he pleased and
then not been like away from his house too long
that anyone noticed. Sure, and maybe he walked in the
same footprints. Maybe he did do the Danny. Maybe you know,
he was the one who originated the Danny. He was
(34:29):
Danny before Danny was even born, that's true. Or maybe
he was Danny. Oh man, this this keeps getting and
the more we make up about it. That's true. The
other thing that he said that I thought was, I mean,
this is just I don't even know if I believe this. Apparently,
many years later, uh, when the murder was talked about
(34:52):
in like the bars and the beer gardens, he would
talk about it in the first person. When he speculated
about the killings. I don't buy that necessarily, don't either.
That sounds like something that people would make up in
a pub. He used to say, I killed them. No
one ever cared. Sure, I guess, so that was he
(35:12):
was the main living suspect. There was another suspect who
was brought back from the dead to be paraded around
as a suspect in this case. Yeah, not literally in
some ways, but no, not literally. This guy's name was
Carl Gabriel and he used to be married to Victoria.
But he died in World War One in the trenches. Um.
(35:35):
And the reason that he was brought back as a
possible suspect is that people said, well, his body was
never shipped back home. We don't actually know that he
really did die. Maybe maybe follow me on, this is
what they said. Maybe he came back to reclaim his
wife found out that she had had an incestuous relationship.
(35:57):
He snaps, he kills everybody. Yeah, I don't buy this
at all. Well, no, they started the police, I think
in the Munich police department really apparently went to town
trying to get to the bottom of his murder over
the years. Yeah. And one of the other things that
pointed to him, supposedly was that in World War two,
another whole war later, uh, supposedly some people came forward
(36:21):
and said, uh, you know what, we met this Russian
German speaking Russian soldier that used to claim to be
the Hinokifet killer, and we think that that's Carl, right,
I guess, Okay, Yeah. The thing is the Munich police
apparently spoke to some of the men who were there
when he died and they described me and died. People
(36:43):
witnessed his his death. Even though his body didn't make
it back, it wasn't recovered, people saw him die, so
it was verified that he was died to I guess
at least the satisfaction of the police. And that was
a pretty weak link anyway, because supposedly the reason that
he fled for the war was to h it was
to fake his death, not why he fled for the war,
(37:05):
but that he faked his death to get out of
the marriage. So why would he get fake his death,
get out of the marriage, come back years later and
killed them all. Great, great question, Chuck. Yeah. I think
they answer that is he wouldn't or maybe it's the
perfect crime. Yeah, it's so nonsensical. He's listening right now.
Last it's the perfect crime. Uh? What else people talking about? Paranormal?
(37:28):
You know that it was ghosts and these strange noises
in this mysterious newspaper and all these footprints. Is because
there was some supernatural force out to get the family. Well,
that would account for the ghost say that you could
say that accounts for everything. That's why it's bunk. Yeah.
Um No, that one's not not a not a big one.
(37:51):
Although the Munich police very early on decapitated, had the
family decapitated, and their schools were sent for friends analysis,
and we're handled by clairvoyant who apparently was not able
to come to any conclusions about their faith or the killer. Yeah,
and those bodies were buried headless, because those heads eventually
(38:12):
went missing. Apparently they kept them in the Nuremberg I
guess in there one of their city government buildings, and
it was leveled in World War two. I think that's
where the skulls were lost. They think that was mixed
them with the other skulls. Is either that or the
ghost they did it. So for the cops part, they
(38:34):
interviewed over a hundred suspects over the years, including the
clear killer. To me um the neighboring man, Lawrence Schlittenbauer.
I just think it all points to him. He apparently
years later two was like God did the right thing
with his family, like they were awful people. And he
(38:56):
didn't say except for my possible son, the two year old.
He said, all of them they deserved it. So it
just kind of seems obvious to me that it was him,
because there was someone stayed there, someone knew the house,
someone took great care covering the bodies. It just doesn't
seem like a random burglary. No, that is a very
bizarre thing to do to stick around afterward unless you
(39:17):
feel like you're within your own safe zone. And if
you lived three and fifty meters away, yeah, maybe you
would feel safe there, Yeah, that you could retreat very quickly, yeah,
or know that, like I know, no one comes by here,
whereas if it was a burglary, they probably wouldn't feel
so comfy hanging out for days on end. So, yeah,
(39:38):
you're right, it probably was him, but no one will
ever be able to prove it one way or another. No,
they didn't have any hard evidence. No, and and the
evidence they did take, a lot of it was lost. Um.
This is nineteen twenty two, so a lot of they
a lot of forensic techniques hadn't been invented yet. It
(39:58):
was still being developed swear in the world. So in
two thousand seven, UM a police academy in Munich got
their hands on the case. Some students did the Gutenberg
Police Academy, the first in feld Brooke. I'm just throwing
Brooke after you know, why not let's throw in another syllable.
(40:20):
Um that students from that police academy investigated this crime
and in Germany like it's pretty this is an enormously
famous crime. Huge there, it's there, Jack the Ripper. For sure.
It will never be solved, it's not possible being solved.
And this is the conclusion from those students at the
first in feld Brook police Academy. They said, we think
(40:42):
we know who it is, we're not. Since this is
unsolvable and it will never be able to be proven,
we're not going to name the person because they still
have relatives alive, but you can't guess it's the one
living suspect that anyone's ever really raised. It was helping him. Yeah,
they didn't say that. That was my conclusion of their conclusions.
(41:04):
And then they said, thank you Police Academy for your findings.
And where's the guy that makes all the funny noises
in his mouth? You know? Steve Guttenberg follows us on Twitter?
No way, yeah? Really yeah at Steve gut buck really yeah,
and he um is in like a Sharknado esque movie.
(41:28):
I'm not sure what what the name of it is,
but he's in it with the guy who does the voices.
Oh really, uh poison. His name Michael Something makes Michael something.
I will say that, And I think I mentioned this
on the show. Maybe that's why he follows us. Steve
Guttenberg was in one of the very best episodes of
one of my favorite TV shows, Party Down and Uh
(41:50):
did you ever see that? Joe Boy? It was good. Yeah,
it was really really funny. Had the great Adam Scott
and Lizzie Kaplan and one of my hero os, Ken
Marino from the State and Martin star Mega. Mallally was great. Well,
they were caterers, like cater waiters all actors and writers
(42:12):
and stuff in Hollywood, and each episode was its own
thing on catering event. And they had one where they
showed up to Steve Guttenberg's house for his birthday party
and he pulled up and he's like, oh, Man, like
I forgot to cancel. I really had the party a
couple of days ago with my friends. He's like, but
since you're all here, why don't we just have a party.
And so the waiters end up having a party with
(42:32):
Guttenberg and he like does some scene acting with them
and give them great wine, and he has great art
and he's just really really funny in it. Yeah, I
can imagine a dude. He seems so awesome. After watching
this episode, I was like, man, Goods is the best.
And I think they called them goots in the show
even this. Yeah, anyway, good shout shout out to party down,
(42:54):
great great show and Steve Gutenberg. Yeah, uh, do you
have a listener? Meal? Was this too spooky? For one?
He did great work on that bibleh Yeah, I gotta
listener to mail. Okay, Well, if you want to know
more about hinter kaifek um. You can go listen to
stuff you missed in history class. I think they did
an episode that covered it as well. Uh you can
(43:16):
search Mysterious universe dot org and all sorts of other
places for it. And since I said, uh, hinter kaifek,
it's time for listening mail. Before we do listener mail,
we want to give a very special thank you to
uh Margaret and Mike in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah, thanks guy. Yeah,
they stepped forward and helped Jerry out in a big
(43:36):
way as the stuff you should know Army is uh
often does. And uh, it's all we're gonna say other
than big, big thanks to you guys for helping out
for real? How about that? Yeah? All right, I'm gonna
call this listener mail squirrel shooting. Hey, guys, been listening
for about a year. I love the show. I was
listening to the Polar Bears episode and I stopped dead
(43:56):
in my tracks when Chuck told the story about shooting
a squirrel. When I was about thirteen, I too, thought
I was a tough guy and wanted to hunt animals.
My grandparents lived on some land and agreed to let
my cousin I shoot a squirrel as long as we
agreed to skin it and eat it. They're like building
that redo it. Yeah, you gotta love those depression eary grandparents, like, sure,
(44:17):
skin and need it. It's all yours. I have envisioned
him as hippies, like passing a joint, like joking about
how stupid their grandkids were. Wow, depression eary, Sure, I
see that one too, all right, So we were very excited.
We dressed up in camo, walked to property and because uh,
you know, I got a dress in camout squirrels. H
eventually found a squirrel in a tree. I should know
(44:38):
that we were using a pellet gun, not like a
real bullet gun. I took the first shot and hit
the squirrel fell from the tree, and much to my chagrin,
he did not die. He made a noise I hope
to never hear again. It was that awful. I had
to hand the gun to my cousin. I just could
not do it and take the other shot. We ended
up skinning it and needing it, though he said it
(44:59):
tastes like sick and so why bother? Uh, like we
promised that we would do. Uh. That was the last
time I considered killing an animal for sport. I've always
loved animals, so I'm not sure where this urge came
from to begin with. Actually run a small online candle
company now that sells dog fame candles. Uh. They donate
ten percent of all profits to animal shelters and rescues.
(45:20):
And so, Stephen, I am going to plug your company
over my wife's candle company even which is Mama Back
and Body. Uh. And you can go to www. Dot
Knox Favorite k n o x s Knox's favorite dot
com and Knox was their dog in the company after
(45:43):
that's sweet. These are soy candles. I looked it up there.
Good from dog. Uh No, Nathan Dog. Thanks again for
everything you do your daily listen for me. I hope
to can hope you continue for years to come. That
is Stephen, Stephen, way to go, Stephen, Thank you for that.
We appreciate you learning us share your horrible story with everybody. Uh.
(46:06):
If you have a horrible story you want to share.
Oh man, I mean I regret saying that. You can
tweet to us that that's y SK podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff. You should know.
You can send us an email. The Stuff podcast that
how Stuff Works dot Com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff You Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
(46:31):
Does it How stuff works dot com
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