Criminology - The Villisca and Hinterkaifeck Ax Murders

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

In this Halloween week episode of Criminology, we're discussing two horrific and infamous ax murder cases. In 1912, in Villisca Iowa, eight people were murdered in the Moore family farmhouse. All six members of the Moore family were killed along with sisters Lena and Ina Stillinger who were staying the night. In 1922, at the Hinterkaifeck farm in Bavaria, Germany, 5 members of the Gruber family and their maid were brutally murdered. These are two very infamous unsolved cases of massacres carried out with some type of ax. And even though the two incidents occurred years apart, and far away from each, there are many similarities between the two cases. Some have theorized that they were both carried out by the same person or persons. The other thing that ties these two cases together is that they both involve a little bit of the supernatural. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 84 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Morf. Well, Morf, we decided to change up the music a little bit. Little creepy, a little haunting. That's a classic by Bach called Takata and Fug in D minor. I'm probably butchering that, I'm sure. And we chose that creepy music to kick off this episode because this is our Halloween

week episode. And naturally, the cases that we're going to talk about today, they're bound to give you a little bit of chills. You know, we did that on purpose to kind of tie in with Halloween. And I think you've got to have that creepy music to really set the tone because we've got a couple of airy and creepy cases to cover. Well, you know, you know, you look at TV shows, you look at movies. How big of an effect is music? I think when you're

talking about scary movies, it's huge. I think it adds an element of creepiness that if you were just watching the movie without the music, you would think, okay, I'm not scared at all. But that music, man, it kind of gets you sometimes. Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of Halloween, so I love it. I get to this week and I'm just excited. Oh, I do too. I do. too. I rewatch all the old classic horror movies. And I'm kind of lucky my two daughters are really into horror movies. That's like their favorite genre. So Halloween's a fun time for us. We watch a lot of movies that we've seen before. We try new ones. But to be honest, a lot of the new ones don't do it for me. There have been some lately like, um, well,

that one we watched a while back about the doppelgangers. That movie, it was called Us, I think. Yeah, that's exactly the one. That was interesting. Now, was it super scary? I don't know. But I liked it. You know, I think a lot of times they're churning out what people want, you know,

slasher flicks and this and that. A lot of that really doesn't scare me. Yeah, it's hard to compare some of these newer movies they make to a lot of the, great ones we probably had when we were growing up. Well, and here's the question I have, though, are they great? Or was it because we were little? It scared the you know what out of us. And so when we watch it today, we kind of go back to being eight, nine, 10 years old or

whatever it was, probably too young to watch the movie in the first place. But it scared us and we get that feeling as opposed to watching a new movie. movie and we're in our 40s, 50s, whatever we are now, I forget sometimes. It doesn't scare us as much. Yeah, there's some of them that still scare me. If I watch The Exorcist again, for example, that, you know, I'm looking, looking around a little bit before I turn the lights off at night. So, funny story. I mentioned my daughters like scary movies. My 13-year-old wanted to watch a movie, and I said, you know what, let's watch the Exorcist. Now, should I have let her watch it at 13? that's questionable.

Mor, if she sat on the couch and laughed through the whole thing. She thought it was the funniest movie she'd ever seen, which scared me a little bit about her, but that's just her personality. I think she was looking at

some of the special effects and some of those types of things and it just cracked her up, I guess. Typical kids. It's not the normal reaction for people, usually when they watch the Exorcist. I'll say that. So, buddy, how you doing?

I'm doing good. How about you? I am as well. I heard Morf that you did an episode of the True Crime podcast today and True Crime. That's going to come out sometime later next month. Yeah, that's on the Parcast Network. And that episode airs November 6th. They pick a different guest host out for each episode.

And I'll be on one on November 6th. So if anybody wants to check it out, you can head over and find it. All right. Morph, we have some new Patreon supporter. So let's give some shoutouts. We had Jacqueline Rodino, Opel Walt, Ngera Payne, Chantel McGovern, and Amanda Lee Ruth Smith. So appreciate that. We always say that, but we mean it.

We appreciate all the support that we get. Thanks to everybody for that amazing support. It really goes a long way, and we can't thank you enough. And if anyone out there listening would like to help support the show on Patreon, they can do so by visiting patreon.com. slash criminology. All right, buddy, let's dive right in to this week's episode. We are discussing two separate acts murder cases that happened in the early 20th century in two different countries. But I think both of them share some similarities and have a touch of maybe some paranormal

events tied to each one. One of these events occurred in the U.S. and the other in Bavaria, Germany. And there are some people that have theorized that the two cases are somehow connected, while other people believe the U.S. killer was possibly a serial killer responsible for upwards of 30 murders in the United States, all committed using an axe as the murder weapon. It's a good time to point out that this German case is the first case we're covering on criminology that takes place outside of North America. Obviously, we cover a lot of U.S. cases, and we've also covered cases in Canada. So covering one in Europe is new for us. So it's the first, but I don't think it'll be the last, right? More if I think we do need to expand our reach,

there are some very interesting, eerie cases that occur in other parts of the world. We're going to cover some of those moving forward. But before we get to that German case, we're starting here in the U.S. with a horrific crime in a small town in Iowa. Veliska, Iowa is a small town in Montgomery County. It's 70 miles southeast of Omaha, Nebraska, about 115 miles southwest of Des Moines. It is a quiet, peaceful town with just over 1,200 residents, but located on a corner at 508, East 2nd Street sits a white house with a barn and an outhouse. I think when you first look at it, you think, okay, I've just stepped back in time because

it looks as though this home does not belong in this century. But this is no ordinary house. This is a place that over the years has taken on a life of its own. A white sign in the yard reads Velisca Axe Murder House. And the most notorious murders in the history of Iowa occurred here 107 years ago. In 1912, a 43-year-old man named Josiah Joe Moore lived in his house along with his wife, Sarah, who was 38 years old. The couple had four children, 11-year-old Herman, 10-year-old Catherine, 7-year-old Boyd, and 5-year-old Paul. The Moors were active members of the Presbyterian Church and had lived in the house since 1903.

Joe ran his own business selling farm equipment. On Sunday, June 9th, 1912, the family attended the Children's Day service and end of the year's Sunday school program at the church. Two neighbor girls, 12-year-old Lena Stillinger and her eight-year-old sister, Ina, accompanied them. They were friends with Catherine Moore. The girls had asked their parents permission to stay the night with the Moors because they didn't want to walk home in the dark and their parents said it was okay.

Sarah Moore was a co-director of the Sunday school program and the more children performed in it, along with the other Sunday school children. The service ended fairly late. It was around 9.30 p.m. Afterwards, the Moore family and the Stillinger girls walked three blocks back to the Moore home where Sarah served the children cookie. and milk before everyone went to bed. Sometime after midnight, an unknown person entered the Moor home, and using Joe's own axe

that the killer found in the backyard, brutally slaughtered every single person in the home, including the Stillinger Girls. At around 7.30 a.m. on June 10th, neighbor Mary Peckham noticed something just wasn't right at the Moor home. Mary lived next door to the Moors on the West Side. She had seen the Moors on Sunday before they left for the program. That night, she went to bed at 8 p.m. and didn't see the family return home. When she awoke at 7 a.m. the next morning, she noticed the more home was still and quiet,

which was unusual. She tried knocking to wake up Joe and Sarah, but the knocking failed to wake them. So she let their chickens out and checked on their livestock. The animals were still tied, so she called Ross Moore, Joe's brother, to see if the family had gone away. Mary then saw Ed Selly, one of Joe's employees, enter the barn to feed the horses. So I think, Mor, if this is something to talk about, right? And maybe it's something that we just don't see that much in today's society. But here's a woman who is very familiar with her neighbors. She knows their routines. She's worried because the house is quiet. Normally at that time of the morning, people would be up. There are. things to do. You know, I think about my neighbors. I don't know their routines. I don't know that their house is quiet and that would strike me as unusual. It just wouldn't happen. And I'm in, you know, like a neighborhood development. There's houses everywhere. But I don't think anything would really

strike me as unusual. I just think that this goes back to the time that we're talking about. And the fact that It's a small town. And having a neighbor meant something a little bit different back then, I believe. It was like it was just more. It was like neighbors looked out for each other a little bit more, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I think nowadays people are sort of taught to mind their own business and, and don't get in other people's affairs.

Yeah, that's kind of my theory, to be honest with you. And not to mention they had a bunch of animals, it sounds like so. when you have animals, you're getting up early to tend to them. So not seeing them out there doing that would certainly catch your attention. Right. Ed Selly had received a call that morning from Ross Moore asking if he had seen Joe. He hadn't. So Ed called Ross and Joe's parents, but they hadn't seen Joe either. Ed also received a call from the neighbor Mary Peckham. She told Ed that the Moore's horses needed to be fed. So, you know, that brings us around to the fact of why Ed is out at the house feeding the horses. Ross Moore arrived at his brother's home at 8 a.m. using a key, he opened the door. Mary, the neighbor, stayed on the porch while Ross looked around in the house. He first went in the kitchen, but nobody was there. He then opened the door to the downstairs bedroom when he saw

two bodies covered with bloody sheets and blood on the bed frame. Ross ran out of the home. Ross ran out of the home and told Mary to call the marshal. Some reports say Ross called Ed Selly and told Ed to call Marshall John Henry Hank Horton, while other reports said that it was Mary Peckham who called Ed Selly to get the marshal. Hank Horton had only been the day Marshall since 1911. He was used to keeping an eye on strangers in the town and making sure that local merchants locked their businesses at night. He was not prepared for a gruesome crime scene. Hank arrived at the more home at 8.30 a.m. and went through the house. He saw the partially cleaned murder weapon leaning against the south wall of the downstairs bedroom where the Stillinger girls were found.

It appeared to the marshal that the murders had happened hours before, most likely while everyone was still sleeping. There were no unusual odors coming from the house, such as the smell of breakfast being cooked, all of the blinds on the windows were still down. Also, the victims were found in their beds, covered with bedclothes, and all of the victims had their heads bashed in, dozens of times, with the blunt end of the axe. Lina Stillinger's nightgown had been pushed up, and she had blood smeared on her knee as well as defensive wounds. She was the only victim to have fought back. Some reports say she was sexually assaulted before her murder,

but others say she wasn't. All of the mirrors and glass entry doors were covered with pieces of clothing, taken from dresser drawers. Gouge marks from the upswing of the axe were found across the ceiling in the parent's bedroom, and in one of the child's upstairs bedroom. It appeared that the killer had stayed for a while at the more home following the murders. leaning against the wall next to the axe was a four-pound piece of slab bacon, a plate of uneaten food, and a bowl of bloody water sat on the kitchen table.

So more if we talked about the fact that this marshal probably wasn't prepared for this. But who would be? I mean, this was a very gruesome crime scene. I mean, you're talking about a lot of people murdered in a very horrific way. My assumption is that in a small town like this, this wasn't something that happened very frequently at all. Most people probably had never seen anything like it. And I think what makes this crime scene even tougher is that before the marshal even got there,

right? So they called, they're waiting for the marshal to get there. The crime scene was compromised when a large number of, of people and the number is widely speculated. It could have been dozens. It could have been even more. These people arrived at the house. They entered the home to gock at the bodies. So anytime you have that, it makes it harder for authorities to collect evidence that could be helpful in solving the case. police were stumped from the beginning about who could be responsible for these grizzly murders, but there were a few suspects in the case.

One in particular was an Englishman named Reverend Lynn George Jacqueline Kelly. That seems like a lot of names, but he and his wife arrived in the U.S. in 1904. Kelly had preached in various churches across the Great Plains, Iowa, Minnesota, and he arrived for the first time in Velisca on June 9th, 1912. The very next day, at 519 a.m., he left Valiska on a westbound train and allegedly told other travelers, there were eight people who had been killed in their beds while they slept. The problem with this timeline is that the bodies hadn't been found yet. Kelly was eventually arrested in 1917 and charged with the murder of Lena Stillinger. And he did sign a confession to her murder, but he later recanted that confession at trial.

And his case went to the jury on September 26th. The first jury was deadlocked. So they had to bring another jury in. this second jury acquitted Kelly in November. And I think more of the part of this that was strange for me was that he was only charged with one murder. The murder of Lena Stillinger, it's kind of hard to believe that if he was involved in that, if they thought he was, that he somehow was not involved in the other murders.

The problem is this is a very old case. and anytime you have cases that are this old, the details are a little fuzzy or they're missing. So we really don't know exactly why he was only charged with the murder of Lena. No one else has ever been tried for the Velisca Ax murders, but there were other suspects that covered a wide spectrum, including a state senator and a possible serial killer, a serial killer who may have been responsible for other acts murders in the Midwestern. West around the same time. Iowa Senator and Valiska resident Frank F. Jones was rumored to have had a business beef with Joe Moore. Moore had previously worked for Frank Jones before leaving

to start his own business. There were also rumors that Joe Moore was having an affair with Frank's daughter. So I think a lot of people have thought it's possible that one or maybe even both of these things could have given Frank Jones the motive to commit these murders or the motive to hire someone to commit these murders. Another promising suspect was Henry Lee Moore, who by the way wasn't a relative of the Moore family. In 1913, Moore was convicted of the acts murders of his mother and grandmother. He was sentenced to life in prison, but got out in 1949 after serving only 36 years. detectives that worked on his case believed that Henry Lee Moore

was responsible for almost two dozen axe murders across the Midwest before he was incarcerated but they could never prove it I will say this 36 years in the 1940s seems like a pretty long sentence just judging by a lot

of the cases that we've done that are older it seemed like people got out much quicker back in the day in some instances. But the guy did kill his mother and grandmother with an axe. Yeah, a lot of times I know that I'm personally surprised by how light the sentences were and how some things were taken without a lot of seriousness as far as the sentences went.

Well, I think especially in the cases that we do about serial killers, right? You and I have talked about it. There is normally, as the story goes along, a pattern of escalation. It starts out with petty crimes. It goes to a little bit more serious crimes till ultimately it leads to murder. But what you see in the beginning is slaps on the wrist for what in some cases are pretty serious crimes that allow these people to get out. over and over again, it's almost as if at some point more if they say,

I can do whatever I want because I'm not really going to get that much time for it. I'm not really going to be held accountable. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until Newtown. Technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. So we mentioned it up front. Today the murder house still stands and it's basically a tourist spot. For several hundred dollars, you can spend the night if you're brave enough or you can take a daylight tour for $10. I think a lot of people would say, well, why in the world would you want to spend the night there?

From my experience, there are a lot of people that have the interest in true crime that would want to do that. Or at the very least, take the daylight tour for $10. There's also a lot of people that claim this house is haunted. According to the current owners, Darwin and Martha Lynn, visitors have claimed to hear children's voices, their flashlights turn off and on, strange things appear in some of the pictures. So I guess the lens bought the house in 1994 and they spent a bunch of money to renovate it to its original condition as it was at the time of the 1912 Axe murders. The TV show Ghost

Adventures visited the home. They did some filming there and they aired an episode in December of 2010. I'm not really familiar with the show Ghost Adventures. I wonder if it's like some of these other ghost hunter shows. I don't watch them. I've seen bits and pieces. They seem to be pretty much the same thing all the time. It's dark. It's spooky. One person says, did you hear that? Did you feel that? Did you see that? And you never hear, see, or, you know, anything. It's all like searching for Bigfoot, searching for the Locknest Monster. I don't know. I kind of put all of those in the same category. It's a lot of, did you hear that? Did you smell that? Did you feel that? But you never see the evidence of anything. Yeah, I think there's a certain historic interest, too,

in some of those places. It's almost like taking a, like a Jack the Ripper tour and seeing the different locations where the bodies were found. I think people just have an interest in the historic part of it. And then as far as the paranormal stuff, I stayed in a house in Cape May in Southern New Jersey in a really old house that's 200, 300 years old that was supposedly haunted. And the only strange noises that night was me snoring. I didn't hear anything else. I slept like a baby, so. No, I think you make an excellent point, right? There is history here. something tragic happened, no doubt about it, but it's part of history. And I don't view going to this house and wanting to take the tour of this house as any different than going to Monticello or, you know, some historical house like that.

It is part of history. It just happens to be something that happened that was tragic. It makes me think, too, how many times do you stay at a. hotel or people out there that buy a house that don't know the history of it, you never know if something tragic like that or violent like that happened there before. In November of 2014, a visitor was staying overnight at the murderhouse for a paranormal investigation. He was alone in a northwest bedroom while the rest of the group was outside. The group received an emergency call from him on a two-way radio. When they ran to the bedroom, the man was lying on the

floor suffering from a self-inflicted stab wound in the chest. The incident happened at 1245 a.m., which is said to be around the time when the 1912 axe murders happened. He was taken to a hospital and recovered. It's unclear exactly how he ended up stabbing himself, but the lens do not speak anymore of the incident out of respect for the man's family. Okay, that's a little spooky. I'll admit. Now, there are some non-spooky possibilities that exist, and I I don't feel the need to go into them all, but you got to admit, a little spooky. Now, over the years, there have been some documentaries made on the Axe murders. There was a 2017 Netflix horror film called The Axe Murders of Veliska.

That film was set in the present day, and Netflix describes the film as three ghost hunting teens, get more than they bargain for when they break into a historic home where eight people were murder. murdered over a century ago. But there's no doubt, even today, over a century after these brutal murders occurred, the slings at the more home continue to both haunt and intrigue countless numbers of people, not to mention the fact that as with a lot of unsolved cases, you have the online sluice, right, that have their theories and things like that. It makes for a lot of chatter on the internet about this case, even today. And speaking of online sleuths, there's a bunch of websites out there about this case.

Of course, you've got the documentaries and there's books and stuff like that out there. So this case just continues to really fascinate these armchair detectives that are out there sleuthing the case. Our next case takes us all the way to Bavaria, a small state in Germany. And there are some interesting similarities to the Iowa. In 1922, Kaifik was a small community in Bavaria, incorporated decades later in the municipality, Wadehofen. Hinter means behind, so the farmstead, Hinter-Kifek, sat roughly a half mile behind Kaifek. It's near Grobern in the Shrobin housing countryside. The farm was remote and sat near a large

forest. The Hinter-Kifek farm was owned by the Gruber family. Kizelia was seven years. years older than her husband, Andreas Gruber. She had inherited the farm from her second husband after he died. She later married Andreas and brought him to the farm. The two had a daughter named Victoria in the late 1880s. In 1922, Victoria Gabriel was 35 years old. She was widowed. Her husband, Carl Gabriel died in World War I. Carl and Victoria had a daughter named Cazilia, named after Victoria's mother, who was born shortly after Carl's death in 1915. Victoria and her daughter moved in with her parents on the Hinter-Kifeck farm. Reports vary on the year, but sometime between 1915 and 1919,

Andreas, then in his 50s, was accused of having an incestuous relationship with Victoria. He spent one year in jail and Victoria served a month. But after their release from prison, the family was once again living together under the same roof. In 1920, Victoria gave birth to his second child, a boy named Joseph. The locals believed Joseph was Andreas's child because he looked too much like him to be his grandchild. Victoria never revealed who the father actually was, which only led credence to the local rumors. Sometime in early 1921, the Gruber's hired a live-in maid. And by the fall of that year, she quit her job and immediately left the family's home. It wasn't a heavy workload that caused

her to leave. It wasn't because she didn't like the gruber family. What caused her to leave was that she had begun to hear unexplained noises in the house. So I guess these included footsteads, steps in the attic. She heard voices whispering all the time. This woman was convinced that the house was haunted and she couldn't stand to work another day there. And there was no talking her out of leaving. The gruber's tried. They couldn't do it. At first, the grubers didn't know what to think. But before long, they would begin to witness and hear some of these strange things going on as well. The Gruber's began searching for a new live-and-maid. They finally found and settled on a woman named Maria Baumgartner, who was 44 years old and partially disabled. They hired her in March of 1922. It was Maria's sister, Franziska, who helped her land the job working for the Gruber's. On the morning of March 31st, 1922, Maria packed her bags and left for Hinner Kaifek. Francisco went with Maria to Hinnir Khyfeck, but left before it got dark outside because she thought the area was spooky after dark.

It was just prior to Maria's arrival that the Gruber family began experiencing some odd occurrences. Victoria felt like she was being watched and she heard voices as well as footsteps in the attic. She and her father, Andreas, saw a man standing near the edge of the forest, watching them. And not long after that, a set of keys to the house disappeared. Andreas and Victoria later found a Munich Daily newspaper on their porch that didn't belong to them. When Andreas asked the postman about it, he had no idea how the newspaper had arrived on the Gruber farm. On March 30th, 1922, Andreas found footsteps in freshly fallen snow leading from the forest to the property. While that was strange in itself, what disturbed Andreas the most was that there

were no footsteps leading back to the forest. The mystery person had apparently left in a different direction, or had they? Andreas searched his property, including every inch of his home and barns, but found no signs of an intruder. Later that day, for unknown reasons, Victoria ran off, and was later found crying hysterically on a river after a brief search. I don't know about you, but whether it's 1922 or 2019, if I'm living on this farm and that stuff is going on, I'm going to be pretty nervous and I'm going to be doing what this family is doing and looking through my house and looking at every inch to see if somebody is hiding in there because I want to get to the bottom of what's going on. What do you think?

I'm right with you. I'm freaked out at this point. I'm not sure what's going on, but obviously strange things are happening. Yeah, whether it's a good, ghost or a person that's somehow made their way into your house, you're hearing noises. You want to get to the bottom of that. You don't want to be sleeping in there at night with somebody in there or something in there. Yeah, I think at one point, Morf, Andreas even discovered some strange scratches on the lock to the tool shed. It appeared as if someone had tried to pick it. So you add all of these things together. It seems like much more than just a coincidence that you've got all of these things going on.

Somebody's been at the house. Somebody is doing something. The maid that quit on the spot and left the farm, I don't blame her one bit. I think I would have too. Yeah, I'm not sure how much she was getting paid, but, uh, I don't, I don't know if any job's worth that. The next morning, Andreas and Victoria went shopping and they told some people about some of these bizarre incidents.

These folks advised Andreas to go to the police, but he refused, believing that he could protect his family. There are some reports that say someone in town offered to loan him a rifle, but again, he refused. And then it was later that day that Maria, the new maid that they had hired, arrived and settled into her room. That evening, Victoria and her mother were sitting together while little Cazilia and Joseph, the two-year-old, were already in bed. Andreas checked on his home and property before bed to make sure that everything was in order. Everything seemed fine. Again, it sounds like the ritual morph that I go through every night before I go to bed.

I check all the doors, windows, all of that. The difference here is that I have not experienced some of these very strange, odd things happening at my home that they have. I think I'd have a hard time getting to sleep knowing that something strange is going on. Yeah, this sounds like a 1922 version of East Area rapist here creeping through the house and disturbing stuff. It actually does. Yeah, it actually does. Two days later, Little Cazilia was absent from school without explanation. Then Victoria didn't show up at church where she sang in the choir. People started to one. of why the family had dropped out of sight.

Neighbors of the grubers saw smoke coming from the chimney, and upon checking, found that the livestock had been recently fed. But the neighbors hadn't actually seen the grubers themselves in days. A mechanic came to Hinnor-Khefeck to repair an engine, but nobody was there to greet him. On April 5, 1922, neighbor, Lauren's Schlittenbauer, along with a team of men,

went to Hinner-Kifek to check on the missing family trying to figure out once and for all what is going on. Nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to see. Maria's body was the first found by the group. Some reports say that she was in her bed. Others say she was found on the floor in front of her bed. But either way, she had been bludgeoned to death. They found two-year-old Joseph dead in his bassinet in Victoria's bedroom.

he too had been killed by a blow to the head. The killer placed one of Victoria's dresses over his little body. The group continued the grim search and found Andreas, his wife Cazelia, Victoria, and little Cazelia, dead in the barn. They were piled on top of one another, covered in blood. Some hay and a door were placed on top of the bodies. The Ho and Ordered police were called in to investigate the grisly scene at Hinnir Kife. and they requested assistance from Shrobenhausen police and criminal police from Munich to help with the investigation.

Well, my assumption is here morph that the local police had never seen anything like this. An extremely grisly murder scene. But then when you get to the barn and you find four bodies piled on top of each other, blood everywhere, I think pretty quickly they most likely thought, you know what, we better call in some help. Investigators could only theorize what actually happened based on the state of the crime scene. They didn't know how, but they theorized that something or someone lured each of the victims to the barn one by one. Police believed that Victoria was lured out first. and when she didn't return to the house, her mother, Cazilia, went to the barn to check on her.

Andreas wondered what was taking the women so long, so he went to the barn to investigate. They believe that Victoria's seven-year-old daughter Cazilia woke up, was looking for her mother and went out to the barn searching for her. After committing the four murders inside the barn, authorities believed the killer made their way into the house where they killed Maria in her room and little Joseph as he lay sleeping in his bassinet. It didn't appear that any of the victims resisted, which to authorities meant the killer either completely surprised them or the killer was perhaps known by the family and therefore had their guard down. Obviously, we're dealing with somebody that is going to murder all these people

with blunt force, which would later be determined to be an axe. So we know that this person is pretty disturbed. But how disturbed did they to kill a little baby in their bassinet? That just shows you the brutality that they're capable of. Yeah, I think any time that you're talking about a very small baby, I think people have a hard time imagining killing anyone or, you know, or how these killers operate and, can take people's lives. But then on top of that, when you talk about a little two-year-old,

defenseless, helpless in his bassinet, I think that's just an entirely different level of depravity. Dr. Johann Allmuller arrived at the scene. He had just completed a training course where he was taught that murdered victims' heads should be cut off so they could be examined more artificially, so Amalor decapitate all of the victims. Upon examination, he saw that Victoria's face was smashed, and her skull had nine star-shaped holes. Police initially thought that a mattock found at the scene was the murder weapon. A mattock is a tool similar to a pickaxe. But Al-Muller ruled this out after examining the injuries.

He saw signs that Victoria had been strangled, but it was not her cause of death. Obviously the weapon used a bludgeon in Victoria was a tool of some sort, but based on the examination by Allmuller, he didn't think it was a medic. But there are no details about what kind of weapon he thought was used. Victoria's daughter, Cazilia's face was shattered and she had a big wound on her throat. The doctor determined that the little girl was the only one who initially survived the attack and likely lived for about two. two or three hours afterwards. But this was a very rough two to three hours. This little girl was in shock. She was in a great deal of agony. It was said that she tore out clumps of her own hair and then eventually bled to death.

The other five victims were killed instantly. Police investigated the crime scene. They never determined exactly what called. caused Victoria to go out to the barn. At first they thought maybe she had heard a noise, like someone screaming or a slamming door, but they ruled that out. They had someone stand in the barn making loud noises while another officer was in the house. It was said that the officer in the house couldn't hear anything.

In the attic of the home, police found hay distributed along the floor, most likely to quiet the sound of footsteps. They also found two coolers. Police found signs that the killer remained at the farmstead for days after the killings. The livestock was taken care of and the dog had been put on his chain and taken off of it as well. A ham was freshly cut and all the bread had been eaten. At first, police thought the motive for the killings was robbery because the gruber's were wealthy. But that theory was shot down. Only a small amount of cash was missing and 100,000 gold marks. And 100,000 gold marks, and other valuables were still in the home. By today's terms, that's the equivalent of $25,000 U.S. dollars, so not something a thief would leave behind.

During the investigation, it was discovered that the pastor of Victoria's Church found 700 gold marks in the confessional, donated by Victoria to the poor, just prior to the murders. But no one knew for sure Victoria herself had delivered the donation. Eventually, investigators figured that the motive for the crime was something more personal. than robbery. There were a number of suspects. The first suspects were four men who had joined a communist resistance group shortly after World War I.

They were from an area near Hinter-Kifax, and for some unknown reason, suspicion fell on them pretty quickly. But the men either had alibis or some of them were dead at the time that the killings took place. Lawrence Schlittenbauer, man who found the bodies, also came under suspicion. He was a village guide and sledmaker. He was widowed with 12 children. It is believed that he had a relationship with Victoria. And he also claimed that Joseph was his son, but then later denied that he was. Some reports claim that Victoria named this guy. as Joseph's father, and to make things even more cloudy.

Schlittenbauer was the person who filed the incest complaint against Andreas a few years earlier. When the bodies were found, some of the other men that went with Schlittenbauer to check on the groubers, noticed that he unlocked one of the doors. Now, it's not clear which door that was, but a few days earlier. The grubers had complained of, losing keys. So this raised a lot of suspicion. Adding to the suspicion was this guy's demeanor. According to witnesses, he didn't show any emotion when he saw the bodies. He also knew his way around the farm. And this was a big deal because police theorized that whoever killed the groubers knew them and knew their way around the farm. Lorenz was considered a suspect for the rest of his life. But he was

only interrogated by police twice, first on the day that the bodies were found, and then years later on March 30, 1931. But he was never arrested for the murders, and he died in 1941. Another suspect was a victorious husband and father of seven-year-old Cazilia, a man named Carl Gabriel. Even though he was declared dead in a World War I battle on December 12, 1914, his body was never found. He was allegedly seen in 1918 near Hinnir Kifak after his reported death. Carl reportedly told someone that he had been to the Hinner Kifak farm and saw that his wife was pregnant. He left immediately and in his anger threatened to kill them all. Police were never able to confirm his death, but it was common for bodies to never be recovered during wartime.

During the investigation, officers also suspected brothers Anton and Adolfs. Gump. They were descendants of a 19th century robber named Ferdinand Gump. On their sister's deathbed, she claimed that they had killed the Gruber family. In 1951, police went to question them. But by that time, Adolf had died. So they could only question Anton. Now, obviously, Anton didn't confess to the murders and police never found any evidence tying either of the brothers to the murders. When the Gruber family was laid to rest, only their headless bodies were buried in plots. Maria, the maid, was buried next to them.

The heads were sent off to be examined and eventually destroyed during bombings in World War II. After the murders, Andres Gruber's brother, Bernhard Gruber, took care of the land and animals on Hinner Kaifek. He made it clear from the beginning that he was only going to stay until he found a buyer for the property. The Gabriel family bought Hinnir Kifek from Bernard at a very low price, and about a year after the murders, Hinner Kifek was demolished. During demolition, the murder weapon was found in a hidden compartment in the barn. It was an axe with a sharp side and a heavy dull side. There was a long heavy screw on the back that matched with the numerous small star-like injuries on the skulls of

the victims. It's believed that the killer placed that weapon there after police. had done their investigation at Hinnert Kiefeck. There are plenty of theories regarding these murders. The first is robbery, as we mentioned earlier. One source said that the cupboards in Victoria's bedroom were ransacked and her empty purse was left on the bed. But there were other valuables and large sums of money that remained in the house. Police also thought that a robber would not.

hang around the farm for days after. He would have taken off right away. I think on top of that, someone that was there to rob the house is not going to take care of the animals for a number of days. Another theory is that this was a murder of passion. I think a lot of this stems from the fact that it's believed that Victoria was lured into the barn and killed first. Police have theorized that maybe she had a date in the barn. A fight broke out and she was killed. Adding to this theory is that Victoria had the most blows to the head out of all of the victims and she had been strangled.

But then you have to ask the question. If Victoria was the only target, why were the others murdered? Was it because members started to come out to the barn to look for her? But even with that, Morph, then why go away? into the house and murder the maid and the two-year-old baby. A two-year-old is not going to be able to identify you. So I think that's a large part of why this case is so baffling. There's also a family dispute theory. This involved Maria Baumgartner's sister, Francisco, who got Maria the job at Hinner Kaifek. Before Maria's murder, Francisco had been appointed her legal guardian

and was forced to look after her, something apparently she didn't want. want to do. So the theory here is Francisco killed her sister or hired someone else to do it. But police weren't convinced because if this was the case, why was everyone else killed? Again, you can see something in every one of these theories. But you can also pick them apart like crazy. In 1979, author Pete Luschner wrote a book on the Henter Kifek murders. And in 1997, he released a newer edition with more information. He spent years researching and investigating the murders and is considered one of the top experts on the case. In 2008, German bestselling author Andrea Maria Schenkel wrote a fictional novel based on the Hintr Kifek murders,

Luciner sued Schenkel for plagiarism, saying that she stole passages from his book. But a judge ruled that her book was not a work of plagiarism. She ended up selling over 500,000 copies of the book, and they made a movie out of it that was released in 2009. No one was ever arrested in the Henrik Hafeck murders. After the murders happened, police realized that this case was eerily similar to another one that happened decades earlier. Around midnight, on March 13, 1893, a fire broke out at the Newhauser farm near Sommdorf, Germany. Firefighters rushed to the scene. The doors were locked and no one responded when they called out.

The firefighters then broke the door down. In the bed chamber, firefighters found the bodies of 57-year-old Anna Ritesberger, a widow, and her 16 and 23-year-old daughters, Anna, and Crescens. The youngest daughter, 14-year-old Marie, was lying on the floor next to the bed. police said the victims were killed with some kind of hatchet. Like in the Hintr-Khyphak murders, police believed that whoever killed the women knew their way around the farm. They also suspected robbery as the motive because the bedroom chest and dresser were ripped open.

It's unclear, though, if anything was taken. Two men from the village fell under suspicion of the murders, but were never charged. They passed the farm when it was on fire, but never reported it. it. Police brought the men in for questioning, but they couldn't prove they were the killers and let them go. The case was never solved. Samdorf is only 90 to 100 kilometers or 70 miles southeast of Hinner Kifek, and about 12 kilometers or 8 miles east of Munich. Both the Neuhauser and Hinner Kifek murders occurred in March on isolated farms, and all the victims were killed with a similar murder weapon while they were sleeping. However, police were never able to connect the two cases together.

In 2007, police academy students took on the Hinter-Kifek cold case. They were able to identify one suspect, but out of respect for his descendants, never disclosed his name. In 2017, sports writer and statistician Bill James, who created baseball's Sabremetrics, along with his daughter, Rachel McCarthy James, wrote a book titled The Man from the Train. The book is about the string of unsolved axe murders in the U.S. that occurred between 1911 and 1912. They believed that one man, Paul Mueller, who was either German or Austrian, was responsible for both the Veliska and Hinter-Kifek murders. Mueller immigrated to the U.S. traveled the country by train. He had been in the towns where the murders took place.

In addition to the Velisca murders, other U.S. acts murders took place in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Monmouth, Illinois, Blue Island, Illinois, Ellsworth, Kansas, Paiola, Kansas, and in Boston, Massachusetts. The last chapter of the book specifically discusses the Hinnir Kiefeck murders as possibly being linked to the U.S. murders. The Hinnert Kifak murders were similar to the U.S. killings. All of the victims were attacked with an axe as they slept, and each household had a young daughter living there. With the Veliska and Hinder Kifak cases, the killers stayed at the crime scene for a while afterwards. Today, Hinner Kifak no longer exists. A memorial is erected near where the farm sat. Locals say that ever since the murders, nothing grows on this land, and some people believe there is haunted. A lantern hike

is offered one weekend a month by Bogan Rider Inn and Hotel in Whitehofen. Carrying lanterns, guests can walk through the forest at night to Hinnir Kifak. They can also visit the victim's graves in the cemetery. After the hike, punch and pastries await guests in the garden of the inn. The Hinnor Kifak murders are considered one of Germany's most notorious cases. So, more seems like an interesting way to spend a weekend, right? Stay at this inn. grab yourself a lantern, go on a hike to an area where a large number of vicious murders

occurred, and then go on to visit the victim's graves in the cemetery. After all that, punch and pastries will be waiting for you. I mean, I'm kind of making light of it, and I shouldn't. These were horrible crimes. Obviously, they happened a long time ago, but there is something. amusing, I guess is the word I would use about scheduling a getaway to go on this lantern hike. Now, to people that are into true crime, like staying in the Veliska Axe murder house, it's something that a lot of people would probably do.

But to people that aren't into true crime, I think they would look at both of these things and say, why? Why would you want to do that? And again, I'll go back to the historical aspect of it. It's history. You know, why do people want to visit, you know, certain historical sites? I don't see it as any different just because it involves crimes and murder. And if that's your thing and you've got the money and a passport and the time, you can go from the

Veliska home here in the U.S. and travel to Germany and go to Hinnert Kifek. Well, you better carve out some time. It's, it's, you know, that's, that's going to be a week for sure to get all that done. You know, some true crime obsessed couples might consider that a honeymoon. But in wrapping up these cases, right, they're horrible. They're very well known. Both of these cases are very well known unsolved murders. Henter Kifek, may not be. You know, they're not be as well known to those in the United States, but in Germany, it is a very notorious crime. The Velisca axe murders is something that people bring up all the time. As far as cases that they want to hear covered, there's a lot of mystery.

I think that surrounds both of these cases. You have how the individuals were murdered, the circumstances around who the the perpetrator or perpetrators could be. But on top of that, you have the supernatural haunting aspect in both cases. Special thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at True Crime Diva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, take a minute. If you haven't, go out, give us a five-star rating and keep telling your friends, word of mouth is huge for the show. If you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod or on Facebook by searching for

criminology podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion and fans. So before we leave, Morf, this is, you know, kind of our Halloween episode. We want to wish everyone a happy Halloween, eat some candy, watch some scary movies. But I think most of all, spend time with your family and friends. If listening to our podcast, teaches people anything. I think it there's a couple of things that people should take away. Number one, you need to be aware of your surroundings, right? Keep your head on a swivel, look out for your own safety at all times. But number two, you got to take every chance to spend time with the people that you love. And if you're going out with their kids,

trick-or-treating, stay safe, wear bright colors and have fun. All right. That is it for another episode of criminology, as always. We'll be back with you next Saturday night with an all new episode. But until then, this is Mike and more. And we'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.