Stuff You Should Know - The Hinterkaifeck Axe Murders

Episode Date: October 27, 2016

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from house.works.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. Yep.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, I would say this is a bonus Halloween episode in a way. You can all look forward to our regular ad-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 Hello Weekend, almost. Why don't we just tell the story of an ex-murdered family? Yeah. I hope I 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 ex-murdered family. Yeah, don't be a sicko. It's up to you whether or not you want to expose them to this kind of treachery. This is bad stuff. Are you ready for it?

You have your German pronunciation down, by the way. Should we talk about... Hinterkfecht. Kixiacheng. Hinterkfecht, yeah. Dixiacheng. Dixiacheng. Dixiacheng, more specifically.

Right. The irony of all this. Because 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. Right. But 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 we were misled on the internet. Yeah. And now that happens. It happens. Still got everything else right.

So Dixiacheng is really Dixiacheng, sort of. Okay. And Hinterkfecht is... Hinterkfecht. Hinterkfecht, yeah. Right? Yeah, I looked over these. My German is rusty, but...

I think I got them all. Yeah, most of them. I bet you're gonna stumble on one, but I'll just hold onto that. I don't even know which one you're talking about. I know. This is gonna make it exciting. Oh, man.

Maybe we should have a sound effect when it happens and I'll just... Like a boring one? Sure. That'll disrupt the spookiness. Well, let's get spooky took, shall we? Yes. Because there's a little town in Bavaria.

That's correct. It's between the towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen. Was that either one of the ones you thought was gonna stumble on? No, I mean, technically you should say like Stadt instead of Stadt. Oh, well, I didn't realize we were getting technical. But, you know, you're not from Germany.

That's how an American might say it. Right. And by God, I'm an American. That's right. Although it's much closer to Weidhoffen. Is that the one? I'm just gonna ask every time I say something in German. You'll hear the sound effect.

But there's a little, little tiny village, a town called Keifeck. And... Hinterkäifeck. No, well, the town... Oh, right. The village is called Keifeck. Yeah.

There was a ranch, basically you'd call it, in America, a dude ranch, maybe even, but not really, it was just a farm, called Hinterkäifeck. It was located a little bit outside of this village. In the hinterland, you might call it. Right. The name of this farm was Hinterkäifeck, Keifeck.

And on this farm lived a man, a woman, another woman, some little kid. Yeah. This is going terribly, isn't it? No, I think it's great. So the family who made up the tenancy of this farm, they were the Grubers. Yes.

Andreas Gruber was the father. His wife... Is this the one? Okay, all right, let me do this then. You ready? Yeah. The wife's name was Kasselia. Eh.

Sajelia. Frank. No, if I'm not mistaken, if you begin a word with C in German and it's pronounced like a T-S. T-S for me. I think that would be Tzatzelia. What? That's not fair.

I know, right? Come on, Germany. Tzatzelia. Okay, well, let me ask you this. So Tzatzelia? Yeah. Am I saying it right now? I think Tzatzelia.

Oh, that's Italian. It does sound Italian. So Tzatzelia is his wife, that's to be determined. Their daughter, Victoria, so if there's a K instead of a C, is it something else entirely or is it Victoria? No. Now, is it Victoria? Victoria.

Okay. And there's two grandchildren. The oldest was a granddaughter. Now, she has an umla over her name, even though it's spelled otherwise, the exact same as her grandmother, Tzatzelia. Yeah. So how would you say that?

It would be Tzatzelia. Tzatzelia? Tzatzelia. Tzatzelia. And Tzatzelia. Tzatzelia and Tzatzelia. So it would be like Tzatzelia and Tzatzelia, Jr.? I don't know.

I mean, I've never seen anyone name their, it just seemed unusual to me. I didn't know if the first name was missing the umlaut or if they really named her after her grandmother but added the umlaut. Maybe there's a story there. Well, Chuck, as we'll find, a lot of the details and facts of this case

have been lost in time. That's right. Lastly, there was a little boy, a two-year-old named Yosef, that was Victoria's son. And Victoria was widowed. She was 35, I believe, at the time that we come into Hinterkaifeck. And they all lived together, relatively isolated, actually,

because they, the Grubers, although they were wealthy, and from what I saw held in somewhat high esteem or at least treated 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 the Paterfamilius Andreus was, he was not friendly, he liked to keep to himself. And apparently he was very abusive

to his wife and children. Yeah. Children, he only had one living child still at this point, who's Victoria. And we're in the Waybeck machine, by the way, and it's 1922. Oh, we didn't say that. I don't think so.

So he was abusive, I don't know the 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 around, maybe he had something to do with it. Maybe, but that was a leap, a total leap. Also the time when, like,

people routinely died from the flu. Sure. You know? That's a good point. So he was a loner, he was abusive. There was the matter of Yosef, the two-year-old daughter of Victoria. Son.

Yeah, his daughter, I don't know where I was going with that. And he was rumored to have been born from an incestuous relationship with her father. Yeah. Andreus. Right, that was the rumor in town. Which smacks up to me of small town 1920s style. 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 were very much aware that other people believed that. Yeah, because he apparently was very controlling of Victoria. Kind of to the level of them being characterizes, obsessed with her.

Yeah. So it could very well be true. Could. Lost the time. Could also have not been true. And there's other reports that Yosef was the son of another man in town, who we'll meet later on. Who at one point claimed paternity,

but later on said no way. Right. Especially I think when the concept of alimony payments was brought up. That's right. He's like, no, kid was a product of incest instead. So Victoria was the only one supposedly that kind of spent a lot of time in town

and that people seemed to care for much because she sang in the choir. Apparently was a very good singer in the church choir. And so this is the scene here in semi-rural Bavaria. Yeah. And we want to give a shout out. We've given, we found some other articles about the case itself.

But the main one that we started with was from mysteriousuniverse.org. Ooh. Not a normal place where we would get our stuff, but it's a good article. Yeah. And everything else I read about it, it sort of all checked out as being the same.

So. Way to go mysteriousuniverse.org. Good job. Thanks for it. So things start to get a little weird on the farm when the maid at the farm, his name, may or may not be Maria. We don't know.

She said, I'm out of here. I quit because this house is haunted. Yeah. I'm hearing weird noises in the attic. Hearing weird sounds all around the place. I'm hearing footsteps. I'm out of here. Yeah.

And apparently she left pretty quickly and suddenly and the family so much so was like, I think she was mentally disturbed. Sure. That's an easy way to quiet the townspeople. If you don't want to. She's cuckoo. Yeah.

You don't want people thinking like, A, I'm abusive and B, I also live in a haunted house. Right. Yeah. You don't want that. That's where you draw the line. Incest, abuse, sure that's allowable, but you don't want people to think you got ghosts.

You know? Right. So the maid leaves and that kind of sets the tone. Like that kicks off this season of dread that settles over Hintar Kaifek. That'd be a good name for the movie version of this. Yeah. 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, but nothing, nothing that ever starred Ray Fiennes. Well, if it doesn't have him, who cares? He would clearly be one of the dudes in this.

Sure. You know? Maybe even Andreas Gruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans, I'm gonna go ahead and admit. Yeah. See the name Gruber and that's what jumps to mind. Yeah.

So the maid leaves and like I said, this weird things start happening. A few months later, Andreas is wandering around his property, around Hintar Kaifek. Wandering around. Right. This is looking aimlessly for something to do. I think there was a-

A family member to punch. There was a snowstorm and he was looking around to see, you know, if there had been any damage, anything that needed repairing. And he noticed that there was a set of tracks in the snow, human tracks, footprints, I guess is a better way to call them. Sure.

Leading to the house. And they went right up to the house. Yeah. But he looked around and he could not find any tracks leading away from the house. Creepy. Super creepy. Just a single set though, right?

Yeah. It wasn't like the footsteps like God carried him from there. Well, that would be a single set. Well, you know, that old adage. Sure. There were two sets of footprints and then when there were only one. It wasn't like God left you.

It was when he was carrying you. That's right. You're sorry ass. That's a great story. Whether, even if you're not religious, you gotta see that and be like, man, that makes me feel good. Yeah.

Because anytime you get to that point, Jesus goes, zing, doubt me, will you? So footprints leading to the house, not leading away, creepy, creepy, creepy. Right. He was a little creeped out. So he said, let me wander around more and see if I can find.

Well, at this point, he wasn't wandering. He had purpose. Okay. 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 on his property or evidence that whoever left that track, those tracks leading to his house had left looking for other tracks away from the house. And he didn't find anything. He found nothing, no evidence of anybody.

He certainly didn't find anybody. There was just nothing. One thing though that he did find that was kind of off-putting to 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. Correct. And they were trying to get into the tool shed and he did not like that. So this is, again, this is following on the heels of their maid leaving.

It's citing ghosts as 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-citing C-I-T-I, right? Sure. Another accidental pun? Yeah.

Was that accidental? Sure. Okay. You didn't mean that, did you? Did I say that? Yeah, he said that she saw a ghost-citing. Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess so.

Nice. See how that happened? Yeah. I wondered, by the way, really quickly, if these footprints, if whoever did that did the old shining trick, where little Danny was so smart, he doubled back in his footprints.

Right. And it worked. Oh, it worked big time. Anyone who's seen the end of this shining can tell you. It sounds a lot like I've been drinking today. I haven't at all. I believe you. I've seen what you're drinking.

You're drinking water. And that's not the only weird thing that happened on... So that was in March. Yeah. I'm sorry, two more weird things happened. Okay. So a set of keys go missing in March. Yeah.

And 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, in 1922, they found a strange newspaper on the porch. Man. 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? From 1989? Yeah. That'd be super creepy.

Yeah. And all I 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. Right. Either they didn't subscribe to it, wasn't in their town,

or just some, just random newspaper being on their porch. Yeah. What matters? 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 course of a couple of days. Things are getting like, weirder at a much faster pace. Andreas himself, who I've not taken to be a very superstitious person, started to notice sounds coming from the attic. The same kind of like disembodied footfalls that the maid had cited as a ghost,

exciting. So he's sitting there like, okay, keys are missing. Somebody's tried to get in a tool 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 1989. Right, exactly.

On my front porch. Things have gotten weird. All right, should we take a break? Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

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And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, things are weird. This is in March 1922. The last day of March 1922, the 31st. All right, a new maid comes on the scene named Maria, for sure.

Yeah, this one's confirmed. Okay. Maria Baumgartner. She, on her first day on the job, it proved to not be a very good first day at work, for one really good reason that we'll get to in a minute. We'll tease it out a little bit more. Okay, so she comes to work.

She's working everything's totally normal. As far as anyone around the Hinter Keifeck farm is concerned, like the neighbors and all that, it's just a totally normal day. But in a few days, they would realize that this day, March 31st, 1922, was the last day anyone could say for certain that they had seen any of the Grubers alive.

Correct. So flash forward a few days, April 4th. People were a little weird. They were like, you know what? Circella is not in school. Which is unusual. No one's been to church. We miss that sweet voice of Victoria up there.

Yeah, that was highly unusual as well. Like Victoria did not miss church. Did not miss choir. 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, for sure. And so they said, and also the mail had been piling up,

supposedly, at the post office. Because they didn't use stamps.com. Right. They would have if they'd had the technology, believe me. That's right. That was free. So the neighbors say, let's go check on them.

Apparently they went. I bet other neighbors were like, really? They, yeah. Do you, should we? I don't like them that much. Yeah, and finally someone was like, yeah, we really should. Let's just, let's go.

It's a neighborly thing to do. We're Bavarian, so. Exactly. That's what we do. So this little search party goes to the house to go check on things. And the house is just, the whole farm is just eerily quiet.

Everything's just kind of, there's not a sign of life. There's a dog barking, the grouper dog was a Pomeranian, actually. And this is the time of Pomeranians were a little bigger and stockier. But barked, nonetheless, just like any other Pomeranian. So were they bigger back then? And stockier.

Yeah, German stock. Sure. 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 barn. This is a house dog that the grouper's kept.

So that was a little weird. But otherwise it seemed okay. The horses and the other 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 grouper's bludgeoned to death.

That's right. Andreas, the papa, daughter of Victoria, and dear old Cecilia, 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 attacks were definitely concentrated on their head and face.

Okay. Yeah. And they were covered with hay, not completely covered. There are pictures of this, by the way. Did you look at the crime scene? Creepy. Oh yeah. You can see them in the barn with the hay.

Right. Very graphic, so beware if you're Googling that right now. So they were dead and had been dead for a little while, which we'll get to. They go inside and they find poor little Joseph, just horrific two year old, was found dead, also bludgeoned to death and is caught in mom's bedroom. And then they're made on her first day on the job,

was killed in her bed as well. And Andres' wife, Tazelia, she was in the barn as well. Oh, did I miss that? Yeah. 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. Yeah.

Whether it was hay or sheets or clothing. Yeah. Which is a weird thing to do. Yeah, it's very weird. Although it would become evident why in a little bit once they started questioning the neighbors. So the day after the bodies were found, Dr. Johann Armuller performed the autopsies in the barn

and he decided that what had been used as a murder weapon was a type of pickaxe called a mattock. Yeah. Although the murder weapon wasn't found for another year actually after that. The doctor concluded quite rightly that it was a mattock that had been used. And if you've ever seen like a pickaxe,

but the other end is like blunt and wide, that's a mattock. And whoever killed the grubers in the maid did it with that. Which is horrific. It is. Even worse than that though, they found in Tazelia's hands clenched in her fists, tufts of her own hair.

Yeah. So there was evidence that she had survived for, they think several hours after she was attacked and watched her other family members attacked and then pulled out her own hair for whatever reason. I'd say that was a good enough reason. Sure. 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 pickaxe to the head. Right. Most of the victims were in bedclothes, except for Victoria and Tazelia. They were in their regular clothes, which seemed to indicate that it probably happened

in the evening. Some people were already getting ready for bed. Some people had not yet. Right. And they also think that the grubers were lured one by one out to the barn, kind of Scooby-Doo fashion. Yeah, because clearly it wasn't all of them killed at once because there was no signs of struggle.

Right. Like, yeah, maybe one person went out and died and then the other person was like, hadn't been back for a while. Right. And then they died and then again and again. Horrific. So there was some other, there was weirdness beyond that,

beyond these, just the horrificness of the crime and the fact that the bodies were covered up. This was April 4th, right? They figured out that the bodies had been killed, or the people had been killed, on March 31st. 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 smoke coming out of the chimney the whole weekend. The livestock has been fed. The dogs clearly eaten. Like 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 were tended to like this whole time. So what is that?

Yeah, even the house itself, it showed evidence that someone had eaten a meal there recently or more recently than four or five days ago. The bed looked like it had been slept in since that time. And like we mentioned earlier, that Pomeranian was tied up. I saw different accounts on whether the dog was somewhat injured or not.

I did too. So let's just say the dog might have been hurt some, but ultimately was fine. Right. And like, you know, wasn't killed or anything. Yeah, yeah. It was not injured, I think. Right, so all signs point to the fact

that someone killed this family and then hung out there for a few days. But even more stirring is the idea that the person who killed them may have been the one who 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 life. Very strange. Yeah. So the police started looking around pretty quickly for suspects and realizing, well, first we gotta 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 robbs. And the thing they found out was that there was a little bit of fold in money taken from the bodies, but there was a lot of valuable jewelry and gold coins and other money 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 stuff behind.

They also found out in the investigation that Victoria 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. Yeah. Who knows what that was? Never turned up, lost the time.

So robbery was kind of discarded as a motive, but another one would come to light soon. We'll talk about that after a break. You know, starting your own business can be a difficult thing, especially small business, but developing your online presence is the one thing that doesn't have to be difficult. Yeah, thanks to Google and Squarespace

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make it beautiful. All right, so to me, it's this guy for sure. Is it? Yeah, I think so. We'll go ahead and talk about this, dude. There was a neighboring man, a neighbor, as you might call it, if you'd speak normally. Or a neighboring man. You're a normal human.

Hello, neighboring man, how are you today? If you're, by all means, if you're a professional broadcaster, you should say neighboring man. All right, so his name is Lorenz Schlittenbauer, and he was a, like I said, living nearby, he was a suitor for Victoria, and she had always said, this guy's who knocked me up,

Joseph's, this is Joseph's father. Right. And like you said earlier, he was like, for a little while, I think he claimed paternity, but then when he found out what that meant, he had to pay for that. He's like, that's an English word, I didn't understand. Yeah, exactly.

What is his paternity? So he backed off of that claim, and later it emerged that she was about to sue him for paternity before this murder took place. Right, so some people say, oh, well, that probably set him off. Yeah, 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? Yeah, especially if he wasn't 100% sure it was his kid. So if you look at this Schlittenbauer guy, some really weird stuff starts to emerge. In addition to that motive of not wanting to pay alimony for little Joseph, the way he behaved in the immediate wake of the discovery

of these murders was very bizarre. He was 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? They think it's on TV, they do.

Sure. Everything I learned from the Flintstones points to this guy being suspicious. He also immediately started disturbing the crime scene. Right? Like he 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. Sure. Apparently Schlittenbauer was totally fine handling them. Yeah, he's like, I got the head, you get the legs. One of the men was quoted as saying he disturbed everything there was to disturb. Yeah.

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. Which isn't necessarily a, it doesn't necessarily, yeah, especially if he was, you know, dating Victoria. Yeah, well, true. I would call this part of the body of evidence though. Okay.

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 was like, did he have a key? Or did he know where the key was? Remember the missing keys? And then he also apparently knew the maid's room handle was unusual and he had to lift it up to enter

and not press it down. And apparently he just went right to it and lifted it up. Again, maybe he spent some time over there with Victoria and knew these things. Like a lot of this can be explained away in some ways. They also said that the dog went nuts when he was around. Yeah, like, it's him. Right, exactly.

There's the murderer. Would you take her to leave that? That seems like local folklore to me. Yeah. The dog called out the murderer, you know? And he said it was because he had blood all over his shoes from 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 he was doing and he said he's looking for his son. Yeah, Joseph. There's 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? Yeah. And then secondly, if he was the killer and he was not trying to act unaware, why would he be looking for his son

in the stack of bodies when he knew full well his son was in his room in the house? Misdirection. I guess this guy seemed like he was not very good at misdirection. He had no alibi for the night, apparently. His family said, and this is where it gets, I don't want to say obvious, maybe obvious.

It gets really suspicious to me. His family said, oh no, the night they were murdered, he 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 he spent the night in the Gruber's barn, is what they're saying?

No, no, no, their own barn. Oh, okay, I gotcha. So he apparently though had asthma, so people were like, why would he spend the night in a barn if he has asthma, smarty, right? But that was his alibi, which is pretty weak. He only lived 350 meters away, which I think that's like 19 miles, I'm just kidding.

What is it? It's like three football fields, right? Yeah, I looked up the conversions. Three and a half. It's not too far. So he could have been the one coming back and forth. Like the fact that there were footprints leading one way doesn't to me signify that someone spent six months

hiding there, it could have been, he could have come and gone as he pleased and not been like away from his house too long that anyone noticed. Sure. And maybe he walked in those same footprints. Maybe he did do the Danny. Maybe.

He was the one who originated the Danny. He was Danny before Danny was even born. That's true, or maybe he was Danny. Oh man, this case keeps getting weirder and weirder. 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, when the murder was talked about 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. I don't either. That sounds like something that people would make up in a pub.

Yeah. He used to say, I killed them. Right. No one ever cared. Sure, I guess. Yeah. So that was, he 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. Yeah. But no, not literally. Right. This guy's name was Carl Gabriel, and he used to be married to Victoria.

Yeah. But he died in World War I in the trenches. 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. Yeah.

Maybe he came back to reclaim his wife, found out that she'd had an incestuous relationship. 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 this murder over the years. Yeah, and one of the other things that pointed to him, supposedly, was that in World War II, another whole war later, supposedly some people came forward and said, you know what, we met this German-speaking Russian soldier that used to claim to be the Hintakifekt 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 him being died. People witnessed 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, I guess, at least to 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 fake his death. Not why he fled for the war, but that he faked his death to get out of the marriage. Right.

So why would he fake his death to get out of the marriage, come back years later and kill them all? Great question, Chuck. Yeah. I think the answer to that is he wouldn't. Or maybe it's the perfect crime. Yeah. It's so nonsensical.

He's listening right now laughing. It's the perfect crime. What else? People talking about paranormal, you know, that it was ghosts, and these strange noises, and this mysterious newspaper, and all these footprints is because it was some supernatural force out to get the family.

Well, that would account for the ghost. You could say that accounts for everything. Sure. That's why it's bunk. Yeah. No, that one's not a big one. Although the Munich police very early on decapitated, had the family decapitated,

and their skulls were sent for forensic analysis, and were handled by Claire Voyant, who apparently was not able to come to any conclusions about their fate, or the killer. Yeah, and those bodies were buried headless, because those heads eventually went missing. Yeah, apparently they kept them in the Nuremberg, I guess, in one of their city government buildings,

and it was leveled in World War II. They think that's where the skulls were lost. They think. That was mixed in with the other skulls. It was either that or the ghost that did it. So for the cops part, they interviewed over 100 suspects over the years, including the clear killer, to me, the neighboring man.

Lawrence Schlittenbauer? I just think it all points to him. He apparently, years later, too, was like, God did the right thing with his family. Like, they were awful people. And he didn't say, except for my possible son, the two-year-old. He just said all of them.

They deserved it. So it just kind of seems obvious to me that it was him, because it was, see, someone stayed there. Someone knew the house. Someone took great care of 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

feel like you're within your own safe zone. And if you lived 350 meters away, maybe you would feel safe there. Safe enough that you could retreat very quickly. Yeah, or know that, like, I know no one comes by here, whereas if it was a burglar, they probably wouldn't feel so comfy hanging out for days on end. Right.

So yeah, 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 the evidence they did take, a lot of it was lost. This is 1922, so a lot of forensic techniques hadn't been invented yet, or were still being developed elsewhere in the world.

So in 2007, a police academy in Munich got their hands on the case some students did. The Gutenberg police academy? The first in Feldbrück, they just threw in Brück after. Yeah, why not? Let's throw in another syllable. Students from that police academy investigated this crime. And in Germany, this is an enormously famous crime.

Oh, sure, yeah. It's huge there. It's there, Jack the Ripper, for sure. It will never be solved. It's not possible of being solved. And this is the conclusion from the students at the first in Feldbrück police academy. They said, we think we know who it is.

Since this is unsolvable, and they will never be able to be proven, we're not going to name the person, because they still have relatives alive. But you can guess. It's the one living suspect that anyone's ever really raised. It was probably him. They didn't say that.

That was my conclusion of their conclusions. And then they said, thank you police academy for your findings. And where's the guy that makes all the funny noises with his mouth? You know, Steve Gutenberg follows us on Twitter. No way. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. At Steve Gutbuck. Really? Yeah. And he is in like a Sharknado-esque movie. I'm not sure what the name of it is, but he's in it with the guy who does the voices. Oh, really?

Poisonous name, Michael Something, maybe? Yeah, Michael Something. I will say that, and I think I mentioned this on the show. Maybe that's why he follows us. Steve Gutenberg was in one of the very best episodes of one of my favorite TV shows, Party Down. And did you ever see that show? No.

Boy, it was good. Yeah. It was really, really funny. Had the great Adam Scott and Lizzie Kaplan and one of my heroes, Ken Marino from the state, and Martin Star, Megan Mullally. It was great. Good episode, huh?

Well, they were caterers, like cater waiters, all actors and writers and stuff in Hollywood. And each episode was its own thing, own catering event. And they had one where they showed up to Steve Gutenberg's house for his birthday party. And he pulled up, and he was like, oh, man, 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 Gutenberg. And he does some scene acting with them and gives them great wine, and he has great art. And he's just really, really funny in it. Yeah, I can imagine. He seems like an awesome dude.

He seems so awesome after watching this episode. I was like, man, Goots is the best. And I think they call them Goots in the show, even. Sure, yeah. Anyway, just Goot Boot. Shout out to Party Down. Great, great show. And Steve Gutenberg.

Yeah. Do you have a listener mail, or is this too spooky for one? He did great work on that Bible. Yeah, I got a listener mail. OK, well, if you want to know more about Hinter Keifeck, you can go listen to Stuff You Missed in History class. I think they did an episode that covered it as well. You can search mysteriousuniverse.org

and all sorts of other places for it. And since I said Hinter Keifeck, it's time for Listener Mail. Before we do Listener Mail, we want to give a very special thank you to Margaret and Mike in Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah, thanks, guys. Yeah, they stepped forward and helped Jerry out in a big way, as the Stuff You Should Know Army

is often does. Sure. And it's all we're going to say other than big, big thanks to you guys for helping out. For real. How about that? Yeah. All right, I'm going to call this Listener Mail Squirrel

Shootin'. Hey, guys. Been listening for about a year, love the show. I was listening to the Polar Bears episode, and I stopped dead in my tracks when Chuck told the story about shooting a squirrel. When I was about 13, 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, long as we agreed to skin it and eat it. They'll never do it. Yeah, gotta love those Depression-era grandparents. Like, sure, skin and eat it, it's all yours. I envision them as hippies passing a joint, like joking about how stupid their grandkids were.

Wow. Depression-era, sure, I see that one, too. All right, so we were very excited. We dressed up in camo, walked the property, because I got a dress in camo for hunting squirrels. Eventually found a squirrel and a tree. I should note 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 hoped 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, kneading it, though.

Alive? No. He said it tastes like chicken, so why bother? Like we promised that we would do, 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, I run a small online candle company now that sells dog-themed candles. They donate 10% of all profits to animal shelters and rescues. And so, Stephen, I am going to plug your company over my wife's candle company, even, which is Mama Bath and Body. And you can go to www.noxfavorit, K-N-O-X-S, Noxfavorit.com, and Nox was their dog in the company after.

That's sweet. These are soy candles. I looked it up. They're good. Made from dogs. No, made from soy. Thanks again for everything you do. You're daily listen for me.

I hope you continue for years to come. That is Stephen. Way to go, Stephen. Thank you for that. We appreciate you letting us share your horrible story with everybody. If you have a horrible story you want to share, I'm going to regret saying that.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called,

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.