REMASTERED – Episode 27: On the Farm

This is the story of the one.

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In 1943, Abraham Maslow gifted the world with his list of five core essentials that every human being has in common.

Today, we call the chart Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it's still a framework for how we understand and study much of human behavior in our modern world.

The list includes a few obvious entries, such as our physiological needs and our desire for love and affection.

There are deeper concepts too, like self-actualization and esteem.

They're just as important but a bit harder for many people to understand at first glance.

But it's the last item on the list that I want to focus on.

It almost seems too obvious to be there, but at the same time, it has a bit of everything.

It's basic yet complex.

It straddles the line, and maybe that's why it's so important to all of us.

What is it?

Safety.

Humans like to feel safe.

Our pursuit of safety is core to who we are as people.

It's not unique to humans for sure.

Animals are very good at finding and building homes wherever they can, but it's undeniable that safety drives a lot of our decisions.

And rightly so.

We deserve to feel safe.

One could argue that it's a subset of freedom.

When we are fully in control of our own lives, a portion of that control will always be diverted towards safety.

We find safety in many different places though.

We find it in groups of friends because, as every horror movie has taught us, there's safety in numbers, right?

We find it in places like work, our schools, and religious buildings, although those are admittedly much less safe today than they were a generation ago.

It's in our homes, though, that we find the most safety.

We nest there, in a sense.

We build a cocoon around ourselves that protects us from the weather, from outsiders, and from harm.

But tragically, sometimes that's not enough.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this

is lore

No one liked Andreas Gruber.

They thought the old farmer was greedy and the public perception of the man was that he was rude and cranky.

He was an old, crusty farmer, and no one around him appreciated that very much.

Gruber was 63, and his wife, Tsecilia, was 72.

They lived on their farm about 40 miles north of Munich, between the small German towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen.

It wasn't their farm, though.

No, it belonged to their daughter, 35-year-old Victoria, who lived there on the farm with them along with her two children.

Her daughter, Tsecilia, was seven, and Joseph was two.

And it was Joseph's birth that really got the neighbors talking.

Victoria's husband Carl had left to serve in the First World War in 1914 while she was pregnant with their daughter.

According to all reports, he died there in the trenches and never returned.

So who fathered Joseph?

Local gossip, fueled by a dislike of Andreas Gruber, claimed the boy was a product of incest between Victoria and her father.

The birth certificate, though, simply listed the initials LS, leaving the boy's paternity a mystery to wonder and whisper over.

The farm provided ample privacy from the gossip, though.

It sat in a large clearing in the thick German forest, close enough to nearby Kaifek to be part of the village, yet far enough away to be outside the normal flow of life there.

Hinter, as the Germans would say.

The farm was hinter, or behind the village of Kaifek.

So most called it Hinter Kaifak.

They still interacted with the village though.

Young Cecilia attended school there six days a week, the postman delivered mail to the farm regularly, and a local woman even lived with the Grubers Gruber's as their maid.

From everything I've read about the family, they seemed to be nothing more than ordinary.

Sure, they were broken in certain ways.

Victoria's lost husband, Andreas' reputation as a greedy crank were hard to miss, but overall, they were just one more German family trying to do their best to get by.

In the autumn of 1921, the Gruber's maid quit her job there on the farm.

She claimed, of all things, that the farm was haunted.

She had heard noises when no one else should have been around.

She had noticed items that had been moved, items that no one else would admit to.

She never felt alone.

It took a while to find a replacement, and in the meantime, winter arrived.

Life on the farm became more insular.

There were no crops to tend to, so the grubers cared for their animals and stayed warm.

But little things were beginning to happen that caught their attention.

Things that shouldn't be happening, and it made them wonder if maybe, just maybe,

their old old maid had been right.

They began to hear those same noises up in the attic.

Andreas even found a newspaper in the house that he had no memory of buying.

When he asked his daughter and wife, they were just as baffled.

And then, one of the house keys went missing.

It was unsettling, to say the least.

In late March of 1922, though, Andreas noticed the most unusual thing.

He'd been outside the house to fetch something, perhaps firewood, or check on the exterior of the house.

The night before had given them another fresh layer of snow on the ground, so perhaps he needed to inspect the roof.

We don't really know.

But as he walked from the house to the barn, Andreas claimed he saw footprints in the snow.

They started at the edge of the forest and covered the distance between the trees and the house, ending there.

Perhaps a traveler passed through in the night.

Maybe a local had been walking through the snow and gotten lost.

That happened from time to time.

But what was odd about the tracks to Andreas was that they didn't go back.

They just ended there.

We know this because Gruber himself told some of the locals while he was in town the next day.

He was clearly disturbed by the things he had seen, but none of his neighbors had experienced anything similar.

And that was the last time anyone saw the old farmer alive.

The first clue that anything odd was going on, at least to the people of Kaifek, was when little Totilia failed to show up for school on Saturday, April 1st.

The next day, the entire family was absent from church, where they attended, pardon the pun, religiously.

Totilya missed school on Monday as well.

Finally, when the postman arrived on Tuesday, he found Monday's mail still on the porch where he'd left it.

This drew his suspicion, and he mentioned it back in the village.

The people there put the pieces together and decided something had to be amiss.

So later that day, a group of neighbors gathered together and they quickly set off to visit the farm.

You know how muffled and quiet it can get outside when there's a lot of snow?

As if the sounds of the world around you have been muted and hushed?

I imagine that those men were keenly aware of that unnatural silence standing there outside the Gruber farmhouse that day.

One of the men shouted out for Andreas or anyone else in the house to come out and speak with them.

They just wanted to make sure everyone was safe and well.

But no one answered.

Just more of that muted, snow-covered silence.

Not giving up, one of the neighbors, a local man named Lawrence Schlittenbauer, led the group to the barn.

It was daylight, so perhaps Andreas could be found working in there with the animals.

But when they opened the door, they were greeted by a grisly sight.

There on the straw-covered floor lay the bloody bodies of Andreas, his wife and daughter, and young Cecilia.

It was clear that something horrible had happened to the family, and Schlittenbauer quickly walked from the barn to the house, which were connected by a door, and inside, he found more bloodshed.

Maria Baumgarten, the new maid who had started work on the farm the previous day, lay dead in her own bed.

Little Joseph, last to be found, had met the same fate.

It was a scene of devastation and gore, and it left the men stunned.

Within a matter of hours, investigators from Munich arrived to go over the scene and gather evidence.

They wanted to piece together what had happened, to discover the story and find clues that might point to the person or people responsible.

What they did uncover, though, was far more disturbing than answers.

It appeared that each of the adults in the barn had been led there one at a time.

Whoever the killer had been, they had appeared to call each person into the barn alone, where they executed them with a farm tool known as a mattock, a sort of pickaxe used for cutting.

Each blow to the head was powerful and deadly, and each victim most likely died instantly.

The bodies inside the house had the same type of wounds.

Maria and Joseph were found in pools of their own blood.

their skulls crushed by their attacker.

As far as the police were concerned, whoever wielded the weapon knew how to use it, and they did so without hesitation.

This was cold-blooded murder, without a doubt.

The trouble was, the weapon seemed to be missing.

It was just gone.

Other aspects of the crime didn't seem to line up with logic.

For one, there seemed to be no motive behind the actions of the killer.

It was known to a few in the village that, just weeks before, Victoria had withdrawn all of her savings, borrowed more from her dead husband's sister, and brought the cash home.

She told people that she planned to invest in the farm.

She even made a large 700-mark donation to the village church.

All of the remaining money was still there in the house.

The killer hadn't taken it, nor had they taken any of the other valuables that filled the farmhouse.

Nothing was stolen.

Whoever had called the grubers into their barn, whoever had swung the pickaxe and ended all of their lives, they weren't interested in money.

Another detail that seemed odd was the condition of the house and farm.

In most instances, a killer will flee the scene after the crime has been committed, but here there were signs to the contrary.

The animals in the barn appeared to have been fed and watered throughout the weekend, and not by an amateur either.

Whoever had tended them knew his way around a farm.

But most disturbing of all were the reports from neighbors that smoke had been seen rising from the chimney of the farmhouse all throughout the weekend.

Food had been eaten, and one of the beds had been slept in.

It was hard to believe, but the facts didn't lie.

The Gruber family's killer didn't run.

Instead, he stayed in the house long after the bodies had turned cold, as if nothing had happened at all.

The question, of course, was a simple one: Who could do such a thing?

But this was 1922.

CSI wasn't a thing that really existed yet.

There was no DNA analysis available to investigators.

Even fingerprint identification was too young to have reached the farmlands of German Bavaria.

But even if there had been better tools, there were other obstacles to uncovering the truth.

The local men who initially stumbled upon the bodies, led by Lawrence Schlittenbauer, had disturbed much of the crime scene.

While the maid and young Joseph had each been covered with cloth by the killer, the bodies in the barn had been stacked like lumber.

On top of this macabre pile, the killer had placed an old door, and then hay had been scattered all over it in an attempt to hide it.

So when Schlittenbauer entered the barn with the others, he actually lifted the door and began to move the bodies, making a full and accurate investigation impossible.

According to those who watched him, Schlittenbauer lifted and moved the corpses with no emotion emotion or hesitation, as if the sight of it all didn't bother him, or wasn't new to him.

And it was that, along with some other subtle clues, that quickly moved him to the top of the list of suspects.

Why would he do it?

Well, he told one of the men that he moved the bodies because he was looking for his son.

Think back for a moment.

Remember the questionable parentage of young Joseph, whose birth certificate simply listed one L.S.

as the father?

Numerous neighbor testimonies made it clear that that man was Lawrence Schlittenbauer, LS.

And that went a long way toward explaining why he led the men from the barn into the house.

He'd been looking for his son, Joseph.

But according to some of the men with him that day, the door between the barn and the kitchen had been locked.

They knew that because Schlittenbauer pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

which was more than a little curious, seeing as how Gruber had mentioned in town that one of his house keys had gone missing.

And one final bit, the family dog was seen by the postman on the day before, where it had been tied to a corner of the barn.

When the men arrived on Tuesday though, they found it in the barn, wounded but alive.

When it saw Schlittenbauer, the animal barked uncontrollably.

All of the clues seemed odd and out of place.

They make your mind perk up and feel like something deeper was going on, but at face value they prove nothing.

And that's the frustrating part.

The dog might have just been barking because of the bodies.

Schlittenbauer might have had a key simply because he was the Gruber's closest neighbor.

Like I said, these clues were subtle, and that's why he was never formally charged with a crime.

As for motive, some people believe that Victoria had sued Lawrence over alimony, and the man had refused.

Clearly, Victoria needed money shortly before the murders, as her bank withdrawal suggested.

But historians are doubtful.

The most likely reality, they believe, is that Joseph's father was none other than his grandfather, Andreas, and the arrangement with Lawrence was simply an effort to save face in the village.

But alternative theories have also been suggested.

There are some who believe that Victoria's husband Carl did not in fact die during World War I.

It seems that no body was ever recovered or sent home, and a friend of Carl's even testified later to seeing him alive in the mid-1920s.

Some people wonder, could Carl have had a hand in the murders, perhaps out of anger toward Victoria's relationship with Schlittenbauer while he was away at war?

I've even read another theory that claimed Andreas had been waiting for an important letter of some kind.

I can't find more than a mention of it, but what if the killer and the letter were connected?

That might explain why he stayed in the house for a few days after the murders.

He'd been waiting to intercept whatever the letter contained.

And one last thought.

By all accounts, the killer had been in or around the Gruber home many times before the events of March 31st.

The Gruber's former maid had quit her job because she felt like the place was haunted.

There had been an unrecognized newspaper, the odd noises, the missing key, weeks and weeks of unusual activity that eventually led up to the day of the murders.

The day, mind you, that the new maid started working there.

Maria Baumgarten had been killed just hours after arriving for her first day on the job.

It makes you wonder, did her arrival upset the plans of whoever it was that seemed to be stalking the Gruber family?

Did she see him and pay for it with her life?

Hinterkaifek has the feel of a cabin in the woods, the centerpiece of many a horror film and novel.

A place of retreat, far from the demands and prying eyes of the outside world, where we could go and get away from it all.

A place where we can find safety in the middle of an unsafe wilderness.

A home away from home.

We all want to feel safe, and thankfully, most of us do.

But there's just enough risk on the outsides of the bell curve that we're always left wondering, what if?

And that's how fear works.

It sits in the dark corner at the edge of our minds and watches.

We know it's not going to step out into the light, but we can feel it glaring at us from the shadows.

I can't help but wonder if the Grubers ever had that sensation during those last few months.

If maybe there had been times when Andreas just couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching him.

Did Victoria have moments when she felt like she wasn't alone.

We'll never know the answers to those questions, unfortunately.

One more tiny mystery.

The physician who performed the autopsies on all six victims had their heads removed and sent to Munich for further study.

Some reports claim that a clairvoyant was part of that research, but I can't find proof of that.

Their bodies were buried nearby, in what is now modern-day Weidhofen.

But their skulls remained in Munich and were eventually lost in the chaos of World War II.

Today, the farm in the woods is little more than a memory.

All that is left today is a small memorial.

But over the year that followed the tragedy there, it stood empty, like a crypt in the middle of that clearing in the forest, a constant reminder to the neighbors who passed by, of the people they lost, and of the violence that had visited their small village.

That might be why they finally tore it down in 1923.

Maybe they couldn't stand to look at it again.

Maybe it needed upkeep that required going inside and no one was willing to do that.

Maybe they just wanted to move on and forget.

Whatever the true reason was, it was only after the farm was torn down that the murder weapon was finally discovered.

One of the men found it among the debris at the top of the pile, mixed in with items that had been in storage.

It had been hidden inside the house all along, in the last place anyone would think to look:

the attic.

The murders on that small Hinterkayfek farm are fascinating to us because of their brutality and uniqueness.

The idea that a killer might settle in and live in the scene of their crime for a while, Well, it's unsettling and compelling.

But the undercurrent beneath it all is even more attractive, the fact that it remains unsolved.

Because most of us hate incomplete puzzles and challenges that haven't been surmounted.

Which is why I've pulled together one more mystery to throw at you, one that has its own kind of beauty at the center.

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Mary was an only child.

Born in 1820, her mother ran a boarding house, and her father had worked on a steamship.

New York City was a busy place for ships, after all, and that kept him very busy as well, putting food on their table.

But when she was 17, her life blew up.

First, her father's steamship literally exploded, leaving her grieving mother at a loss for how to make ends meet.

So Mary went looking for a job and eventually landed employment as a clerk in a nearby tobacco shop, which is where the second explosion happened.

Celebrity.

This is wild generalization and assumption, I know, but I'm guessing the typical tobacco shop employee back then was a bit more old and grizzled from all that smoke.

Mary, being young and pretty, clearly stood out, and that attention brought in more customers, which earned her a bigger paycheck.

I don't want that to be tossed aside aside as a small detail, though.

You see, Mary became something of a celebrity as a result, with customers coming from all over just to glimpse the woman many called the beautiful cigar girl.

There are reports of famous people, including Sleepy Hollow author Washington Irving, actually making the trip to the shop just to confirm the legend of her beauty.

And look, I know it's creepy.

And I'd like to think folks today would handle it better.

But then again, platforms like Instagram and TikTok might suggest that, no, it probably would play out the same today.

Make of that what you will.

Oh, and one last bit of context.

Mary was so popular within the first year of taking her job at the tobacco shop that some historians believe that she partnered with the New York Sun to create some fake drama by going missing for three days in October of 1838.

Of course, Mary resurfaced, life went on, and her fame increased.

as did the New York Sun's paper sales.

But almost three years later, in July of 1841, Mary's story took a dark turn.

On Sunday the 25th, she told her fiancé that she was headed out of the city for a quick visit to see family in nearby New Jersey.

She planned to be back at work the next day.

But when she wasn't, folks started wondering where Mary, the beautiful cigar girl, had gone.

Maybe the weather had delayed her return.

Maybe she ran away from the attention and fame to start a less public life somewhere else.

Or maybe something more dreadful had happened.

On Wednesday the 28th, some men in Hoboken, New Jersey spotted something floating in the water of the Hudson.

Grabbing a boat, they rowed out to see what it was and then quickly called the police.

It was the body of Mary Rogers.

As you might imagine, the press had a field day.

News of her murder spread quickly throughout the nation, writing a final dark chapter in a story everyone had loved so much.

But there were also theories.

And of course, this being 1841 and an era long before things like DNA evidence, all of it would remain just that.

Theories.

I wish I could tell you that they managed to track down Mary's killer, but that's not an option here.

Her death quickly became one of the most famous unsolved murders in New York City.

And because of that, people really never stopped wondering.

What really happened?

Who was to blame?

Where was the killer now?

It didn't help that her fiancé took his own life shortly after.

In fact, he traveled traveled to that spot on the river in Hoboken to do it.

Some saw it as an outpouring of grief.

Others, of course, saw a killer taking the easy way out.

The only thing we know for sure is that we'll never know for sure.

One man wanted to find the answers, though, and he believed it was just a puzzle that needed worked out logically.

He had a way with detail that was admired by many.

Think Sherlock Holmes, but with much less action and drama.

So to work through the mystery, he wrote it all out.

But this guy's job wasn't writing for newspapers or scientific journals.

No, he was better known for make-believe.

So in order to properly go through this exercise in logic and problem solving, he changed Mary's details just enough to turn her into a new creation, a fictional character, but not enough to obscure the details of the crime.

He was looking for a real answer, after all.

Mary went from working in a tobacco shop to a perfume shop.

New York City was swapped out for Paris.

The Hudson became the Seine.

And the final story, published in three episodes from November of 1842 to February of 1843, would go down in history as the first ever true crime novel.

The Mystery of Marie Roget by Edgar Allan Poe.

This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make an executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy.

My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place: grimandmild.com.

And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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