SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Hinterkaifeck Axe Murders

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Hi everybody and welcome to our new playlist for the fall featuring some of our best episodes on true crime.

We've got so many that it was hard to choose and we left a number of the all-time greats out because we've released them as selects.

But if this floats your boat then check out some of our other true crime episodes that didn't make the list like the Yuba County 5, The Body on Somerton Beach, The Missing Soder Children, and 10 Dumb Criminals, among many others.

We're starting the playlist off with our episode on a grisly unsolved mystery from 1922 in Bavaria, where a family was found murdered on their farm.

It has all sorts of weird twists and turns and it's a genuinely mysterious unsolved case.

Okay, here we go.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.

Chuck Bryant and Jerry.

Yep.

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 Hallowend, 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?

Have you got your German pronunciation down, by the way?

Should we talk about

Hinterkefek.

Yeah.

Disha Chang.

Yeah.

Dishia Chang.

More specifically.

Right.

The irony of all this is.

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.

Yeah.

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 that happens.

It happens.

Still got everything else right.

So Dixia Chang is really Dixia Chung, sort of.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

And Hinter Kaifek.

Hinter Kaifek.

Hinter Kaifek.

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 going to stumble on one, but I'll just hold on to that.

I don't even know which one you're talking about.

I know.

That's what's going to make it exciting.

Oh, man.

Maybe we should have a sound effect when it happens, and I'll just.

Like a boring?

Sure.

Okay.

That'll disrupt the spookiness.

Well, let's get spooky chuck, shall we?

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 I was going to 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 Weidhofen.

Is that the one?

I'm just going to 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 Kaifek.

And

Hinterkaifek?

No, well, the town,

the village is called Kaifek.

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 Hinterkaifek.

It was located a little bit outside of this village, in the hinterland, you might call it.

Right.

So the name of this farm was Hinterkaifek, Kaifek.

And on this farm lived a man, a woman, another woman, some little kids.

This is going terribly, isn't it?

No, I think it's great.

So the family who made up 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.

Uh, the wife's name was

Kazilia.

Segelia.

Frank.

No, if I'm not mistaken, if you begin a word with C in German and it's pronounced like a like a TS,

I think that would be Tzetzilia.

What?

That's not fair.

I know.

Come on, Germany.

Tetzelia.

Okay, well, let me ask you this.

So, Tetzelia?

Yeah.

Am I saying it right now?

I think Tetzelia.

Oh, that's Italian.

It does sound Italian.

So, Tetzelia 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?

Victoria.

Okay.

And there's two grandchildren.

The oldest was a granddaughter.

Now, she has an umlaut over her name, even though it's spelled otherwise the exact same as her grandmother, Tadzilia.

So how would you say that?

It would be Certzilia.

Tutzilia?

Cert.

Ts?

Yeah, Tzertzilia.

Tzotzilia.

And Tadzilia.

Tzotzilia and Certzilia.

So it wouldn't be like Tatzilia and Tadzilia 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, you know, Chuck, as we'll find, a lot of the details and facts of this case have been lost to time.

That's right.

Lastly, there was a little boy, a two-year-old, named Joseph, that was Victoria's son.

And Victoria was widowed.

She was 35, I believe, at the time that we come into Hinter Kaifek.

And they all lived together, relatively isolated, actually,

because

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 Pater Familius Andreas was

not friendly.

He liked to keep to himself, and apparently he was very abusive to his wife and children.

Children, he only had one living child still at this point, which is Victoria.

And we're in the Wayback 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 it's a leap, a total leap.

Also, the time when

people routinely died from the flu.

Sure.

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, she's 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.

Andreas.

Right.

That was the rumor in town.

Which smacks to me of small-town 1920s stuff.

I'm not sure if I bought that.

No, but that was definitely the rumor in town.

Yeah.

But there was a significant number of people in town who either believed that or were very much aware that other people believed that.

Yeah, because he apparently was very controlling of Victoria.

Kind of to the level of being characterized as obsessed with her.

Yeah.

So it could very well be true.

Could.

Lost a time.

Could also have not been true, and there's other reports that Joseph 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 found some other articles about the case itself, but the main one that we started with was from mysteriousuniverse.org.

Not a normal place where we would get our stuff, but it's a good article.

Yeah, and we...

Everything else I read about it, it sort of all checked out as being the same.

Way to go, go, mysterious universe.org.

Good job.

Thanks for it.

So things start to get a little weird on the farm when the maid at the farm, whose name may or may not be Maria.

We don't know.

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, yeah, I think she was mentally disturbed.

Sure, that's an easy way to quiet the townspeople if you don't want to.

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 Hinter Kaifek.

That'd be a good name for the movie version of this.

Season of Dread.

Yeah.

I can't believe there's not a number of blockbuster movies about this.

Yeah, I looked it up.

Apparently there were a couple that weren't very big.

But

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

Maybe even Andreas Gruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans, I'm going to go ahead and admit.

Yeah.

You see the name Gruber, and that's what jumps to mind.

So the maid leaves, and like I said, the weird things start happening.

A few months later, Andreas is

wandering around his property.

around Dirkaife.

Wandering around.

Right.

Yeah.

Just looking aimlessly for something to do.

Family member to punch.

There was a snowstorm, and he was looking around to see 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.

That point on.

Well, that would be a single step set.

Well, you know, that old adage.

Sure.

There were two sets of footprints, and then when there were only one.

It wasn't that God left you, it was when he was carrying you.

That's right.

You're sorry ass.

That's a great story.

Even if you're not religious, you got to 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.

Oh, 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 was 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

this is again this is following on the heels of their their maid leaving yeah be citing ghosts as the reason she left.

Somebody has come to their farm farm and not left.

They tried to get into the tool shed.

The things are getting a little creepy.

So in that case, it was a ghost sighting, 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, you said that she saw a ghost sighting.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I guess so.

Nice.

See how that happens?

Yeah.

I wondered, by the way, really quickly, if these footprints, if whoever did that did the old shining trick.

Remember, 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.

So that was in March.

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,

is there somebody like

hanging around our 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 a newspaper that I couldn't get if it was like, was it from Russia or was it from 1989?

Yeah, that would be super creepy.

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, it wasn't in their town, or just some just random newspaper being on their porch was what matters.

Yeah, I couldn't find anything beyond that as well.

Yeah, there was one other last thing, and all 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 sighted

as a ghost sighting.

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.

Things have gotten weird.

All right, should we take a break?

Yeah.

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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.

No.

For one really good reason

that we'll get to in a minute.

Oh,

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 Kaifek 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 groubers alive.

Correct.

So flash forward a few days, April 4,

people were a little weird.

They were like, you know what?

Tritzilia was not in school.

Which is unusual.

No one's been to church.

We missed that sweet, sweet voice of Victoria up there.

Yeah, that was highly unusual as well.

Like, Victoria did not miss church.

Did not miss 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.

You know?

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.

And apparently they went.

And then other neighbors were like, really?

Yeah.

Do you

like them that much?

Yeah, and finally someone was like, yeah, we really should.

Just let's go.

It's a neighborly thing to do.

We're Bavarian, so

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 Gruber dog was a Pomeranian, actually.

And this was a time when Pomeranians were a little bigger and stockier,

but barked nonetheless,

just like any other Pomeranian.

Are they bigger back then?

Mm-hmm.

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.

Okay.

But what was odd was that it was tied up in the far in the barn.

This is a house dog that the groupers 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 grubers

bludgeoned to death.

That's right.

Andreas, the papa,

daughter of Victoria, and dear old Tsuitsilia, the granddaughter, in the barn, stacked one on top of the other, bled to death, bludgeoned to death, only 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 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 in his cot in mom's bedroom.

And then the maid on her first day on the job was killed in her bed as well.

And

Andreas' wife, Tetzelia,

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.

Sure.

So the day after the bodies were found,

Dr.

Johann Armueller 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.

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, you know, like a pickaxe, but the other end is like blunt and wide,

that's a mattock.

And

whoever killed the grubers and the maid did it with that.

Right.

Which is horrific.

It is.

Even worse than that, though, they found

in Tzilia'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 had pulled out her own hair for whatever reason.

I'd say that was a good enough reason.

Sure.

Uh 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 bed clothes except for Victoria and Tsertilia.

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 the groupers were lured one by one out to the barn, kind of scooby-doo fashion.

Yeah, because clearly it wasn't all 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, they 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

just the horrificness of the crime and the fact that the bodies were covered up.

This was April 4th, right?

And 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

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.

Yeah.

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 differing 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 what this 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 got to go with motive, I think is what they said to themselves.

Sure, like occasionally it happens that there's a vagrant that comes through and kills for money and robs.

And

the thing they found out was that there was a little bit of folden 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.

No.

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 of 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.

T-Mobile's Friday Night 5G Lights is back for another season of Hometown Pride and big wins.

T-Mobile brings communities together by giving high schools across America the chance to turn their Friday nights into something unforgettable.

So far, 25 finalists have won a $25,000 grant to upgrade their stadiums, and now these schools are going head-to-head for the $1 million grand prize package.

We're talking a game-changing homefield upgrade, a Gronk Fitness Weight Room Makeover, an epic tailgate party, and a VIP trip to the SEC Championship.

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That's up to you.

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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 or 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, lived nearby.

He was a suitor for Victoria.

And she had always said,

this guy is 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.

Exactly.

What is this?

Paternity.

So he backed off of that claim.

And later it was 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.

Right.

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?

At least on TV they do.

Sure.

Everything I learned from the Flintstones points to this guy 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.

Apparently Schlippenbauer 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.

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

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 you 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.

Which you take take or leave that.

That seems like

local folklore to me.

Yeah.

The dog called out the murderer.

Yeah.

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.

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

obvious, maybe not obvious.

It gets really suspicious to me.

His family said, oh, no, he's...

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 are like, why would he spend the night in the 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 conversion.

Three and a half?

It's not too far.

Yeah.

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 you know he 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 this case keeps getting weirder and weirder yeah and the more we make up about it that's true

the other thing that he said that i thought was

I mean, this is just, I don't even know if I believe this.

Apparently, many years later,

when the murder was talked about in 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 either.

I don't either.

That sounds like something that people would make up in a pub.

Yeah.

He used to say, I killed him.

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.

Maybe he came back to reclaim his wife, found out that she'd had an incestuous relationship with his father, he snaps, he kills everybody.

Yeah, I don't buy this at all.

Well, no.

They started the police, I think, and 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 Russian, German-speaking Russian soldier that used to claim to be the Henta Kaifecht 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.

Okay.

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, get out of the marriage, come back years later, and kill them all?

Great, 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?

Of course, whenever they're going one way and not the other, and they're talk of ghosts, you're going to have some tinfoil hat-wearing people on the internet 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 a clairvoyant, 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 their

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's mixed in with the other skulls.

It was either that or the ghost that did it.

So for the cops part, they interviewed over a hundred 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 this family.

Like, they were awful people.

And he didn't say, except for my possible son, the two-year-old.

Right.

He just said, all of them, they deserved it.

Yeah.

So it just kind of seems obvious to me.

that it was him because it was

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.

Yeah.

Whereas if it was a burglar, they...

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 Furstenfeldbruck.

They just threw in Bruck after, you know.

Yeah, why not?

Let's throw in another syllable.

Students from that police academy investigated this crime.

And in Germany, like it's pretty.

This is an enormously famous crime.

Oh, sure, yeah.

It's huge there.

It's their Jack the Ripper for sure.

It'll never be solved.

It's not possible of being solved.

And this is the conclusion from those students at the Furstenfeldbruck Police Academy.

They said, we think we know who it is.

We're not, since this is unsolvable, it will never be able to be proven, we're not going to name the person because they still have relatives alive, but you can guess.

Right.

It's the one living suspect that anyone's ever really raised.

Yeah.

It was probably him.

Yeah.

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?

Mm-hmm.

Boy, I used to know his 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 this.

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, Joe?

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 Starr.

Megan Mulally.

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, like, I forgot to cancel.

I really had the party a couple of days ago with my friends.

He's like, but since you're all here, why don't we just have a party?

And so the waiters end up having a party with 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 I can imagine.

He's like an awesome dude.

He seems so awesome after watching this episode.

I was like, man, Goots is the best.

Yeah.

And I think they called him Goots in the show, even.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Or Gootbook.

Shout out to Party Down.

Great, great show.

And Steve Gutenberg.

Yeah.

Do you have a listener meal?

Or is this too spooky for one?

He did great work on that Bible.

Yeah, I got a listener meal.

Okay, well, if you want to know more about Hinter Kaifek,

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 Kaifek, 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

often does.

sure and uh that's all we're gonna say other than big big thanks to you guys for helping out for real how about that yeah all right i'm gonna call this listener male uh squirrel shooting 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 a 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 and I shoot a squirrel as long as we agreed to skin it and eat it.

They're like, they'll never do it.

Yeah, you've got to love those Depression Era grandparents.

Like, sure, skin it and eat it.

It's all yours.

I envisioned them as hippies like 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, you know, you got to dress in camo if you're hunting squirrels.

Sure.

Eventually found a squirrel in 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.

He fell from the tree, and much to my chagrin, he did not die.

He made a noise I hope to never hear again.

It was that awful.

Oh, man.

I had to hand the gun to my cousin.

I just could not do it and take the other shot.

We ended up skinning it and eating 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.

I actually run a small online candle company now that sells dog-themed candles.

He donates

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.

Whoa,

which is Mama, Bath, and Body.

And you can go to www.noxfavorite, K-N-O-X-S,

noxesfavorite.com and knox was their dog they named the company after that's sweet these are soy candles i looked it up they're good made from dogs uh no made from dogs made from soy dogs uh thanks again for everything you do you're a daily listen for me i hope to can hope you continue for years to come that is stephen

stephen way to go steven thank you for that uh we appreciate you letting us share your horrible story with everybody yeah

If you have a horrible story you want to share, oh man, I'm going to regret saying that.

You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast.

You can join us on facebook.com/slash stuff you should know.

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And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housuffworks.com.

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Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

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