Hinterkaifeck, a small farmstead situated between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen (approximately 70 km north of Munich), was the scene of one of the most puzzling crimes in German history. On the evening of the 31st of March 1922, the six inhabitants of the farm were killed with a pickaxe, and the murder is still unsolved.
The six victims were: the farmer Andreas Gruber and his wife Cäzilia; their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel and her two children Cäzilia and Josef ; as well as the maid Maria Baumgartner. The two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas: it was common knowledge that they had an incestuous relationship.
Hinterkaifeck was never an official place name. The name was used for the remote farmstead of the hamlet of Kaifeck, located nearly one kilometer north of the main part (another two farmsteads) of Kaifeck and hidden in the woods (the prefix Hinter, part of many German place names, meaning behind), part of the town of Wangen, which had been incorporated into Waidhofen on October 1, 1971.
7-year old Cäzilia
and her father, Andreas
The corpse of the 2-year-old Josef.
Where the maid's body was found.
Coffins.
