On March 31, 1922, the owner's family and six people, including their nanny, were brutally murdered on a farm in Bavaria, Germany, one of the ten most unsolved cases of the twentieth century, and although it was a hundred years apart, the case remained unsolved.
Located in the Weedhoven county of Bavaria, Germany, about 70 miles from the capital Munich, the Cintecafeet Farm is a scattered area where the local population is mainly engaged in agriculture.
The farm is home to gruber, a 63-year-old farm owner, and his wife, Kezilia, 35, Victoria, who is their daughter, 7, granddaughter Gabriel, and 2-year-old grandson Joseph.
The family's combination was also more "chaotic", the original owner of the farm was Kezilia's ex-husband, but after giving birth to Victoria, the ex-husband was conscripted into the army and later died on the battlefield. After Kezilia and Gruber married, Gruber became the farmer and Victoria's stepfather.
Victoria had previously married a man named Carl, and soon after the marriage, she became pregnant, and when the child was not yet born, Carl was conscripted into the army and has not been heard from since. Victoria later gave birth to her now 7-year-old daughter. As for 2-year-old Joseph, many people in the town are rumored to have been born of incest between Victoria and her stepfather, and Gruber was also sentenced to a year in prison for this.
Because the farm is far from the town and Gruber's personality is isolated, he usually does not have much contact with the residents. About half a year before the incident, Gruber changed his usual initiative to ask residents whether there were any strange things happening in the surrounding area. Asked why, it was that the nanny in Gruber's family often heard strange noises from the attic when she slept at night, and the frightened nanny offered Gruber's resignation, giving the reason: "The farm is entangled in something".
Originally Gruber did not pay attention to it, but planned to find another nanny, until one day, his 7-year-old granddaughter was called a parent for dozing off. Under the questioning of the family, the little girl said the reason, every day before going to bed, she could hear the sound of footsteps walking around and men whispering from the attic, and she was frightened and could not sleep.
That day, Gruber took a shotgun and searched all the corners of the house, but found nothing unusual. After that, Gruber, who was more concerned about this matter, also heard "Bar click, bar click, bar click..." from the attic at night, like the sound of the heel hitting the wooden floor, but rushing up to see that there was nothing in the attic.
So Gruber began to ask the people around him if there were any strange people or people, but he did not get an answer, and the matter could only be solved. At the same time, the news of the farm's "haunting" also began to spread in the town.
A few days before the crime, Gruber also told his neighbors that he had found suspicious footprints. One morning, Gruber got up to clear the snow, and as soon as he opened the door, he saw a series of footprints, and he looked along the footprints and found that the beginning of the footprints was in the woods behind the farm, and the end was the barn of his own farm, and the footprints were one-way and there was no sign of return. The footprints don't match the rest of the family, which means that someone may have come to the farm from the woods and haven't left yet.
So Gruber picked up the shotgun again and inspected the rooms of the farm, not even the chicken coop, but still found nothing. In addition, he also found that one of the keys he had placed on the porch was missing, because he was older, the keys were fixed in one place, and they certainly would not be misplaced. Later, he also found a newspaper at home that had never been ordered, the appearance of the newspaper was neat, and there were no creases from reading, which should have been delivered not long ago. But probably because of personality and family reasons, Gruber did not choose to call the police.
On the afternoon of April 4, 1922, lorenz, the farmer's neighbor, noticed that he had not seen Gruber for several days, and Gruber was very industrious and could always be seen going in and out of the farm. So Lorenz asked his two sons to go next door to see the situation, and the son came back to tell him that he had not seen a shadow on the farm, and Lorenz, who felt that something was wrong, called the other residents and went to the farm to check it out.
When everyone came to the farm and pushed open the barn, the first thing they smelled was a foul smell, and then they saw several corpses hidden by straw, trembling and pulling open the straw, and what came into view were the bodies of Gruber, Kezilia, Victoria and her seven-year-old daughter! The blood on the ground had long dried up, and except for Victoria, whose throat was cut, everyone else was hit by a blunt object on the head. Arriving at the house, I found 2-year-old Joseph in the cradle of Victoria's room, and in a corner room, I saw maria, a new nanny, lying in a pool of blood, and the cause of death was skull fracture.
Lorenz and his neighbors were so frightened by the scene in front of them that they quickly informed the town's sheriff, who had seen the scene and could only report to the police station in Munich.
On April 5, 1922, the Munich police arrived at the scene of the crime, and the forensic doctor performed an autopsy on six corpses, which showed that all six people had their heads broken and their chests were severely traumatized. The murder weapon may be a pickaxe or similar tool. In addition to the fatal wound to her head, daughter Victoria has 9 star wounds and a cut wound on her neck. The 7-year-old granddaughter survived the attack for hours, her hair scattered next to the body, which should have been unbearable pain, but she had roughly pulled it out.
In 1923, the year after the murder, the Cavette Farm was demolished, workers found a pickaxe and a blood-stained knife under the floor of the attic, which was later identified as the murder weapon.
Forensic doctors deduced that the six dead were probably killed between March 31 and April 1, and when they heard the news, nearby residents felt creepy. Because the day before the body was found, they also saw the chimney of the farm smoking, someone cooking inside, and the four days that the six people on the farm were killed did not hear the livestock screaming, apparently someone fed, especially the cows, if there was no milking for a day or two, they would howl. This shows that the murderer did not leave after killing the Gruber family, but lived on the farm for a while.
Police also found at the scene that the bread and other edible things on the farm had been eaten, and the murderer even killed a chicken on the farm to eat.
The sister of the new nanny, Maria, said that on March 31, she accompanied her sister to the farm to check out the new working environment, and left around 6 p.m. that day, when the Gruber family was fine, and Maria may have been killed just a few hours after working.
A villager named Proc said that he was passing by Caffit Farm at about 11 p.m. on March 31 and saw a man burning something next to the house, the smell was very bad, the man seemed to see Proc, turned to him, and also took a flashlight to his eyes, causing him to see nothing clearly.
On April 1, Butcher Simon rode home past Caffit Farm, where he saw two boys behaving suspiciously, and although his face was covered, Simon recognized one as George Mader and the other Carl Bichler.
April 2 was Sunday, and the Grubers had a habit of worshiping on Sundays, but they didn't go to church that week.
On Monday, April 3, the villagers were a little worried because 7-year-old Gabriel did not go to school, but they did not care when they saw the chimney of the house smoking. On the same day, the postman also noticed that the letter he had sent last Saturday was still in the mailbox and had not been received.
On April 4, electrician Albert was invited to the farm to repair the electric motor, and he told the police that he had been there for about five hours and had not seen anyone.
At first the police thought it was a robbery and murder, but after inspection, although the cabinets and drawers on the farm had been turned over, there was still a large amount of cash and valuables that had not been taken away, and it was clear that the murderer was not coming for money.
Based on the clues provided by the neighbors, the police conducted a thorough search of the entire farm, and found several piles of hay in the farm attic, with traces of having been slept on them, and the tiles of the roof were also moved, and the situation inside the house could be clearly observed through the gaps. This shows that there are indeed people hiding in the attic, most likely the murderer, but the specific number of people, how long they have been hiding, is unknown.
In order to solve the case as soon as possible, the Munich police offered a reward of 100,000 marks on April 8 to collect any clues about the murderer. Hundreds of people, including villagers, were questioned as suspects, but without success.
However, there are still a few people who are more suspicious.
The first is the neighbor Lorenz, who was the first to notice that something was wrong with the farm, and many of the murderers were often the ones who called the police. After Lorenz was widowed, he had a relationship with Victoria, but was strongly opposed by his adoptive father Gruber. However, shortly after breaking up with Lorenz, Victoria gave birth to Joseph, and there were rumors among neighbors that Lorenz had been threatened by Victoria for maintenance. If the killer is Lorenz, then he also has time to sneak up on the farm animals without causing agitation. In addition, Victoria had more wounds on her body than other corpses, and it was likely that Lorenz killed Victoria after an argument with her, and then led the rest of the farm to the barn to kill them one by one.
The second was George and Carl, who were recognized by the butcher, both of whom had committed multiple thefts and repeatedly threatened to be robbed by Caffit's Farm, and even prepared to kill them, and the police also found some poisonous drugs in George's house, presumably ready to carry out the robbery, but they provided an alibi. On May 5, Carl committed a murder until the execution, and did not confess that he had committed the Kafit Farm murder.
There are also many who suspect that Victoria's husband, Carl Gabriel, although killed in World War I, did not find the body. Many people believe that he did not die, but returned, because the deserters were to be punished very severely, he secretly hid in the attic of the farm, and soon he learned that his wife and stepfather Bulun were still having an affair with his neighbors, so he killed them angrily, which also explained that Victoria had more wounds on her body. Although Carl's comrades did not find Carl's body, they said they saw Carl die in the trenches.
Investigators from the Munich police made their best efforts to resolve the case. However, the investigation was hampered by the villagers' disgust, and they did not cooperate as expected. For further investigation, the police removed all the victims' heads and sent them to a Munich laboratory for autopsy, but not to the forensic doctor, but to the psychic medium for research. But in World War II, all the skulls were lost in the war.
In 2007, 15 students at a police academy in Germany studied the case again using modern advanced forensic technology, and later they published a paper claiming to have found the murderer of the case, but because the murderer had died long ago, in order to respect his living relatives, they did not publish the information about the murderer to the outside world, but no one believed it. On official records, the Kafit Farm murder remains an open case.