[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: April 1922, a mechanic walked up to a farm in Bavaria and found the place strangely quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: The animals were active, but no one answered his knocks, no one replied to his calls.
[SPEAKER_00]: That alone was unusual, six people lived and worked on the proper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost always, someone was around.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the salesman wasn't aware of that moment, was that everyone inside the house had been murdered.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the killer had stayed afterwards inside the house four days before the killings took place the farmer had told people that he saw footprints in the snow leading towards the house but none leading away.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of Hintercalfec has become one of the most famous unsolved murders not just in German history but the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a stack of mysteries one on top of the other, some factual, some exaggerated, and some warped by a century of retailers.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't just an unsolved case.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's become myth and legend.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the podcast, I am Michael May.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The intercifect murders have been covered extensively for good reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're difficult not just to digest the horrific things that happened in this case, but they're also difficult to investigate in a retail, which makes them really intriguing because we want to solve this case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Much of what is said about this story comes from rumors, assumptions, mistranslations, and conflicting statements from neighbors and witnesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2007, students at the First and Feldbrook Police Academy and Germany re-evaluated the case using modern techniques and forensic science, they concluded the case unsolvable.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that is due to the fact that a lot of physical evidence doesn't exist anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the students were able to land at a single prime suspect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Due to German privacy laws with regards to descendants, they have not been able to publish who that suspect is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's sift through the details and see what we find.
[SPEAKER_00]: hinter Kaifeck was a family farm in Bavaria.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means something close to behind Kaifeck because it was literally tucked away from a tiny hamlet of Kaifeck, and it was in the rural area about 40 miles north of Munich, Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early 1920s, those 40 miles are not what 40 miles are today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interchipheck was isolated, roads were unpaid, and barely anyone had found or electricity 1922 in this area was closer to 1822, then it was to the rest of the 20th century.
[SPEAKER_00]: While this area is rural and small and homes are spread out because they're all farmers, you could still see from Interchipheck to the neighbor's homes, hundreds of yards away, and also to the nearby village.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first world war had recently ended and the country was still wounded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Money was unstable, men had come home damaged if they had come home at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Villages were full of memory, gossip, and resentment.
[SPEAKER_00]: The physical structure at Hinterkai-Fak was a connected farmhouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had living quarters, a stable abarne machine house, storage spaces, and an attic running above portions of the building.
[SPEAKER_00]: meaning and bad weather or at night a person could move from one area to another without having to step outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: The head of the household was Andreas Rupert, a 63-year-old farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some statements make a comment that he was retired but if that was true he'd still lived on the property and he gives off vibes of that semi-retired feel where he still controls the day today.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a broad
[SPEAKER_00]: that has a deeper meaning that will come into play later in this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Along with Andreas was his wife, Satsiliah Gruber 72, their daughter of Victoria Gabriel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Victoria was a widow, her husband Carl Gabriel had gone off to war and was killed in the first world of war.
[SPEAKER_00]: With Victoria Werner to children, seven-year-olds, Celia Gabriel, and two-year-old Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on March 31, the night of the murder is 1922, a new maid moved into the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her name was Maria Balgartner.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been hired to work at Hinterkai Factory, she arrived with her sister, who helped her move in and get settled, but then left, lucky for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: because no one in the house would live through the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph, the young boy in the house, his paternity is a huge plot point in this story, and this topic can be considered the most difficult or uncomfortable to discuss in the whole story, and that is because it involves incest.
[SPEAKER_00]: On May 28, 1915, Andreas was sentenced to one year in prison for incest and his daughter Victoria to one month.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1918, a neighbor named Lauren Schlittnbauer, a farmer, a widow, had an intimate relationship with Victoria, and Joseph was born, just around nine months later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Schlittnbauer would acknowledge that Joseph was his son, and at this time, Andreas was arrested again for incest, and Schlittnbauer testified against him.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, Schlitt & Vauer recanted this story after an urging from Victoria to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Schlitt & Vauer would later recant his paternity for Joseph, but then he would also claim paternity again soon after.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a complicated story, but the debate and rumors are that Andreas, Joseph's own grandfather, could be his father as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's worth noting at the time of the murders themselves almost three years later, Schlittenbauer considered Joseph his son at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gossip around town at the rumors to this day are that Andreas would continue his sexual assault of his own daughter until the end of their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will come back to this topic throughout the episode as it relates directly to some theories and suspects in the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jumping back on track, the version of this story that people know begins before the murders, when some strange things were noticed around the farm.
[SPEAKER_00]: The former live-in-made at Hinterkai-Fec had told people that she had been hearing footsteps and strange noises from the attic.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she believed the house was haunted, so she quit her job and left.
[SPEAKER_00]: This account seems to be a blend of reality and modern lore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did she really think the house was haunted?
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't find those words and early statements, but we do know that she did hear things around the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: On March 30, 1922, the day before the fateful night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Andreas Gruber discovered that a lock on the engine shed had been broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, nothing inside had been taken.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gruber's in later encountered Lauren Schlittenbauer to 11 AM.
[SPEAKER_00]: and he told him about this break-in where it attempted break-in, and that he also saw tracks footprints in the snow that led to the farm, but not back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shortly afterwards, Gruber met farmer Casper Stegmar and told him about these strange footprints in the snow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a statement from Lauren Schlittenbauer, directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the deceased Gruber called out to me in the field on Thursday, March 30, 1922 at around 11am, that he had been burgled the previous night.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had noticed and followed the tracks in the fresh snow, but had not found any leading away from the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: He then noticed the lock on the engine shed door had been forced open.
[SPEAKER_00]: The burglar had also been inside the engine shed, but had taken nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other strange details before the murder include an addition of a Munich newspaper that was found inside the house, and it's so unsettled on Dres Gruber that the following day he asked the mailman, if anyone in the area subscribed to this newspaper and no one did, he and other people in the house didn't know where it came from.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, a key to the house went missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it stated as the only key to the house other statements say that that were two or three keys, but a key was missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the animals had gotten loose, and the family themselves had mentioned to some people that they had been hearing footsteps in the attic, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea here is that a killer could have been in the house hiding up stairs, and that attic or loft, as you might want to call it, that runs through the whole house, was primarily storage with hay, it also had a meat smoker, and it was a perfect place for someone to hide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that is true, what was he doing up there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was he watching, learning?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was he waiting for the right moment to strike?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know, what we can say is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A day before the murders, Andreas Gruber believed someone had been on the property, possibly inside the home.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told others about it, but he refused to ask the police for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the night of some murders, we don't know what time it all started.
[SPEAKER_00]: At some point that night, someone in the household went towards the barn or stable area.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they heard an animal, maybe they heard a noise, maybe someone called out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the killer created some kind of disturbance.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one by one, the first four victims were killed near the transition between the stable and the bar.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exact order is still debated.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the scene suggests a terrible pattern, one person enters or is drawn into the barn, and then there are attacks, and then another follows, then another.
[SPEAKER_00]: The presumed order is Victoria Gabriel, then Cecilia Gruper, then Andreas Gruper, and then seven-year-old Cecilia Gabriel.
[SPEAKER_00]: The weapon was a farm tool found on the property often translated as an attic or grub hoe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's similar in look to a pickaxe.
[SPEAKER_00]: After the four victims in the barn were dead or dying, the killer then moved into the living quarters.
[SPEAKER_00]: There he killed Maria Baumgartner, the new maid, under her first night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he killed two-year-old Joseph in his carriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: The murders likely happened on Friday night March 31st or early Saturday morning April 1st.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bodies, though, were not discovered until Tuesday April 4th.
[SPEAKER_00]: On April 1st, two coffee merchants came to the farm to take an order, but no one answered.
[SPEAKER_00]: They thought it was on how quiet things seemed on the property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, seven-year-old Cecilia did not appear at school.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Sunday, a pro-second, the family did not attend church and in a community like this, that was noticed, especially because Victoria is sung in the choir and she never missed a Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is an anecdote that Victoria's friends showed up that morning to take her to church and no one answered the door, but that story comes about years later and might not actually be true.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Monday, a pro-third, the child's at Celia Gabriel, missed school again, and the mailman, Joseph Mayer, noticed the silence around Hinterkive and his statement, he said he would normally see Victoria and Joseph through the window on his rounds, but he didn't on his deliveries this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: By April 4, there are statements from people that had seen smoke coming from the chimney during these days after the murder, and a mechanic named Albert Hoffner arrived to repair
[SPEAKER_00]: No one answered the door, so he waited, expecting someone to return home soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one did, so he decided to start work himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as he was working, he made sure to make a lot of noise, so that he wouldn't scare anybody as they return home.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that never happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: He heard the dog, he heard animals, the farm felt occupied, it was just quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a quote from a statement by neighbor Lauren Schlittenbauer.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Tuesday, April 4, 1922, and around 3pm, a mechanic came to my property and told my daughter Victoria Schlittenbauer that the Gabriel family should be informed that he had now repaired the engine.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said that he had found no one at the property and that everything was locked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I was told that a coffee merchant had been there and it said that no one was to be seen at the Gabriel property.
[SPEAKER_00]: This seems suspicious to me, and I thought it needed to be
[SPEAKER_00]: I then instructed my two sons, Yohan, Schlitt, Bauer, 16 years old, and Joseph Dick, nine years old, to go to the Gabriel property and knock on the windows and look through them into the rooms to see if anyone was in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also told him that if they saw anyone from the Gabriel family, they should mention that the engine had now been repaired.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shortly afterward, my sons returned to reported that they hadn't found anyone at the home, that they had heard whimpering and that the cattle in the barn were bellowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 5pm, Lauren Schlittenbauer asked two neighbors, Michael Poole and Jacob Siggle to come with him to Hinterkifek.
[SPEAKER_00]: The three explore the property, finding all the doors locked, but one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Schlittenbauer entered first and went around to some other doors to open them for the two other men.
[SPEAKER_00]: They first found Andreas under some hay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the same room, Victoria, Victoria's mom, Sicilia, and Victoria's daughter, the others in Sicilia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Schlittenbauer, then went into the house and found Maria in her room and Joseph in his carriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember, Schlittenbauer had said, Joseph was his son.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stressed this because Schlittenbauer's own comments and comments from the other men that were there at the home.
[SPEAKER_00]: They tell people and they tell authorities that Schlittenbauer moved bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is later considered to be very suspicious, but Schlittenbauer said he was doing it because he was looking for Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: His son.
[SPEAKER_00]: The men then notified the neighbors, the mayor, the authorities, and remember it takes time to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no phones.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Schlittenbauer stayed on the property to watch over things, he fed the animals, and people in town began to gather.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a small town and words spreads fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: People came into the home, they entered the scene, they looked at the bodies, they might have moved the bodies even more.
[SPEAKER_00]: The standards of crime scene preservation.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this rural area 1922, they're not up to par with what we would consider today.
[SPEAKER_00]: When investigators did examine the scene later that night, the damage was already done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the methods for investigating were already limited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Autopsies were performed at the farm by a court position, and one forensic detail that really hits hard is that seven-year-old Celia may have survived for hours after the attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was found with clumps of her own hair torn out in her hands, suggesting a very long, haganizing death.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the attic there were signs that someone may have been up there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hay had been scattered about as if two potentially muffle foot steps, and there was a depression in some hay where someone could have sat or lied down maybe slept.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some tiles had been disturbed that could have been moved to spy into other parts of the property.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are stories today that pass around that human feces was found in the attic, but that appears to not be true as I can't find that detail and any of like the early original statements and reports.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only details I continuously come across are about the depression in the hay and the tiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: The initial theory, from people first at the scene, was that this had to be a robber, because that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Gruper family was believed to have money on dress was, well, he was considered to be very thrifty, and people in the area believed that there was cash on the farm.
[SPEAKER_00]: But investigators found that money and valuables were left behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't cleaned out in a way you would expect from a burglar who had days to search the home.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then suspicions spread to those near and far, and investigators interviewed hundreds of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now let's look at some suspects and theories.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to start with Lauren's Schlittin' Bower.
[SPEAKER_00]: The neighbor who lived just a few hundred yards away, who had a relationship with Victoria in the late 19th teens, and possibly the father to Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is often said that Lauren's is the primary suspect and was the primary suspect immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, and for the researching this story, it doesn't look like people started considering him like the top suspect until the early 30s after rumors had been festering around for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless, he is a suspect that always tops these lists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mentioned the incestor layer, and that he claimed to be Joseph's father, Lawrence was a winner.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are some reports, some from him, some from local gossip, that Victoria had actually made moves on him, and then they discussed marriage at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Andreas, Victoria's dad, wouldn't let that happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: After Joseph was born in 1919, Lorenz then testified twice against Andreas for incest.
[SPEAKER_00]: The argument where argument is there are many different directions to take with this theory is that Lorenz Schlittenbauer murdered the family over the emotional turmoil of the whole ordeal.
[SPEAKER_00]: The relationships, the paternity questions, Andreas's controlling behavior and assaults
[SPEAKER_00]: Shlettenbauer was also the first person in the home after the deaths where he could have controlled the narrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew the property, he knew the home, he moved the bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some accounts also claimed that Lawrence even used a key to letting the other two gentlemen who were with him into the home to search.
[SPEAKER_00]: The missing key.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that is true, how did he get it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he take it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did he steal it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he stayed on the property when the other gentleman went off to get authorities.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, there was never enough evidence to even arrest Schlittenbauer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The contrary evidence that could defend Schlittenbauer is that a lot of his behavior was due to his concern for Jose, like moving the bodies in the hay because he was searching for Jose, which indeed is what he told authorities and what the other two men also mentioned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, the key story seems to be one of those tales that's spun out of control over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Statements mentioned that he entered the home through the one-open door, and then let the other two men in at various stores throughout the property as they were searching around.
[SPEAKER_00]: They mentioned that those stores were either closed with a latch or kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying the key thing didn't happen, but that could be one of those stories that has morphed with time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, he has a family, he had children, he had also remarried, so he had a wife, there are multiple people on his property, just down the street from Intercafe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are also neighbors, there are mailmen, there are salesmen, there's a village right there, no one witnessed Schlittenbauer going to the Groober's house on the night of the murders, no one mentioned seeing him coming and going,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no comments from family that he snuck out at night or disappeared for a few days.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is too difficult to put him at the place of the murders at the time of the murders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suspicion is still just conjecture.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next theory is that dead husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: This one has soap opera written all over it, but the theory is that Victoria's husband, Carl Gabriel, who had been declared dead in the first world war, but rumors, later claimed that he actually survived.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he returned secretly and discovered the situation at Hinterkai-Fec, Victoria's child, the scandal, the incest, family money, and he murder everybody in revenge.
[SPEAKER_00]: definitely has flair for drama this theory, but the problem is evidence, men from Carl Gabriel's regiment confirmed his death they saw him die, there are also war records that he had passed away, and the war ended about five years prior to this event, why did it take him so long to return home if he was actually alive?
[SPEAKER_00]: The next suspect is a man named Peter Weber.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was named by a gentleman named Joseph Betts who claimed that Weber had spoken about the isolated farm and had suggested killing undress Rubber to steal the family's money.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is interesting because it introduces this possibility of pre-meditation by somebody outside the immediate family's circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It also lines up with the idea that the Rubbers were believed to have cash on the property.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pre-meditation to me is really interesting because that fits the killer who shows up, snuck into the loft, and then waited for the right moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Weber made those comments, that certainly makes him look guilty, but this Joseph Fett's guy who shared the story, he might have misremembered, he might have exaggerated, where he had his own reasons for naming Peter Weber.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless, no one could ever convict or arrest Peter Weber.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another series that this could have been carried out by former workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: These include Anton and Carl Biltcher, and possibly another farmhand named George Seagull.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are farm workers who knew the layout, they knew the home, they knew the family's routines.
[SPEAKER_00]: They also knew of the animals, maybe they even knew the dogs of the dog wouldn't bark at them, but again, there's no evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just suspicion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the idea that there's motivation from former workers who may not have particularly liked the groupers and wanted to come back and steal some money.
[SPEAKER_00]: The police investigated many suspects over the years, but no one was ever charged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of the problem was the crime scene itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been entered, disturbed, rearranged.
[SPEAKER_00]: The farm itself was demolished a year after the murders.
[SPEAKER_00]: For what it's worth during the demolition of the property, that's when they found the murder weapon, it was under a false floor, along with it, they also found a bloody knife.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bodies of the victims were buried without their skulls, which had been taken off during autopsy's, and then those skulls disappeared or were destroyed during World War II.
[SPEAKER_00]: so we can't go back and investigate those using modern scientific techniques.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to make a quick comment about the investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've read a lot of articles about how authorities were just terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did this all wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the investigation itself was bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: But apparently the process for investigating murders had just been revamped, and the rules and steps that detectives were supposed to take was really confusing, and it was all new to investigators, not to mention, it took a long time to get to the scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did show up that night, but it was still hours later, and they also had a lack of people and resources.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this area felt more like 1822 in terms of technology.
[SPEAKER_00]: then the roaring 1920s.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not modern in any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could they have done better?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely for sure, but how much better I don't actually know.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have a lot of experience where science on their side.
[SPEAKER_00]: The physical farm disappeared, witnesses memories aged, suspects died, rumors grew stronger as evidence grew weaker, combined that with the absolute horrific setting, the relationships of the eerie mysterious things around the property before the murders, that is all how this case has become a legend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I end, I want to bring up a few more theories.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, I actually found on a blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I love to badmouth blogs as the source for facts and information in a lot of the stories I cover on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are the source of many inaccuracies and things that float around in these kind of tales.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can find good interesting things on blogs from time to time they do bring some value and someone posted their theory that Andreas Gruber was the killer, the grandfather, who was also one of the victims.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know he was controlling, we know he had sexual relations with his daughter and he controlled who she married, who she interacted with,
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we all have a solid picture of this man in our heads.
[SPEAKER_00]: The theory goes that he lost his temper dealing with Joseph's paternity, Victoria, and his whole family and who knows what.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he kills everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, Lauren Schlittenbauer finds out her happens to be walking by the property when this is happening, and he kills Andreas in retaliation, then covers up the whole escapade.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't buy into this theory as we presented per se, but there are certain aspects of it that are intriguing, mainly that Andreas was evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: One anecdote I read and this is so uncomfortable to talk about even for a show that covers a lot of murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one anecdote I read is that the incest started because a doctor recommended Victoria needed to have sex with a man to cure an ailment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, medicine of the early 1900s.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was about, I think she was 16 or 17 at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Andreas didn't want his daughter going out with some random dude, so Andreas and Victoria's mother's Celia planned for Andreas to, well, I mean, I think you get the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a fun story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't also know if that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is just an anecdote I read, but Andreas is not a good person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And however that all started, he kept going throughout Victoria's life and she was stuck in this home with her son, with her evil father and the society and a world where she didn't have a choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have an escape.
[SPEAKER_00]: So any theory that points to Andreas being the ultimate bad guy in the story,
[SPEAKER_00]: one part of that theory to be true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another theory I'm going to share just because I love it from a narrative standpoint and that's that a gentleman named Paul Mueller was the killer.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a suspect in the famous Velisca murders in Iowa in 1912.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know the Velisca story, you'll likely picked up on some of the similarities between these two cases, someone who snuck into a home,
[SPEAKER_00]: stayed hidden inside, then killed everybody in the home, before also staying inside the house for a short while.
[SPEAKER_00]: Palm Mueller was presented as a suspect in that murder and more, because he would travel by train for various work opportunities, and he killed others in the same manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy wrote a great book about Palm Mueller called the man from the train, about their suspicions from Mueller in those American unsolved
[SPEAKER_00]: Mueller has since been presented as a possible suspect in Hunter Kifak because of the similarities with the cases.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Mueller was a German immigrant, so could he have moved back to Germany in the 1920s?
[SPEAKER_00]: We, in fact, don't know what happened to Paul Mueller when he died, where he was if he was even alive in 1922.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are also differences between Velisca and Hinterkai Facts like in Velisca, the mirrors were covered up and things of that nature, so it is a bit of a stretch, but it's a fascinating theory, and since we love to find patterns, that's the closest we can come in this strange case, to finding a pattern, finding this obscure alleged killer from early American lore.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hinterkific murders are complicated, because of all these moving pieces, the rumors, the false details that have become part of the legend, but it's actually not a complicated story when you boil it down to the simple fact that a horrendous person killed six people, including two kids, and the motivation behind it all is still unclear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, we can only keep guessing.
[SPEAKER_00]: which fuels the legend.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe one day, I don't know how the German law's work, but I would love to hear about that investigation the police academy did and who their prime suspect is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's anybody I may have mentioned today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to a study of strange, quick reminder.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have an opportunity to be on this show.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have experienced something strange or unusual in scary, we want to hear about email a study of strange at gmail.com and we will be in touch until next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you and stay strange.