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

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 Five, The Body on Somerton Beach, The Missing Solder Children,

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot 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 Hello weekend, almost right, why don't we just tell the story of an ex murdered family.

Yeah.

I hope it 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.

It 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?

If you get your German pronunciation down. By the way, should we.

Talk about hinter kxia chang hinter k yeah, dsha.

Chang yeah, chang chung more specifically?

Right?

The irony of all.

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. 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 dsha chung sort.

Of okay, And hinter kek is kaik hinter kaifak 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 gonna stumble on one. But I just hold under that.

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

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 boy. 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 Ingelstadt and Schrobenhausen. Was that either one of the ones you thought I was gonna stumble on?

No, I mean technically useduld say like stott instead of stott.

Oh well, I didn't realize we're getting technical.

But Uh, you know you're 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 vibe often. Is that the one I'm just gonna 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 Kafek and hinterfe No, well, the town, the village is called Kaifek. There was a ranch basically you'd call it in America a dude ranch maybe even, but not really. It's just a farm called

No, I think it's great.

So the family who made up this the tendancy of this farm, they were the Groubers. Yes, Andreas Kruber 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 Cazilia Augh Gelia.

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 yes for me, I think that would be Tetzelia.

What that's not fair, I know, come on Germany, Tetsilia. Okay, Well let me ask you this. So Tetsilia, yeah? Am I saying it right now?

I think tet Cilia.

Well that's Italian. It does sound so Tetzilia is his wife. H that's to be determined. Uh, 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. Tatzelia. Yeah, how would you say that?

It would be uh chert Celia, Toutzilia, sure tu yeah, Chertzilia.

Toutzelia and Toatzelia.

Tatzelia and chert Celia.

So it wouldn't be like Tatzilia and Tatzilia junior. I don't know.

I mean, I've never seen anyone name there. 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 the time.

That's right.

Lastly, there was a little boy, two year old named Joseph, that was Victoria's son, and Victoria was widowed. She was thirty five. I believe at the time that we come into hinter k Ifek and they all lived together relatively isolated actually because they the groupers. 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 paterfamilius Andreas was he was not friendly, He liked to keep to himself, and apparently he was very abusive to his wife and children. Yeah, children, he only had one living child. Still at this point, there's Victoria and we're in the wayback machine, by the way, and it's nineteen twenty two.

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, maybe he had something to do with it. Maybe, But it was a leap, a total leap.

Also the time when like people routinely died from the flu.

Sure, you know, it's a good point. So he was a loner, he was abusive. There was the matter of Joseph, the two year old daughter of Victoria Son. Yeah, she's daughter. I don't know where else 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 nineteen twenty stuff. I'm not sure if I bought that.

No, but that was definitely the rumor in town. Yeah, there was a significant number of people in town who either believe 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 will 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 incests instead.

So Victoria was the only one supposedly that kind of spent a lot of time in town and that people seem 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 Rule Bavaria.

Yeah, and we want to give a shout out we've given. We found some other articles about the case itself, but the main one that we started with was from Mysterious universe dot 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.

So way to go, mysterious universe dot 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, I'm 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 also live in a haunted house.

Right, Yeah, you don't want that. That's where you drove the line incest abuse. Sure, that's allow, 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. Oh that settles over hinter kaifek.

It'd be a good name for the movie version of this. Yeah, season of dread.

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

Yeah, I looked it up. Apparently there were a couple that weren't very big, but nothing nothing that ever start ray fines.

Well, if it doesn't have him, like, who cares?

He would clearly be one of the dudes in.

This sure, you know, maybe even Andreas Kruber, who I keep wanting to call Hans. I'm gonna go ahead and admit.

Yeah, you see the name Druber and that's what jumps to mind.

Yeah, So the maid leaves, and like I said, this weird things start happening. A few months later, Andreas is wandering around his property around Kaife, plundering around, right, yeah, just looking aimlessly for something to do. I think they remember there was a snowstorm and he was looking around to see, you know, if there had been any damage, anything that need repairing, And he noticed that there was

Creepy, super creepy. Just a single set though, right, Yeah, it wasn't like the footsteps like God carried him from there at that point.

Well, that would be a single step set.

Uh well, you know the 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. It's right, you're sorry.

That's a great story whether it even if you're not religious. You gotta see that and be like, man, that makes me feel good.

Yeah, because anytime you get to that point, Yeah, Jesus goes zing, doubt me, will you?

Uh So, footprints leading to the house and 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.

Okay, so let me not wander aimlessly, but let me go from room to room and barn to barn room, h barnroom 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 house, and he didn't find anything. He found. Yeah, nothing, no evidence of anybody certainly didn't find anybody, didn't There was just nothing.

Of their.

Maid leaving. Yeah, because citing ghosts is the reason she left. Somebody has come to their 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. See iti right, another accidental pun?

Yeah was that accidental?

Sure? Okay, you didn't mean that, did you?

Did I say that?

Yeah? He said that she saw a ghost sighting.

Oh wow, yeah, I guess so the oh that happens.

Yeah. I wondered, by the way, really quickly, if these footprints, if whoever did that, did the old shining trick. A little Danny was so smart he doubled back in his footprints.

Right, and it worked. Oh, it worked big time. Anyone who've seen the end of this shining can tell you it sounds a lot like I've been drinking today. I haven't at all of you.

I've seen what you're drinking.

You're drinking water.

And that's not the only weird thing that happened on So that was in March, I'm sorry. The two more weird things happened. 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 there's is there somebody like churringing around a 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 nineteen twenty two, 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 it was a newspaper that I couldn't get if it was like, was it from Russia or was.

It from nineteen eighty nine?

Yeah, that'd be super greaty Yeah, 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. Yeah, it wasn't in their town or just some just random newspaper being on their porch was yeah, 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 ad, 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

And there's a Chicago Tribune from nineteen eighty nine.

Right exact, things have gotten weird.

All right? Should we take a break?

Yeah?

All right, things are weird. This is in March nineteen twenty two.

The last day of March nineteen twenty two, the thirty first.

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 for one really good reason that we'll get to in a minute. Oh, okay, 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 Kaifec farm is concerned, like the neighbors and all that. It's a totally normal day.

Yeah.

But in a few days they would realize that this day, March thirty first, nineteen twenty two, was the last day anyone could say for certain that they had seen any of the groupers alive.

Correct. So flash forward a few days April four. People were a little weird. They were like, you know what, sirt Cilia. Uh, it 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. Yeah, 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 for sure. And so they said. And also the male had been piling up supposedly right at the post office because they didn't use stamps dot com.

Right, they would have if they'd had the technology. Believe me, that's right.

That was free.

So the the neighbors say, well, let's go check on them. Apparently they went I.

Bet other neighbors right, really, yeah, you like them that much? Yeah, And finally someone was like, yeah, we really.

Just let's go. Yeah, it's a neighborly thing to do. We're Bavarian, so exactly what we do. So that 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. Yeah, there's a dog barking that the gruber dog was a Pomeranian. Actually, yeah, and this is a time of Pomeranians. We're a little bigger and stockier,

That, okay.

But what was odd was that it was tied up in the in the barn. This is a house dog that the Gruber's kept. Yeah, 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 groupers bludgeoned to death.

That's right, Andreas, the papa, daughter Victoria, and dear old Cecilia, the granddaughter in the barn, stacked one on top of the other, bled to death, bludgeon to death only in the head area.

Largely in the head area, like the attacks were. 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, and 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 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 Andreas, his wife said, Zelia, 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, which is a weird thing to do.

Yeah, it's very weird. Although it would it would become evident why in a little bit once they started questioning the neighbors.

Sure.

So, the day after the bodies were found, doctor Johann R. Mueler performed the autopsies in the barn, and he decided that what had been used as a murder weapon was a type of pick axe 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 mattic that had been used. And if you've ever seen, you know, like a pick axe, but the other end is like

Reason, I'd say that was a good enough reason. Sure, Victoria showed signs of strangulation, but they did try and that was not the cause of death. And by all accounts, everyone else died pretty much immediately upon receiving that pickaxe to the head. Most of the victims were in bed clothes except for Victoria and Churtsilia. 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, like, uh, yeah, maybe one person went out and died and then the other person was like, it hadn't been back for a while.

Right, and then they died and then yeah again and again. Horrific, So there was some other there was weirdness beyond that, beyond these the just the horrificness of the crime and the fact that the bodies were covered up. This was April fourth, right, They figured out that the bodies had been killed or the people had been killed on March thirty first, that was the last time anybody had seen

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 different 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. 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 even more stirring is the idea that the person who killed them may have been the one who left the footprints, Yeah, 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 live in 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 olden 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. 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.

All right, So to me, it's this guy first, 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 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?

Uh So his name is Lorenz Schlittenbauer, and he was a, like I said, live nearby. He was a suitor for Victoria and she had always said, this guy's 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 it when he found out what that meant, so he had to pay for that.

He's like, that's an English word. I didn't understand.

Exactly what is what is his paternity? So he backed off of that claim, and later it was emerged that she was about to sue him for paternity when 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 one hundred percent sure it was his kid. So if you look at the 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 these murders was very bizarre. He was part of the original search party that searched the house. Suspicious first thing, Yeah,

Right at leased on TV they did.

Sure, everything I learned from the Flintstones points to this 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 Schlittenbauer 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, if especially if he was, you know, 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 is like did he have a key or did he know where the key was? Remember the missing keys. And he also apparently knew the maid's room handle was unusual and he had to lift it up to enter and not press it down, And apparently he just went

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 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?

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 I don't want I want to say obvious. Maybe not obvious, It gets really suspicious to me. His family said, oh, no, he's the night they were murdered. He's 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. Yeah.

So he apparently though had asthma. So people were like, well, I would he spend the night in a barn if he has Asthma's marty, right, But that was his alibi, which is pretty weak. He only lived three hundred and fifty meters away, which I think that's like nineteen miles.

I'm just kidding, what is it. It's like three football fields, right.

Yeah, I looked up the conversions and a half. It's not too far. Yeah, So he could have 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, right, 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 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 kids 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 like 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, I don't either.

That sounds like something that people would make up in a pub. Yeah, he used to say I'd killed them, right, No one ever cared, sure, I guess.

Yeah, So that 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. This guy's name was Carl Gabriel and he used to be married to Victoria. Yeah, but he died in World War One 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

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 his murder over the years.

Yeah. And one of the other things that pointed to him, supposedly was that in World War two, 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 Hinto kaifect killer and we think that that's Karl.

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 being died. People witnessed his death. Okay, even though his body didn't make it back, it wasn't recovered, people saw him die all. So it was verified that he was dyed to 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 it 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 get fake his death, get out of the marriage, come back years later and kill them all?

Great, great question, Chuck.

Yeah.

I think they answer that is he.

Wouldn't or maybe it's the perfect crime.

Yeah, it's so nonsensical. He's listening right now.

Last it's the perfect crime? What else? Of course, when they were the parents going on laying out the other and they're talk of ghosts, I'm and I 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 there was some supernatural force out to get the family.

Well, that would account for the ghost.

Say that you could say that accounts for everything. Sure, that's why it's bunk.

Yeah. No, that one's not a 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 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 two. They think that's where the skulls were lost.

They think I was mixed in with the other skulls.

It is either that or the ghost that did it.

So for the cops part, they interviewed over one 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 two 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 covering the bodies. Yeah, 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 three hundred and fifty meters away, yeah, maybe you would feel safe there. Well, yeah, that you could retreat very quickly.

Yeah, or know that, like I know, no one comes by here, whereas if it was a burglar, 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 nineteen twenty two, so a lot of a lot of forensic techniques hadn't been invented yet or were still being developed elsewhere in the world. So in two thousand and seven a police academy in Munich got their hands on the case. Some students did.

The Gutenberg Police Academy.

The first enfeld Brook just throughing Brook after you know, yeah, why not, let's throw in another syllable that students from that police academy investigated this crime and in Germany like, it's pretty this is an enormously famous crime. Huge there, it's there, Jack the Ripper, for sure. It will never be solved, it's not possible being solved. And this is the conclusion from those students that the first in felt Brooke Police Academy, they said, we think we know who

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 saw his name, Michael Something made? 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 show?

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 megam Malalley.

It was great, good episode. Well.

They were caterers like cater waiters all actors and writers and stuff in Hollywood, and each episode was its own thing on catering event and they had one where they showed up to Steve Guttenberg's house for his birthday party and he pulled up and he's 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.

Yeah I can imagine. Yeah, dude, he.

Seems so awesome. After watching this episode, I was like, man, Goots is the best and I think they called them goots in the show even Yeah anyway, or just good book to shout out to party down, great great show.

And Steve Gubenberg, Yeah, do you have a listener mail? Or is this too spooky? For one?

He did great work on that Bible. Yeah, I got a listener to real.

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 Mysterious universe dot org and all sorts of other places for it. And since I said, uh, 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 and Jacksonville, Florida.

Yeah, thanks, guys.

Yeah, they step forward and helped Jerry out in a big way as the stuff you should know Army is often does. Sure, And it'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 mail squirrel shooting. Hey, guys, been listening for about a 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 thirteen, 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 I shoot a squirrel as long as we'd agreed to skin it and eat it.

They like, they'll never do it.

Yeah, you gotta love those depressionaire a grandparents like, sure, skin it and eat it. It's all yours.

I have envisioned them as hippies, like passing a joint like joking about how stupid their grandkids were. Wow depressionaire, 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 gotta dress in camo if you're unting squirrel. 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 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. I had to hand the gun to my cousin. I just could not do

Uh?

Like we promised that we would do.

Uh.

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. Actually run a small online candle company now that sells dog themecandles dogs. They donates.

We give them a lot.

I know they donate ten percent of all profits to animal shelters and rescues. And so, Stephen, I am going to plug your company. Yeah over my wife's candle company even which is Mama Bath and Body.

Uh.

And you can go to www. Dot knox favorite k n o x S Knox's favorite dot com and Knox was their.

Dog in the company after that's sweet.

These are soy candles. I looked it up.

They're good made from dogs. Uh No, maybe waiting from zoely Dal.

Thanks again for everything you do your daily listen for me. I hope to hope you continue for years to come. That is Stephen Steven.

Way to go, Steven, thank you for that. We appreciate you lending us share your horrible story with everybody. Uh. If you have a horrible story you want to share, Oh man, I'm gonna regret saying that, you can tweet to us. So that's WHYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.

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