The following episode contains disturbing and graphic scenes that are not suitable for children. Parental discretion is advised. Welcome to Unexplained Extra with Me Richard McClane Smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that one reason or other didn't make it into the previous show. In the last episode Tenebrus, one of the darker episodes in recent times, we explored the disturbing story of the nineteen twenty two murders on Hinta Kaifek farm
in southern Germany. It is undoubtedly a deeply unsettling mystery, and one that feels oddly timeless too, with its power to shock undiminished in the almost one hundred years since it took place. I think what makes it most perplexing for me is the combination of the fact that the murderer or murderers, most likely he knew the family, yet none of the suspects appeared to have motivation enough to
carry out such a devastating attack. Left with no answers, it is almost tempting to believe that this wasn't a human act at all, but the result of some terrible, supernatural judgment that swept through the property, killing Andreas for his crimes and taking the others with him as collateral damage. But despite the story's apparent singularity, it is by no means the only strange and horrific event to have ever occurred in human history. It wasn't even the only one
that day. The girls laughed as they made their way back to the farmhouse, pulling their dresses above their ankles as they skipped through the thick tufts of grass. They'd been out feeding the horses before deciding to chase each other back to the house, and had just stumbled into the chart when one of them realized Pauline was no longer with them. Even at only two and a half years old, it wasn't unusual for Pauline to help her brothers and sisters with the various errands around the farm.
Feeding the horses was one of her favorite chores, but now she was missing. The girls turned and looked back up to the hill, shouting for their sister to show herself, but saw only the stillness of the dark green fields and the horses ambling about in the distance. The Picards lived on their farm in the hamlet of goass Al la Doux in the area of Sainte rivo Al, a few kilometers east of Breast in the northwest of France,
surrounded by rolling hills of thick scrub and woodland. There were eleven of them in total, with Pauline being the second youngest of nine children. That night of April sixth, twenty two, as a while storm blew in from the Aria Mountains, the family were joined by police search dogs and close to one hundred and fifty volunteers as they searched desperately for the little girl, trudging through thick tufts of gorse in the wind and the rain, but no
sign of Pauline was found. With the family grief stricken, attentions soon turned to their farm hand, Christoph Karamon, who'd been staying at the farm the night before. Karamon, who was known to be overly tactile with the young girl, had also previously served five years in prison for rape,
having tracked him down three days later. However, working on another farm six kilometers away, the police accepted Kerraman's story that he was miles from the scene at the time, and though police continued to make inquiries with no sign of Pauline in the weeks that followed, any hope of finding her alive soon disappeared, But then something truly unexpected. It was May eighth when two local police officers arrived
at the Peacard's farm bearing some unlikely news. A young girl had been picked up in the northern port town of Cherbourg, four hundred kilometers away by road, bearing an uncanny resemblance to their missing daughter. Could this be Pauline, the officers asked as they passed a photograph of the newly found toddler to Pauline's parents. The couple were stunned, clinging to each other as they poured at the picture,
daring themselves to believe it was true. The following day, the couple made the agonizing trip by train to Cherbourg to visit the girl in person. After arriving at the orphanage where she'd been taken, they gasped as she was brought into the room, their eyes filling with tears at the sight of her, Pauline, They whispered, barely able to speak,
the name, Is it's really you? The child stared back, a little unsure of them at first, then broke into a wide smile, unable to resist any longer, the father, Francois, moved forward and swept her up into his arms. Look she has her eyes, he said, holding her up toward his wife, who, unlike her husband, was hesitant at first, but soon she was holding her too, noting the similarity of the ears, and before long there was no denying it.
Pauline had been miraculously returned to them. After spending the next few days in Cherbourg together, though the girl was yet to even speak, the Peacards were eventually granted permission to take her home, and so it was on May eleventh that Pauline was returned to the farm and to her grateful siblings, who took it in turns to pass around, bombarding her with kisses and playfully scolding her not to leave them again. Many of the families neighbors came by
two to witness the girl's incredible return. All remarked on how extraordinary it was, and that though she seemed to sum a little thinner than before, it was only natural
considering how long it had been since she disappeared. And by the following day, Pauline was beginning to find her voice again, laughing wildly as she chased the cat in the yard, and though the police were still keen to establish just how the girl had disappeared in the first place, for the family, at least that she was alive and seemingly well was all that mattered. It was a few weeks after her return that neighbor Eve Martin appeared at
the farm asking to see Pauline. Thinking little of it, nearly everyone else had done the same, Pauline's mother kindly showed her daughter off to the man. Then his face went white, his mouth contorting in horrible ways, until finally he blurted it out, God is fair. I am guilty. He cried, then turned and ran from the property. When word reached police of the bizarre episode, they searched for days for the man, only to find when they finally tracked him down, that he had been committed to a
psychiatric hospital. Martin was said to have suffered a terrible head trauma a few days before the outburst, and was by then too incapacitated to be interviewed. Two weeks later, almost a kilometer from the Peacard's farm, Monsieur Lemieux, a farmer from Lembrasse, was cycling to collect his cows from a nearby field when he noticed pieces of blood stained clothing scattered by the edge of the path. Pulling up to take a closer look, he was overcome with the sweet,
sickly stench of rotting flesh. It wasn't unusual in those parts to come across the odd, putrid carcass slowly rotting in the bushes, but that didn't smell like this. This was different. Following the trail of clothing through the long grass and into a thicket of gorse, he soon found the source of it. It took a moment to understand what he was looking at. So strange an alien, it seemed, and though countless things were moving and buzzing around it, there was no denying it was the body of a
small child, or rather what was left of it. One of the legs was missing, while the other was inside a muddied woolen stocking. There was a small wooden soled shoe on the end of it, and one of the arms had been almost completely off, the bones protruding through the tough, dark skin blackened by decomposition. There was no head on the body either, but a skull just two meters away, completely stripped of flesh. It took three days for police to arrive on the scene, but by then
the whole community had learned the horrific discovery. Pauline's parents were at home with Pauline when they heard the news, Francois racing into the field to see it for himself. It went almost unnoticed that among the strewn pieces of clothing, some pieces had been placed neatly folded next to the body. But Francois saw it. Saw the familiar checkered dress and the small shoe whose laces he'd once tied himself with
his own hands. He saw two those familiar strands of hair that now clung in clumps to the surrounding gorse. He looked across to his wife by the path, and to the young girl from Cherbourg holding her hand, and in that moment he saw what he'd refused to see before, that this girl, this stranger that love had morphed and distorted into his little girl, was a good ten centimeters shorter than Pauline, and her eyes they weren't the eyes of his daughter at all. Nor her nose that he
saw now was softer and smaller than Pauline's. With tears in his eyes, he smiled down at the young girl and took her into his arms, then taking his wife by the hand. Together, they walked slowly back to the house. After the discovery of the body, volunteers from the local area stood watch over it to protect it from further
damage until the police. An autopsy conducted in a nearby barn revealed a large tear in the side of the body and a puncture wound in the groin, likely done by a knife, and though the extremities had undoubtedly been nibbled and gnawed on by wild animals, much of the torso seemed curiously untouched. The skull, perhaps most bizarrely, was
found to be that of an unknown man. Despite the autopsy's findings and the fact that one hundred and fifty people had already thoroughly searched the area where the body later appeared, not to mention the neat pile of clothes left by the corpse, authorities concluded that the child had
simply got lost and died from natural causes. On June thirteenth, police arrived at the farm to take the young girl from Cherbourg, who the peacards had by then named Louise Marcel Pauline, back to where she was found at the door. As they said their good byes, Francois held her for just a moment longer before finally handing her over to the officers while the Peacards were left to mourn for
a second time. Louise was placed in an orphanage and a few months later began to talk finally, and though she seemed not to know who she was, she asked repeatedly for Alleyne, Henriette, and Anne, siblings of Pauline's. In September, a neighbor of the Peacards who visited the orphanage to see Louise for herself, left convinced that she was in
fact Pauline after all. But by then the Peacards had made their peace, burying the remains of the young girl found by their farm under a stone engraved with their daughter's name, and though many rumors swelled among the local community about just what exactly had taken place, most scurleously in the press, ever, eager for a salacious angle, the case was eventually closed. Sadly for Louise, or whoever she was, she died only a year later after contracting measles at
the orphanage. Where she was staying. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up, or if you'd like to make a one time donation, you can go to Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations, no matter how large
or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
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