Unsolved Mysteries Day 3: The whole family found slaughtered in their barn

ON the evening of March 31, 1922, six residents of the Hinterkaifeck farm in Bavaria, Germany were murdered with a pickaxe.

Five members of the Gruber family and their maid Maria Baumgartner, who arrived at the farm a few hours before their deaths, were slaughtered one by one.

Six people were murdered on the Hinterkaifeck farm in 1922

All except for two-year-old Josef and maid Maria, who were butchered in their beds, were somehow lured to the family barn and killed there.

Maria had been hired that day as a replacement for the previous maid who quit six months earlier, claiming the farm was haunted.

Footprints had allegedly been seen leading from the edge of the dark forest outside the property to the rear of the family home, where they disappeared, in the days leading up to the murders.

Sources also claim the Grubers heard strange footsteps in the attic, found an unfamiliar newspaper in the home and had a set of house keys disappear shortly before.

Two-year-old Josef was murdered in his crib and left for days

After they were killed the bodies were stacked on top of one another in the barn and covered in hay.

 Autopsies confirmed whoever killed the family was familiar with using the murder weapon, a pickaxe, as the wounds were so precise.

Chillingly, whoever committed the crime stayed at the home for several days after, feeding the cattle and eating meals in the kitchen.

Neighbours reported smoke rising from the chimney the following Sunday and the family dog was handled and tied up near the barn when the postman arrived on Saturday afternoon.

Many bizarre details accompany the heinous crime as daughter Viktoria, who was the official owner of the farmstead, had numerous men in her life who act as possible suspects.

The bodies were stacked on top of one another and buried under hay

It is reported their neighbour Lorenz Schlittenbauer had been with Viktoria intimately and believed Josef was

his son – although it was later discovered Andreas Gruber was in fact the father and grandfather of the young boy through incest.

Creepily when the corpse’s heads were removed for study at autopsy they were lost and never found – leaving them to be buried headless.

The case was never solved, and suspects range from the neighbour to an escaped mental patient who was at the loose at the time – and even to suggestions the aforementioned footprints belonged to The Devil, who committed the heinous act.