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He came back because he had nowhere else to go and then hid in the attic because otherwise he'd be known as a deserter. The he saw that his wife had a kid with her own father, maybe thought it wasn't rape so he killed them all and left. Makes sense as a motive. 🤷🏻
He just didn't like the permanence without indisputable proof of guilt. Now, he's seen that sometimes a lot of non-death penalty crimes can accumulate enough to warrant it anyway.
It's so sad....but in many ways...doing deep dives into these themes begin to open ANYONES eyes. Many people generally begin to rethink this position the longer you do it
You know, i'm beginning to think that simon is actually the one kept in the basement. He exchanges thumbdrives of completed videos in exchange for food and more scripts
For those who are curious about "sled builder," "Schilttenbauer" literally means sled builder. In "the sled builder," the "the" is just added to refer to a specific person.
@@lannamama2034I was told as a kid it translates to "slippery road" I know bahn is road for sure. Actually, now I'm not sure. To Google I go! Edit: Schlitter by itself means slide and bahn has a couple of meanings including road but together it translates to "slippery road" so the kid who told me when I was also little was right!
Laughed so hard at the literal translation of the German idioms. E.g. "that would be even nicer" is mostly used ironically as an expression of exasperation.
Simon, I know this is an older video but really quickly, the differencence between a pick, pickaxe, a mattock, and an adze. All are handled tools, essentially metal heads on sticks. A pick is double sided with a point on both ends. It is useful for breaking up hardened soil. A pickaxe is pointy on one end with a narrow chisel tip on the other. It is good for breaking up hardened soil, but also prying things like rocks out of soil. A mattock is either a pick or axe head on one side (closer to older medieval hand axes than a modern axe with a narrow neck and a somewhat smaller than usual vertical axe blade) with the axe version typially called a mattock and the other version a pick mattock. The other side of the double side is an adze blade. Which is a broad flat blade, similar to an axe head but narrower and longer and turned at an 90° angle to the handle instead of parallel. Finally, the adze. It is the only single sided tool here and is actually different, traditionally, from the version that is part of a mattock. The mattock is longer and narrower so the weight on both sides of the tool head are more balanced, but a pure adze is more like a sideways axe. It was originally developed for working wood, before processed lumber was a thing. Say you cut down a tree and you wanted to trim branches. The orientaion of a normal wood axe means the easiest method is standing it up and chopping down through the branch. Which is a fairly unstable way to work the wood. An adze allowed you to lay the tree down and get the most out of gravity adding to your swing, and the added stability of it laying down on its broad side. It also allowed you to shave long strips off or create notches for building things like log cabins. You MIGHT be able to do the same with a normal axe, but it would be signicantly more difficult and take more time. On a completely different point, the new maid being accompanied by the sister. Yes it could be the case of dropping her off (though wagon would be more likely than car 100+ years ago), but let us assume that they didnt own a wagon. A live in maid would be taking many of her possesions with her and splitting those things up between two people would greatly diminish the burden on the maid on the long trek from town.
about the "there's a foot" - "that would be even nicer" conundrum: it's the literal translation of the common German phrase "Das wär ja noch schöner!" which expresses disbelief or outrage
I was born near and still live very close to Hinterkaifeck and just a few months ago there was a large exhibition in a museum in Ingolstadt (the place were one of the gump brothers lived) because it was the 100th anniversary of this murder mystery. It's fascinating that this case is still discussed today and even outside of germany! I was always interested in this case and it's sad to know that we well probably never definitively find out who did it. In the place where the farmstead was stands a cross with the names of the victems - and there are always flowers and candles to remember them. By the way: Your pronunciation of the German names is very good - and no, i personally am not offended if you speak them in a German accent :D Keep up the great work!
Honestly, if the perpetrator was Lorenz, I don’t think he would have had any trouble luring the others to the barn one by one. He goes and has a discussion with Viktoria, and, perhaps in a rage, kills her. Then he calls for Andreas, telling him it should be discussed between all three. Then he asks for Cäzilia, saying it should be a family discussion. Then he calls out the younger Cici, telling her that the whole family is okay and wants a group moment. Last, he maybe tells Marie that Andreas has fallen and they need her to help. Then he goes back into the house where Joseph is. It’s chilling to think of, but I agree with Simon that that’s not really the hardest part to explain.
I read on Reddit that this case is given to policing students to solve, and it comes back to Lorenz time and time again. The police in Munich know that it was him, but decide to leave the matter out of respect for his living descendants.
I honestly have my doubts it was him because his behavior makes a lot more sense if you consider the possibility that Lorenz was Josef's father. It's never actually been proven whether Josef's father was his grandfather or Lorenz and multiple sources confirm this. I'm not sure why this video has them saying the grandfather was definitely the father. His behavior also makes so much more sense if you consider that when he saw dead bodies he was panicked that one of them was Josef. There's also the simple fact that there's so much possiblity that someone was living in the house for months before
@@bboops23 I am also in 2 minds on him. Motive for revenge/rage at Victoria and Andreas? Sure, that makes sense. But why kill the children, including his own, the mother and the new maid? It also sounded like at one point he would have shacked up with Victoria and he accpeted the child as his own, except Andreas got in the way. Also, I wonder how no one would have noticed that Lorenz was gone for 4 days if he was indeed living at the farm for those few days, tending the animals and eating the food. Or, if he was up and down between his own home and the farm, surely someone would have noticed.
"And all because of the child" could also just mean that Ceci one day spotted the drifter who lived in the attic, and called for her mum before he could kill Ceci. When Victoria came looking for Ceci the guy killed her mum, then one after another the granddad and grandma also came looking for them and he killed them too. Then he walked into the farmhouse to complete the task and lived there as long as he could before people began snooping around on the farm. I don't think he was in any way involved in the family secrets or he would have known about the gold, too. He just wanted to have a roof over his head and killed the family once he was spotted so he wouldn't get arrested.
He could also, given the beliefs at the time, believe that his being caught was a punishment for having killed the baby. Divine providence was a thing back then.
There was a story from Russia a few years ago that was kind of disproves the family wouldn't have gone one by one like that theory. The young daughter (I think she was 8) the only survivor told the story of how, Dad went down for potatoes and didn't come back so Mom went to look for him when she didn't come back her older brother went and when he didn't come back her Grandmother followed. Finally the child took a look and saw her whole family lying at the bottom of the steps and instead of doing what everyone else had done (run down to help only to pass out as well) she'd called the cops. Sadly by the time help arrived they were gone. The potatoes in the cellar had bad and due to how they had been stored had fermented into releasing a noxious gas, it had built up so much it it had replace most of the oxygen in the unventilated cellar.
That is a real danger at drilling/fracking sites. H2S is a colorless gas that collects in low areas and confined spaces due to its high density. it is detectable by its smell at extremely low concentrations ( .01 - 1 ppm) but prolonged exposure (2-10 minutes) at that level, or any exposure to higher concentrations, causes olfactory paralysis, disabling the sense of smell. This is instantaneous at 100 ppm. 200 ppm - extreme pink eye and fluid build up in the lungs in under an hour. 500ppm - collapse in 5 minutes, blindness in 30 minutes, death in under an hour. 700ppm - unconscious in 1 or 2 breaths, dead in minutes 1000ppm - near instant death. Everyone wears a personal gas detector and respirator. There are stationary detectors around every pad, and hi-vis wind socks or flags, so everyone can flee upwind in case of an incident. If someone collapses at work, we cannot attempt help them. Immediate evacuation until the area is cleared. It's serious shit, man.
I had known that this was a legendarily gruesome unsolved murder, but I never heard anything about what a complete nightmare the family was prior to their deaths. Just an absolute horror show.
To answer your question regarding the new maid and her sister accompanying her, I've read other reports explaining that Maria was mentally challenged and thus much less autonomous, needing her sister's supervision. As I recall this was to be her very first job away from her own family. I'm troubled by Angus reporting the incestuous rapes going on, but blithely leaving out the known timeline of it beginning when Viktoria was a young teen. She was known to have sought to marry SOMEbody-ANYbody at a young age *in order to escape her father*, flirting with & proposing to a couple of different men over the years, including Lorenz after her husband was KIA on the front. And yeah, suffice to say, incest and society's misogynistic view of perp and victim in Catholic Bavaria would need its own show... And: while far too sprawling for your channel, the book "The Man from the Train" details the crimes of a serial axe murderer criss-crossing the U.S. via rail in the years before Hinterkeifeck -- and the author speculates that the perpetrator was a certain (named) German immigrant and itinerant logger/handyman, who had eventually escaped back to Germany as the U.S. cops began closing in, only to commit the same crime(s?) with (nearly) the same M.O. not long after. A cool twist, especially for someone like me, who'd read a lot about Hinterkaifeck, but heard there were "no suspects"!
Ya that kind of important info. As presented here the evidence of incest isn't great. The guy Victoria had been in a relationship with, who she was pining as the Dad and who seems to have started the paperwork to make it official has an argument with her and is suddenly telling everyone the babies not his but the result of a crime the GF he's arguing with could be convicted of? Ya that sounds real and not an attempt to get out of supporting the child at all /S Refraining the whole relationship as Viktoria's as a pastern of behavior and an attempt escape her father changes things
Being from rural Bavaria myself, I thought that this must have been the case as well why she was so desperate to marry again, since after her husbands death and without property of her own, she had nowhere else to live except at her parents place unless she managed to marry another guy who had property of his own. And yes, it was a reality that back then, women were totally blamed for "seducing the man" if they got raped. There's so many stories where daughters were blamed for seducing their fathers who raped them, it's absolutely not funny. I immediately had to think of my own grandmother who chose to stay with an absolute dickhead of a smoker and drinker after her first husband died, just so she wouldn't be forced to stay with her parents in law, who blamed her for his death although he died in a mountaineering accident while installing avalanche fences.
Other information I had heard elsewhere was that the roof went from the house to the barn. There were holes someone could look down on the family with. I can totally see someone being up there, unseen.
@@hopejohnson6347 Agree -- but little has actually changed over the generations, as you likely know. Little children to this day are being blamed for their "seductive behavior" that "makes" their rapists violate their bodies and ruin their lives forever.
" We had a quarrel. Your daughter is behaving like a crazy woman and refusing to come into the house. Could you please come out and help me calm her down?" There. Perfect way to get each person to come out individually.
Ooooooooh I’ve been looking forward to this one! I’ve been fascinated by this case for years. Was a bit disappointed when I heard it had been taken, but now I get to listen to Simon live through the details as an observer, which is always fun lol. Cuz, well, who doesn’t love a good Murder mystery?
I suspect that the "that would be even nicer" is a slightly too literal translation of "Das wäre ja noch schöner!" which, depending on the circumstances can mean something among the lines of "As if!" or "No way!" or alternatively also "Not gonna happen!" or "Not if I have anything to say about it" or "You wish!" or "Sure!" (but like, in a sarcastic way). It's usually used to voice either surprise or, more commonly, spite and/or disagreement or frustration.
47:50 Reminds me of that scene in Hitman 2 when the priest tells you about an old Scilian saying "I don't know anything, I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything I wasn't even there and if I was I was asleep."
Jen got really good, evocative stock footage for this one. The cows in the snow in the old-fashioned enclosure and the hand-shaped doorknocker were two of my favorites.
I understand the past was different, but I can't imagine finding footprints into a building on my property, with no returning footprints, and not searching for intruders or calling the authorities to have a thorough search.
2:05 - Chapter 1 - Hinterkaifeck 11:30 - Mid roll ads 14:25 - Chapter 2 - The investigation 23:55 - Chapter 3 - The family 29:40 - Chapter 4 - The concerned neighbor 36:25 - Chapter 5 - The theories 44:10 - Chapter 6 - The final suspects 53:45 - Wrap up - Dismembered appendices PS: Sorry, i'm on a live so i put the timestamping on hold...
THIS- just this! Hinterkaifeck is one the unsolved crimes that morbidly fascinates me and love it when a channel covers it. One of the best in depth coverages I’ve watched to date. Thanks Simon and team- keep up the good work
Greetings from from a small town near Augsburg, Germany. The Hinterkaifeck murders are considered a somewhat "local" mystery since the place is about 60 Killometers or an hours drive away. I would like to add a few points here, if you don't mind 1.) The reason the mayor was informed first was probably due to the time period, he had most likely a telephone to call the police in Munich because... 2.) as soon as the local police took their first look at the crime scene, they knew they were horribly under qualified for the task at hand and requested back up from Munich. Also Munich was and is the state capital of Bavaria so that could have been a deciding factor to call on them not Augsburg, wich is about 50-ish kilometers in distance to the crime scene. 3.)the gapeing holes in the Schliffenbauer theory are, if I recall correctly , that he was a farmer as well and interacted with several people on his farm and the town nearby on the day and the days after the killings and with limited means of transportation, he wasn't likely to be able to make the necessary trips to pull it off. I hope this was litte bit helpful . Servus. Also having between one or a few murderus individuals or ghosts in my barn........I´d rather have ghosts!!!
I agree with you on the ghosts. Actually I have my own theory on the case. One involving the consequences of something Andreas Grubber might have done. There’s a reason why there is a concept of sins of the father continuing to haunt family members in Judaism, Christianity and the ancient Hellenic religion. I think that’s what happened with this family.
@@Steffi.Morgenstern.5388 I think the only way to know for certain is if we find the foreign newspaper mentioned in the first investigation of the case. I think that is the key to cracking the mystery. Only problem is there’s no mention of the name of the newspaper online.To me this felt like a revenge killing, a punishment to the entire family for something Andreas Grubber possibly committed hence why I said sins of the father.
To add onto point number 2: My first assumption on why Munich was called instead of Augsburg is because Augsburg is the Capital of the administrative district of Swabia, however, Hinterkaifeck lies in upper Bavaria - of which Munich is the district capital. That's my guess on why Munich was contacted - even though Augsburg is geographically closer.
@@kraanz I don't think the name is weird at all - unless you think that Cecilia is also a weird name. Literacy back then wasn't what it is now and people tended to write stuff as they spoke it. Cecilia and Cäzilia are the same in spoken German and I can totally see it becoming a Cäzillia with a bavarian dialect. Nowadays the spelling would be considered strange of course, but for the time? I don't think so. Adding onto the 'spelling like you speak it': In Germany Maier is a very common surename with lots of different spellings: Maier, Mair, Mayer, Mayr, Meyer, Meier and probably a few more. It was same for first names.
Simon's American doppelganger: *hears footsteps in the attic, gleefully grabs guns* "Alexa, initiate intruder alert protocol." *Lights turn red* *Guns N Rose's "Welcome to the Jungle" begins* *Digital locks initiate* *Simon rails lines of Athletic Greens* "Yippie Kay Yay mother..."
Re ‘confessions’ to pastors, priests etc. Here in Australia the only protected communications under law are those communications between a lawyer and their client. Everything else, when it comes to the commission of a crime, is not protected. Came under much discussion in recent years with the Royal Commission into sexual abuse of children, particularly in the Catholic Church. Basically a priest, or a doctor, can invoke confidentiality, but they’ll be found in contempt of court and suffer the punishment that the court decides. Here in NSW there is even a section in the Crimes Act that absolves anyone in any profession (except legal) from any actions under confidentiality requirements if they report criminal information. I underwent this myself with bosses when a patient turned up to ED (with his solicitor) and stated to me that he had tried to kill himself because his wife was going to find out he had been sexually abusing his stepdaughters (her daughters) aged 8 and 10. You better believe that I reported that to both the Police and the Dept Community Services - two small children at great risk.
The translation is really, really bad, lol. What Pöll/the other man said at around the 10:00 min mark was probably "Das wäre ja noch schöner", which literally translates to "That would be even nicer" but doesn't *mean* that discovering a body is nice. It's an expression of disbelief/incredulousness and still used today. I'm not sure what a better translation would be - Probably just "That's unbelievable" or "Are you taking the piss?" but not as vulgar.
A few notes that come to mind: 1) The murders happened in the morning, just before dawn. The mother and maid were up and dressed, the rest of the household not yet out of bed. This is for the morning chores that need to be done before the others wake up for the day's work, things like starting the fire and breaking the cream. 2) No, it's not that unusual that a rural farm would've been targeted for a crime like this by a group of strangers. Even today, this is a common crime in parts of the world where social order has broken done, because the remote property makes the crime easier and allows more time to search for valuables. 3) "All because of the child." Maybe they had originally intended to rob the place but not kill anyone. If one of the conspirators had lured everyone out to the barn, perhaps by claiming to be a bystander who saw a fire, that would allow the other conspirator to enter the house. But the baby started crying, and the maid went back in, forcing that second conspirator to kill her? And they had to kill the rest as witnesses? Some holes in that theory, but I think "all because of the child" is more likely to mean something like this than some hint at a personal connection to the family or some incest revenge squad, lol. This is all assuming, of course, that it was the Gump brothers. Honestly, my first impression was that Cecilia was having some sort of affair, and had let the man stay hidden in the home. That explains the strange noises. And the two sets of foot prints the father had seen going to the shed? Cecilia and her mystery suitor, meeting for a midnight rendezvous. The fight that sent Cecilia crying out of the house the night before the murders? Her lover was discovered. Probably by the maid - having just arrived, she would likely have inspected her new workplace thoroughly. They told him he could stay in the barn for the night, but he had to be out by dawn. Then dawn came, and he had another idea...
We've learned Angus has trouble getting people to do things, and that Simon, having experience both luring people places (basement) and getting them to do things (write scripts), does not.
I am a sceptic of everything myself just like Simon, having prior knowledge of the Hinterkaifek murders I was excited to see this video uploaded. This story has always creeped me out.
Ive heard this story many times but this is truly the best flushed out version ive heard. Thank you for giving this tragedy a better face. One day we may have the answers to such a horrible crime. One day we may be able to bring closure to the victims. Keep sleuthing. Never give up.
40:35 There's another thing absurd about this idea... Karl is supposed to have died seven years previously, which places his recorded death around 1914-15. He is said to have expressed a desire to move the the USSR. Would this be the USSR that didn't exist until the second revolution of 1917? How can he desire to move to a country that wouldn't be created until 2 or 3 years after his apparent death? Unless he had actually spoken of _Imperial Russia_ and it's been misquoted by sources...
a few weeks ago while playing dnd a friend of mine decided the character they were bringing in had a german accent, and he was doing pretty well until he lost it after talking normally to buy some snacks from the shop we play at. he just couldnt find it again for like 5 mins of playing until he held up a finger, took a breath, and declaired in a high pitched faux german accent "schnitzle!!" and then he was back to doing the accent well for the session. but all 6 of the rest of us freaking lost it, something about the pitch, random word and the bright joy in his eyes as he said it. man. we are still giggling, but he still has the accent down. so if in doubt, yell schnitzle! ps, yeah, i cant spell german so i tried phonetically, please forgive me.
From other sources I've seen, the incest was prosecuted in court. Andreas received a 1 year sentence, and Viktoria 1 month, and it was common knowledge. How much time they actually served, and why they were allowed to return living at the farm, I saw no mention. But the mention of 1 year scribbled on the death notices seems to reference that.
One aspect is missing in my opinion: You have to know the region - it was and is strongly catholic. A very religious person, possibly a relative might have known and might have seen the whole thing as an unexcusable sacrilege that had to be ended and the persons involved punished.
Reminds me of the 1920s US story of this man with mental health issues who lived in this couple’s attic for months and killed the husband at one point. Family/police never found the guy until much later because they thought the attic access was too small for a person to enter. Unfortunately it happens still of people (usually stalkers) taking up residence in an attic.
If you’re referring to who I think- the man wasn’t mentally ill- he was basically the wife’s s3x slave starting from age 17. He killed the husband because he was worried for the wife’s safety.
@@positivevibesvedaThats a fascinating case. I think Simon did a video on it a while back. She kept him as a sexual plaything with him being hidden in a tiny attic room and only coming out to satisfy her lusts. The husband was a violent drunk and was killed during one of his outbursts iirc. From what I recall the woman was convicted of the murder and attic guy disappeared from history to live his life out of the public record.
German here! The admittedly weird-sounding phrase "That would be even nicer!" is almost certainly a literal translation of an idiom, hence the weirdness. "Das wär' ja noch schöner!" is the idiom, and an equivalent English phrase in this context would be something along the lines of "Are you f*cking kidding me?!" or "I'll be damned!".
Two things with this story. 1. There is more, the man of the house also found footprints coming to the house door in the snow but no leaving prints and a house key was stolen. 2. He saw two sets of prints going to the shed and not leaving. I think it could be the neighbor and another person, perhaps a son. That would explain 2 sets of prints. Prints going to the door but the lock wasn't broken. The need for 2 sets of keys. And how the neighbor could be home and someone can be in the house.
Wait -- The elder Cecilia owned the farm when she married Andreas and that made HIM the owner of the farm? And that doesn't even get a "The past was the worst"?
Welcome to property law prior to womens lib where women only have control until married, it's related to why Elizabeth I never married. I'm not even sure when that one got ditched but I have a feeling 70s onward for a number of countries. It's only been in the past 20 years that spousal rights got tossed out in my state so a husband can be tried for rape.
I'll give you one. The past was the worst. Definitely. Even today, I will advise other women to have their own funds/property/bank account/prenup/etc, even you think the guy you're about to marry/date is a good one. Literally no one goes into a relationship with the expectation that their partner is an abusive asshole and they're one day going to need to leave suddenly.
I have an argument about the "someone was tending the stove and Lorenz couldn't have made it home in time" thing. I have a stove heated house. From the outside the only way to tell if someone is tending the stove is if it's smoking. But if you know what you're doing and feed the stove properly, you can leave for several hours and still come home to a smoking chimney.
Lol Jen is the best! I can't remember what episode it was, but there was one that between Simon's tangents and Jen's editing I was rolling with laughter. It was more of a comedy than a true crime murder episode.
Funny thing, I live about 40km (in Augsburg actuall) away from Hinterkaifeck and lerned about it in 2 UA-cam videos. Apparently there's now a memorial site there but I've never been there. Thanks for educating me 👍
I’d heard a brief overview of this case before, but this episode really gave a good analysis of what might have happened and of the evidence recovered. It was quite enjoyable!
Regarding your comment about the supposedly dead husband - if you think about it, he may have come back to collect his wife and child and found that she had another child, and KNOWING that child could not possibly be his own, he would have assumed that Victoria had an affair before knowing for sure he was dead, and it would have been very easy for him to hide around the place as it was his home before - and killed all of them in a rage. He would have had no way of knowing about the molestation if he had just seen the extra child from afar. He may have changed a lot since his time at war and people may never have recognized him. There is a very good case that he did in fact come back to get his wife and child to take them with him. I honestly believe the husband theory is a very strong one.
This case is probably the case that makes me most curious about. No matter the answer, I'm really interested in how this occured because it's so strange.
Gabriel suffers from Shell Shock after surviving No Man's Land. Spends time being healed and after a few years returns home. Victoria initially agrees to hide him for old time sake. He finds out about the abuse and the other man. Trips off one night and murders everyone. Hides out in the house for a bit and then flees to the Soviet Union. Maybe far fetched - but a good movie script.
Hahahaha Simon, I laughed all the way through this. Your sense of humour is gold to me and what a gifted storyteller to take seriously dark aspects of human life and make it funny. I feel very safe knowing there's plenty of sane, intelligent beings like you out in the world. Gold mate. Thankyou;)
I’d be really interested to see a Casual Criminalist vid on the Clutter family murders. I’m a bit surprised it’s not been done yet considering how well known it is from Capote’s In Cold Blood. Hope to see it eventually
As a german i for one am fine with you doing a german accent. I think it is hilarious and it is so cool when you by accident pronounce something german correctly. Go ahead from me :)
"That would be even nicer!" seems to be a correct verbatim translation of "Das wäre ja noch schöner!", but this phrase would more accurately be translated to a sarcastic "Wouldn't that be just great!"
It being hard to find a good maid is bourgeois problems Simon. First world problems are Netflix being down or having to use an iPhone with a cracked screen because you are locked into a sheety plan.
I know this one!! I had an inkling with the maid, and that grew with the first day of her work, the traveling salesman asking neighbors and then I knew it when it said that there was a mechanic!
So as a granddaughter of a minister, he would only talk after the confessor died with the only difference in this pattern being if the confessor asked to have him wait until the death of other people. He said “I wish I could tell when someone needs help or commits a crime but if I talk before able then I will not be able to provide closure to others even if far to late because no one will ever talk to me again.” He only struggled with this 2 times I know of but it’s suggested to me that he annoyingly sent information including where to find evidence and who to look for more before I was born. He was not part of a church that takes confession.
In 2007 a group of German students, who were about to become police inspectors, looked into the case. They were pretty certain they knew who the killer was, but out of concern or respect for that person's living relatives, they refused to publish the name.
I've disproved Einstein's theory of special relativity but out of respect for his living relatives, I refuse to publish the find. I still want my Nobel Peace Prize though.
Interesting decision. Were they always planning to not publish the results or did the likely killer have (at least locally) powerful living relatives who could make life difficult for the students if word got out?
German laws are verys strict about divulging personal information even i the person has been tried and convicted. In a case like this where any direct participants are probably dead and any living relatives would most likely have had no knowledge of what their ancestor/relative had done, the concern is generally to protect the innocent, so to say.
Ich finde die Erkärung, dass das ein Fall von staatlichem Eingreifen war, am plausibelsten. Diese Erkärung hat am wenigsten offene Fragen von allen. Darunter auch das Video vom Donau Kurier von Anfang 2022, in dem das ausführlich erklärt wird: Damn, this whole video lacks one of the most exciting and probable theories! Hinterkaifeck was an ASSASSINATION ORDERED BY THE MILITARY LEADERSHIP of the German Reichswehr. This has to do with post-war Germany and the revolution that took place in Bavaria and several parts of Germany. A fight between Communists and Royalists and subsequently Nationalists. It came to light end of the 1990s when military historian Johnny Noack got into possession of a document by a former soldier who wrote in detail about his assignment to deal with a farmer who blackmailed the Reichswehr. For those interesed check out this video from minute 30 onwards. ua-cam.com/video/-hGCR7mbDXs/v-deo.html
This might be the biggest unsolved case I'd never heard of before the pandemic. I first learned about it about a year ago when I listened to Red Web's podcast (released June 2021)... and I'd completely forgotten about that coverage when I saw this video show up in my UA-cam recommendations four days ago, but thought the title looked familiar. I finally got around to watching it when my work week ended... sort of; I work nights and don't get consecutive nights off.
The guy in the attic isn’t far fetched at all, and Simon is how I know that. Go checkout “The Denver Spiderman.” If the actual hiding place was in the barn side, you don’t have to lure anybody. You’re going to be there anyway. Get ‘em as they come out and throw a little hay on them so the next person has to get close enough to figure out what happened.
Ya one person disappears everyone looks for them one by one. There was a story from Russia a few years ago that was like that. The young daughter (I think she was 8) the only survivor told the story of how, Dad went down for potatoes and didn't come back so Mom went to look for him when she didn't come back her older brother went and when he didn't come back her Grandmother followed. Finally the child took a look and saw her whole family lying at the bottom of the steps and instead of doing what everyone else had done (run down to help only to pass out as well) she'd called the cops. Sadly by the time help arrived they were gone. The potatoes in the cellar had bad and due to how they had been stored had fermented into releasing a noxious gas, it had built up so much it it had replace most of the oxygen in the unventilated cellar.
Some guy was just seen jumping across the rooftops of houses in a town near me. A man called police when he confronted a man who was in his attic with drugs, a gun and a spot he was sleeping. 😮😮😮
You’ve totally gotta look up the Coral Castle in Florida!!! It’s one of my favorite mysteries and one I constantly still wonder about! Edit: just realized I commented this on the wrong show! Whoops! 😅
I live in the middle of nowhere Germany too und we have a wooden home. So every day in summer the wood expends with the hear and cools down in the evening. Sounds exactly like footsteps and we came to refer to it as our own House spirit. Scarred the hell outta my girlfriend when she was alone first time there. 😂 But to say it in Ron Swanson's words: "If your house ain't haunted you are lonely"
Not being a criminologist, I can still tell you that with 100% certainly that the Gump bro. was not there on the 31st of APRIL. Otherwise, I loved this post. Tyvm for sharing an interesting story and it's details! ❤️
It should be noted that you CAN in fact walk from Munich to the Hinterkaifek farm in about 21hours I believe. And, the closest neightbord was 0.5 km away from the farm, which was Lorenz. Walking that distance is about 7 minutes. This is a tough case to solve but I believe it is solvable. Pherhaps if one day someone finds a detail we all missed it could be the key to solving this case. Even if it was a random person in the woods, I believe that you could narrow down the search to maybe someone in Munich or a WWI german veteran, or any veteran for that matter that was discharged or quit. That's a wide range or names you gotta go through, which is why I recommend A.I. to help you sort out and find the culprit. Another thing, you could have A.I. play simulations and see how it behaves and see how it is able to draw out people and kill "people" out in that scenerio as well. It may not be 100%, but we could discover new things. I wish I had the time to do it but yeah rest in piece to each of the victims :/.
So I learned something interesting about roofs when mine was redone. When the weather changes and the wood of the roof is either very new or very old, each board will expand in succession, pushing on the one next to it causing it to shift and make a sound. This in turn shifts the next one and so on. This is because new wood hasn't settled yet and old damaged wood has lost its heat retention. In short, this makes it sound like someone stomping on the roof or attic!
I think if you hear footsteps in your attic it’s totally appropriate to call a non emergency police line and just explain you are checking out the sound of foot steps from your attic and just want someone on the phone who can send help if a crazy person is in there.
If I hear footsteps in my attic or cellar, it's perfectly reasonable to call any helpline and get someone else to check out the mad murderer thumping about 😳
You are one of the few I listen to as I drive. I like to learn about the lesser known criminals. I don't mean to be blunt. I have to constantly adjust my car volume as I'm trying to enjoy your stories. It's a huge spike up as you break away from reading the script. Your laugh is the loudest peak. I truly hope that you investigate this to assure your content is growing more to perfection.
Go to curiositystream.thld.co/criminalist_1122 and use code CRIMINALIST to save 25% off today, that’s only $14.99 a year. Thanks to Curiosity Stream for sponsoring today’s video.
Simon we need DTU March 8 1994 Michigan Please make it happen
Challenge for CashCrim: *Luis Gavarito* .
Looks like you've been watching BuzzFeed unsolved 👀
Ryyyytty it is
He came back because he had nowhere else to go and then hid in the attic because otherwise he'd be known as a deserter. The he saw that his wife had a kid with her own father, maybe thought it wasn't rape so he killed them all and left. Makes sense as a motive. 🤷🏻
Simon a few years ago: "The death penalty is so inhumane, I would never..."
Simon now: "TO THE GALLOWS" *brings along some popcorn*
Haha YES!! That certainly was his old opinion. Man, that's been a hot minute. Good recall.
He just didn't like the permanence without indisputable proof of guilt. Now, he's seen that sometimes a lot of non-death penalty crimes can accumulate enough to warrant it anyway.
This made me laugh more than expected
It's so sad....but in many ways...doing deep dives into these themes begin to open ANYONES eyes. Many people generally begin to rethink this position the longer you do it
@@andiward7068 and he saw Pedro Lopez, who might still be walking free amongst us...allegedly
You know, i'm beginning to think that simon is actually the one kept in the basement. He exchanges thumbdrives of completed videos in exchange for food and more scripts
He is kept alive by magic spoon, the waterproof vessis his only protection against trench foot on the damp floor
That’s why his vessis are not worn out! Keep Simon in the basement!
his office is in a basement... you might be onto something
@@personzorz don’t forget he gets his dose of vitamins and minerals from AG1 the theory holds up. FREE SIMON!
You have all been lied to. Simon IS Danny.
For those who are curious about "sled builder," "Schilttenbauer" literally means sled builder. In "the sled builder," the "the" is just added to refer to a specific person.
Scrolled down to see if someone had posted this. Thanks.
Don't know German but figured it out from context.
@@FuschelChan same
There's a huge water park called schilterbahn. 😂 makes some sense now I guess
@@lannamama2034I was told as a kid it translates to "slippery road" I know bahn is road for sure. Actually, now I'm not sure. To Google I go!
Edit: Schlitter by itself means slide and bahn has a couple of meanings including road but together it translates to "slippery road" so the kid who told me when I was also little was right!
Laughed so hard at the literal translation of the German idioms. E.g. "that would be even nicer" is mostly used ironically as an expression of exasperation.
I *thought* it sounded like something one would say out of frustration. My little Midwestern hometown is *very* German.
Kinda like "well that's just GREAT"
Yeah I was like “I feel like he was being sarcastic”:) thank you for clarifying!
Yeah, it was probably "das wäre ja noch schöner" and the non-litteral meaning would be something like "as if we could use that now, too".
@@MissRiny exactly.
Like "das hat gerade noch gefehlt" 😁 (literally "that's what's been missing right now")
Simon, I know this is an older video but really quickly, the differencence between a pick, pickaxe, a mattock, and an adze. All are handled tools, essentially metal heads on sticks.
A pick is double sided with a point on both ends. It is useful for breaking up hardened soil.
A pickaxe is pointy on one end with a narrow chisel tip on the other. It is good for breaking up hardened soil, but also prying things like rocks out of soil.
A mattock is either a pick or axe head on one side (closer to older medieval hand axes than a modern axe with a narrow neck and a somewhat smaller than usual vertical axe blade) with the axe version typially called a mattock and the other version a pick mattock. The other side of the double side is an adze blade. Which is a broad flat blade, similar to an axe head but narrower and longer and turned at an 90° angle to the handle instead of parallel.
Finally, the adze. It is the only single sided tool here and is actually different, traditionally, from the version that is part of a mattock. The mattock is longer and narrower so the weight on both sides of the tool head are more balanced, but a pure adze is more like a sideways axe.
It was originally developed for working wood, before processed lumber was a thing. Say you cut down a tree and you wanted to trim branches. The orientaion of a normal wood axe means the easiest method is standing it up and chopping down through the branch. Which is a fairly unstable way to work the wood.
An adze allowed you to lay the tree down and get the most out of gravity adding to your swing, and the added stability of it laying down on its broad side. It also allowed you to shave long strips off or create notches for building things like log cabins. You MIGHT be able to do the same with a normal axe, but it would be signicantly more difficult and take more time.
On a completely different point, the new maid being accompanied by the sister. Yes it could be the case of dropping her off (though wagon would be more likely than car 100+ years ago), but let us assume that they didnt own a wagon. A live in maid would be taking many of her possesions with her and splitting those things up between two people would greatly diminish the burden on the maid on the long trek from town.
about the "there's a foot" - "that would be even nicer" conundrum: it's the literal translation of the common German phrase "Das wär ja noch schöner!" which expresses disbelief or outrage
I was born near and still live very close to Hinterkaifeck and just a few months ago there was a large exhibition in a museum in Ingolstadt (the place were one of the gump brothers lived) because it was the 100th anniversary of this murder mystery.
It's fascinating that this case is still discussed today and even outside of germany! I was always interested in this case and it's sad to know that we well probably never definitively find out who did it. In the place where the farmstead was stands a cross with the names of the victems - and there are always flowers and candles to remember them.
By the way: Your pronunciation of the German names is very good - and no, i personally am not offended if you speak them in a German accent :D
Keep up the great work!
I live about 15 Minutes away from Hinterkaifeck
Honestly, if the perpetrator was Lorenz, I don’t think he would have had any trouble luring the others to the barn one by one. He goes and has a discussion with Viktoria, and, perhaps in a rage, kills her. Then he calls for Andreas, telling him it should be discussed between all three. Then he asks for Cäzilia, saying it should be a family discussion. Then he calls out the younger Cici, telling her that the whole family is okay and wants a group moment. Last, he maybe tells Marie that Andreas has fallen and they need her to help. Then he goes back into the house where Joseph is. It’s chilling to think of, but I agree with Simon that that’s not really the hardest part to explain.
I read on Reddit that this case is given to policing students to solve, and it comes back to Lorenz time and time again. The police in Munich know that it was him, but decide to leave the matter out of respect for his living descendants.
I honestly have my doubts it was him because his behavior makes a lot more sense if you consider the possibility that Lorenz was Josef's father. It's never actually been proven whether Josef's father was his grandfather or Lorenz and multiple sources confirm this. I'm not sure why this video has them saying the grandfather was definitely the father. His behavior also makes so much more sense if you consider that when he saw dead bodies he was panicked that one of them was Josef. There's also the simple fact that there's so much possiblity that someone was living in the house for months before
@@bboops23 I am also in 2 minds on him. Motive for revenge/rage at Victoria and Andreas? Sure, that makes sense. But why kill the children, including his own, the mother and the new maid? It also sounded like at one point he would have shacked up with Victoria and he accpeted the child as his own, except Andreas got in the way. Also, I wonder how no one would have noticed that Lorenz was gone for 4 days if he was indeed living at the farm for those few days, tending the animals and eating the food. Or, if he was up and down between his own home and the farm, surely someone would have noticed.
I love that one of the investigators was like “hey Fritz, go scream in the barn for us.”
"And all because of the child" could also just mean that Ceci one day spotted the drifter who lived in the attic, and called for her mum before he could kill Ceci. When Victoria came looking for Ceci the guy killed her mum, then one after another the granddad and grandma also came looking for them and he killed them too. Then he walked into the farmhouse to complete the task and lived there as long as he could before people began snooping around on the farm.
I don't think he was in any way involved in the family secrets or he would have known about the gold, too. He just wanted to have a roof over his head and killed the family once he was spotted so he wouldn't get arrested.
That sounds like the one!
He could also, given the beliefs at the time, believe that his being caught was a punishment for having killed the baby. Divine providence was a thing back then.
There was a story from Russia a few years ago that was kind of disproves the family wouldn't have gone one by one like that theory.
The young daughter (I think she was 8) the only survivor told the story of how, Dad went down for potatoes and didn't come back so Mom went to look for him when she didn't come back her older brother went and when he didn't come back her Grandmother followed. Finally the child took a look and saw her whole family lying at the bottom of the steps and instead of doing what everyone else had done (run down to help only to pass out as well) she'd called the cops.
Sadly by the time help arrived they were gone.
The potatoes in the cellar had bad and due to how they had been stored had fermented into releasing a noxious gas, it had built up so much it it had replace most of the oxygen in the unventilated cellar.
That is a real danger at drilling/fracking sites. H2S is a colorless gas that collects in low areas and confined spaces due to its high density. it is detectable by its smell at extremely low concentrations ( .01 - 1 ppm) but prolonged exposure (2-10 minutes) at that level, or any exposure to higher concentrations, causes olfactory paralysis, disabling the sense of smell. This is instantaneous at 100 ppm.
200 ppm - extreme pink eye and fluid build up in the lungs in under an hour.
500ppm - collapse in 5 minutes, blindness in 30 minutes, death in under an hour.
700ppm - unconscious in 1 or 2 breaths, dead in minutes
1000ppm - near instant death.
Everyone wears a personal gas detector and respirator. There are stationary detectors around every pad, and hi-vis wind socks or flags, so everyone can flee upwind in case of an incident. If someone collapses at work, we cannot attempt help them. Immediate evacuation until the area is cleared. It's serious shit, man.
Yep, solanine poisoning.
only survivor? I thought the younger Cäzilia was killed and had tuffs of her hair in her hands because she didn't die instantly.🤷
@@kalevala29read the comment again the commenter is referring to a different case and using it as an example/ comparisan
@@sophiebritton3280Indeed, it makes sense thanks.🤦
I had known that this was a legendarily gruesome unsolved murder, but I never heard anything about what a complete nightmare the family was prior to their deaths. Just an absolute horror show.
To answer your question regarding the new maid and her sister accompanying her, I've read other reports explaining that Maria was mentally challenged and thus much less autonomous, needing her sister's supervision. As I recall this was to be her very first job away from her own family.
I'm troubled by Angus reporting the incestuous rapes going on, but blithely leaving out the known timeline of it beginning when Viktoria was a young teen. She was known to have sought to marry SOMEbody-ANYbody at a young age *in order to escape her father*, flirting with & proposing to a couple of different men over the years, including Lorenz after her husband was KIA on the front.
And yeah, suffice to say, incest and society's misogynistic view of perp and victim in Catholic Bavaria would need its own show...
And: while far too sprawling for your channel, the book "The Man from the Train" details the crimes of a serial axe murderer criss-crossing the U.S. via rail in the years before Hinterkeifeck -- and the author speculates that the perpetrator was a certain (named) German immigrant and itinerant logger/handyman, who had eventually escaped back to Germany as the U.S. cops began closing in, only to commit the same crime(s?) with (nearly) the same M.O. not long after. A cool twist, especially for someone like me, who'd read a lot about Hinterkaifeck, but heard there were "no suspects"!
Ya that kind of important info. As presented here the evidence of incest isn't great.
The guy Victoria had been in a relationship with, who she was pining as the Dad and who seems to have started the paperwork to make it official has an argument with her and is suddenly telling everyone the babies not his but the result of a crime the GF he's arguing with could be convicted of? Ya that sounds real and not an attempt to get out of supporting the child at all /S
Refraining the whole relationship as Viktoria's as a pastern of behavior and an attempt escape her father changes things
Being from rural Bavaria myself, I thought that this must have been the case as well why she was so desperate to marry again, since after her husbands death and without property of her own, she had nowhere else to live except at her parents place unless she managed to marry another guy who had property of his own. And yes, it was a reality that back then, women were totally blamed for "seducing the man" if they got raped. There's so many stories where daughters were blamed for seducing their fathers who raped them, it's absolutely not funny. I immediately had to think of my own grandmother who chose to stay with an absolute dickhead of a smoker and drinker after her first husband died, just so she wouldn't be forced to stay with her parents in law, who blamed her for his death although he died in a mountaineering accident while installing avalanche fences.
Other information I had heard elsewhere was that the roof went from the house to the barn. There were holes someone could look down on the family with. I can totally see someone being up there, unseen.
@@hopejohnson6347 Agree -- but little has actually changed over the generations, as you likely know. Little children to this day are being blamed for their "seductive behavior" that "makes" their rapists violate their bodies and ruin their lives forever.
This is honestly such a perfect book too. So good
" We had a quarrel. Your daughter is behaving like a crazy woman and refusing to come into the house. Could you please come out and help me calm her down?" There. Perfect way to get each person to come out individually.
Ooooooooh I’ve been looking forward to this one! I’ve been fascinated by this case for years. Was a bit disappointed when I heard it had been taken, but now I get to listen to Simon live through the details as an observer, which is always fun lol. Cuz, well, who doesn’t love a good Murder mystery?
No worries you legend, there is noooo lack of horror for you to bring us. (Well.... yeah, I guess that is worrisome. )
Your scripts are still amazing, Matt.
I suspect that the "that would be even nicer" is a slightly too literal translation of "Das wäre ja noch schöner!" which, depending on the circumstances can mean something among the lines of "As if!" or "No way!" or alternatively also "Not gonna happen!" or "Not if I have anything to say about it" or "You wish!" or "Sure!" (but like, in a sarcastic way).
It's usually used to voice either surprise or, more commonly, spite and/or disagreement or frustration.
79
47:50 Reminds me of that scene in Hitman 2 when the priest tells you about an old Scilian saying "I don't know anything, I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything I wasn't even there and if I was I was asleep."
I’m so stoked I got my nan to start watching casual criminalist. Everyone needs the glory of Simon and his amazing team 😇
Hello Nan. Welcome.
Yes, Welcome Nan!
Thank you Angus and Jen for your hard work and dedication to this channel.
Jen got really good, evocative stock footage for this one. The cows in the snow in the old-fashioned enclosure and the hand-shaped doorknocker were two of my favorites.
Wish the ghoul boys would've re-visted this one. Somehow, Simon oscillates between both of their incredibly polar personalities.
Crossover, maybe?
@@GreebleClown Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!
Glad to know there’s people with great taste out there😎
Unfortunately a crossover would be hard considering the distance 😕
@@meganmills5412 they traveled to a tiny island off Mexico for a video, I'm sure they could manage England
I understand the past was different, but I can't imagine finding footprints into a building on my property, with no returning footprints, and not searching for intruders or calling the authorities to have a thorough search.
Can you imagine how messed up that repairman must have been when he found out he was there when the killer was?!
Plot twist, it was the repair man
2:05 - Chapter 1 - Hinterkaifeck
11:30 - Mid roll ads
14:25 - Chapter 2 - The investigation
23:55 - Chapter 3 - The family
29:40 - Chapter 4 - The concerned neighbor
36:25 - Chapter 5 - The theories
44:10 - Chapter 6 - The final suspects
53:45 - Wrap up
- Dismembered appendices
PS: Sorry, i'm on a live so i put the timestamping on hold...
Chapter 5 - The theories. I really thought there was gonna be aliens in there somewhere….. anyway thank you 😊.
Appreciate your work
THIS- just this! Hinterkaifeck is one the unsolved crimes that morbidly fascinates me and love it when a channel covers it. One of the best in depth coverages I’ve watched to date.
Thanks Simon and team- keep up the good work
Greetings from from a small town near Augsburg, Germany. The Hinterkaifeck murders are considered a somewhat "local" mystery since the place is about 60 Killometers or an hours drive away. I would like to add a few points here, if you don't mind
1.) The reason the mayor was informed first was probably due to the time period, he had most likely a telephone to call the police in Munich because...
2.) as soon as the local police took their first look at the crime scene, they knew they were horribly under qualified for the task at hand and requested back up from Munich. Also Munich was and is the state capital of Bavaria so that could have been a deciding factor to call on them not Augsburg, wich is about 50-ish kilometers in distance to the crime scene.
3.)the gapeing holes in the Schliffenbauer theory are, if I recall correctly , that he was a farmer as well and interacted with several people on his farm and the town nearby on the day and the days after the killings and with limited means of transportation, he wasn't likely to be able to make the necessary trips to pull it off.
I hope this was litte bit helpful . Servus.
Also having between one or a few murderus individuals or ghosts in my barn........I´d rather have ghosts!!!
I agree with you on the ghosts. Actually I have my own theory on the case. One involving the consequences of something Andreas Grubber might have done. There’s a reason why there is a concept of sins of the father continuing to haunt family members in Judaism, Christianity and the ancient Hellenic religion. I think that’s what happened with this family.
@@mirandagoldstine8548 yeah maybe, or they were truly victims of opportunity .....
@@Steffi.Morgenstern.5388 I think the only way to know for certain is if we find the foreign newspaper mentioned in the first investigation of the case. I think that is the key to cracking the mystery. Only problem is there’s no mention of the name of the newspaper online.To me this felt like a revenge killing, a punishment to the entire family for something Andreas Grubber possibly committed hence why I said sins of the father.
To add onto point number 2: My first assumption on why Munich was called instead of Augsburg is because Augsburg is the Capital of the administrative district of Swabia, however, Hinterkaifeck lies in upper Bavaria - of which Munich is the district capital. That's my guess on why Munich was contacted - even though Augsburg is geographically closer.
@@anonymmc2764 Yes, that's right. Slippt right past me 😅
Simon pronounces Cäzilia like she’s Godzilla’s twin sister and their mom liked matchy names 😂
To be fair, that name is incredibly weird.
@@kraanz I don't think the name is weird at all - unless you think that Cecilia is also a weird name. Literacy back then wasn't what it is now and people tended to write stuff as they spoke it. Cecilia and Cäzilia are the same in spoken German and I can totally see it becoming a Cäzillia with a bavarian dialect.
Nowadays the spelling would be considered strange of course, but for the time? I don't think so. Adding onto the 'spelling like you speak it': In Germany Maier is a very common surename with lots of different spellings: Maier, Mair, Mayer, Mayr, Meyer, Meier and probably a few more. It was same for first names.
IF ABLE: A follow up Casual Criminalist about the German group of farmer killers, would be a pretty awesome addition to this story.
Simon's American doppelganger:
*hears footsteps in the attic, gleefully grabs guns*
"Alexa, initiate intruder alert protocol."
*Lights turn red*
*Guns N Rose's "Welcome to the Jungle" begins*
*Digital locks initiate*
*Simon rails lines of Athletic Greens*
"Yippie Kay Yay mother..."
If they seen Casual Criminalist, even once, they'd know that footsteps that approach your house and don't leave are suspicious.
Allegedly...
Re ‘confessions’ to pastors, priests etc. Here in Australia the only protected communications under law are those communications between a lawyer and their client. Everything else, when it comes to the commission of a crime, is not protected. Came under much discussion in recent years with the Royal Commission into sexual abuse of children, particularly in the Catholic Church.
Basically a priest, or a doctor, can invoke confidentiality, but they’ll be found in contempt of court and suffer the punishment that the court decides.
Here in NSW there is even a section in the Crimes Act that absolves anyone in any profession (except legal) from any actions under confidentiality requirements if they report criminal information.
I underwent this myself with bosses when a patient turned up to ED (with his solicitor) and stated to me that he had tried to kill himself because his wife was going to find out he had been sexually abusing his stepdaughters (her daughters) aged 8 and 10. You better believe that I reported that to both the Police and the Dept Community Services - two small children at great risk.
The translation is really, really bad, lol.
What Pöll/the other man said at around the 10:00 min mark was probably "Das wäre ja noch schöner", which literally translates to "That would be even nicer" but doesn't *mean* that discovering a body is nice. It's an expression of disbelief/incredulousness and still used today. I'm not sure what a better translation would be - Probably just "That's unbelievable" or "Are you taking the piss?" but not as vulgar.
A few notes that come to mind:
1) The murders happened in the morning, just before dawn. The mother and maid were up and dressed, the rest of the household not yet out of bed. This is for the morning chores that need to be done before the others wake up for the day's work, things like starting the fire and breaking the cream.
2) No, it's not that unusual that a rural farm would've been targeted for a crime like this by a group of strangers. Even today, this is a common crime in parts of the world where social order has broken done, because the remote property makes the crime easier and allows more time to search for valuables.
3) "All because of the child." Maybe they had originally intended to rob the place but not kill anyone. If one of the conspirators had lured everyone out to the barn, perhaps by claiming to be a bystander who saw a fire, that would allow the other conspirator to enter the house. But the baby started crying, and the maid went back in, forcing that second conspirator to kill her? And they had to kill the rest as witnesses? Some holes in that theory, but I think "all because of the child" is more likely to mean something like this than some hint at a personal connection to the family or some incest revenge squad, lol.
This is all assuming, of course, that it was the Gump brothers. Honestly, my first impression was that Cecilia was having some sort of affair, and had let the man stay hidden in the home. That explains the strange noises. And the two sets of foot prints the father had seen going to the shed? Cecilia and her mystery suitor, meeting for a midnight rendezvous. The fight that sent Cecilia crying out of the house the night before the murders? Her lover was discovered. Probably by the maid - having just arrived, she would likely have inspected her new workplace thoroughly. They told him he could stay in the barn for the night, but he had to be out by dawn. Then dawn came, and he had another idea...
I just realised I forgot to rank the likelihood of the theories. Here they are
1. Unidentified Resident
2. Gump Brothers
3. Drifter
4. Lorentz
Way down at the bottom of the list: undead USSR husband
This is scary, yesterday I went through your channels to see if you ever covered Hinterkaifeck. And now there is this video....
We've learned Angus has trouble getting people to do things, and that Simon, having experience both luring people places (basement) and getting them to do things (write scripts), does not.
I am a sceptic of everything myself just like Simon, having prior knowledge of the Hinterkaifek murders I was excited to see this video uploaded. This story has always creeped me out.
Ive heard this story many times but this is truly the best flushed out version ive heard. Thank you for giving this tragedy a better face. One day we may have the answers to such a horrible crime. One day we may be able to bring closure to the victims. Keep sleuthing. Never give up.
40:35 There's another thing absurd about this idea... Karl is supposed to have died seven years previously, which places his recorded death around 1914-15. He is said to have expressed a desire to move the the USSR. Would this be the USSR that didn't exist until the second revolution of 1917?
How can he desire to move to a country that wouldn't be created until 2 or 3 years after his apparent death? Unless he had actually spoken of _Imperial Russia_ and it's been misquoted by sources...
Jen! You have the power to free the prisoners from the writing dungeon. Please don’t, I need this in my life
a few weeks ago while playing dnd a friend of mine decided the character they were bringing in had a german accent, and he was doing pretty well until he lost it after talking normally to buy some snacks from the shop we play at.
he just couldnt find it again for like 5 mins of playing until he held up a finger, took a breath, and declaired in a high pitched faux german accent "schnitzle!!" and then he was back to doing the accent well for the session.
but all 6 of the rest of us freaking lost it, something about the pitch, random word and the bright joy in his eyes as he said it. man. we are still giggling, but he still has the accent down.
so if in doubt, yell schnitzle!
ps, yeah, i cant spell german so i tried phonetically, please forgive me.
From other sources I've seen, the incest was prosecuted in court. Andreas received a 1 year sentence, and Viktoria 1 month, and it was common knowledge. How much time they actually served, and why they were allowed to return living at the farm, I saw no mention. But the mention of 1 year scribbled on the death notices seems to reference that.
Merch opportunity: "That's not a relationship, that's a crime" on a T-shirt.
Omg I think I recommended this one a while ago! I’m sure I’m not the only one but I’m excited to hear you and your teams input on it
One aspect is missing in my opinion: You have to know the region - it was and is strongly catholic. A very religious person, possibly a relative might have known and might have seen the whole thing as an unexcusable sacrilege that had to be ended and the persons involved punished.
Reminds me of the 1920s US story of this man with mental health issues who lived in this couple’s attic for months and killed the husband at one point. Family/police never found the guy until much later because they thought the attic access was too small for a person to enter. Unfortunately it happens still of people (usually stalkers) taking up residence in an attic.
If you’re referring to who I think- the man wasn’t mentally ill- he was basically the wife’s s3x slave starting from age 17. He killed the husband because he was worried for the wife’s safety.
@@positivevibesvedaThats a fascinating case. I think Simon did a video on it a while back.
She kept him as a sexual plaything with him being hidden in a tiny attic room and only coming out to satisfy her lusts. The husband was a violent drunk and was killed during one of his outbursts iirc.
From what I recall the woman was convicted of the murder and attic guy disappeared from history to live his life out of the public record.
I'm so excited to hear another Casual Criminalist episode 😁
German here! The admittedly weird-sounding phrase "That would be even nicer!" is almost certainly a literal translation of an idiom, hence the weirdness. "Das wär' ja noch schöner!" is the idiom, and an equivalent English phrase in this context would be something along the lines of "Are you f*cking kidding me?!" or "I'll be damned!".
Two things with this story. 1. There is more, the man of the house also found footprints coming to the house door in the snow but no leaving prints and a house key was stolen. 2. He saw two sets of prints going to the shed and not leaving. I think it could be the neighbor and another person, perhaps a son. That would explain 2 sets of prints. Prints going to the door but the lock wasn't broken. The need for 2 sets of keys. And how the neighbor could be home and someone can be in the house.
Wait -- The elder Cecilia owned the farm when she married Andreas and that made HIM the owner of the farm? And that doesn't even get a "The past was the worst"?
Welcome to property law prior to womens lib where women only have control until married, it's related to why Elizabeth I never married. I'm not even sure when that one got ditched but I have a feeling 70s onward for a number of countries. It's only been in the past 20 years that spousal rights got tossed out in my state so a husband can be tried for rape.
I'll give you one. The past was the worst. Definitely. Even today, I will advise other women to have their own funds/property/bank account/prenup/etc, even you think the guy you're about to marry/date is a good one. Literally no one goes into a relationship with the expectation that their partner is an abusive asshole and they're one day going to need to leave suddenly.
1:24
My grandpa told me not to get a dna test when I was younger and now I’m wondering how many people he’s killed
😂
Simon give your editor a bonus for the back to the future call back. So perfect, so well done
The noises in the attic happened to my mom and sister. Turns out a family of raccoons had taken up residence in their attic.
Same thing happened at my mom's but it was bats.
Same but it was squirrels
I had a possum (the Australian brushtail type, without the "O").
I have been waiting for you to do this one so I can hear your opinion on the craziness of this horrible multiple murder.
I have to say Jen is my favorite. Killer editing
THIS is the one I've been waiting for since reading about it years ago, of all true crime and unsolved cases this one has haunted me the most.
I have an argument about the "someone was tending the stove and Lorenz couldn't have made it home in time" thing. I have a stove heated house. From the outside the only way to tell if someone is tending the stove is if it's smoking. But if you know what you're doing and feed the stove properly, you can leave for several hours and still come home to a smoking chimney.
Moral of this episode: if Simon ever asks you to “come here a minute…” and “here” is some kind of shed or barn, what do you do?! RUN!
The sled builder neighbour thing is just because "Schlittenbauer" literally translates to "sled builder"
I’ve been bingeing these episodes while working from home, and I have come to the conclusion that Jen is an editing genius 😂👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Lol Jen is the best! I can't remember what episode it was, but there was one that between Simon's tangents and Jen's editing I was rolling with laughter. It was more of a comedy than a true crime murder episode.
I went back and found the episode that I thought was quite funny, called The Poisoner.
Funny thing, I live about 40km (in Augsburg actuall) away from Hinterkaifeck and lerned about it in 2 UA-cam videos. Apparently there's now a memorial site there but I've never been there. Thanks for educating me 👍
I love that I can type in any topic I'm curious about and find a video about it on one of Simon's channels. 🤘
27:37 Schlittenbauer literally means sled builder, so it's just that the translator translated his name
I’d heard a brief overview of this case before, but this episode really gave a good analysis of what might have happened and of the evidence recovered. It was quite enjoyable!
There is no way in hell fact boy is confronting anyone in the attic lmao
Regarding your comment about the supposedly dead husband - if you think about it, he may have come back to collect his wife and child and found that she had another child, and KNOWING that child could not possibly be his own, he would have assumed that Victoria had an affair before knowing for sure he was dead, and it would have been very easy for him to hide around the place as it was his home before - and killed all of them in a rage. He would have had no way of knowing about the molestation if he had just seen the extra child from afar. He may have changed a lot since his time at war and people may never have recognized him. There is a very good case that he did in fact come back to get his wife and child to take them with him. I honestly believe the husband theory is a very strong one.
SIMON --- Kudos to you for giving Jen a mention at the beginning!! 😊
This case is probably the case that makes me most curious about. No matter the answer, I'm really interested in how this occured because it's so strange.
Gabriel suffers from Shell Shock after surviving No Man's Land.
Spends time being healed and after a few years returns home.
Victoria initially agrees to hide him for old time sake. He finds out about the abuse and the other man. Trips off one night and murders everyone. Hides out in the house for a bit and then flees to the Soviet Union.
Maybe far fetched - but a good movie script.
Hahahaha Simon, I laughed all the way through this. Your sense of humour is gold to me and what a gifted storyteller to take seriously dark aspects of human life and make it funny. I feel very safe knowing there's plenty of sane, intelligent beings like you out in the world. Gold mate. Thankyou;)
Angus's banjo joke 😅 pure savagery!
I’d be really interested to see a Casual Criminalist vid on the Clutter family murders. I’m a bit surprised it’s not been done yet considering how well known it is from Capote’s In Cold Blood. Hope to see it eventually
As a german i for one am fine with you doing a german accent. I think it is hilarious and it is so cool when you by accident pronounce something german correctly. Go ahead from me :)
"That would be even nicer!" seems to be a correct verbatim translation of "Das wäre ja noch schöner!", but this phrase would more accurately be translated to a sarcastic "Wouldn't that be just great!"
End of march is still calfing/lambing season, so luring farmers into the barn wouldn't be difficult. It can also explain the halfclad situation.
It being hard to find a good maid is bourgeois problems Simon. First world problems are Netflix being down or having to use an iPhone with a cracked screen because you are locked into a sheety plan.
I've been SO waiting for this one!
Excellent as always Simon!
Jenn and Sam are TangentBoi’s top two editors 👌🏻👍🏻
TangentBoi - I can't 🤣
I know this one!! I had an inkling with the maid, and that grew with the first day of her work, the traveling salesman asking neighbors and then I knew it when it said that there was a mechanic!
So as a granddaughter of a minister, he would only talk after the confessor died with the only difference in this pattern being if the confessor asked to have him wait until the death of other people. He said “I wish I could tell when someone needs help or commits a crime but if I talk before able then I will not be able to provide closure to others even if far to late because no one will ever talk to me again.” He only struggled with this 2 times I know of but it’s suggested to me that he annoyingly sent information including where to find evidence and who to look for more before I was born. He was not part of a church that takes confession.
Simon: "I don't have people living in my attic waiting to murder me"
Danny, Sam & Kevin: "But in the basement....."
Thank Zeus I didn't know if I was going to make it thru my last hour of work and then here comes Simon with a new episode for me to listen to lol
In 2007 a group of German students, who were about to become police inspectors, looked into the case. They were pretty certain they knew who the killer was, but out of concern or respect for that person's living relatives, they refused to publish the name.
Intriguing, any links to this?
I've disproved Einstein's theory of special relativity but out of respect for his living relatives, I refuse to publish the find.
I still want my Nobel Peace Prize though.
Interesting decision. Were they always planning to not publish the results or did the likely killer have (at least locally) powerful living relatives who could make life difficult for the students if word got out?
German laws are verys strict about divulging personal information even i the person has been tried and convicted. In a case like this where any direct participants are probably dead and any living relatives would most likely have had no knowledge of what their ancestor/relative had done, the concern is generally to protect the innocent, so to say.
Ich finde die Erkärung, dass das ein Fall von staatlichem Eingreifen war, am plausibelsten. Diese Erkärung hat am wenigsten offene Fragen von allen. Darunter auch das Video vom Donau Kurier von Anfang 2022, in dem das ausführlich erklärt wird:
Damn, this whole video lacks one of the most exciting and probable theories!
Hinterkaifeck was an ASSASSINATION ORDERED BY THE MILITARY LEADERSHIP of the German Reichswehr. This has to do with post-war Germany and the revolution that took place in Bavaria and several parts of Germany. A fight between Communists and Royalists and subsequently Nationalists.
It came to light end of the 1990s when military historian Johnny Noack got into possession of a document by a former soldier who wrote in detail about his assignment to deal with a farmer who blackmailed the Reichswehr.
For those interesed check out this video from minute 30 onwards. ua-cam.com/video/-hGCR7mbDXs/v-deo.html
Thanks for doing this one! I recommended it a while ago.
This might be the biggest unsolved case I'd never heard of before the pandemic. I first learned about it about a year ago when I listened to Red Web's podcast (released June 2021)... and I'd completely forgotten about that coverage when I saw this video show up in my UA-cam recommendations four days ago, but thought the title looked familiar. I finally got around to watching it when my work week ended... sort of; I work nights and don't get consecutive nights off.
The guy in the attic isn’t far fetched at all, and Simon is how I know that. Go checkout “The Denver Spiderman.” If the actual hiding place was in the barn side, you don’t have to lure anybody. You’re going to be there anyway. Get ‘em as they come out and throw a little hay on them so the next person has to get close enough to figure out what happened.
Ya one person disappears everyone looks for them one by one.
There was a story from Russia a few years ago that was like that.
The young daughter (I think she was 8) the only survivor told the story of how, Dad went down for potatoes and didn't come back so Mom went to look for him when she didn't come back her older brother went and when he didn't come back her Grandmother followed. Finally the child took a look and saw her whole family lying at the bottom of the steps and instead of doing what everyone else had done (run down to help only to pass out as well) she'd called the cops.
Sadly by the time help arrived they were gone.
The potatoes in the cellar had bad and due to how they had been stored had fermented into releasing a noxious gas, it had built up so much it it had replace most of the oxygen in the unventilated cellar.
Some guy was just seen jumping across the rooftops of houses in a town near me. A man called police when he confronted a man who was in his attic with drugs, a gun and a spot he was sleeping. 😮😮😮
You’ve totally gotta look up the Coral Castle in Florida!!! It’s one of my favorite mysteries and one I constantly still wonder about!
Edit: just realized I commented this on the wrong show! Whoops! 😅
I pick gump bros. Wouldn’t be the first time that a psychopath were living alongside the victims for some time. What a deliciously sordid tale!
I live in the middle of nowhere Germany too und we have a wooden home. So every day in summer the wood expends with the hear and cools down in the evening. Sounds exactly like footsteps and we came to refer to it as our own House spirit. Scarred the hell outta my girlfriend when she was alone first time there. 😂 But to say it in Ron Swanson's words: "If your house ain't haunted you are lonely"
Not being a criminologist, I can still tell you that with 100% certainly that the Gump bro. was not there on the 31st of APRIL. Otherwise, I loved this post. Tyvm for sharing an interesting story and it's details! ❤️
Once again, I should be sleeping... but nope, time to watch some horrible stuff about criminals and such :D
It should be noted that you CAN in fact walk from Munich to the Hinterkaifek farm in about 21hours I believe. And, the closest neightbord was 0.5 km away from the farm, which was Lorenz. Walking that distance is about 7 minutes.
This is a tough case to solve but I believe it is solvable. Pherhaps if one day someone finds a detail we all missed it could be the key to solving this case. Even if it was a random person in the woods, I believe that you could narrow down the search to maybe someone in Munich or a WWI german veteran, or any veteran for that matter that was discharged or quit. That's a wide range or names you gotta go through, which is why I recommend A.I. to help you sort out and find the culprit.
Another thing, you could have A.I. play simulations and see how it behaves and see how it is able to draw out people and kill "people" out in that scenerio as well. It may not be 100%, but we could discover new things. I wish I had the time to do it but yeah rest in piece to each of the victims :/.
So I learned something interesting about roofs when mine was redone.
When the weather changes and the wood of the roof is either very new or very old, each board will expand in succession, pushing on the one next to it causing it to shift and make a sound. This in turn shifts the next one and so on.
This is because new wood hasn't settled yet and old damaged wood has lost its heat retention.
In short, this makes it sound like someone stomping on the roof or attic!
I think if you hear footsteps in your attic it’s totally appropriate to call a non emergency police line and just explain you are checking out the sound of foot steps from your attic and just want someone on the phone who can send help if a crazy person is in there.
If I hear footsteps in my attic or cellar, it's perfectly reasonable to call any helpline and get someone else to check out the mad murderer thumping about 😳
There is a small hole in the Karl Gabriel theory. That being: the USSR did not exist until 1922.
Schlittenbauer means sled builder in German, that's probably where the confusion comes from. A lot of German surnames are just professions.
YES! 'bin waiting for this, since i've discoverd this channel
You are one of the few I listen to as I drive. I like to learn about the lesser known criminals. I don't mean to be blunt. I have to constantly adjust my car volume as I'm trying to enjoy your stories. It's a huge spike up as you break away from reading the script. Your laugh is the loudest peak. I truly hope that you investigate this to assure your content is growing more to perfection.