Speaker 1: The following episode contains disturbing and graphic scenes that are
Speaker 1: not suitable for children. Parental discretion is advised. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Unexplained Extra with Me Richard McClane Smith, where for the
Speaker 1: weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas
Speaker 1: that one reason or other didn't make it into the
Speaker 1: previous show. In the last episode Tenebrus, one of the
Speaker 1: darker episodes in recent times, we explored the disturbing story
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenty two murders on Hinta Kaifek farm
Speaker 1: in southern Germany. It is undoubtedly a deeply unsettling mystery,
Speaker 1: and one that feels oddly timeless too, with its power
Speaker 1: to shock undiminished in the almost one hundred years since
Speaker 1: it took place. I think what makes it most perplexing
Speaker 1: for me is the combination of the fact that the
Speaker 1: murderer or murderers, most likely he knew the family, yet
Speaker 1: none of the suspects appeared to have motivation enough to
Speaker 1: carry out such a devastating attack. Left with no answers,
Speaker 1: it is almost tempting to believe that this wasn't a
Speaker 1: human act at all, but the result of some terrible,
Speaker 1: supernatural judgment that swept through the property, killing Andreas for
Speaker 1: his crimes and taking the others with him as collateral damage.
Speaker 1: But despite the story's apparent singularity, it is by no
Speaker 1: means the only strange and horrific event to have ever
Speaker 1: occurred in human history. It wasn't even the only one
Speaker 1: that day. The girls laughed as they made their way
Speaker 1: back to the farmhouse, pulling their dresses above their ankles
Speaker 1: as they skipped through the thick tufts of grass. They'd
Speaker 1: been out feeding the horses before deciding to chase each
Speaker 1: other back to the house, and had just stumbled into
Speaker 1: the chart when one of them realized Pauline was no
Speaker 1: longer with them. Even at only two and a half
Speaker 1: years old, it wasn't unusual for Pauline to help her
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters with the various errands around the farm.
Speaker 1: Feeding the horses was one of her favorite chores, but
Speaker 1: now she was missing. The girls turned and looked back
Speaker 1: up to the hill, shouting for their sister to show herself,
Speaker 1: but saw only the stillness of the dark green fields
Speaker 1: and the horses ambling about in the distance. The Picards
Speaker 1: lived on their farm in the hamlet of goass Al
Speaker 1: la Doux in the area of Sainte rivo Al, a
Speaker 1: few kilometers east of Breast in the northwest of France,
Speaker 1: surrounded by rolling hills of thick scrub and woodland. There
Speaker 1: were eleven of them in total, with Pauline being the
Speaker 1: second youngest of nine children. That night of April sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty two, as a while storm blew in from the
Speaker 1: Aria Mountains, the family were joined by police search dogs
Speaker 1: and close to one hundred and fifty volunteers as they
Speaker 1: searched desperately for the little girl, trudging through thick tufts
Speaker 1: of gorse in the wind and the rain, but no
Speaker 1: sign of Pauline was found. With the family grief stricken,
Speaker 1: attentions soon turned to their farm hand, Christoph Karamon, who'd
Speaker 1: been staying at the farm the night before. Karamon, who
Speaker 1: was known to be overly tactile with the young girl,
Speaker 1: had also previously served five years in prison for rape,
Speaker 1: having tracked him down three days later. However, working on
Speaker 1: another farm six kilometers away, the police accepted Kerraman's story
Speaker 1: that he was miles from the scene at the time,
Speaker 1: and though police continued to make inquiries with no sign
Speaker 1: of Pauline in the weeks that followed, any hope of
Speaker 1: finding her alive soon disappeared, But then something truly unexpected.
Speaker 1: It was May eighth when two local police officers arrived
Speaker 1: at the Peacard's farm bearing some unlikely news. A young
Speaker 1: girl had been picked up in the northern port town
Speaker 1: of Cherbourg, four hundred kilometers away by road, bearing an
Speaker 1: uncanny resemblance to their missing daughter. Could this be Pauline,
Speaker 1: the officers asked as they passed a photograph of the
Speaker 1: newly found toddler to Pauline's parents. The couple were stunned,
Speaker 1: clinging to each other as they poured at the picture,
Speaker 1: daring themselves to believe it was true. The following day,
Speaker 1: the couple made the agonizing trip by train to Cherbourg
Speaker 1: to visit the girl in person. After arriving at the
Speaker 1: orphanage where she'd been taken, they gasped as she was
Speaker 1: brought into the room, their eyes filling with tears at
Speaker 1: the sight of her, Pauline, They whispered, barely able to speak,
Speaker 1: the name, Is it's really you? The child stared back,
Speaker 1: a little unsure of them at first, then broke into
Speaker 1: a wide smile, unable to resist any longer, the father, Francois,
Speaker 1: moved forward and swept her up into his arms. Look
Speaker 1: she has her eyes, he said, holding her up toward
Speaker 1: his wife, who, unlike her husband, was hesitant at first,
Speaker 1: but soon she was holding her too, noting the similarity
Speaker 1: of the ears, and before long there was no denying it.
Speaker 1: Pauline had been miraculously returned to them. After spending the
Speaker 1: next few days in Cherbourg together, though the girl was
Speaker 1: yet to even speak, the Peacards were eventually granted permission
Speaker 1: to take her home, and so it was on May
Speaker 1: eleventh that Pauline was returned to the farm and to
Speaker 1: her grateful siblings, who took it in turns to pass around,
Speaker 1: bombarding her with kisses and playfully scolding her not to
Speaker 1: leave them again. Many of the families neighbors came by
Speaker 1: two to witness the girl's incredible return. All remarked on
Speaker 1: how extraordinary it was, and that though she seemed to
Speaker 1: sum a little thinner than before, it was only natural
Speaker 1: considering how long it had been since she disappeared. And
Speaker 1: by the following day, Pauline was beginning to find her
Speaker 1: voice again, laughing wildly as she chased the cat in
Speaker 1: the yard, and though the police were still keen to
Speaker 1: establish just how the girl had disappeared in the first place,
Speaker 1: for the family, at least that she was alive and
Speaker 1: seemingly well was all that mattered. It was a few
Speaker 1: weeks after her return that neighbor Eve Martin appeared at
Speaker 1: the farm asking to see Pauline. Thinking little of it,
Speaker 1: nearly everyone else had done the same, Pauline's mother kindly
Speaker 1: showed her daughter off to the man. Then his face
Speaker 1: went white, his mouth contorting in horrible ways, until finally
Speaker 1: he blurted it out, God is fair. I am guilty.
Speaker 1: He cried, then turned and ran from the property. When
Speaker 1: word reached police of the bizarre episode, they searched for
Speaker 1: days for the man, only to find when they finally
Speaker 1: tracked him down, that he had been committed to a
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital. Martin was said to have suffered a terrible
Speaker 1: head trauma a few days before the outburst, and was
Speaker 1: by then too incapacitated to be interviewed. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: almost a kilometer from the Peacard's farm, Monsieur Lemieux, a
Speaker 1: farmer from Lembrasse, was cycling to collect his cows from
Speaker 1: a nearby field when he noticed pieces of blood stained
Speaker 1: clothing scattered by the edge of the path. Pulling up
Speaker 1: to take a closer look, he was overcome with the sweet,
Speaker 1: sickly stench of rotting flesh. It wasn't unusual in those
Speaker 1: parts to come across the odd, putrid carcass slowly rotting
Speaker 1: in the bushes, but that didn't smell like this. This
Speaker 1: was different. Following the trail of clothing through the long
Speaker 1: grass and into a thicket of gorse, he soon found
Speaker 1: the source of it. It took a moment to understand
Speaker 1: what he was looking at. So strange an alien, it seemed,
Speaker 1: and though countless things were moving and buzzing around it,
Speaker 1: there was no denying it was the body of a
Speaker 1: small child, or rather what was left of it. One
Speaker 1: of the legs was missing, while the other was inside
Speaker 1: a muddied woolen stocking. There was a small wooden soled
Speaker 1: shoe on the end of it, and one of the
Speaker 1: arms had been almost completely off, the bones protruding through
Speaker 1: the tough, dark skin blackened by decomposition. There was no
Speaker 1: head on the body either, but a skull just two
Speaker 1: meters away, completely stripped of flesh. It took three days
Speaker 1: for police to arrive on the scene, but by then
Speaker 1: the whole community had learned the horrific discovery. Pauline's parents
Speaker 1: were at home with Pauline when they heard the news,
Speaker 1: Francois racing into the field to see it for himself.
Speaker 1: It went almost unnoticed that among the strewn pieces of clothing,
Speaker 1: some pieces had been placed neatly folded next to the body.
Speaker 1: But Francois saw it. Saw the familiar checkered dress and
Speaker 1: the small shoe whose laces he'd once tied himself with
Speaker 1: his own hands. He saw two those familiar strands of
Speaker 1: hair that now clung in clumps to the surrounding gorse.
Speaker 1: He looked across to his wife by the path, and
Speaker 1: to the young girl from Cherbourg holding her hand, and
Speaker 1: in that moment he saw what he'd refused to see before,
Speaker 1: that this girl, this stranger that love had morphed and
Speaker 1: distorted into his little girl, was a good ten centimeters
Speaker 1: shorter than Pauline, and her eyes they weren't the eyes
Speaker 1: of his daughter at all. Nor her nose that he
Speaker 1: saw now was softer and smaller than Pauline's. With tears
Speaker 1: in his eyes, he smiled down at the young girl
Speaker 1: and took her into his arms, then taking his wife
Speaker 1: by the hand. Together, they walked slowly back to the house.
Speaker 1: After the discovery of the body, volunteers from the local
Speaker 1: area stood watch over it to protect it from further
Speaker 1: damage until the police. An autopsy conducted in a nearby
Speaker 1: barn revealed a large tear in the side of the
Speaker 1: body and a puncture wound in the groin, likely done
Speaker 1: by a knife, and though the extremities had undoubtedly been
Speaker 1: nibbled and gnawed on by wild animals, much of the
Speaker 1: torso seemed curiously untouched. The skull, perhaps most bizarrely, was
Speaker 1: found to be that of an unknown man. Despite the
Speaker 1: autopsy's findings and the fact that one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people had already thoroughly searched the area where the body
Speaker 1: later appeared, not to mention the neat pile of clothes
Speaker 1: left by the corpse, authorities concluded that the child had
Speaker 1: simply got lost and died from natural causes. On June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: police arrived at the farm to take the young girl
Speaker 1: from Cherbourg, who the peacards had by then named Louise
Speaker 1: Marcel Pauline, back to where she was found at the door.
Speaker 1: As they said their good byes, Francois held her for
Speaker 1: just a moment longer before finally handing her over to
Speaker 1: the officers while the Peacards were left to mourn for
Speaker 1: a second time. Louise was placed in an orphanage and
Speaker 1: a few months later began to talk finally, and though
Speaker 1: she seemed not to know who she was, she asked
Speaker 1: repeatedly for Alleyne, Henriette, and Anne, siblings of Pauline's. In September,
Speaker 1: a neighbor of the Peacards who visited the orphanage to
Speaker 1: see Louise for herself, left convinced that she was in
Speaker 1: fact Pauline after all. But by then the Peacards had
Speaker 1: made their peace, burying the remains of the young girl
Speaker 1: found by their farm under a stone engraved with their
Speaker 1: daughter's name, and though many rumors swelled among the local
Speaker 1: community about just what exactly had taken place, most scurleously
Speaker 1: in the press, ever, eager for a salacious angle, the
Speaker 1: case was eventually closed. Sadly for Louise, or whoever she was,
Speaker 1: she died only a year later after contracting measles at
Speaker 1: the orphanage. Where she was staying. If you enjoy Unexplained
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Speaker 1: or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained, the book and audiobook,
Speaker 1: featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
Speaker 1: the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores.
Speaker 1: All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClane smith. Please subscribe and rate the
Speaker 1: show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
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