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Speaker 1: and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't I'm not going you
Speaker 1: never know stories of things we simply don't know the
Speaker 1: answer too. Hi there, welcome again to another episode of
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways in a week. Yeah, this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is the second one this week. So this episode Happy Thursday,
Speaker 1: the bonus on Thursday. As you all know, we're doing
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways most wanted the episodes you all have been
Speaker 1: asking us about for years now, this is one of
Speaker 1: them we've been too lazy to do. Basically, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the this is like shocking. I'm actually I
Speaker 1: was surprised that this wasn't the number one number one.
Speaker 1: It is the tie for the first runner up. Yeah
Speaker 1: it is, you means second place. Yeah, but yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: We've gotten a lot of emails about this one for
Speaker 1: the past couple of years and even just this week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any of them. Yeah, I admit it's kind of a
Speaker 1: cool little mystery. But well let's let's just talk about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: you ready? Oh, By the way, I totally forgot to
Speaker 1: introduce myself and my lovely co hosts. I'm Joe, joined
Speaker 1: as always by Steve And Okay, you met us earlier
Speaker 1: this week. Yeah, you know, he wouldn't know us now.
Speaker 1: I probably don't need to really be saying that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know us by now. But let's let's go on
Speaker 1: with our mystery. Yeah. This, uh, this took place almost
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago on a farm in Bavaria, which
Speaker 1: is located near the village of wongan In in Bavaria.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was part of the farmstead called Kaik
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure exactly how that got that name,
Speaker 1: and then the farm was called hinter Kaifek for some reason.
Speaker 1: That means ter me behind, so we're behind the town
Speaker 1: they were behind the Kaek. I don't know. Well, German
Speaker 1: is a language that co cantonates, so that was a
Speaker 1: big words. You know what co canton is, right, How
Speaker 1: do you know a word? I don't know. Co canton
Speaker 1: It is a something you use in Excel. It's the
Speaker 1: name of a formula. Yeah, but co cantonate. It's also
Speaker 1: it's something to do with languages where you literally merged
Speaker 1: the two words to shove twenty words together to make
Speaker 1: the town name that is so long it doesn't fit
Speaker 1: on one road side. Like these things happen, that's how
Speaker 1: it got the name. Yeah, there's long words in German.
Speaker 1: Have no doubt about that. Anyway, back to our story. Uh,
Speaker 1: this farm was inhabited by the Grewber family, which was
Speaker 1: fairly well known in the area. I'll give you their names.
Speaker 1: Andreas Grewer sixty three. His wife Cazelia was seventy two.
Speaker 1: Their daughter, Victoria Gabrielle, was thirty five. She had two kids,
Speaker 1: Gazelia seven and Joseph, who was two, and he also
Speaker 1: had a maid, Maria Baumgartner forty four. Victoria was a
Speaker 1: widow her husband, Carl, Carl Gabrielle was killed in nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen and World War One, although there's been a little
Speaker 1: contention about that. Carl. Carl's family, by the way, was
Speaker 1: from the area. He was from a neighboring farms. That's
Speaker 1: how you met people back then. It really is. Yeah, crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the Internet wasn't a thing. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: no okay keeping Yeah, he just had to make do
Speaker 1: with a very tiny pool village. Yeah. Uh so Andre's
Speaker 1: gruber was ahead of the family, of course, and he
Speaker 1: was actually not that well liked. Yeah, he was an unfriendly,
Speaker 1: loner kind of guy. Not He beat his wife on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, also abused his children. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: was all very highly suspected of committing incest with his
Speaker 1: daughter Victoria. Also cool, Yeah, I know, a great guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact the nine both Andreas and Victoria were
Speaker 1: tried and convicted for incests and they both went off
Speaker 1: to the pokey for a while. She got a really
Speaker 1: short sentence, she only got a month and he got
Speaker 1: a year. And I don't think they were allowed to
Speaker 1: share the same cell. I'm I'm just distressed that she
Speaker 1: was also convicted for that. Like she was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: dad looked like I don't know that. Well, she was
Speaker 1: an adult though she would have been like her. But
Speaker 1: his wife was nine years older than him and was
Speaker 1: still getting beat up by him. I mean, was his
Speaker 1: wife Causilia? Was she right? Was that his first wife
Speaker 1: or his second wife? Because I swore I read somewhere
Speaker 1: it was his second wife, But I could be making
Speaker 1: that up, you know, I don't know, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I hadn't know that but I don't, but he probably
Speaker 1: you know, quite often in those days, you know, you
Speaker 1: have a wife, she died in childbirth, and then you
Speaker 1: get another wife. You know, it happened along the story
Speaker 1: how it happens. I know where Devon's coming from with
Speaker 1: the why is Victoria in trouble for this? Because typically
Speaker 1: this is a kind of behavior that starts very early on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's early behavior, and it's not necessarily voluntary behavior. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least in the beginning and later on you don't
Speaker 1: know any better, and it may be a case of
Speaker 1: she didn't know any better. Yeah, that's could have been
Speaker 1: going on. Let's get away from this subject. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: back to I don't really like talking about incest anyway.
Speaker 1: That we'll talk about it a little bit more anyway.
Speaker 1: But uh see, Andreas, besides being abusive, was also a
Speaker 1: control freak and he and this might have been because
Speaker 1: he of sexual jealousy of a Victoria, but maybe because
Speaker 1: he was a control freak or a combination there. But
Speaker 1: he told Victoria that she was forbidden to marry again,
Speaker 1: and he kept her a short leash, and in general
Speaker 1: of the family was kind of sullen, reclusive and just
Speaker 1: not that well liked. Victoria's reputation was a little better
Speaker 1: because she's saying in the church choir. She had a
Speaker 1: good voice apparently, although how you know, she was also
Speaker 1: kind of promiscuous and back in those days, you know
Speaker 1: you think that. Well, case in Point Rach in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, she had a two year old despite the
Speaker 1: fact that her husband died in nineteen fourteen. So let's
Speaker 1: just point that mouth out. Yeah, you know, that seems important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was there was some question about who the
Speaker 1: father of the kid was, if it was her her
Speaker 1: dad Andreas, or if it was a neighbor or several
Speaker 1: other men from around the town who claimed to have
Speaker 1: had relations with her. Yeah. Well, anyway, back to our
Speaker 1: little mystery here at the farm, things started getting kind
Speaker 1: of strange. In ninety one there made suddenly quit her
Speaker 1: job and left. Uh and not Maria, her name was
Speaker 1: not Maria. Yeah, and asked why she suddenly decided to
Speaker 1: leave so leave, the maid said that she'd been hearing
Speaker 1: strange voices and noises in and around the house and
Speaker 1: sounds of footsteps from the attic. She was convinced that
Speaker 1: the house was haunted, and so she quit and yeah,
Speaker 1: the group was tracted up to mental illness, but the
Speaker 1: source of all this was the groupers themselves, so it
Speaker 1: may be that they were asking about it, they made
Speaker 1: this up. And maybe the real reason she left was
Speaker 1: because Gruber was Andreas Gruber was abusive towards her or
Speaker 1: or coming onto her. Or perhaps she got wind of
Speaker 1: the incests and that kind of turned her off and
Speaker 1: she decided to leave. It's hard to say if that's that.
Speaker 1: Stuff about the maid think in the place was yeah,
Speaker 1: But it also seems like that's a weird thing to
Speaker 1: say about why she left. Like, if you get to
Speaker 1: make up whatever story you want, why wouldn't you just
Speaker 1: say like she wanted to go to a warm and
Speaker 1: climate because wait, wait, no, I need to say this,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna I'm gonna put us into the mindset
Speaker 1: of a very controlling man. In the nineteen twenties, women
Speaker 1: are hysterical. It's a common thing to call it for
Speaker 1: to say that woman is hysterical, meaning she's mentally unstable,
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, oh, yeah, no, you're right, that women
Speaker 1: are Yeah, then you just say, I don't know she
Speaker 1: was crazy, I don't know why she left. You don't say, like,
Speaker 1: but I don't know our house is haunted. Yeah. People
Speaker 1: also always volunteered too much, especially when they're lying. As
Speaker 1: it turns off. And then degree Wers actually could have
Speaker 1: been telling the truth. Maybe she really maybe she really
Speaker 1: was just mentally ill. And then I really thought the
Speaker 1: house was haunted, or maybe the house really was haunted.
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably not. It's about six months later
Speaker 1: things kind of got stranger. This is after the maid left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the six months after she left. This is in March.
Speaker 1: Andreas was outside after a snowstorm and he found some
Speaker 1: footprints in the snow that originated in the forest and
Speaker 1: came across their property and right up to the house.
Speaker 1: And he searched all around. He circled the house and
Speaker 1: the barn and everything, and could not find tracks going
Speaker 1: back to the woods. Yeah. I heard in one account.
Speaker 1: I heard that the footprints originated at the forest, not
Speaker 1: coming from the forest, just appeared as though they'd been
Speaker 1: dropped the forest. I thought that was a fun little
Speaker 1: addition to the story. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, some of
Speaker 1: this stuff apparently, uh he did, he did talk about
Speaker 1: some of his neighbors about some of this stuff. At first,
Speaker 1: I was like a little bit skeptical of some of
Speaker 1: some of this, but I think that apparently a lot
Speaker 1: of this did happen, because there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of absurd stuff also inserted into the story
Speaker 1: as usual, and that's yeah, Yeah, I'm really desperately trying
Speaker 1: not to be the wet blanket on this one today.
Speaker 1: I've actually been kind of a wet blanket on the
Speaker 1: entire most wanted Yeah, well we all have there's a
Speaker 1: reason we haven't done them yet. Well, so at this point,
Speaker 1: he did the next obvious thing, which is he searched
Speaker 1: the house, and he also searched the barn in the
Speaker 1: tool shed, and it didn't find any signs of an intruder.
Speaker 1: And also no more footprints. No more footprints. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: a night, I don't know if it was that night
Speaker 1: or something. Sometimes shortly thereafter, he woke up to strange
Speaker 1: noises coming from the attic, and he grabs the lantern
Speaker 1: and heads up there and searches the attic found found
Speaker 1: nobody hiding there and nothing going on, and so it
Speaker 1: seemed like there was a trespasser. He advantaged what the
Speaker 1: noises from the attic were probably squirrels. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know creat it could have been. It could have
Speaker 1: been creators, rats, squirrels, whatever. And then a few mornings
Speaker 1: after that, Andrea sound a newspaper from Munich on his porch.
Speaker 1: Nobody in the family had bought this newspaper or read
Speaker 1: this newspaper. Yeah, and stomachcounts. He found the newspaper at
Speaker 1: the edge of the forest again to also but yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently the newspaper again was something I took with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt, but apparently it was actually true. He
Speaker 1: asked the local post man if anybody in the village
Speaker 1: had ever received this newspaper, and the postman said no,
Speaker 1: I did not recognize it. Interesting. Yeah, another creepy thing.
Speaker 1: Victoria noticed a strange man standing at the edge of
Speaker 1: the forest watching the farm. Later, Andreas also noticed a
Speaker 1: man in the woods watching the farm. Yeah, kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: And then March thirtie, a set of keys to the
Speaker 1: house disappeared, and they had two sets of keys apparently.
Speaker 1: And then and he keep again repeated this to one
Speaker 1: of his neighbors. I can't remember which one. This is
Speaker 1: all discovered later by the police when they interviewed everybody
Speaker 1: in the area, uh, when he was searching or the
Speaker 1: farm for the keys, because obviously they could have been
Speaker 1: dropped to anywhere in the barnyard or the barn or wherever.
Speaker 1: And so he found that the lock to the tool
Speaker 1: shed was all scratched up, as if somebody had tried
Speaker 1: to jimmy it or pick it. Yeah. I've been told
Speaker 1: that Andreas told most of the stuff to his neighbor,
Speaker 1: Lawrence Schlittenbauer, although I'm not sure if that was true.
Speaker 1: It appeared to me that he and Schlittenbauer were not
Speaker 1: actually on great terms. But you don't have to necessary
Speaker 1: only be on great terms with somebody to talk to him. Yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: especially when weird hanky stuff is happening. Yeah yeah, especially
Speaker 1: maybe if he Maybe it's that Andreas was suspicious of
Speaker 1: his neighbor. You know, every once in a while, if
Speaker 1: you're suspicious of somebody, you'll do that like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: by the way, some strange stuff, some weird stuff going on,
Speaker 1: It wouldn't happen to see the set of keys. Suspicious
Speaker 1: people do sometimes when they say like hey, this it's
Speaker 1: it's the weirdest thing. This thing happened. It's the equivalent of,
Speaker 1: you know, like texting your boyfriend. I just think it's
Speaker 1: funny that, right. You don't Okay, you don't text your
Speaker 1: boyfriend that thing? Nope, never have cool I mean either.
Speaker 1: That's why you're married. Now sorry Gay Back to their
Speaker 1: story here. Yeah, that's so the neighbor Schlittenbauer just as
Speaker 1: a side here. One of the reasons things weren't all
Speaker 1: that great is that Schlittenbauer had been courting Andreas's daughter, Victoria,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how far that went. Victoria actually
Speaker 1: said that Schlittenbauer was the father of their two year
Speaker 1: old Joseph. Yeah, although everybody in town believe that Joseph
Speaker 1: was actually fathered by Andreas. But yeah, and uh, and
Speaker 1: then there's Schlittenbauer actually denied it. He accepted the first
Speaker 1: and denied it U and and so and of course
Speaker 1: when he offered to marry her, Andreast forbide the whole
Speaker 1: thing and very emphatically. And so that's why things weren't
Speaker 1: so hot between them. But again, I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how how deep the hostility was. Okay, so that was
Speaker 1: March thirties when the keys were lost on March thirty one,
Speaker 1: a new maid, Maria Baumgartner, arrived to replace the one
Speaker 1: that had left six months earlier. That house must have
Speaker 1: been filthy. Yeah, yeah, so anyway, I talked about bad timing. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: she arrived just a few hours early before the unpleasantness began. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next day was a Saturday, and Gazalia, the seven
Speaker 1: year old girl, Victoria's daughter, didn't show up for school,
Speaker 1: so apparently they had six days of school back in
Speaker 1: those days. And on Sunday the family didn't show up
Speaker 1: for church. Then on Monday, April three, Gazilia again didn't
Speaker 1: show up for school. And also the postman noticed that
Speaker 1: nobody was collecting the mail, so, huh what happened? So Schlittenbauer,
Speaker 1: Lawrence Schlittenbauer, the neighbor, Uh, he got windows some of
Speaker 1: this stuff because it's a small town that people are
Speaker 1: all talking. And so he said his two sons by
Speaker 1: the farm to check on the family. Uh. That was
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, April fourth that they came back and said
Speaker 1: they had walked around the farm and hadn't seen the
Speaker 1: had seen the family and hadn't seen anything and really
Speaker 1: out of place. Um. And then later on Schlittenbauer rounded
Speaker 1: up a few more people and went over to check
Speaker 1: the place out himself, and they did a more thorough search.
Speaker 1: And when it said opened the door or whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe his sons didn't feel like it was really proper
Speaker 1: for them to open the you know, go into the
Speaker 1: barn or into the house. Here's the problem that I
Speaker 1: have with the sons went over and then later on
Speaker 1: a whole troop of people from the village. You go over,
Speaker 1: and then eventually the police are going to come. You've
Speaker 1: got a gadget people marching around this place in the snow.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there's there's no way. Yeah, what's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that's one of the things that makes it unsolved.
Speaker 1: That definitely the whole thing, doesn't it. Uh Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So in the barn they found four bodies. It was
Speaker 1: Andreas and his wife Bazilia, daughter Victoria, granddaughter Casilia had
Speaker 1: all been bludging to death, bludging and chop attacked to
Speaker 1: death with a pick axe. Although the murder weapon wasn't there.
Speaker 1: All they all they knew it was that there were
Speaker 1: these four bloody, battered bodies, some more bloody than others.
Speaker 1: Holes in their heads. Yeah, yeah, and uh, and then
Speaker 1: their faces in some cases their jaws broken and faces torn,
Speaker 1: all torn up and stuff. And they had all been
Speaker 1: covered with hay stacked stacked on top of each other.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. They then went into the farmhouse
Speaker 1: and found young Joseph two years old, dead in his
Speaker 1: his cot in his mother's bedroom, and the maid, the
Speaker 1: new made Maria, was also found dead in her bed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they had been covered also, the maid with a
Speaker 1: bed sheet and Joseph with one of his mother's skirts.
Speaker 1: So they kind so whoever did cover the body bodies
Speaker 1: um And appears that granddaughter Kazilia didn't immediately die from
Speaker 1: her bludgeonings, and the autopsy reveal that she probably had
Speaker 1: lived two to four hours after getting her head injuries
Speaker 1: because she pulled wads of hair out of her head,
Speaker 1: because she was probably laying there probably you know, who knows,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe she was paralyzed, partially paralyzed from you know,
Speaker 1: getting blows to the head and you're sitting there and
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, you're sort of laying there
Speaker 1: helpless next to the dead bodies of your grandparents and
Speaker 1: your mother. You know that'd be a stressful situation. Well,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking she might have I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not even thinking that she maybe did it on purpose.
Speaker 1: But you're trying to move, if you're in a kind
Speaker 1: of a semi paralytic state like that, you're trying to
Speaker 1: move and you're grasping, and you're like, oh, I feel something.
Speaker 1: I can tell I've got a hold of something hard
Speaker 1: holding on and then it gives way and then you're
Speaker 1: there was something there. Let me go back for it
Speaker 1: not being able to see what you're grabbing in. In
Speaker 1: a lot of the accounts that I read, there was
Speaker 1: some suspicion that she was not the last to have
Speaker 1: been hit, that she didn't die, but that she perhaps
Speaker 1: witnessed the murders of Yeah, they thought she was dead
Speaker 1: and she wasn't, and so she witnessed it all. And
Speaker 1: that's it's a fairly typical traumatic response, is the like
Speaker 1: ye hair and yeah, they don't know actually what order
Speaker 1: they were the four of the one were killed, and
Speaker 1: so it could have been maybe Cazilia went out there first,
Speaker 1: or maybe Victoria and Casilia went out there first, and
Speaker 1: then well they do they do suspect right, it was
Speaker 1: one at a time, though, don't think. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: there's no way to really know that. You know, it
Speaker 1: could have been it could have been a couple first.
Speaker 1: I think the only way to know that is the
Speaker 1: lack of a sign of struggle. Yeah, it didn't appear
Speaker 1: that anybody fought back, so you would assume that it
Speaker 1: was one at a time. Yeah. Probably, they couldn't tell.
Speaker 1: But somebody goes out to the barn and then they
Speaker 1: don't come back, and then somebody else, somebody else goes
Speaker 1: out to check out them, they don't come back. You
Speaker 1: think after the third or fourth time, people would sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, smarten up and take a gun
Speaker 1: with them when they go out there. Well they stopped
Speaker 1: going after the fourth one. Yeah, many of them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty brutal. Yeah. Yeah, it was a very
Speaker 1: vicious killing. So Schlittenbauer sent his sons to go get
Speaker 1: the police. I don't know how far they had to
Speaker 1: go to find a police. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: had to go down to the village or to one
Speaker 1: of the larger villages nearby or what. But they had
Speaker 1: on their way. They though they everybody they ran into,
Speaker 1: they told them what had happened. Over a hinter k
Speaker 1: and so it's this is a weird comparison, but you
Speaker 1: know that I'm seen in love actually actually yeah, the
Speaker 1: one right where he finally goes to propose to the
Speaker 1: girl and he is not at the house and they
Speaker 1: all walk through the village and every single by the
Speaker 1: end of it, it's just like thousands of people standing there.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to lighten this situation here, you guys, come on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of people granting, a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of people. Was Hugh Grant, wasn't it. Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, work work gets all around all over the village.
Speaker 1: So everybody from the village, like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: comes up to the farm and tramples everything inside. Eventually
Speaker 1: the police arrived and they started doing the usual thing,
Speaker 1: taking pictures and you know, and did they actually take pictures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they took pictures, but they didn't draw a layout of
Speaker 1: the barnery or yeah. That wasn't the most Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't really draw the lay out. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: best investigation, I don't think in terms of gathering fingerprints.
Speaker 1: They did a real bang up job either. They did
Speaker 1: search it pretty thoroughly. They even use canine units. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they didn't find the murder weapon. Yeah. And then eventually,
Speaker 1: at one point the Munich police were brought in because
Speaker 1: obviously they were they were the big players and as
Speaker 1: as far as I know, this might even still still
Speaker 1: be an open case. But they question yeah, that's the question.
Speaker 1: A lot of suspects and the most recent one was
Speaker 1: in six so they're still on the case, though obviously
Speaker 1: not pursuing it quite as hard. There was a police
Speaker 1: force class, yeah that looked into it. They've done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those those cases they use every now
Speaker 1: and again. Yeah, there was one that was not so
Speaker 1: long ago the way they like two seven. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they finally said, no, it's it's unsolvable. Yeah. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: stop trying to solve it is unsolvable. Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: report's interesting. Of course I don't read Germans, so i'd
Speaker 1: use Google Translate, and it was lots of muffins involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it came out a little garbling. Yeah. I read that
Speaker 1: one too. It's difficult. Yeah. Uh So back to the
Speaker 1: to the police at the time, they finally concluded that
Speaker 1: some person or persons had lured them out one by
Speaker 1: one into the barn. Or again, maybe they just waited
Speaker 1: out there for people to show up. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a farm. People are gonna go out to the barn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, yeah, they were at the lure, or they
Speaker 1: just waited until they showed up and then murdered them
Speaker 1: with the pick axe, after at which case of murderer
Speaker 1: or murderers went to the farmhouse to finish off the
Speaker 1: baby in the maid. This it was believed that Victoria
Speaker 1: and Gazilia had been the first to arrive, most likely um,
Speaker 1: because they had not been dressed for bed when they
Speaker 1: went up to investigate, and apparently the grandparents were uh,
Speaker 1: so you know, most likely they were just you know,
Speaker 1: and then the grandparents went out later on to check
Speaker 1: on one thing that was going on back Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Date of death was determined to be Friday, March thirty one,
Speaker 1: but when police questioned the neighbors the neighbors, some of
Speaker 1: the neighbors said that they had seen smoke coming out
Speaker 1: of the chimney of the house over the entire weekend,
Speaker 1: which was suggest as somebody had been home and somebody
Speaker 1: was home with six dead bodies. But yeah, when they
Speaker 1: looked at the house, there was evidence that somebody had
Speaker 1: recently eaten meals. One of the beds appeared to have
Speaker 1: been slept in, but I'm not sure, maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: In the smoke house they found a ham that had
Speaker 1: been freshly cut. In addition, all the cattle and livestock
Speaker 1: had been fed and were in good condition. The cows
Speaker 1: had been milked, and in fact, none of the animals
Speaker 1: on the farm had been harmed in any way, not
Speaker 1: even the dog. The dog was tied up in the
Speaker 1: barn and barking, and it was abelously not in the
Speaker 1: best of spirits, but was otherwise in good shape. So
Speaker 1: the guy wasn't an animal killer anyway. We kind of
Speaker 1: hand them that other creepy evidence. So this is really
Speaker 1: creepy that they found evidence that somebody had been staying
Speaker 1: in the hay loft in the barn, because they found
Speaker 1: it was at least a day or two, probably before
Speaker 1: the murders, because they found too deep depressions in the
Speaker 1: hay where it appeared that something that two people have
Speaker 1: been sleeping, and a roof tile and the roof of
Speaker 1: the barn had been moved aside so that they could
Speaker 1: peer out, apparently, and and surveil the farmhouse and the
Speaker 1: barn yard, so it's real creepy. There might have been
Speaker 1: somebody's stay in the halof for two or three, who
Speaker 1: knows how long before the murders, watching those people. And
Speaker 1: another curious side, I don't I don't know if this
Speaker 1: was related at all to it. Victoria had emptied her
Speaker 1: bank account a few weeks previously, and when he was
Speaker 1: searching the house, the police had a large amount of cash.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that the murderer had was, you know,
Speaker 1: in the house for days, and if he was there
Speaker 1: to rob them, then he would have been searching the
Speaker 1: house and he would have found that cash. The cash
Speaker 1: was still there, so obviously the murder, the motive for
Speaker 1: the murder was not robbery. This is when the police
Speaker 1: started to suspect that the murders were had been a
Speaker 1: crime of passion, considering the violence of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: considering they were able to rule out robbery. Uh suspicion
Speaker 1: fell of course on the neighbor, Lawrence Schlittenburger. He's Lawrence Schlittenbauer.
Speaker 1: I keep on to say Schlittenberger, Schlittenbauer, because as I
Speaker 1: said before, he had been a suitor of Victoria's and
Speaker 1: then and Andreas had forbidden the marriage, and the cour
Speaker 1: Laurent had heard all the rumors that Andrea's was really
Speaker 1: the father of two year old Joseph, and that probably
Speaker 1: if he was, if he had serious feelings for Victoria, obviously,
Speaker 1: that would have probably kind of graded on him a
Speaker 1: little bit. Well, I don't know that he probably had
Speaker 1: serious feelings for her, but regardless, I think it probably
Speaker 1: would have been a weird thing, real weird you know,
Speaker 1: at Christmas time, you know, here's dad and he's sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so uh, as I said, Victoria claimed that
Speaker 1: Joseph was Schlittenbauer's son, but but it's not really a given.
Speaker 1: So the motive might have been jealousy. It could also
Speaker 1: been to escape child support payments, because apparently Victoria had
Speaker 1: been on the verge of suing Schlittenbauer for child support
Speaker 1: right before the murders. So you know, that could have
Speaker 1: been a trigger for the murder. I mean, having to
Speaker 1: support a kid that's not even yours or your that
Speaker 1: you don't believe he's yours. Yeah, yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: kind of calling. Yeah. Um. Some of the other evidence
Speaker 1: of his involvement was he was one of the members
Speaker 1: of the original search party. It was reported when he
Speaker 1: was in the barn, the dog, which was also tied
Speaker 1: up in the barn, barked and snarled at him the
Speaker 1: whole time he was there. So that's interesting. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there's some people the dogs just don't like, especially if
Speaker 1: your owner didn't like you when he was alive. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. Also. I also, actually, I really think that
Speaker 1: Schlittenbauer didn't think it too very carefully if you left
Speaker 1: the dog alive, because obviously you come back, the dog's
Speaker 1: going to have that reaction to you if you if
Speaker 1: you killed everybody right in front of the dog, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was it was not smart to leave the
Speaker 1: dog alive. But then anyway, it's not just positive one
Speaker 1: way or the other. But another one of the guys
Speaker 1: who was there with the search party said that he
Speaker 1: seemed kind of cold blooded about the whole thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're looking at these these these horribly horribly murdered bodies,
Speaker 1: bloody bodies, and he just unstacked the body and didn't
Speaker 1: show any sign of revulsion or disgust or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You just calmly unstacked him, and somebody said, why are
Speaker 1: you moving to corpses before the police even are here,
Speaker 1: And he said he needed to find his boy. So
Speaker 1: apparently he thought his son Joseph was somewhere in that
Speaker 1: stack of bodies. Do we know if he served from
Speaker 1: World War One? Schlitton Barer. Yeah, it seems like he
Speaker 1: would have would have been the right age. It would
Speaker 1: have been the right age, would have been the right age.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, okay, well it could be that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was pretty pretty near. I mean, un plus, anybody
Speaker 1: that's worked on a farm for any extended amount of time,
Speaker 1: which this guy has, you're used to dealing with death,
Speaker 1: dead animal, roll it over, cut it up to do whatever.
Speaker 1: That's that's why his reaction doesn't strike mus a the
Speaker 1: serving in the war and be dealing with dead things. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he didn't give a crap for the old
Speaker 1: man on the farm anyway. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. People
Speaker 1: also said he seemed to be really familiar with the
Speaker 1: farm and he lived near it. Yeah, but they yeah,
Speaker 1: they said he just like navigated around like, you know,
Speaker 1: so super easy. But I don't I don't know that
Speaker 1: really means much of anything. He did get Schlittenbauer did
Speaker 1: get questioned by the police, but in the end they
Speaker 1: just didn't have any evidence to really like for the crime.
Speaker 1: M In fact, nobody has been arrested for the crime
Speaker 1: until to this day a year later. Actually, the Gabriel
Speaker 1: is that was Carl Gabriel, Victoria's husband. Their family lived nearby.
Speaker 1: Of course, they wound up buying at the inter Kaifak
Speaker 1: farm for the really lilttle market price. Who wants to it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So in n they bought it, and they decided to
Speaker 1: demolish the whole thing. And when they when they demolished
Speaker 1: the barn, that's when they found the pick axe. It
Speaker 1: was actually hidden under a false bottom in a hayrack,
Speaker 1: So they had a hidden they had a secret compartment
Speaker 1: in the barn that Schlittenbauer I don't think should have
Speaker 1: been should have known about well no, I mean, nobody
Speaker 1: should have no right. I mean that unless well, family members,
Speaker 1: you know, family members would have been the only yeah,
Speaker 1: anybody who lived there. Yeah yeah, yeah, So that's that's
Speaker 1: another market in Schlittenbauer's favor. I think. Oh, they also
Speaker 1: found a penknife in that same compartment. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: one final grizzly note before we head onto our list
Speaker 1: of suspects. Yeah yeah, yeah. They decided to cut the
Speaker 1: heads off the bodies and sent the heads to Munich
Speaker 1: for further analysis. I think also for commeding with a
Speaker 1: psychic or something like that. And uh, the headless bodies
Speaker 1: were buried in a buried in the grave and Vidholfen,
Speaker 1: which is I think somewhere to the west of the
Speaker 1: farm and like southwest I think. H the heads, of
Speaker 1: course have gone missing. So there's another unsolved mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that whole World War two things. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Munich was at the receiving end of a lot of
Speaker 1: bombing and stuff in World War Two, so I guess
Speaker 1: that's not too surprising. Now let's move on to our
Speaker 1: list of suspects. You guys have any favorites. I have
Speaker 1: some favorites speak as I find him hilarious. Yeah, man, favorites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't hear. They're really Schlittenbauer, of course is everybody's
Speaker 1: favorite and motivesword jealousy. It's just hard to get out
Speaker 1: of pink show support. Um. But what I don't get
Speaker 1: about that is that again he wouldn't have known about
Speaker 1: that secret compartment in the barn. I don't think anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: I was about to say he might have. He could.
Speaker 1: I guess he could, especially if he was populating with Victoria.
Speaker 1: I just say, if he was canoodling, you know, that
Speaker 1: would explain why there's depressions in the hayloft and why
Speaker 1: that one tile is easy to move. Is she might
Speaker 1: you know, have a you know, tell a guy, hey,
Speaker 1: come over and go in the hayloft and there's just
Speaker 1: one tile that you can look and watch for me
Speaker 1: to come out. But if you see my father coming,
Speaker 1: hide under the hay kind of thing. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I could have. Yeah that there could be a non
Speaker 1: sinister explanation for the thing in the hayloft, definitely. But
Speaker 1: the thing I got to get about Schlittenbauer had been
Speaker 1: the killer and he stayed in the house for days.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't he have been knows not in his own house?
Speaker 1: But I think so, I think so. And And also
Speaker 1: why would he want to stay there? There's that's a
Speaker 1: bunch of corpses around, Yeah, although they'd been covered up,
Speaker 1: they had been covered up. Yeah, but that but that
Speaker 1: it's you're you're right in the middle of a very
Speaker 1: incriminating scene, you know, and it happens to come by, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you've got a perfectly good home just right down
Speaker 1: the road to go to go to. So that's another
Speaker 1: reason I don't think it was Schlittenbauer. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: rest of our suspects are kind of a thin list.
Speaker 1: We've got Carl Gabriel, Victoria's staying her husband. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a big one. Of course, he was dead
Speaker 1: there in World War One, but there are claims that
Speaker 1: he didn't actually die in the war. And there was
Speaker 1: actually a witness who said that he had seen Carl
Speaker 1: in a train in nineteen eight and Carl said that
Speaker 1: he had just been home and had seen Victoria apparently
Speaker 1: didn't talk to everybody's apparently saw her from a distance,
Speaker 1: saw that she was pregnant, and I decided, well, I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to just leave town and go take
Speaker 1: on a new identity, because obviously you see your wife
Speaker 1: and you've been you've been gone for like four plus years,
Speaker 1: and well, yeah, it's not something most of us really
Speaker 1: want to deal with. Math doesn't that kind of does it? Could?
Speaker 1: It could work, I mean Joseph was born July ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, and so yeah, and so so I could
Speaker 1: have and also you could have been mistaken about the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe he saw him in early nineteen nineteen on a
Speaker 1: train and not nineteen eighteen, but with him. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: problem with it being Carl, though, is that the guys
Speaker 1: in his unit him saw him step on the land
Speaker 1: I think it was a land vine. I have heard
Speaker 1: various things about that. Yeah, but I think it was
Speaker 1: understanding and they like he was face up and his
Speaker 1: body was destroyed, but his face was pretty much intact.
Speaker 1: His skull was cracked, see his brain, but it was
Speaker 1: definitely him. Yeah, but you know, Carl did have a
Speaker 1: decent motive. If Carl had somehow survived, I don't not
Speaker 1: a bad motive, yeah, yeah, yeah, a pretty good motive.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, but why come back all those years
Speaker 1: after you've already figured out that your wife was fooling around? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I don't know why. Maybe he just dwelled on
Speaker 1: it for a long time and finally just sort of
Speaker 1: went around the bend. Uh. So, Carl, we got to
Speaker 1: kick that with a grain of salt. Also, next suspect
Speaker 1: was Andrea s. Gruber's brother or excuse me, brothers. He
Speaker 1: had two brothers, and apparently his sister confessed on her
Speaker 1: deathbed that her brothers had done it. Why she was
Speaker 1: a little hazy on that she was on her deathbed
Speaker 1: and all. Yeah, not a lot of time we give details. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, maybe I don't again, are
Speaker 1: gonna be that this is gonna be one hell of
Speaker 1: a family feud. Yeah, I know, I mean talk about
Speaker 1: the McCoy's in the fields, Yeah, the McCoys in the
Speaker 1: hat fields kind of situation. Yeah, I don't. Again, it's
Speaker 1: it's the evidence is so skimpy that I really can't say.
Speaker 1: I bet, I really did. I really do have doubts
Speaker 1: about Schlittenbauer though, that some random random vis Yeah, a
Speaker 1: random nuts job. And it would have to be a
Speaker 1: nut job because obviously he wasn't motivated by money. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was perfectly happy to hang around and eat their
Speaker 1: food for a while, you know, and sleeping a soft bed,
Speaker 1: but you know, take their money. But it could have
Speaker 1: been some sort of serial killer type. It's not like
Speaker 1: they haven't been out there for a long time. Not
Speaker 1: a new thing. Yeah. So yeah, although you still think
Speaker 1: if he was an itinerant serial killer that he would
Speaker 1: have taken the money. Yeah, I would Yeah, why not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're creepy. Yeah, so maybe a serial killer. I
Speaker 1: don't know anyway, that's about you guys have any more theories.
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, no, I really don't either. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: thing is probably one of the biggest murder mysteries in
Speaker 1: German history, if not the biggest. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a serious thing. There was literally nothing there
Speaker 1: is the actual evidence, and everything is totally mismanaged and
Speaker 1: badly investigated by the initial Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they're constables,
Speaker 1: are they? Yeah? I don't I don't even know if
Speaker 1: they're the village the local village even had a constable.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if they had to go
Speaker 1: to some one of the larger towns nearby to find
Speaker 1: a cop. I'm not sure at that day and age.
Speaker 1: I mean, as soon as you get the entire town
Speaker 1: trooping through, people are rubber neckers, you're gonna show up
Speaker 1: to look, you're the scene is as we saw last
Speaker 1: week with the solder kids. Yes, yeah, yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: obviously never going to get solved. I mean and you
Speaker 1: know this is a tough case if Team Sideways can't
Speaker 1: solve it. Yeah, it's very true. Yeah, I guess we
Speaker 1: did overlook one suspect. Yeah, who's that chop chop? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's right, good point. How you missed that super cobra?
Speaker 1: Does you know these snowy situations? Yeah? Okay, I'll buy
Speaker 1: that old it alright? Cool. Hey, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: a little a little information here, so don't shut us
Speaker 1: off quite yet. This is very very important information. First
Speaker 1: of all, our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, where
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Speaker 1: next week. Guys. Yeah, what's actually guys? Bye bye