Episode Notes:
In late March of 1922, six people were murdered on a remote Bavarian farmstead north of Munich. The killer was never caught. But what makes Hinterkaifeck unlike any other unsolved case in German history is not the murders themselves—it is what came after. Someone stayed. For four days following the killings, whoever did it continued living on the farm. They fed the livestock. They lit the fires. They ate food from the kitchen. They turned the calendar page. The bodies of the family lay covered in hay in the barn the entire time.
Host Shawn Spainhour takes you into the full story: the Gruber family and the specific shadows in their history that may have sealed their fate; the footprints in the snow that led to the farm and never led back out; the sounds in the attic that the previous maid had reported for weeks before she quit; and the over one hundred suspects investigated across a century of trying. In 2007, a team of German Police Academy students re-examined the case and claimed they knew who the killer was—but refused to name them.
The case has never been officially solved.
If you love history, true crime, or storytelling — or if you’re just looking for something to listen to on a long drive or drift off to sleep — this one is for you.
Strange Epochs is a weekly narrative history podcast hosted by Shawn Spainhour. Each episode takes one strange, true, documented moment from somewhere in the long span of human history and sits with it—slow, atmospheric, and built for deep listening. New episodes every Tuesday. If this is your first episode, there are ten more waiting for you.
Sources are listed in the show notes:
- Wikipedia contributors. Hinterkaifeck murders. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2024.
- Mental Floss. The Chilling Story of the Hinterkaifeck Killings, Germany’s Most Famous Unsolved Crime. 2023.
- All That’s Interesting. The Gruesome True Story of the Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders. 2023.
- Bavarian State Archives Munich. Investigation files on the Hinterkaifeck case, 1922 to 1923.
- Reingruber, Georg. Initial investigation report, Hinterkaifeck farmstead. April 5, 1922.
- Aumüller, Johann Baptist. Post-mortem examination report, Hinterkaifeck victims. April 5 and 6, 1922.
- German Police Academy Fürstenfeldbruck. Criminological re-examination of the Hinterkaifeck case. 2007.
- Headcount Coffee. The Unsolved Hinterkaifeck Murders That Still Defy Explanation. 2026.