It’s terrible it all had to end like that. Terrible. I think about it all day. I can’t get it out of my head. Who’d do a thing like that, I ask you? What kind of man? Not a man, no, it was an animal did it.

VICTIMS OF MURDER FARM AT TANNÖD BURIED

STILL NO CLUE TO MURDERERS AND MOTIVE

Einhausen. The members of the Danner family murdered in the isolated village of Tannöd, in the parish of Einhausen, were laid to rest on Monday with a large crowd present.

The murder raised painful questions, said Father Hans-Georg Meissner at the funeral ceremony, addressing a congregation of over four hundred.

“We are left behind in pain and grief. We stand by their open grave, unable to comprehend this heinous crime.”

As reported earlier, the body of farmer Hermann Danner was found last Tuesday, together with the corpses of his wife, Theresia, his daughter, Barbara Spangler, her children, Marianne and Josef, and Maria Meiler, employed as a maid at the farm.

According to the findings of the post mortem, all the victims died as a result of massive trauma to the head area. The murderer or murderers probably used a pickax found at the scene of the crime as a weapon.

The nature of their injuries, say the police in charge of the case, allow that assumption to be made. The investigating officers at the scene were shocked by the brutality with which the blows had been inflicted.

The bodies of Herr and Frau Danner, and of their daughter Barbara and granddaughter Marianne, were found by neighbors in the farmyard barn, hidden under a pile of straw.

The bodies of the other murder victims at the farm were found in the farmhouse.

The family lived a secluded life on their property. Maria Meiler had only just gone to work as a maid at the farm.

According to information from the police department responsible for the case, the above-named persons were presumably murdered on the night of March 18/19. The findings of the post mortem confirmed that supposition.

There were also traces of injury to the neck of Barbara Spangler’s dead body.

The possibility that this crime was a case of murder committed in the course of a robbery cannot be ruled out.

According to the neighbors, the family, who lived so privately, was prosperous. It is reported that there were large amounts of cash, jewelry, and securities in the house.

The closets in the main bedroom of the house appeared to have been ransacked.

However, there is no clue to the identity of the murderer or murderers.

Maria Lichtl, age 63, priest’s cook and housekeeper

If you ask me, the Devil took them. Yes, the Devil himself, Old Nick, he flew away with the entire family.

Father Meissner don’t think so. He says I didn’t ought to repeat such godless talk. But it’s true, it’s a fact, and it’s our duty to tell the truth.

I’ve been cook-housekeeper for the priest here these thirty years. Thirty years I’ve been keeping house for the Reverend Fathers. I was cook-housekeeper for the old priest, Father Rauch. The Reverend Fathers have always been satisfied with me.

Oh, I’ve seen things, believe you me. And that’s why I say that family out there was carried off by Lucifer. Even if the Reverend Father don’t like to hear me say so.

Why, I saw him myself. The Destroyer, the Prince of Darkness.

It was when I was coming home from my sister’s. She lives in Schaumau, and the way there passes Tannöd.

Yes, it was there, right there, I saw him. A-standing on the outskirts of the wood, he was, looking at the Danner farm in Tannöd. All black, with a hat on his head, a hat as had a feather in it. There’s only one being looks like that, and it was him, it was the Devil. Only the Devil can look like that, I tell you, and when I turned to look again he’d vanished. The ground opened and just swallowed him up. Well, no wonder, is it? Not with the shocking goings-on out at that place.

You mark my words, when father and daughter get together everything’s all topsy-turvy.

And the riffraff he always had working on that farm! Not surprising if he comes, is it? Not surprising if Beelzebub comes to take them all away.

Rogues and vagabonds, a pack of ne’er-do-wells he had working on that farm. Shady riffraff, the lot of them.

And his precious son-in-law made off, too, disappeared overnight.

The Devil will have come for him first of all. Though they say that fine gentleman’s in America.

What a joke! He’ll have gone to join the Foreign Legion. That’s where all the scoundrels go.

The old man paid him off. Everyone in the village says so, and then he went to join the French.

Oh yes, you can be sure that scoundrel went to join the Legion. Like all them scoundrels. If the Devil hasn’t come for him yet then the Prince of Hell will be fetching him away soon.

That Barbara, she came to see Father Meissner with a letter.

With a letter from the French. No, I didn’t see the letter.

But she wanted to speak to the Reverend Father, and then she left him a donation for the church by way of thanks.

I saw the envelope lying there, I saw it with my own eyes.

I daresay she wanted to buy absolution from her sins. Her guilty conscience was pricking her. Sitting on her like it was the Trud. But it was too late, the Evil One carried her off.

Oh, she was a proud piece, she was, and her father the same.

Never spoke to a soul as wasn’t right in front of their noses. It’s a wonder the saints didn’t turn their faces away in church of a Sunday.

That little boy of hers, he was her father’s, too. Everyone in the village knows that. But that fool Hauer got paid to say he was the child’s father.

Still, you mustn’t say that kind of thing, oh no, mustn’t say it.

The Reverend Father likes to close his eyes and ears to such things.

That’s how they are, the Reverend Fathers, always believing the best of people. While there’s fornicating all around them, worse and worse all the time.

Old Danner has all the deadly sins on his conscience, every last one of them.

Chopping and changing right after the war, he was, and before it too.

He backed them a hundred percent first, and then suddenly he’s all for the Yanks.

He’d throw in his lot with anyone as brought him profit.

I wouldn’t like to know what he had on his conscience. I could never sleep at night if I was to know it all.

And the police was after his son-in-law, too. Folk say he was trafficking in something, and then he was gone. But for that he wouldn’t have had to leave, not like that he wouldn’t, not between gloom and dead of night, like we say hereabouts.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Devil took that family away.

There was a storm too, that Friday night.

Friday’s a good day for the Black Folk, and the Trud, and the likes of them. Many a man has disappeared of a Friday, and that in a house where someone’s already killed himself.

They wander around, poor souls, a-looking for their rights.

My mother told me such stories, and she had them from her mother before her. We have to listen to the old folk. By the Blessed Virgin Mary, may I fall down stone dead if it’s not the truth I’m telling.

Reverend Father Meissner, age 63

I have been priest of this parish since the end of the war. That’s nearly ten years now.

But to the best of my knowledge such a thing as this, a murder, has never happened here before.

Many families in the parish are deeply distressed and shaken. Some won’t leave their houses now after nightfall. Community life has ceased to exist. Everyone distrusts his neighbor. It’s nothing short of a tragedy.