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.
We all believed the bad years were behind us at last, life was gradually getting back on an even keel. By now everyone who came from this village is home again. Life had returned to normal—and now this murder. Suddenly there’s fear abroad once more, people question everything. We see how deceptive appearances can be in everyday life. But let’s not talk about that.
You want to ask me about the Danner family, I’m sure. Ah yes, the Danner family. What the Danners were like. Well, I think old Frau Danner was a good Christian soul. A simple woman, but very devout. She often sought and found comfort in prayer. She was very reserved, and latterly her reserve was if anything more marked. I think she had already come to the end of her journey, and was preparing herself inwardly for life after death. As far as I can judge, she was loving to her grandchildren.
Her husband was a patriarch in all senses of the word, good and bad. What he said was law in the family. No one was to rebel against him, no one. No one was to go against his will. He was certainly a believer, if in his own way. I’d say he was a man of the Old Testament. Hard on himself, hard on his family.
His daughter, Barbara. I thought for a long time she was suffering from her father’s autocratic ways. But now I’m not so sure. Barbara had been greatly influenced by her father. I’d say the two of them were bound by a love-hate relationship.
On the one hand she admired her father. In her brusque way she was often very like him. On the other hand, I can’t shake off a feeling that she detested him. Truly detested him.
She would never confide in me, although I tried to induce her to do so several times. But there was the way she sometimes looked at him when she thought she was unobserved. To me, as a man of God, it was very strange. There was hatred in her eyes. Not love, no: hatred.
As a priest one is confronted with all aspects of human life. And you may believe me when I say I have seen and known much. It was recently in particular that I more and more often saw dislike, indeed venom, in her eyes.