A chambermaid cleaning rooms on the second floor of a Bavarian bed & breakfast in the southern German city of Passau found three dead people impaled on long arrows in one of the rooms.
When she first peeked into the room on Saturday morning, she didn’t realize a figure on the bed was human, according to Merkur news website.
“Somebody put a doll on the bed,” the cleaner said to a colleague who was down the hall, Merkur reported. The two cleaners then pushed the door open to find a man, 54, and two women, aged 30 and 33, with arrows stuck through their mid-sections. On the floor were two crossbows, presumably used in the killings.
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The guesthouse describes itself on its website as a nature getaway. “Here you can relax, relax and find your inner peace again,” the hosts promise.
The three mystery visitors were from Rhineland-Palatinate, according to local press reports. The 33-year-old, who booked the triple room with a double and single bed online for three days for $95 a night, was from Lower Saxony, some 300 miles away, local media said. Residents in the 33-year-old’s home town said she kept to herself and rarely left her house. It is unclear if the other two people were a couple.
The three arrived around 10 p.m. in a white pickup truck late Friday in a driving rainstorm, the hotel manager on duty Sunday night, who did not want to give his name, told The Daily Beast.
When they arrived, the hotel manager said, they asked for food, but the kitchen was already closed so they took packaged salty snacks, several bottles of Coca Cola and water to their room. He said they were hungry, so they booked breakfast for the next day, but did not show up in the morning.
“It was a strange group,” one of the hotel guests told Merkur news. The man, who had a long white beard that extended down to his mid-chest, wore a formal suit. The women were both dressed completely in black. “They said good evening and just wanted to get to their room quickly,” the guest said.
None of the guests reported hearing any strange noises overnight, according to the local press, though a violent storm and the raging river next to the guesthouse may have muffled any noise.
“Currently, there are no indications that anyone else participated in the deaths,” according to police spokesman Stefan Gaisbauer at a press conference Sunday afternoon.
It was not immediately known how the trio knew each other, but it was reported by the German press that they were not assumed to be in the same immediate family based on their identification, which they left at the front desk when they checked in.
Autopsies have been ordered to determine the time and cause of death. The guesthouse reopened for business on Saturday night but the room in which the deceased were found was sealed until further notice.
