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a photo of Maria, taken shortly before her death, with the family dog, Louis October 10th, 1920 - January 12th, 1960
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Maria Anna Hofer (nee Kulmer) was an Austrian woman found murdered. She is also the maternal grandmother of Austrian-American actress Lillian Ledermann.
Maria was born on October 10th, 1920, in Bregenz, Austria, the second of five children. She lived a normal life and was married in 1946 to Paul Hofer and moved to Salzburg. They would have four daughters. Magdalena Maria "Magda", 1947, Anastasia Louise "Ana", 1948, Elisabeth Sophie "Beth", 1949, and Johanna Laura, 1950. Johanna is Lillian's mother.
The four of them grew up repeatedly watching their father be beaten by their mother, though he rarely, if ever, hit the children.
"I remember, uh, I remember how often my father did this," Magda said in a 2017 interview for the show Corrupt Crimes. "My mother never spoke of it. If we asked her if she was okay, my mother would always brush us off, say she was fine, it was nothing we needed to worry about. And we viewed this as normal. And, I mean, it was the 1950s, it was all but normal."
In 1960, Maria went missing. Paul reported her missing and employed the help of Maria's sisters to take care of the daughters. She was considered missing for two months before ten year old Johanna went into her aunt Lydia's room in the middle of the night, in tears.
"You can't even begin to imagine how scared I was," Johanna said in that same episode. "I was terrified something would happen to me, if I told anyone. I was so worried my family would hate me, despise me."
While Magda, Ana, and Beth, were at school, Johanna had stayed home, due to being sick. Johanna had witnessed her father murder her mother. They had gotten into a fight and Paul killed Maria, stabbing her fifteen times in the head, as Johanna peeked around the corner. Paul then employed Johanna's help to get rid of Maria's body. She grabbed a bedsheet while Paul wrapped her in it and then the two brought her down into the basement.
Paul was arrested and Maria was buried in the Friedhof Salzburg, otherwise known as St. Sebastian's Cemetery.
"I grew up with this story," Lillian said in the same episode. "I heard time and time and time again the story of my grandfather, murdering the grandmother I never got to meet. From everything I hear, she was a very kind woman, and grandmothers have a reputation for being kind, so I always wondered what she would have been like if I ever got to meet her."
