On the morning of December 21st, 2015 — just four days before Christmas — neighbours in the quiet village of Rupperswil, a small community in the Swiss canton of Aargau, noticed smoke rising from a single-family home on Hintergasse. At first, people assumed it was just a kitchen fire or some kind of accident.

But when firefighters forced their way inside, what they found shocked even the most seasoned emergency responders.

Inside the home were four bodies. Bound. Stacked. Murdered. It was immediately clear: this was no accident — this was a crime scene.

The victims were 48-year-old Carla Schauer-Freiburghaus, her sons Davin (13) and Dion (19), and Dion’s girlfriend Simona Fäs (21).

Just hours earlier, a terrified Carla had been captured on CCTV withdrawing money from two different ATMs, her fear unmistakable on camera.

So what had happened inside that house? What terror had this family endured? This peaceful village of 5,000 was about to become the center of one of the worst crimes in Swiss history…