It was in the middle of the Iberian peninsula blackout last month when police knocked on Christian Steffen’s front door. Strange timing perhaps, but they were investigating a case that sounded even more peculiar.
Even so, the officers could have hardly anticipated that, more than five years after the start of the Covid crisis, they were about to walk in one of the most extraordinary and disturbing stories to emerge from the pandemic.
Inside the house, they came across stomach-churning scenes of filth and squalor. Worse still, they found German-born Steffen’s sons – a ten-year-old and twins aged eight – in a pitiful, disorientated and – unsurprisingly given their surroundings – appallingly unhygienic state.
It was, according to one investigator, as if the children were ‘oblivious’ to the everyday world. Yet the boys’ real tragedy is that their parents, who allegedly subjected them to years of isolation due to their own extreme fears concerning Covid, seem to have been completely divorced from reality themselves.
The investigation is at an early stage, but nobody knows precisely how Steffen and his American wife Melissa Ann, who were living in Germany when the Covid crisis began, reacted to the pandemic at first. But by the time the fourth wave of the virus was sweeping over the country in the autumn of 2021, the pair were apparently so fearful of their family catching Covid that they were determined to keep their sons out of school as the new academic year got under way.
With homeschooling prohibited under German law, it appears that fears over losing custody of the children prompted the family to move country. Steffen signed the rental agreement on a villa in Toleo, a secluded enclave on the outskirts of Oviedo in northern Spain, in October. He initially claimed he would he living there alone, but moved in with his wife and three sons two months later.
Fast-forward to April 14, 2025 when police in Oviedo were handed a dossier chronicling unusual-looking activity at the Steffens’ household. It contained information so detailed that an investigation was set up immediately, something described as ‘unheard of’ by local sources.
Detectives put the house under surveillance and soon realised that Steffen – the sole individual registered at the address – only ever ventured a few yards outside to collect supermarket deliveries from the gate. At one point, they also noted a food order that was clearly for more than one person. But it was the drop-off of a large consignment of nappies that triggered the raid on April 28.
Eight-year-old twin boys were found wearing nappies and had been forced to sleep in caged beds
According to his LinkedIn profile, Christian Steffen is an ‘experienced tech recruiter’ and ‘HR generalist’ who is open to ‘remote’ work
It was not the first time Steffen, who has no criminal record in either Spain or Germany, had come to the attention of the authorities since settling in Toleo. The Mail can reveal that officers from the Guardia Civil – a separate national police force – called on him in February after receiving a tip-off about his domestic set-up. But he managed to fob them off by falsely insisting his children were at school.
The 58-year-old was unable to talk his way out of it this time, though. Yet even with a police team on his doorstep demanding to be let in, Steffen – described as being barefoot and dishevelled at the time – was still sticking to strict Covid protocols.
Before the investigators entered, he asked them to put on face masks. He also requested that they wait outside until the children had their masks on.
The officers were stunned by what greeted them inside. Perhaps the least disturbing aspect of it all was that the three Steffen children – who only speak English because they never got to meet anyone in Spain – were each wearing three masks.
They were also in nappies and had been sleeping in caged, cot-style beds. Deeply unsettling pictures showing monsters with jagged teeth had been scrawled on the beds’ bars and end panels.
Meanwhile, Christian Steffen’s fastidious approach to coronavirus clearly didn’t extend to basic cleanliness and hygiene. Police found soiled nappies dumped in a guest bedroom and kitchen worktops covered in animal excrement. It was every bit as bad in the parents’ room, where used sanitary towels and tampons were routinely discarded under the bed.
It is understood that the initial search was hampered by the 23-hour power cut that knocked out electricity supplies across mainland Spain and Portugal between April 28 and 29. But detectives still discovered mounds of other detritus and stockpiled medicines. More than 20 jars of Vaseline were sitting on a bedside table used by Melissa Ann, who is said to weigh more than 22 stone.
Elsewhere, an upstairs room had been converted into a makeshift classroom with three chairs, a table, books on human anatomy and a world map. There were also four air-purifying ozone generators, which became popular during the pandemic, switched on permanently.
Police found soiled nappies and used sanitary towels and tampons dumped around the house, and worktops covered in animal excrement
Deeply unsettling pictures showing monsters with jagged teeth had been scrawled on the beds’ bars and end panels
Somehow it seems fitting that the only other witness to this surreal vision of domestic hell was a one-eyed cat with a large tumour.
Previous reports have told how the children started hyperventilating when they were brought outside by police. According to an officer, one of the boys knelt on the grass and ‘touched it with amazement’. Another investigator remarked that all three youngsters were ‘oblivious to any contact with reality’ and were ‘very scared around the mother’.
Yet as dreadful as all this sounds, it could have been far worse. Had it not been for the vigilance of a concerned neighbour, the case might have remained unknown and undiscovered for years to come.
It was last August when Silvia Gomez Anson caught a glimpse of what she took to be a young girl playing in the adjacent garden. Initially she thought no more of it, assuming that perhaps someone visiting the man next door had brought their daughter.
But Ms Gomez Anson, an economics professor, subsequently noticed movement behind one of the window blinds while her neighbour – whom she had thought lived alone – was outside collecting a delivery.
It was at that point that she began to suspect that the child she had seen months earlier – presumably one of the Steffens’ sons rather than a girl as she had thought – might actually be living in the house.
In the weeks and months that followed, she meticulously recorded the various comings and goings next door. She took particular note of the food deliveries which – as later spotted by the police – seemed to be too large and too frequent for a single man living on his own.
Other details spotted by Ms Gomez Anson included the blinds in certain rooms – which turned out to be the children’s bedrooms – being pulled down at precisely 5.10pm every day. By contrast, the blinds in the rest of the house remained down all of the time.
The house where the children were held captive for more than three years in Oviedo, Spain
Crucially, Ms Gomez Anson was also listening out for the sound of young voices and became increasingly convinced that there were a number of children inside the house. On April 14, she presented her dossier to the local Oviedo police.
The photo on Christian Steffen’s LinkedIn page shows a smiling, bespectacled man with a neat parting and goatee beard. According to his profile, he is an ‘experienced tech recruiter’ and ‘HR generalist’ who is open to ‘remote’ work. It states that he has worked as a ‘headhunter’ since 2008 – initially in the life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors but, for the past 15 years, in the IT field ‘across all industries’.
Another online CV says he was awarded a PhD in philosophy by the University of Hamburg in 2003 and has a separate degree in pedagogy – the study of teaching methods. It also states that he is ‘open yet disciplined’ and possesses ‘strong empathy’ as well as ‘perseverance and commitment’.
The Mail understands that his 48-year-old wife is of Mexican heritage, although she was born in America and holds a German passport. Online records show that $276 of ‘electromechanical domestic appliances’, such as food processors or juice extractors, were ordered from the Steffens’ address last October and dispatched to Baltimore – suggesting family links in the US city.
Both parents have been in custody since their arrest at 2.45pm on April 28 and are the subject of an ongoing judicial inquiry. Regardless of what transpires, it seems unlikely that they will be returning to their Spanish hideaway any time soon.
For its part, Toleo is a sought-after address. It is located in the foothills of Monte Naranco, home to the finishing line of the Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain) cycling race – which has been won twice by British rider Chris Froome.
Most of its well-heeled residents live in expansive homes behind the protective security of electronic gates and intercom buzzers. The luckiest ones have panoramic views over Oviedo, which was named last year as Spain’s official gastronomic capital.
When the Mail visited this week, the Steffens’ spacious pink-coloured home was partly hidden behind hoardings hastily erected after their arrest. Thirty yards in front of the house, a barrier at the start of the driveway looks like a half-hearted attempt to deter sightseers from coming for a look. Anyone turning on to the approach road half a mile away is confronted by a large sign declaring: ‘Residents only’.
A nun at the Carmelite convent opposite the Steffens’ home told me: ‘We never saw anybody in the house and we knew nothing, so we assumed it was empty, the front garden is so unkept.
‘People here live very independently so it’s not unusual to go unnoticed, but it was horrible to find out about it and that it was right next to us.’
Neighbour Rafael Ruiz said: ‘Honestly, I don’t remember knowing it was inhabited.
‘The blinds were always down, no noise, no cars. Nothing to indicate life.’
So what now? If they are convicted of domestic and psychological abuse and child abandonment offences, the Steffens – who were refused bail – face up to seven years’ jail each.
Unsurprisingly, their three sons will remain in state care for the foreseeable future. When they were freed by the police, the boys were unsteady on their feet and did not have any shoes that fitted them.
Worse, they were also suffering from severe constipation after apparently being subjected to a strict regime determining when they could use the toilet. Reports also say the parents went online to buy medication containing THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, and administered it to the children as ADHD treatment – even though it is unclear whether any of the youngsters suffer from the condition.
According to Flor Gonzalez Muñiz, spokeswoman for the Professional Association of Social Education of the Principality of Asturias, the Steffens repeatedly warned their sons that the outside world was ‘harmful’.
She said the damage caused to the brothers is ‘very serious’ but ‘not irreversible’, adding: ‘They have an opportunity right now; childhood has that flexibility.
‘If you work correctly, even if there may be after-effects because this is something they will carry with them for ever, they will be able to reach adulthood with the guarantee of a full life.’
That last sentiment at least offers some hope of a brighter future for the Steffen boys. Unfortunately, though, this grim tale is a stark reminder that – even in an affluent 21st century Western democracy – no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors.
