Acht (2025)

In Langenlois, Lower Austria, radiologist Dr. Harald Wolf is shot in the chest and killed outside his home. The victim was married to Sandra Wolf and was the father of Heinrich Wolf. Chief Inspector Marion Geyer of the Lower Austrian State Criminal Police Office takes charge of the investigation together with Patrick Brandl, the local police officer, with support from District Inspector Elvira Zoric. Brandl knew the victim from the Langenlois marksmen’s club. An eight is tattooed on the dead man’s upper arm. The murder weapon, a Luger P08 S/42, was a pistol manufactured in small numbers in the 1930s, part of the victim’s gun collection, and had been reported stolen eight weeks earlier. Master carpenter Otto Wolf, the victim’s father, lives in Altenburg and considered his son a weakling. Heinz Rettenbacher is chairman of the shooting club; according to him, Harald supported relaxing the firearms laws. Dr. Wolf is also said to have issued fake vaccination certificates during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria. In online videos for the Infinity Freedom Community, he presented himself as a free-thinking critic of the system. The community’s symbol was the infinity sign. Among his followers were several people known to the authorities who were involved with the Identitarians or the States’ Alliance. Harald Wolf was himself involved with the States’ Alliance. Its president, Birgit Hofer, was sentenced to prison for high treason. According to a neighbor, a vehicle with Czech license plates had been seen near the house some time before the crime. Sandra Wolf says she has felt watched for some time; her husband thought she was paranoid. Sandra also has an online presence and has studied numerology. According to Sandra’s neighbor and friend Lissy, some people believe Harry had affairs and that the killer was a jealous husband. Lissy herself does not believe this, though; she says Harry adored Sandra and was the jealous one. District Inspector Zoric tells Geyer that Brandl had previously completed basic military police training. During that time, two colleagues were suspended after a female colleague was raped. Brandl wanted to help the victim and was beaten up. The victim died the day after the rape. Marion Geyer asks her husband Jörg to do some research. Brandl discovers that Sandra Wolf had a criminal record for theft and robbery 17 years earlier. She was addicted to heroin at the time. While searching for meaning in her life, she met her future husband at a seminar. After Chief Inspector Geyer assigns Brandl three murder theories as “homework,” he presents Otto Wolf and Sandra Wolf as possible perpetrators and Birgit Hofer as a possible contract killer the next day, earning a grade of “1+.” Geyer suspects that Sandra Wolf was abused and controlled by her husband and killed him for that reason, but she has no evidence. Sandra says that at some point her husband would have beaten her to death. After that, he would have gone to prison or shot himself, and Heinrich would have been left without parents. Brandl assumes that Sandra hired someone on the dark web to murder her husband. In a vineyard, Sandra makes what amounts to an implicit confession, but Marion Geyer apparently does not want to pursue the matter for lack of evidence. She later makes that clear to Brandl as well, who has also understood what happened.