Briefe aus dem Jenseits (2023)

Sven Nolden disappeared without a trace 25 years ago, at the age of 15, when he was planning to visit friends in a neighboring village. At the time, the Noldens repeatedly received anonymous letters purportedly written by someone named Chris, intended to make Sven’s parents believe he was on a tour of Europe. After a few weeks, the letters stopped, and the case could not be solved. Twenty-five years later, the parents begin receiving letters again, written in the same way. They contact Gerd Dennert, the investigator in charge of the case at the time, who in turn reaches out to Ingo Thiel. Thiel and his team take up the investigation. While Thiel and Dennert revisit the locations from the original investigation, his colleagues go through the old files of the Sven task force. Winni Karls, Thiel’s longtime colleague, tells him that he will soon be transferring to the State Criminal Police Office. Unable to deal with the news, Thiel picks a fight with his colleague. After the murder case is solved, they make up. At the same time, the difficult life of Julia Klemm and her daughter Jessica is shown. Jessica has resumed contact with her homeless father. Julia acts frightened, panicked, and hysterical when photos of Jessica from social media are sent to her from an unknown number. The sender is in prison. DNA testing shows that the letters, both then and now, were written by the same woman. The new investigation raises more and more doubts about the thoroughness of the original inquiry. Dennert suspected that Sven had gone with another boy to a parking area at a motorway service station known as a “gay cruising spot,” where a long-haul truck driver picked him up. Thiel brings Dr. Sturz from the State Criminal Police Office back onto the investigation. Thiel and Koller work with the postal service to find out who sent the letters. The investigators delve into Sven’s life at the time, search his childhood bedroom, which still exists, and find a lock of hair that Dennert had overlooked and which belongs to the letter writer. Interviews with former members of Sven’s Scout troop point to another murder case that took place in the same village five years after Sven’s disappearance. At the time, Jürgen Renk shot his neighbor in the head three times after she complained about his dog barking. The woman survived, badly injured. Thiel and Karls visit her and discover that Renk has a daughter. Dennert had not considered a connection between the two cases at the time. Renk is now in the final months of his prison sentence and uses a supervised outing to lie in wait for Jessica on the street and introduce himself as her grandfather. This leads to a physical altercation with her father. Jessica then confronts her mother with a photo Renk gave her. Until then, she had assumed her grandfather was dead. Thiel now believes that Renk was responsible for Sven’s disappearance and that Julia is writing the letters. Renk is questioned in prison. Julia is also confronted with the letters, but denies having written them. The investigators keep watch on a mailbox and establish that Julia wrote the new letters. By this point, she has fled by hitchhiking and is picked up in Aachen. During questioning, after hesitating for a long time and in tears, she confesses that her father murdered Sven out of anger because she and Sven had fallen in love. He forced her to fire the final shot. Julia wrote the new letters because she was afraid her father would be released from prison.