Carneval - Der Clown bringt den Tod (2018)

In his fourth case, Chief Inspector Jan Fabel of the Hamburg Homicide Squad is called to Cologne shortly before starting his vacation to help track down a serial killer dressed as a clown during the Cologne Carnival, before the killer can strike again. Rhineland Chief Inspector Benni Scholz has two unsolved murders of women in his files from the past two years. Both were committed on Weiberfastnacht by a cannibal, and he fears the killer will strike again this year. Fabel, who is considered an expert on serial offenders, agrees to help because he hopes to find his traumatized colleague Maria Klee and protect her from herself. She has secretly traveled to Cologne to take vigilante revenge on her Ukrainian tormentor, Witrenko. In Cologne, Maria Klee meets Viktor Buslenko, a boxer who works for Witrenko, and begins an affair with him to get to Witrenko through him. Scholz believes the cannibal chooses the day symbolically because of its name (Carne vale); the victims were women with fuller buttocks. The first victim was beaten by her husband, while the second lived with her mother. Willi Heidkamp witnessed the second murder. After running in front of a car while fleeing the killer, he ended up in hospital and has been in a wheelchair ever since. Fabel and Scholz try to question Heidkamp, but he is physically unable to provide any information. Jan Fabel manages to find Maria Klee, but she overpowers him and knocks him unconscious, allowing her to escape. Cologne Criminal Investigation Department links another case to the serial killer. Four years earlier, Vera Reinhardt was seriously wounded when a clown stabbed her in the buttocks; afterward, she changed her name to Andrea Gehring. The clown may have identified his victims through lectures by psychologist Thomas Tesla, so the investigators suspect the next victim could also be someone who attended one of these lectures. Tesla is friends with a cook named Ansgar. Tesla tells Ansgar that the police have questioned Vera Reinhardt. When Viktor Buslenko discovers that Maria Klee is a police officer, the two fight, and Klee is seriously injured. Buslenko takes Klee to Witrenko, while Fabel finds Buslenko's apartment ransacked. The police ask Dora Seiffert to act as bait for the serial killer. Ansgar dresses as a clown and goes to Vera Reinhardt/Andrea Gehring's apartment, but investigator Tansu Bakrac overpowers him in time. Maria Klee is freed by the police, and Witrenko is arrested. Klee shoots Witrenko. However, after questioning Ansgar, Scholz concludes that Ansgar is not the serial killer, since he is fixated solely on Reinhardt/Gehring and has no intention of killing her. Fabel now recalls some of the first victim's statements, which lead him to think it possible that Reinhardt/Gehring herself is responsible for the subsequent crimes—the murders—as a way, so to speak, of freeing herself from the role of victim. Decoy Dora Seiffert, who already thought she was safe, is nevertheless overpowered by Vera Reinhardt/Andrea Gehring, dressed as a clown. The police manage to stop the attack.