Der Metzger – Mordstheater (2024)

Restorer Willibald Adrian Metzger receives a job that takes him to a crime theater in Graz, where he is to restore the furnishings. Once the work is finished, he wants to see the play Murder Theater with his Danjela, his friend Petar Wollnar, the caretaker, and his former schoolmate, now police officer Heribert Senekowitsch. Danjela is a fan of the leading actress, Emelie Fablé. However, Emelie does not show up for the performance, and her body is found soon afterward. She fell to her death from the window of her apartment. Senekowitsch and Kaplan begin investigating, and Willibald, Danjela, and Wollnar get involved as well. Soon afterward, the understudy Olga Toller is also found murdered. A voice message is found on her phone. As far as Senekowitsch is concerned, the case is closed: according to the message, Toller died by suicide after murdering her rival Emelie out of jealousy over her success. Metzger, however, does not believe this, because Olga has a young son, Tim, whom she needs to care for. He has also overheard a phone call from theater director Viktor Schinder suggesting that Emelie may have known something, and that Schinder killed her for that reason. The theater’s aristocratic patron, Ludwig Degasperi, threatens director Viktor Schinder with closing the theater if the police discover his schemes. Danjela and Wollnar find false invoices in Schinder’s office, which Schinder had issued and paid to himself, including one made out to Metzger that Metzger had never issued. When Metzger confronts Schinder about them, Schinder bans him from the theater. Senekowitsch and Kaplan disregard the information because financial crimes are not their responsibility. At the funeral, Schinder tells Kaplan that a homeless man had supposedly been stalking Emelie. At the cemetery, Kaplan also runs into her former colleague Kathi Springer, who now works in customs. Schinder summons Metzger to meet him at the theater. Metzger is first knocked unconscious, and later finds Schinder covered in blood. Metzger is suspected of murdering Schinder, but Senekowitsch is convinced he is innocent. Pascall Peischl, a young colleague of Senekowitsch’s, was supposedly told by Schinder shortly before his death that Metzger had made a threat. Metzger suspects that both messages—the one from Olga Toller and the one Schinder sent to Peischl—were created using artificial intelligence. Mizzi Horawetz from the theater turns up at Djurkovic’s and claims that Degasperi committed all three murders and used the theater for money laundering. She says a folder at Degasperi’s can prove it, and suggests retrieving it together with Danjela and handing it over to the police. At Degasperi’s villa, Mizzi hands him the folder, which she had in fact been carrying all along, and in return demands that he let her go; he can do whatever he wants with Djurkovic. Degasperi claims he had nothing to do with the murders and, in turn, suspects Mizzi. Kathi Springer from customs arrests Degasperi for importing endangered animal species. Metzger suspects that the murderer is Emelie’s stalker, whom the rose seller Rakkola also claims to have seen. Kaplan and Senekowitsch discover that their colleague Pascall Peischl had tampered with evidence and created the computer-generated messages. Peischl was in love with Fablé and had broken into her apartment. When he tried to take the knife away from her, she fell out of the window. He murdered Olga to cover up what he had done and frame her for Fablé’s murder. Schinder had to die because he had identified Peischl as Fablé’s stalker and murderer. Peischl is eventually arrested by the police.