Erzgebirgskrimi - Mordholz (2025)

Sawmill owner Karl Zenker is found beaten to death in the forest. A nearby pile of timber belonging to the Protestant church is missing. Suspicion falls on his son Heiko, who recently took over the management of the sawmill and often argued with his domineering father. Leonie Kampmann, a forestry student and intern working with forester Saskia Bergelt, is in a relationship with Heiko; she has bloodstains on her clothes. Luise Wolf, the head of the registry office in Annaberg-Buchholz, was present when the body was found and makes a conspicuous effort to get in touch with Leonie. Pastor Schubert also behaves strangely; she had sold timber to the elderly Zenker below its value. The detectives identify Gregor Kampmann as one of the timber thieves. He is an employee of the Zenker company and Leonie’s adoptive father. He lives with his family in poverty and wanted to finance Leonie’s studies with the proceeds from the thefts. She has a reading and spelling disorder. When the detectives find her shopping list at the crime scene, she confesses that, in a fit of anger, she shoved the elderly Zenker against a tree after he hurled vicious insults at her and forbade her from having a relationship with his son. However, the autopsy shows that this injury was not the cause of death. More motives gradually come to light: Despite an import ban, Heiko is trading in birchwood from Russia, and Zenker had been blackmailing the pastor because she was having an affair with a married woman. Luise Wolf eventually tells the investigators that she and Zenker are Leonie’s biological parents; back then, he had pressured her to have an abortion and leave town. But she had the baby and gave her up for adoption, telling Zenker only after she saw Heiko and Leonie together. Leonie overhears the conversation and learns that Luise is her mother and Heiko is her half-brother. Inspector Winkler gets Heiko to confess: He had eavesdropped on the conversation between Leonie and his father in the forest. After Zenker regained consciousness, he revealed to his son that Leonie was his sister, and hurled insults at him too, whereupon Heiko flew into a rage and beat his father to death with a log. Winkler, who has suffered panic attacks in enclosed spaces since the events of the previous case, is gradually overcoming them thanks to his romantic relationship with Saskia Bergelt.