Erzgebirgskrimi - Tödliche Abrechnung (2022)

Chief Inspector Robert Winkler and Inspector Karina Szabo investigate the murder of Dr. Lenhard Hellmann, founder of an innovative and successful textile start-up in Chemnitz. Retired forester Georg Bergelt had seen the climber fall from the rock face. Believing he had also seen another person flee the scene of the accident, he alerted the police. The autopsy reveals that the man was already dead before the fall, and that the time of death cannot be determined precisely. The textile company is on the verge of successfully completing a research project carried out in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Sybille Köhler of Chemnitz University of Technology. This brings Hellmann’s business partners, Philipp Mertens and Julia Jacobi, into the spotlight of the investigation, since Hellmann did not want to share the success of his newly developed technology—not even with manufacturer Bernd Lauber, who had provided a substantial part of the funding for the research. During the investigation, Lauber is found brutally bludgeoned to death, which initially leaves Winkler and Szabo baffled. They suspect Lauber had evidence against Hellmann’s killer. The evidence against Mertens and Jacobi grows stronger, and both say they found Hellmann already dead in his apartment. Afraid they would be mistaken for the killers, they had taken their partner to the rock face to make it look like an accident. But they insist they certainly did not kill him. It is later established that Hellmann was having an intimate relationship with Sybille Köhler and that she was demonstrably in his apartment when he died, so she is questioned. Köhler admits that she had a heated argument with Hellmann after he told her he wanted to end their relationship. Deeply disappointed, she pushed Hellmann away, causing him to fall and hit his head. In a panic, she ran out of the house, but he was still alive. According to the autopsy report, the victim died from a blow, suggesting that the killer must have entered the house shortly after the argument. This line of reasoning leads to Philipp Mertens. With the evidence pointing to him, he admits that he went to Hellmann’s apartment after Sybille Köhler and bludgeoned him to death because he felt Hellmann had cheated him out of the results of their work. The investigators also consider it proven that Mertens killed Bernd Lauber as well, when Lauber surprised him while he was searching for incriminating material.