Hubert und Staller - Eine schöne Bescherung (2018)

Shortly before Christmas, Hubert and Staller are supposed to arrest 85-year-old Hannelore Eissner for failing to pay her broadcasting licence fees for a year. So the pensioner won’t get into trouble, the precinct has collected money for her—after all, it’s Christmas. When Hubert and Staller go to bring her the money, they find Hannelore Eissner dead in her house. It turns out that the pensioner had actually died a year earlier. Since Dr. Fuchs initially assumes she died of natural causes, Staller heads to Rome for some pre-Christmas shopping. He won the trip in a contest run by Police Superintendent Girwidz. But as soon as Staller has left, Dr. Fuchs discovers that Hannelore Eissner has a broken neck. Also missing is the €400,000 the pensioner withdrew from her account shortly before her death. As Girwidz is about to pick up his mother-in-law from the station, a Santa Claus on a sleigh passes in front of his car and crashes into a stack of logs. After Girwidz takes him to the hospital, it turns out he is Georg Obermeier, who had been missing for a year. When Hubert arrives at the hospital with Obermeier’s wife, Katharina, Obermeier has disappeared. But that’s not the only surprise: when Hubert gets home, 16-year-old Anna is standing at his door and introduces herself as his daughter. After he comes to terms with the idea of having a daughter, he discovers that she is a con artist who used a modified version of the grandparent scam to gain access to his apartment. Strangely, though, she didn’t steal anything from him. DNA tests show that Georg Obermeier broke into Hannelore Eissner’s house a year earlier and probably stole her money. This explains to the officers why he disappeared back then, but not why he reappeared a year later and vanished again shortly afterward. When he is then found frozen to death in a stream, the investigation turns to his regulars’ table companions: bank adviser Franz Hübner, butcher Michael Schartl, and postman Joseph Brenner. Since precinct chief Girwidz is the only one the three have never seen, he is asked to set a trap for them. It works, and Franz Hübner is exposed as a double murderer. A year earlier, he had gone to the old woman’s house to steal the money, which he had learned about through his work at the bank. When Hannelore Eissner realized what he was up to, they argued and she fell down the stairs. To cover up his crime, he sent his regulars’ table companion Obermeier there to commit a burglary, after which Obermeier went into hiding. When Obermeier learned from the press a year later about the large sum of money that had gone missing since the break-in, he realized Franz Hübner had cheated him. To keep his crime from coming to light, Hübner promptly silenced Obermeier after his unexpected reappearance by strangling him and throwing him into the stream. But their more recent conversations at the regulars’ table also made postman Joseph Brenner realize that Hübner had kept the old woman’s money for himself. He goes to Hübner’s home and takes the money. Hubert and his colleague Lena go to arrest Hübner and find him tied up in his apartment. They inform Girwidz that they have the murderer, but his regulars’ table companion Brenner is on the run with the money. By chance, Brenner runs into the police chief, but when Girwidz tries to stop him, Brenner is run over by a snowplow. Girwidz gathers up the money and sets off to take it to the precinct. On the way, a Rosenheim police patrol pulls him over and detains him because of the alcohol on his breath. When the officers call the precinct so Girwidz’s colleagues can come and collect his car, the only person they reach there is Staller, who has just returned from his trip to Rome. He immediately takes a taxi to help his boss. Meanwhile, Anna, whose real name is Leonie, has abandoned her attempt to flee and returned to Wolfratshausen. Hubert isn’t home, so she sits outside his front door to wait for him. Staller arrives at the patrol station and goes to pick up his boss, but the Rosenheim officers take Girwidz back to their station, and Staller drives back in Girwidz’s car. Then Staller gets a call from Rome. He had fallen in love during his trip and now doesn’t hesitate to follow his new happiness. He leaves Wolfratshausen and says goodbye to his colleague Hubert on a country road along the way.