Steirergift (2024)

In this episode, Chief Inspector Sascha Bergmann and his colleague Anni Sulmtaler of the Graz State Criminal Police Office investigate the death of waitress Julia Moser. Workers found her with only faint vital signs at a landfill on the edge of the forest near Leoben, and she died shortly afterward. The autopsy shows that Julia had been drugged with knockout drops and raped. The victim’s older sister is television journalist Vanessa Moser. Their parents died when a hot-air balloon crashed. The balloon ride, which Vanessa had not joined because of her fear of heights, had been Julia’s wish for her fifteenth birthday. Miraculously, Julia was the only person to survive the crash. At first, the sisters continued living together in their parents’ house. Later, Julia moved out and now lived with a friend, Aluna Riedl. Having dropped out of her studies, she had taken a job as a waitress at the pub “Absacker,” run by a shady character nicknamed “Spezitoni.” The investigators initially suspect Max Ertl, Julia’s ex-boyfriend. After he cheated on her, Julia had dumped him. And because Max was unwilling to accept the breakup, he had stalked her. Bergmann and Sulmtaler are initially unable to pursue this suspicion further because Fritz Maurer and Leonard Lamprecht provide Max Ertl with an alibi. The three young men, who are friends, belong to a free-fighting student fraternity whose regular hangout is the “Absacker.” After an appeal on television, Yvonne Lanz comes forward as another rape victim. She, too, had been sedated with knockout drops and abused after visiting the “Absacker.” During a police interview, Yvonne cannot identify any of the photographs shown to her, or the voices of the three men now considered the main suspects—Leonard Lamprecht, Max Ertl, and Fritz Maurer—with certainty. Later, almost by chance, Anni Sulmtaler spots Leonard Lamprecht reflected in a mirror in a video recording he had made of the sleeping Julia. Meanwhile, Vanessa Moser, frustrated that the police investigation is moving too slowly, conducts her own inquiries. To advance them, she responds to Sascha Bergmann’s flirtation and eventually spends the night with him, as it turns out, in order to get information. While Bergmann sleeps contentedly, she photographs the case files the chief inspector had taken home. Armed with this information, she gets in touch with Yvonne Lanz. The investigators eventually learn from Marco, a regular at the “Absacker,” that he saw Julia get into an older Japanese-model car parked in front of the pub on the night of the crime, together with a young man, and drive away. Marco’s description matches Fritz Maurer, who is then arrested. During a lengthy interrogation, as the evidence against him becomes increasingly overwhelming, Maurer finally explains that ordinary sex does not satisfy Leonard Lamprecht, and that Lamprecht had therefore drugged and raped other women in the past, as well as Julia Moser and Yvonne Lanz. Fritz Maurer says he had merely brought Julia to Lamprecht; but when she suffered circulatory collapse because of the drugs, he had helped Lamprecht, at Lamprecht’s request, to make the nearly dead Julia disappear. Vanessa Moser has also turned her attention to Leonard Lamprecht. At the “Absacker,” she pretends to be drunk and begins making unmistakable advances toward Lamprecht. He does indeed take her home and promises her another drink. Vanessa, however, sees him drip knockout drops into the drink intended for her. Without him noticing, she switches the glasses, so Lamprecht soon experiences the effects of his drops himself. Just before losing consciousness, however, he manages to send Fritz Maurer a voice message on his phone, calling for help. Vanessa ties the unconscious man to a chair and, when he comes to, confronts him with her well-founded suspicions. When Lamprecht not only confirms them but even begins boasting about his strange sexual preferences, Vanessa strikes him very hard with a fire poker and flees. At that moment, Bergmann and Sulmtaler arrive at Lamprecht’s apartment and, after Lamprecht is found to be dead, set off in pursuit of Vanessa. The chase ends in a wooded area, where the woman jumps to her death from a rocky ledge. Vanessa had left her phone in Lamprecht’s apartment; she had used it to film his confession.