Winterkartoffelknödel (2014)

Several bizarre deaths occur in the Neuhofer family in Niederkaltenkirchen. Provincial police officer Franz Eberhofer and his friend, private detective Rudi Birkenberger, investigate. After the Neuhofers’ father has already died from an electric shock, one of the sons is crushed by a shipping container. Shortly afterward, the family’s depressed mother is also found hanged from a tree in the forest. While Eberhofer’s superior, Moratschek, assumes each death was an accident, Eberhofer grows suspicious. Adding to this, Hans, the only surviving Neuhofer son, sells his family home and the land that goes with it, then buys a Ford Mustang—which is destroyed in a chase involving the police officer. The gas-station company OTM paid €500,000 for the Neuhofers’ property, while Hans Neuhofer received just €50,000. The sale was arranged by the Munich real-estate company ImmoNovum. Mercedes Dechampes-Sonnleitner, who has recently moved to Niederkaltenkirchen, turns the heads of the village men. Eberhofer is no exception, and begins an affair with her. When she is involved in a fatal accident with Hans, who had planned to give a statement the following morning, Birkenberger begins investigating ImmoNovum. It turns out that Mercedes’s real name is Alexandra Kleindienst, and that she is connected to ImmoNovum along with the architect who was supposed to oversee the renovation of the house and is actually a Snowfrost delivery driver (Snowfrost is a parody of Bofrost). The company has since moved to Tenerife, where Rudi Birkenberger had planned to fly with his girlfriend for a romantic holiday. But when his girlfriend leaves him at short notice, he goes there with police officer Eberhofer, who is very reluctant to make the trip. When Eberhofer meets Alexandra Kleindienst in ImmoNovum’s office, she tells him that she wants to confess in an abandoned church. When he arrives there, he encounters Klaus Mendel, the Snowfrost salesman, who threatens him with a pistol and tells him that, as a delivery driver, he had learned that OTM had offered a lot of money for the Neuhofers’ property, but that Father Neuhofer had refused to sell. So Mendel killed him with an electric shock. But since his surviving family members were now even less willing to sell, he killed them one after another as well. Together with his accomplice, he was thus able to embezzle €450,000 from the house sale. But then Hans Neuhofer grew suspicious, so they got rid of him too. After their confession, Mendel and Kleindienst tie Eberhofer up and try to flee, but are arrested by the police, who were alerted by Rudi Birkenberger. The detective captured the full confession on his camcorder; Eberhofer’s dictation recorder, by contrast, contains only static. Nevertheless, Moratschek praises both men for solving the case, and they are mentioned in various newspapers.