Crime scene: With bare feet
| Episode of the series Tatort | |
|---|---|
| Original title | With bare feet |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Production company |
Hessian radio |
| length | 89 minutes |
| classification | Episode 110 ( List ) |
| First broadcast | March 9, 1980 on German television |
| Rod | |
| Director | Franz Peter Wirth |
| script | Karl Heinz Willschrei |
| production | Wolfgang Völker |
| camera | Werner Hoffmann |
| cut | Gabriele Rosenhagen |
| occupation | |
| |
With Bare Feet is the 110th TV film in the crime scene crime series. Produced by Hessischer Rundfunk , the episode was broadcast for the first time on March 9, 1980 on ARD's first program. It is the only case of Commissioner Sander, portrayed by Volkert Kraeft .
Plot overview
Verena Kersten, an employee of an advertising agency , is suspected by her boss Dörhoff of being responsible for the death of her colleague Uschi Terhorst. Knowing about her neurological disease, he wants to protect her and removes traces that could point to Verena as the perpetrator. Yet they will by police as prime suspect in custody taken. When a second, very similar murder occurs during this time, Verena has to be released again. For her part, she now suspects her boss of killing the woman who was connected to the advertising agency in order to help Verena. In the meantime, however, Gerda Kalinke, an assistant from the agency, confesses to having killed Uschi Terhorst out of jealousy. Kersten uses this to help her boss. To divert attention from him, she gives the police a hint that Kalinke also committed the first murder. However, this quickly turns out to be a mistake, and so the investigation ultimately leads to Dörhoff, who turns out to be Verena's biological father and who actually committed the second murder to protect his daughter and distract her from her neurological hereditary disease.
action
Verena Kersten, who works in an advertising agency, returns from the break to her office, where she finds her colleague Uschi Terhorst dead. She was killed with a heavy tool, a cutting shutter, the perpetrator took off her shoes and placed them next to her head. Kersten picks up the tool in her shocked state. At this very moment, Albin Dörhoff, the head of the agency, comes into the room and sees her with the murder weapon in her hand. He assumes that she killed her colleague. Although she denies the act, he hastily orders her to go to his office. He wipes the chopper thoroughly to remove Verena's fingerprints. On the way to Dörhoff's office, Verena is seen by the caretaker, who notices blood on her clothes. When Dörhoff arrives at the office, Verena again protests her innocence, but her boss doesn't believe her. Dörhoff says she is sick and does not know what she has done. In this state, his mother would never have known what she had just done. Verena is perplexed and now completely confused. Dörhoff is convinced that she killed Terhorst in the course of a dispute. He implores the young woman to trust him and not tell anyone that she has seen him, this is the only way he can help her.
In the meantime, the police with Chief Detective Sander and Commissioner Knauf have arrived at the scene. Sander is taken aback by the fact that the murderer apparently took off the victim's shoes after the crime and placed them next to her head. Sander interrogates Kersten, in whose pocket you find a blood-smeared cloth. He learns from her that she was the dead editor's assistant and that she touched Terhorst when she found her. On the way from the canteen back to her office, she only met the caretaker. Sander confiscates Kersten's clothing for the KTU and arrests her temporarily. In the interrogation that followed , Knauf confronted the young woman with her blood-smeared fingerprints that were found on the instrument. Kersten says she doesn't remember whether she touched the drawer. Sander throws in that her fingers couldn't have been smeared with blood at the moment they hit, because she couldn't come into contact with the blood until the blow. The commissioners withdraw to deliberate. Sander alleges that Knauf is behaving like a public prosecutor who is already preparing the indictment. Knauf replied that Sander was acting like Verena Kersten's defense lawyer. Sander points out that more than twenty people have the key to the main entrance and are therefore possible perpetrators. He sticks to his doubts about Verena's culprit. Knauf confronts Verena with statements from colleagues that she often argued with the victim and threw the instrument at her the day before. Kersten admits occasional quarrels, but limits that she never aimed at the victim, but merely threw the ark against the wall in a fit of sudden anger. She refuses to give any further statements without the presence of a lawyer.
During another interrogation, for which Kersten was brought to the presidium, she met Dörhoff in the hallway, who wanted to know whether she had already told the officers about her illness. She just replies that she is not sick and asks him to get her out of custody. Only a short time later, Sander was called to another murder case: Eva Eggebrecht, an actress for advertising spots for the agency, was killed with a hammer in her apartment. As with the first murder, the victim's shoes were removed and placed next to his head. Sander assumes that both murders are about the same perpetrator and that he must therefore come from the advertising agency. In addition, Eva Eggebrecht must have known her murderer because, according to the traces, she obviously offered him champagne. Sander feels in his opinion that Verena Kersten is innocent, reinforced and obtained her release from the examining magistrate. He is quite emotional, picks up the young woman himself from the prison and drives her to a restaurant . Since they get a little closer, they also go to the cinema together in the evening . The inspector then takes her home with him, where the evening would have turned out to be almost amorous if Sander hadn't come up with the case, whereupon she leaves his apartment. That same night Kersten went to Dörhoff and accused him of killing Eva Eggebrecht in order to take away her suspicions. Kersten means to him that her colleague has always walked around barefoot in the editing room. It must have been a coincidence that she fell so that her head came up next to her shoes. From Sander, Verena found out that the shoes of the second victim had also been removed next to the dead head. Obviously the perpetrator wanted to imitate the first murder, a sure sign for Kersten that it must have been Dörhoff. Dörhoff denies everything, he repeats that she must have committed the first murder, but because of her illness no longer knows.
In the police station Knauf receives a call that a girl has thrown herself from a bridge and is seriously injured in the hospital. The patient kept repeating the name "Uschi Terhorst". Sander then rushes to the clinic, where Gerda Kalinke, an agency employee, confesses to having killed Uschi Terhorst. She claims that Terhorst took her fiancé, Willi Graubner, from her. Graubner works as a director in the advertising agency. Uschi mocked her and said obscene things, which is why she killed her in affect. Sander asks about Eva Eggebrecht, but Kalinke is too excited to continue the testimony. Some time later, Kersten meets with Dörhoff in a park and speaks to him about the newspaper article about Gerda Kalinke. He had to face the police about the murder of Eva Eggebrecht. When he realizes this and says goodbye, she suddenly stops him and says that it would be just as pointless as the death of Eva Eggebrecht if he had to go to prison. That same evening, Kersten visits Sander, tells him that she has just ended a relationship and that she would like to see him more often. She wants to make him believe that Gerda Kalinke committed both murders, since her boyfriend not only had a secret relationship with Terhorst, but also with Eggebrecht. Sander is surprised by her claim, which is supposed to suggest that Kalinke also had a motive for the second murder, which was actually committed by Dörhoff. However, he does not enter into her attempt to seduce him. Only when the second murder has been solved can one think of a relationship.
Sander visits the agency again and talks to the director Willi Graubner. He confirmed that they had a relationship with Kalinke, but they were not engaged. Gerda saw it one-sidedly. He also had a relationship with Uschi Terhorst until shortly before her death, but not with Eggebrecht. When Sander confronts Verena with this statement, however, she insists that everything was as she told him. Sander tries to make it clear to her that Graubner has no reason to testify wrongly, since he could no longer help Kalinke, since she had already admitted the first murder and it would therefore make no sense to try to help her out of the second murder incident. However, Verena remains stubborn and Kalinke can no longer be questioned because she has passed away in the meantime. Sander again appeals to Verena to tell him everything she knows, but without success. The inspector then visits Kersten's parents and meets Verena there. Dörhoff, who was also present, had been hidden by her shortly before. Sander's suspicion for the murder of Eva Eggebrecht now falls on Verena's father, who may have killed Eggebrecht to protect his imprisoned daughter. He summons Paul Kersten, who is confused about how things are going, to the presidium. Mother and daughter Kersten are of the opinion that Sander should under no circumstances know that Verena and Dörhoff know each other.
The next day, Kersten seeks out Professor Bachmann, who had already examined her thoroughly in the past, and asks him to do another examination because she is afraid of suffering from a hereditary disease. He then takes her to his private clinic. When Sander visits the young woman there, he confronts her with his suspicion that Eva Eggebrecht had to die because the perpetrator wanted to protect her, since he firmly assumed that she had committed the murder of Uschi Terhorst. When he wants to know whether her father or mother committed the second murder, Verena calls for the sister and Sander is shown out of the room. The inspector learns from Bachmann that Verena has been his patient for four months because of suspicion of so-called "twilight attacks". He had been to a convention in Los Angeles for the past few weeks and was therefore unaware of the murder investigation. These "twilight attacks" are a special form of an epileptic seizure . Because of this nervous disease , sufferers would do things in a state of seizure that they were not aware of, they could develop a sudden aggressiveness that cannot be explained from the outside. Outwardly, the affected people would appear pretty normal. He could not rule out that this aggressiveness could even lead to murder. Verena's father was obviously very worried about her and therefore urged her to go to the clinic. However, Verena is completely healthy. The disease is hereditary and her paternal grandmother suffered from it. The professor also explains that the insane are less likely to commit acts of violence than the healthy. Sander wants to question Verena again, but she has fled the hospital. The inspector then visits Kersten's parents again and wants to arrest Paul Kersten. Verena's mother confesses that her husband is not Verena's father. She claims that Verena's father emigrated to Brazil at the time. Paul Kersten, who was completely ignorant until then, is stunned, but Sander does not believe Hilde Kersten's story of emigration and now arrests them both. Meanwhile, Verena seeks protection from Dörhoff. He says that sooner or later Sander will find out that he is her father and suggests that she go to a place where Sander cannot find her. Then he puts a gun in his pocket.
Meanwhile, Knauf checked Paul Kersten's mother, she was perfectly healthy. Sander makes further investigations, which reveal that Verena's mother must have been pregnant at the time of their marriage. When he wants to do further research in Hilde Kersten's home village, he learns that Verena has arrived with a gentleman and is staying in an old mill. While Dörhoff tells Verena about his relationship with her mother and suggests that they commit suicide together, Sander requests reinforcements and goes to the mill. When he wanted to arrest Dörhoff, he sent Verena out of the room to talk to Sander alone. Then he points his gun at the inspector. Sander says it won't do him any good to kill him, because his lifelong fears have overtaken him. Dörhoff says he can't get the images out of his head of how his own mother changed under the influence of the disease. He is convinced that Professor Bachmann is wrong and that Verena also suffers from this disease, which must finally be eradicated. Then a shot can be heard. Sander steps out of the old mill and tells Verena that her father shot himself. The young woman turns away without a word and lets him stand.
Production and Background
The film was shot from October to November 1979 in Frankfurt am Main and the surrounding area. When it was first broadcast on German television on March 9, 1980, the film achieved an audience rating of 54%, which corresponds to 18.16 million viewers. Having bare feet is one of the so-called " poison cabinet consequences ". These are episodes that are blocked by a sender's internal block and may not be broadcast until further notice. The film claims that epilepsy is a mental illness and that epileptics are more likely to be violent than average. Both were scientifically refuted back then.
This crime scene episode was alternatively titled Murder Without Regret and was released by Video Palace on VHS.
Web links
- With bare feet in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Summary of the plot of With bare feet on the ARD website
- With bare feet at the crime scene fund
- With bare feet at Tatort-Fans.de
- Zauberspiegel - 40 years of the crime scene - The consequences of the poison cabinet: With bare feet
Individual evidence
- ↑ With bare feet at tatort-fundus.de , accessed on September 18, 2014
- ↑ Discussion at Zauberspiegel , accessed on September 18, 2014
- ^ With bare feet (1980) at lonnysfilme.de. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
- ↑ Tatort episode 110: With bare feet at tatort-fans.de
|
previous episode February 10, 1980: The yellow petticoat |
Crime scene follow |
next episode April 7, 1980: The witness |