Crime scene: Evenstar

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Evening star
Country of production Germany
Production
company		 WDR
length 83 minutes
classification Episode 68 ( List )
First broadcast November 7, 1976 on ARD
Rod
Director Wolfgang Becker
script Herbert Lichtenfeld
production Werner Kloss ,
Richard Deutsch
camera Josef Vilsmaier
cut Thomas Nikel
occupation

Abendstern is a television film from the television crime series Tatort by ARD and ORF . The film was produced by WDR and broadcast for the first time on November 7, 1976. It is the 68th episode in the crime scene series, the ninth with Commissioner Haferkamp .

action

A yellow Audi 100 C1 , like the one that Helm drives in Abendstern

Isabel Raisch works as a waitress in a country inn. Although she is married, she is not averse to other men. Her current lover is Gerhard Helm from the Essen construction department . When he picks them up from work for a trip, they have no idea that her husband Peter Raisch is up to the same thing and is following them. But he loses sight of her. Suddenly Helm runs out of gas. He leaves Isabel alone at a lonely forest crossing to get gasoline from the next town. When he returned, he found Isabel seriously injured next to the Audi 100 . He hurries to refuel the car and tries to get the woman to the hospital. However, she dies on the way and Helm decides to hide the body in the forest for fear of a scandal. A little later the shoe dealer Kurmeier appears at the same intersection and looks carefully for something on the floor; he finds a metal letter "R" and pockets it.

Shortly before the end of the shift at 6 a.m., Inspector Haferkamp and his assistant Kreutzer are called to the same intersection: Children have found the body of a forest worker in the bushes. A blood-smeared stone and a gasoline stain are discovered near the site where Helm was parked. A small piece of metal is also discovered. A short time later, Haferkamp and Kreutzer are called to a point in the forest about 2 kilometers away, where Isabel's body was found by colleagues of the forest worker. Since the blood on the stone is assigned to Isabel, Haferkamp researches her surroundings and has all men with whom she has contact questioned. He also arrests her husband Peter as the main suspect. The dead man's notebook contains the official telephone number of Helm, whom Haferkamp visits in the office. The petrol stain leads the commissioner to check the petrol stations in the vicinity of the crime scene. At the station in question, Haferkamp tricked Helm by falsely claiming that the gas station attendant recognized Helm. Helm admits to have been there and describes what happened in the police station.

But now Helm is under suspicion of murder, also because his wife incriminated him by destroying evidence: she removed the suspicious petrol can and brought the car to the washing machine. Helm comes into custody, and Haferkamp lets Helm's wife come to visit prison, "so that the two of them can talk, maybe that will make a difference". In a key point, Helm's wife says to him "You just have to say one word and I'll help you". All she wants is an apology. But Helm does not understand her hint, gets angry and goes back to the cell.

Haferkamp orders that Frau Helm be shadowed to find out whether she has set a trap for her husband about his affair. A house search results in a large sum of money and a recording device and cassettes. Surprisingly, this relieves the burden on Helm, because the device was hidden in his car without his knowledge at the time of the event. It contains the whole act on clay and leads to Kurmeier. An inscription with a damaged letter "R", to which the metal piece fits, is also discovered on his company car. Kurmeier ran over the forest worker because he ran into his car while completely drunk. Isabel had observed it, was recognized by Kurmeier, then tried in vain to bribe with money and finally strangled out of panic and killed.

The money found at Frau Helm's had been extorted from Kurmeier. Since her husband was imprisoned for a manslaughter he did not commit, she found it compensatory that Kurmeier paid for someone else - Helm - to sit in jail for him. The strongly religiously inclined wife had therefore tried to punish her husband for his infidelity by suppressing the exculpatory evidence. All she wanted was a plea for forgiveness from her husband, then she would have helped him.

Trivia

  • Evening star is the nickname that Mr. Helm used to give his wife. Ms. Helm uses this password to collect the extortion money from the post office.
  • A recurring musical motif in this Tatort episode is the guitar solo from the piece Fools by the British rock band Deep Purple .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tatort (Abendstern 1976) - music sequence from Fools by Deep Purple on YouTube
previous episode
October 10, 1976: Trimmel and the tulip thief 		Crime scene follow next episode
December 5, 1976: Transit into the hereafter