Crime scene: A question of conscience

Episode of the series Tatort
Original title	A question of conscience
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Production ; company	Maran Film on behalf of SWR
length	87 minutes
classification	Episode 923 ( List )
First broadcast	November 23, 2014 on Das Erste
Rod
Director	Till Endemann
script	Sönke Lars Neuwöhner , ; Sven Poser
production	Nils Reinhardt , ; Sabine Tettenborn
music	Jens Grötzschel
camera	Jürgen Carle
cut	Sabine Garscha
occupation
	Richy Müller : KHK Thorsten Lannert ; Felix Klare : KHK Sebastian Bootz ; Michael Rotschopf : Christian Pflüger; Caroline Ebner : Sabine Pflüger; Luise Berndt : Alice Gebauer; Eva Bay : Paula Martens; Isaak Dentler : Peer Schmiedle; Daniel Christensen : Holm Bielfeldt; Holger Kunkel : Blesinger, senior public prosecutor; Gisela Straehle : Mrs. Bielfeldt; Carolina Vera Squella : Public Prosecutor Emilia Álvarez ; Mimi Fiedler : Forensic technician Nika Banovic ; Jürgen Hartmann : Forensic specialist Daniel Vogt ; Bettina Koch : saleswoman, witness; Sarah Sanders : Police Officer, Witness; Thomas Schmidt: KHK Gerber; Miriam Joy Jung : Maja Bootz; Jacob Höhne : Henry Bootz; Ralf Beckord : Peters, security officer; Andreas Klaue : Detective; Stefanie Anhalt : radio presenter;

A television film from the crime series Tatort is a question of conscience . The contribution was produced by Maran Film on behalf of Südwestrundfunk . The first broadcast on German television took place on November 23, 2014. It is the 15th case of the Stuttgart investigative team Lannert and Bootz .

action

Lannert and Bootz have rushed to a supermarket because they happened to be nearby. Lannert tries to persuade the gangster Holm Bielfeldt, who has several criminal records and who belongs to the squatter scene, to give up. Bielfeldt holds a security guard under his control and threatens to shoot the hostage if Lannert doesn't stay away. He also demands money. Meanwhile, Bootz is busy getting the customers out of the line of fire. When a young supermarket customer, who obviously fails to understand the situation, approaches the hostage-taker, Bootz pulls her to the ground. At that moment a shot is fired, Bielfeldt collapses dead from a shot in the head, the hostage emerges unharmed from the situation.

At the instigation of the dead Bielfeldt's mother and her lawyers, the Pflüger couple, an investigation takes place against Lannert because of the gunshot. At the hearing, Lannert testifies that he had to shoot because Bielfeldt immediately set about killing the hostage. The witnesses are interrogated, Bootz says that he saw the shot and that Lannert can confirm emergency aid for the security guard. Alice Gebauer, the woman who had to pull Lannert to the ground, is also invited as a witness and appears very relaxed in the hallway in front of the hearing room. When she entered the hall, however, she suddenly looked completely disheveled and confused and was unable to make a useful statement . She asks to be able to go, but the head of the hearing , Senior Public Prosecutor Blesinger, and Ms. Bielfeldt's lawyer, Christian Pflüger, insist on the questioning. Ultimately, Gebauer testifies that Lannert shot Bielfeldt simply and without cause. Since the witness was in a seemingly confused state, she should be questioned again, until then the trial will be adjourned.

The appearance of the witness seems strange to Bootz. Nor can she be seen on any video recordings from the surveillance cameras. Bootz, who is still suffering from the separation from his wife, drinks alone in a pub. Since Alice Gebauer's false statement does not leave him in peace, he visits her late in the evening in her apartment and finds her door open. She lies dying in her apartment and has been shot in the back. Although Bootz immediately alerts the rescue workers, any help for the woman comes too late. Despite the investigation into Lannert, prosecutor Álvarez charged Lannert and Bootz with the investigation into the case.

The woman had lived from Hartz IV for years . Her parents live in Tübingen, work at the university there and have had no contact with their daughter since she slipped into the drug environment. Before that, she was a model child until she was raped when she was 16. Then she crashed, flew from school, broke off an apprenticeship and slipped into the drug and squatter milieu. She has few social contacts, only two young people visit her, a young dark-haired woman and a young man. The investigators find the number of the law firm Pflüger in the connection record of Ms. Gebauer's cell phone, which they then go to. You ask the lawyer couple what their phone call was about. Christian Pflüger says that Ms. Gebauer showed herself to be ready to testify against Lannert. The next morning, Lannert and Bootz researched Alice Gebauer's profiles on social networks. In doing so, they come across a young woman on their friends list who can also be seen on the surveillance cameras as a customer in the supermarket. Her name is Paula Martens and she also comes from Tübingen. However, she was not with Alice Gebauer, but with a man named Peer Schmiedle in the supermarket, with whom she has a relationship according to the profile in the network. Both were quickly gone after the attack. The man was also active in the squatter scene. He spent two years in the same prison as Holm Bielfeldt. So all four of them know each other. Lannert and Bootz suspect that they wanted to raid the supermarket together. Probably because the two officers arrived so quickly, they refrained from helping their friend and fled. Only Alice Gebauer was near Bootz and couldn't escape. The two suspect that their friends killed Alice Gebauer because they weren't sure whether she would stand up to the testimony.

Since Schmiedle lived with Bielfeldt's mother for a while after his release, Lannert and Bootz went to see her. Ms. Bielfeldt says that Schmiedle was unsympathetic to her. He left a few things with her that she handed over to the police. Schmiedle handed the things over to her the night before. His laptop is also among the items. Its evaluation shows that he exchanged e-mails with Alice Gebauer about the supermarket and the robbery in the run-up to the same, so that the theory of the joint robbery has come true. Paula Martens and Peer Schmiedle are put out to be searched . In the continuation of the hearing, Christian Pflüger interrogates Bootz again and accuses him of false statements. Nevertheless, he remains to be able to confirm the emergency aid situation. When asked why he went to Alice Gebauer that night, he cannot give a comprehensible answer. Pflüger raises the question of whether Bootz can be considered credible, he is also unstable due to his private problems and the resulting alcohol consumption. Because Bootz loses his composure and leaves the hearing, Prosecutor Alvarez makes Bootz take leave.

In the evening that Bootz spends again in a pub, he is photographed drinking excessively. Since Bootz suspects that the man was commissioned by Pflüger to spy on him, he goes after the man, but is held back by the host and other guests so that the man can escape. The next day, Nika Lannert informed that a gas station had been attacked in Tübingen, the perpetrators could be Schmiedle and Paula Martens. Lannert picks up the boat on leave and takes him to Tübingen. Lannert finds the two people in hiding in a legalized alternative housing project. Schmiedle threatens him with a gun. Bootz comes to Lannert's help and overpowers Schmiedle. Lannert can then arrest Paula Martens and cover up Bootz's involvement in the operation. On Paula Martens' cell phone they find a panicked mailbox message from Alice Gebauer from the time after the interrogation, in which Alice Gebauer says that she “saw him” and that he looked at her with a glance that she was sure he would do something to her. Lannert and Bootz wonder who they might have meant. It can't be you yourself, because she expected the confrontation and even before the hearing she faced the two calmly in the hallway. The officers speculate that she must have faced her rapist from then. They research who of the men in the room was in Tübingen at the time.

In the hearing the next day, they confront Christian Pflüger about having been the rapist. At that time, DNA traces were found on clothing, a DNA check would possibly convict Pflüger as a rapist. The chief public prosecutor closes the investigation against Lannert because they could not substantiate any sufficient suspicion against him. Christian Pflüger is provisionally arrested because of an urgent suspicion in the Gebauer murder case. In the interrogation that followed, he admits the rape, but denies the murder of Alice Gebauer. He also had no motive, since the act was statute-barred under current law. He has regretted the rape every day since then. At that time he had private problems because his fiancée had surprisingly separated from him, although a marriage was planned. He was not himself at the time. In all the years since then, he has campaigned for victims of violence. Lannert asked if he had a weapon, Pflüger affirmed, it had been lying untouched in the safe in his office for years. The weapon is of the same type as the murder weapon in the case of Gebauer. Bootz asks Pflüger if his wife knew about the rape. Pflüger states that he revealed himself to his wife from the start. She was shocked, but stuck with him all these years. She was also his mainspring for his new field of activity in victim protection. Lannert asks him whether he had told his wife that the witness in the hearing was the rape victim from that time, which Pflüger also affirmed. When Bootz asked whether his wife also had access to the safe, Pflüger became nervous and urged him to call his wife. But she has meanwhile taken her own life in the law firm with the weapon with which she killed Alice Gebauer.

background

The episode was shot in February and March 2014 in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe.

In addition to the film music of Jens Grötzschel found Bruno Mars ' song Locked Out of Heaven use.

reception

Reviews

"Action-packed entry, emotional exit, in between a cleverly constructed story, sometimes surprising, sometimes predictable, fresh and in places originally staged - the" Tatort - A Question of Conscience "offers entertaining thriller entertainment and addresses the deeper question of how far loyalty is Friends and colleagues. At times it is a bit emotional, but it is precisely the mixture of emotion & eruption that is often the particular strength of the sympathetic Stuttgart cops. "

- Volker Bergmeister : tittelbach.tv

“A question of conscience” comes primarily as a crisis “crime scene” whose heroes falter - but of course do not fall. ”

- Joachim Schmitz : New Osnabrück Newspaper

"Bootz's loneliness seems parodic when he's alone in the bar looking at the bottom of the glass."

- Holger Gertz : Süddeutsche Zeitung

“The final 20 to 25 minutes are also very successful: The increasingly complicated entanglements into which the Swabian police were dragged dissolve into quickly narrated, coherent television moments and are as dramatic as they are clever. ... Exciting, quiet, straightforward. "

- Sidney Schering : quotemeter.de

Audience ratings

A question of conscience was seen by a total of 10.41 million viewers in Germany when it was first broadcast on November 23, 2014 and achieved a market share of 29.9% for Das Erste .

“For the two commissioners Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz, played by Richy Müller and Felix Klare, this means a career record. For the first and so far only time, the duo had cracked the ten million viewer mark in May 2013 with the "Tatort: Spiel auf Zeit" (Tatort), but was almost 200,000 viewers below yesterday's reach. ... All in all, yesterday, for the twelfth time this year, a "crime scene" reached a reach beyond the ten million viewer mark. "

- mediabiz.de