Crime scene: infant death

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Crime scene: infant death
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 WDR , Colonia Media
length 84 minutes
classification Episode 472 ( List )
First broadcast June 17, 2001 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Claudia Garde
script Edgar von Cossart , Irene Martin
production Sonja Goslicki
music Jörg Lemberg
camera Oliver Bokelberg , Johann Feindt
cut Claudia Wolscht
occupation

Kindstod is a television film from the Tatort crime series. Their 17th case gets under the skin of the Cologne team of investigators Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk . You not only have to solve the murder of a water corpse, but also the death of a little girl who was abused for a long time. The cases lead to one another. The report was produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk and Colonia Media and broadcast for the first time on June 17, 2001 on ARD 's first program.

action

Chief Inspector Max Ballauf is driven to the hospital by his colleague Chief Inspector Freddy Schenk because of severe pain, where acute appendicitis is diagnosed. While Ballauf is still waiting for his operation, a little girl next to him is examined, whose body is covered with bruises and has further injuries. The inspector introduces himself to the little one, the child looks at him with wide eyes and is silent.

Schenk now has to deal with a body of water, which, as it turns out a little later, is Manfred Knoche. The man has a skull injury and has been beaten. The groundskeeper of the caravan colony where Knoche was last shows Schenk his caravan. He usually comes by on weekends with his girlfriend Gaby Berg and a boy, he says.

Ballauf, who has since been operated on, asks about the little girl who had been brought in with him the previous evening. He found a little character that is hers. When he brings it back to her, the child is extremely anxious. The doctor Dr. Hildebrandt joins them and virtually wants Ballauf to ban contact with the girl. When Ballauf left the room, the child is reluctant to let her touch her.

Schenk rings Gaby Berg's doorbell in vain and a neighbor confirms that she lives with a Mr. Knoche, but before that she had been with a Wuttke. However, Wuttke was in Frau Berg's apartment yesterday evening with another man. When Schenk returns to the police station, he finds Ballauf there, who has brought Sister Gertrud with him to have a phantom image made of the man who anonymously delivered the unknown girl to the hospital. When she happened to look at the picture of Wuttke that Schenk was investigating, she pointed to it and was certain that it was him. Together, the inspectors go to the Berg apartment again and find the room in which a child must have been locked up in a confined space. Berg has a daughter named Nathalie and a young son named Björn. Max finds other figures in the room, like the one he brought back to the little girl in the hospital. He notices that there are tons of toys lying around in little Björn's room, but nothing in Nathalie's room except for the little figures. The room is a kind of storage room without a handle on the door and with the window panes taped shut. Ballauf is certain that the little girl in the hospital is Nathalie.

Fingerprints of Axel Wuttke and a Tarkowsky are found in Bone's caravan. Schenk thinks Wuttke had a motive for the crime, Ballauf counters why he then brought the child to the hospital. Schenk goes to the prison, from which Wuttke has not returned from his leave. Tarkowsky was also imprisoned there for serious bodily harm. The prison director tells Schenk that Wuttke is something of a leading figure for Tarkowsky. After this conversation, Schenk goes to Renate Berg, Gaby Berg's mother. She seems to react indifferently to his questions and says that she cannot say when she last had contact with her daughter. When Schenk asks about Nathalie, her indifference evaporates, she wants to know what about the little one. When she goes to the hospital to check on her granddaughter, she is not allowed to see her. She defends herself in view of the hidden allegations that she spoke to the youth welfare office several times, but nothing happened.

Gaby Berg, who is wanted by the police, is expelled from the apartment by her friend Andrea's husband and then looks for shelter with her mother Renate with Björn. When Björn cries, she snaps at him. Renate Berg explains to her daughter that she will take Nathalie in as soon as she is released from the hospital and that she will also have custody. “All right,” Gaby replies indifferently. She accepts her mother's accusations of not protecting Nathalie from the abuse of bone with indifference. At the same time Ballauf is sitting by Nathalie's bed and reading something to her. All of a sudden the girl is feeling extremely bad and the doctor who is called orders an emergency operation.

When Schenk later rings the Bergs' doorbell, Gaby Berg tells him that she has left her daughter in the apartment because of Manfred. She had seen Axel Wuttke shortly before and was afraid that she was gone. When asked about Nathalie's mistreatment, she only said that after he had mistreated her daughter, he was always sorry. After this conversation, Schenk went to the hospital, where he learned from Ballauf that Nathalie was in the intensive care unit after an emergency operation. Ballauf lets Schenk take him to the youth welfare office. In the social worker's room, the inspector notices children's drawings in which each person is missing an arm. That is the beating arm, it is so frightened in the children that they no longer even want to draw it, he is informed. Ball on the cell phone rings, Nathalie is dead.

Schenk receives the news that Tarkowsky had been so stupid as to attack a gas station with Wuttke at night, that they had him and that Wuttke was on the run. At the same time, Wuttke managed to gain access to his daughter who was lying in a cold room. There he kneels down next to his dead child. When Dr. Hildebrandt goes to Nathalie's with Max, they find Wuttke there. He can escape from the ball, which has been weakened by his surgery. The mother, the neighbor, the guy from the youth welfare office, we can all get it, says Ballauf, deeply shaken by the death of the child. The doctor apologizes to the inspector for her dismissive manner towards him and tells of another case where she was wrong. You didn't want to act too quickly this time. Then she gives Ballauf a drawing to little Nathalie, because the child meant something to him, and adds, "I do too, by the way".

The autopsy reveals that Nathalie died of a ruptured spleen , caused by blows or kicks in the stomach. Schenk wants to know from Gaby Berg why she didn't just leave her daughter with her mother. Manfred wanted her to take Nathalie with her. Since she once put a pillow on her brother Björn's face as a three-year-old, Nathalie has only been her daughter, the child of a criminal. As an apology for not protecting her daughter, she only states that she did love Manfred. All of a sudden Renate Berg attacks her daughter.

A missing baby bag, the existence of which Gaby Berg stubbornly denies and which Ballauf and Schenk actually find in a garbage dump, suddenly gives the case a completely different turn. In this bag, hidden under baby clothes, lies a bloody iron bar. “Looks like a murder weapon,” says Schenk. "Gaby Berg is lying," replies Ballauf after looking at Nathalie's drawing. There is a figure that is missing an arm and has long hair. Nathalie drew her murderer, her own mother. When the commissioners confront the Bergs with the new facts, Gaby Berg yells at her mother: "If you hadn't said we'd throw him into the Rhine, he might still be alive." They would both have drawn him into the river. It was his own fault, says Gaby Berg, he wanted to get away from her, just went to the campsite with Björn, and she wasn't allowed to go. The commissioners' accusation that she kicked her daughter in the stomach she wipes away by saying that Nathalie had clung to her leg, that she had driven her crazy with her screaming: “Mama, Mama.” The women are arrested. At Nathalie's funeral there is an incident that says everything about Gaby Berg, at first she sobs uncontrollably and regrets herself, then when she sees the child's father Wuttke, she clings to him and says that she has always only loved him. Wuttke holds a knife to her throat and wants to know what she did to his daughter. Schenk can get him to let go of her. Ballauf presents the grieving father with a flower so that he can say goodbye to his little daughter.

production

This Tatort episode was filmed from November 14th to December 14th, 2000 in Cologne , Brühl and Düsseldorf . The production company was Colonia Media , editor: Helga Poche.

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Tatort: ​​Kindstod on June 17, 2001 was seen by 9.21 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 28.50% for Das Erste .

criticism

TV Spielfilm gave two out of three points for aspiration and tension, one for action, which means “thumbs up” and said: “Adults don't have their lives under control, the children suffer - a tragedy. A social thriller to think about. "

Kino.de came back to the fact that the problem with the “Tatort” contributions from Cologne was initially “that they wanted to be more than just a crime thriller. Since the authors have refrained from sacrificing the tension of the respective politically correct message, the cases of Ballauf [...] and Schenk [...] have been among the best that ARD [has] to offer on Sunday evenings. " sensitive, cleverly narrated script "certifies" which completely renounces cheap dismay and other gimmicks. "The only weak point criticized is that the commissioners find the" discarded bag with the murder weapon almost straight away "in a huge garbage dump.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tatort: ​​infant death data at tatort-fundus.
  2. ^ Tatort: ​​Kindstod at tvspielfilm.de. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
  3. ^ Tatort: ​​Kindstod at kino.de. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
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May 20, 2001: funeral mass 		Crime scene follow next episode
July 8, 2001: The long arm of chance