Episode list

Stefanie Berghoff from Buchingen had been missing for 17 hours when the police station in Lauburg began the search. Detective Chief Inspector Barbara Kramer and her colleague Thomas Riedle coordinated the search along the young woman's jogging route. The longer they search, the more important it becomes to secure evidence, find witnesses and prevent the many volunteers around Berghoff's husband and father from trampling on evidence. When the young woman's body was finally found in the forest, she had already been dead for 72 hours, killed by violence, the murder weapon unknown. Forensic medicine and forensic science began their work. The evidence was thin and the investigation team led by Barbara and Thomas was expanded to a special task force.

The special task force in the Berghoff case is working flat out, but Barbara Kramer can only give the public prosecutor a few results. The forensic team succeeds in securing male DNA from the body, but the databases do not provide a match. Thomas Riedle, himself from Buchingen, is confronted with the fears of the villagers, who long for the perpetrator to be found - and hope that he turns out to be a stranger. A second murder of a young woman just 30 km away shakes the region. The Josefine Schora case may be connected to the Berghoff case, so it is also being handed over to Barbara and Thomas' team. New clues need to be secured, and the radius of the data query is being expanded. The mountain of work seems insurmountable to the special task force and requires a lot of perseverance. But it is tackled nonetheless.

The strikingly colored male hair that was found in the Schora case leads the investigators to a suspect. The case is solved, the relief is great - even if there is still no breakthrough in the Berghoff case. At least the missing running shoe and splinters from the victim's cell phone are finally found. Since traces of the husband's DNA are on them, Tobias Berghoff has to spend an unpleasant time in the detention cell before he can be ruled out as the perpetrator. Finally, the search in the European databases brings a result: four years earlier, a young woman was killed in Austria in a similar case. The murder has not yet been solved. The theory that the perpetrator could be a truck driver is growing. Barbara and Thomas agree to work together with their Austrian colleagues. Now 50,000 data sets from Austrian toll stations have to be examined.

The investigation has now lasted for over a hundred days. The team alternates between fatigue and determination, as progress is slow. When Barbara Kramer learns that the special task force is about to be disbanded, work on the toll data and the origin of the iron bar, the murder weapon used in the murder in Steinach, Austria, is all the more urgent. They finally manage to match the bar to a truck brand and narrow down the circle of potential perpetrators. This helps Barbara Kramer and Thomas Riedle to maintain their motivation, even when the special task force shrinks to a smaller investigative group. And it's worth it, because after months of hard work, there is a suspect.