Season 40

A young Turkish woman - Ayse Ozbay - is found hanging from a tree in the forest near the Tyrolean market town of Telfs. At first the police assumed it was a suicide, because within a year three other Turkish girls and a young man hanged themselves from the same tree in order to avoid being forced into marriage by the family.

A body is found in a Leipzig canal. The chief inspectors Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler manage to find out the identity of the man: it is Peter Schneider, a successful Leipzig entrepreneur and family man.

A murder without a motive? - Inconceivably. And yet the murder of the 48-year-old senior physician Hermann Johns seems completely unfounded. The renowned physician, who worked in the maternity ward of a Cologne clinic, seems to have been popular with patients and hospital staff alike.

Boris Blaschke's body lies on the garbage amid leftovers and packaging that could have come from the shops he worked for, because Blaschke was area manager at the discount chain Billy and responsible for three Ludwigshafen branches. When Lena Odenthal and Kopper inspect his apartment, they realize that there was practically nothing else for Blaschke besides work.

The suicide of medical student Rojin Lewald poses a number of puzzles for chief inspector Inga Lürsen and her colleague Stedefreund. The young woman, who comes from a Turkish family, wanted to divorce her German husband. She leaves behind a two-year-old daughter. Her wealthy parents are successful and respected citizens of Bremen, open-minded but devout.

In his 15th case, inspector Fritz Dellwo has to investigate on his own because his colleague Charlotte Sänger is undergoing further training. But Dellwo is ripe for a vacation and decides to take some time off - a forty-year-old detective in midlife crisis. He visits his old love Katrin and subjects his life to a thorough examination. But even in the supposed idyll, crime catches up with him.

A dead body is found in the swimming pool of the "Schloss Hamberg" boarding school: Stephan appears to have committed suicide. Lovesickness may have driven the introverted son of a renowned banker and a celebrated actress to his death. However, an inconspicuous laundry button changes the entire scenario.

Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz are investigating the case of a man who was found shot dead in the Filder near Stuttgart Airport. The murdered man appeared to have lived beyond his means, but apparently had no apparent enemies. However, Lannert and Bootz come across unforeseen connections in the professional environment of the dead man, who worked as a customs officer at the airport.

Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler are confronted with the excesses of the modern job market. Temporary work and illegal employment seem to encourage abuse of people. A young manager Armin Lohmann is found dead in his apartment. The first suspicion falls on his wife Katrin, but chief inspectors Saalfeld and Keppler find bloody footprints at the scene of the crime, which indicate the presence of a strange woman on the night of the crime.

A police officer is shot dead during an identity check at Hanover-Langenhagen Airport. What looks like a criminal's panicked reaction becomes increasingly mysterious. All surveillance cameras were out at the time of the crime. For Charlotte Lindholm, however, the case seems clear after just a few hours.

It's a picture-perfect summer's day when Prof. Boerne's golf tournament in Grothenburg is suddenly interrupted by a dead man in a tuxedo. With the tournament victory firmly in mind, Boerne is briefly tempted to deny his profession and to assume that Dr. Raimund Strothoff, the Münster banker, killed himself. But bondage marks on one of the ankles cause Boerne to call Inspector Thiel. [Münster]

This case takes the Munich chief inspectors Franz Leitmayr and Ivo Batic to their limits: the television astrologer Doro Pirol is found shot to death in her Nymphenburg villa. Not only Doro's husband Remy and her stepfather Prof. K.D. Mosberg are shocked. Even the longtime housekeeper Annemarie Weigand can hardly believe the sudden death of the ethereal beauty. Doro and Remy acted as popular esoteric stars in their TV show "Astraltime" in front of the camera. Selina works as a fortune teller behind the scenes.

Cenk Batu is investigating undercover in the Hamburg Special Operations Command (SEK) on behalf of his superior Uwe Kohnau. Some officials there are suspected of working illegally as trainers abroad and selling their specialist knowledge. Batu manages to gain the trust of SEK man Lars Jansen, who is also said to be involved in the deal. The case seems almost solved when the SEK is suddenly called because of an alleged hostage situation.

A dead man on the subway calls inspectors Ritter and Stark into action. It is the building contractor Horst Baumann, who had already come to the fore in the past due to a spectacular company bankruptcy. After a long stay abroad, he returned to Berlin to renovate real estate with the help of his attractive wife Alissa and his opaque partner Alsfeld. The investigations quickly bring the inspectors on the trail of the craftsman Rothe, who was ruined by the bankruptcy at the time. Had he wanted revenge on Baumann?

Gerhard Nieser, a wine inspector at the Saarland Institute for Food Research, is found murdered in a house on the outskirts of Saarbrücken. A man like that has a lot of responsibility - and power. Vintners tremble before him, wine shops fear his visit.

It's a tough case for Borowski: The body of the eight-year-old girl has hematomas and a broken rib - both older injuries. The inspector takes a closer look at the family: Michelle's parents, Nadine and Thies Nowak, have financial problems and are struggling with enormous marital problems. To make matters worse, Nadine is pregnant, and then Thies' ex-girlfriend reappears on the scene.

Florian robs a gas station to get money for drugs: he needs the money to meet a dealer. The deal is supposed to take place in an abandoned warehouse - but a SEK unit is already waiting there, having received a tip. Everything goes wrong here: Florian escapes, a SEK officer is shot. During their investigations, Lena Odenthal and Mario Kopper encounter a wall of silence.

A dead body is caught in the net of a German fishing boat off the Norwegian coast. But the dead man seems to be the second officer of the container ship MS Karina, Radek Jankowski, and he is apparently not missing. To Inga Lürsen and Stedefreund's astonishment, neither the water police nor the shipping company in Bremerhaven are willing to help.

When the body of the well-known investigative journalist Sandra Walch is found in the Danube on a foggy autumn morning in Linz, the alarm goes off in the Vienna Ministry of the Interior and Moritz Eisner is immediately dispatched as a special investigator. On the spot, Eisner learns that the reporter had been researching a red-hot story, which she surprisingly no longer wanted to publish.

Klara Blum and Kai Perlmann have been a well-rehearsed team for years, working well together and also getting along privately. It is all the more dreadful when Klara finds out that Perlmann unexpectedly finds himself in the crosshairs of the investigations involved in the murder of a young woman because he had met Constanza on the evening of her death.

A male body is found in the Weser. For chief inspector Inga Lürsen and her colleague Stedefreund, it quickly becomes clear that the dead man is a student who met men for money. Are Lürsen and Stedefreund dealing with a serial offender? The inspectors try to reconstruct the last few days before the murder and keep coming across the name of Leon Hartwig, a young electrician who was always exactly where the victim was. Coincidence?

The two inspectors Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz receive an order over the police radio: a woman with a Slavic accent has called for help. When the two inspectors arrive at the specified address - a luxurious apartment - a young woman lies dead in bed. Before Lannert and Bootz can react, they come under fire themselves.

The puncture wound is deep: Prof. Julius Gann has lost a lot of blood. When he and his wife returned home from a charity gala, an unknown attacker stabbed them in the villa. While help came too late for Carmen Gann, Prof. Gann is now being treated in his own private clinic - and even in this situation he remains the boss.

Sofia Martens, star architect and owner of a large architecture office, asks her old friend, public prosecutor Scheer, for help: her assistant Anett Berger has disappeared. Scheer draws Charlotte Sänger and Fritz Dellwo's attention to the case, but they are not exactly enthusiastic about it as the search for missing persons is not one of their duties. At first, they are reluctant to investigate the disappearance of Anett, but they are increasingly fascinated by this completely different world of Sofia Martens.

Margret Saloschnik, in her mid-fifties, is found dead in front of a hotel in Kiel. Everything indicates that she threw herself off the roof of the hotel. Klaus Borowski and police psychologist Frieda Jung soon find suspects who all had a relationship with Margret.

Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk have to solve the murder of a young homeless man. Apparently the young drug addict Andi Lechner was poisoned. The bottle of wine he last drank was laced with antifreeze. Was it a targeted attack on him? Or was it a coincidence? Their investigations lead the detectives into the world of people on the fringes of society.

Lena Odenthal gets a call: a witness wants to testify something important about a murder, but when Lena Odenthal arrives at the meeting point, the witness is dead. The case she wanted to testify about was twelve years ago, the murderer confessed and has served his sentence. So what else did Michaela Bäuerle want to share?

The spectacular suicide of the Munich journalist Rainer Truss makes waves. Truss was known for solid front-line research when it came to exposing grievances or corruption. And Ivo's childhood friend comes under suspicion for the murder.

Prof. Karl-Friedrich Boerne is on his way home when he witnesses an old man being ruthlessly run over by a car. When Boerne rushes to the dying victim's aid, he is almost run over himself. The "accident" appears to have been a targeted murder attempt with an unusual murder weapon: Father Thiel's taxi. [Münster]

The Berlin meat king Hans Merklinger is found dead in the cold store of his factory. The dead man had been missing for several days, but was only reported missing by his lover Kathi. When Ritter and Stark enter the meat factory, there are no workers to be found. The boss's son, Maximilian, treats the commissioners with cool arrogance, as he is currently in contract negotiations with the Ukrainian Litvin brothers. They want to join the Merklinger company and aren't bothered by the fact that the company was involved in a rotten meat scandal years ago.

For Chief Inspector Charlotte Lindholm, her vacation comes to an abrupt end when a man is shot dead in front of his wife. He is the third victim of a serial killer, a sniper who kills seemingly at random. Age, profession, gender of the dead do not show any correspondence - the victims did not know each other and do not fit into any recognizable pattern.

A youth center burns down. The body of 40-year-old Ulf Meinert is found in the building. At first everything indicates that he started the fire, but then chief inspectors Eva Saalfeld and Andreas Keppler find a lead that leads to the owners of the land where the youth center was located. The Kleebergs want to sell it because their auction house is heavily in debt. So far, the project has failed due to resistance from the youth center operator. Did the Kleebergs order the arson to survive financially?

Ivo has amnesia and is suspected of murdering a colleague.

The death of Willy Schubert, over 80 years old, came as no surprise as he had been seriously ill for a long time. But an attentive medical officer discovers that Schubert's death was caused by drug poisoning. Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz now have to investigate within the grieving family.