The body of 19-year-old Lara Krohn is fished out of a canal. She was a drug addict and financed her addiction by working on the streets. The Cologne inspectors Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) and Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) suspect the perpetrator to be among their suitors. In fact, there are three foreign DNA traces on the dead woman. One of them points to the laboratory assistant Natalie Förster (Tinka Fürst). Did the young woman contaminate the tracks – or is there more to it? In fact, Natalie is acting strangely and researching on her own.
At the beginning the focus is on two young women who are looking for short moments of happiness together between drug addiction and prostitution. But in the course of this “Tatort” episode, another young woman who is looking for her biological father comes to the fore. They are touching stories that are interwoven with the crime story by the screenwriters Jan Martin Scharf and Arne Nolting. They have already proven in the past that the two can credibly tell stories from the perspective of young people: Scharf and Nolting wrote, among other things, the script for the German series adaptation “Club of the Red Ribbons”.
The cast is also outstanding: with Josef Harder and Robert Stadlober, two top-class stars were won for supporting roles.
In a crime series, the focus is on crimes, and they are rarely pretty. But the murder case told here is exceptionally brutal and unsavory. For this reason, this episode is not recommended for everyone.
While Freddy Schenk is visibly affected by the brutal murder of a 19-year-old girl, Max Ballauf’s rough manner causes discord among the young laboratory assistant Natalie. However, this turns out to be the key to solving the case.
This case from Cologne is surprisingly complex. Tune in.
The “Tatort” episode “Trace of Blood” was first broadcast on October 23, 2022. ARD repeats the case on Friday, March 22nd at 10:20 p.m.
Commissioners Ballauf and Schenk also investigated these cases:
