The legendary commissioner from the Lower Rhine region is investigating again: Heino Ferch is looking for a 14-year-old girl as chief investigator Ingo Thiel. The case is proving to be a tough nut to crack.
Mönchengladbach – The “stubborn dog” is back, taciturn and tough as usual. Heino Ferch (58) plays the chief investigator Ingo Thiel for the third time. Arte will show the film “A girl is missing” on Friday (September 17th) at 8.15pm (available online until October 16th, 2021).
The first Thiel film was about the murder of ten-year-old Mirko in 2010 on the Lower Rhine, which the real Thiel was able to solve with stoic meticulousness after months.
The second case took place in Duisburg and it was about the mafia murders of 2007, in which not Thiel, but Duisburg’s Heinz Sprenger, alias the “real Schimanski”, was in charge as the investigator.
The third case also traces – true to the popular true crime format, the filming of real murder cases – a real murder, say the makers, but this time they are silent about when and where it took place. For “personal rights reasons”. In the Mönchengladbach area, where the real Thiel is investigating, the police are not aware of such a case.
In any case, power plants with their cooling towers form the oppressive backdrop for the filming of the crime in the Lower Rhine province. 14-year-old Nele trains synchronized swimming – but when her mother wants to pick her up at the swimming pool, she disappeared.
Investigator Thiel, who has since given up smoking, triggers a major search. But the diabetic girl was only found dead eight days later at a quarry pond. It even took 73 days to find the killer.
Thiel and his team come across desperate parents who throw each other around with accusations and of whom the father ultimately even falls into the sights of the investigators. But lane by lane proves to be a dead end.
What about the stolen lingerie that the investigators discover in Nele’s nursery? And what about the DJ that the 14-year-old fell in love with?
And why isn’t her father telling the truth, why was his cell phone logged into the same cell as his daughter’s at the time of the crime? Why is Nele’s best friend reluctant to talk to investigators?
The DNA traces on Nele’s body just don’t seem to lead to the culprit. After all, a mass genetic test takes the investigators a little further, but only a little. Because they come across a relative of the perpetrator, who does not seem to have any suitable relatives.
The investigators enter the single-family homes of elderly women, where time seems to have stood still. Then a 30-year-old postcard from someone who has since died provides the investigators with the decisive clue, or more precisely: the stamp on it.
After “A child is wanted” and “The trace of the murderers”, this is the third case based on true events that Chief Inspector Ingo Thiel and his team have to solve in arduous investigative work. At the German TV crime festival in Wiesbaden, “A child is wanted”, the first part of the series, won the audience award in 2018 and Heino Ferch the actor award.
“Ingo is a packer,” Ferch had described his role. “He’s on fire, he’s always on the adrenaline rush when something like this works. He’s a stubborn dog who doesn’t give in, that’s also the secret of his success. ”The third case lacks the fact that the creators don’t want to reveal the real background. Nevertheless, a dark and realistic looking thriller has emerged. dpa
