Bernd Reuther's team soon suspects wealthy crone Barbara Lott was strangled in her fine home, from which nothing seems stolen, as part of wave of 'grandchild fraud', whereby members of a gang presumably led by ex-con Martin Vogel pose as offspring to trick halfwit elderly into gifts or 'loans'. Lott repeatedly cashed various sums, accompanied by a girl, from a bank branch managed by Thomas Lange, who informed his friend, Barbara's daughter Hannah's husband, struggling optician Michael Boehme, who could hardly afford their inheritance being thrown away. The fake ...

Bernd Reuther joins Christian Schubert and Kerstin Klar in the rural Taunus village where farmer's wife Monika Bender was fatally shot with the hunting rifle the family uses in the local shooting competition. The superstitious locals seem to believe in the curse of the 'Taunus witch'. The grumpy husband, farmer Johann, is in a wheelchair since a grave accident and claims to have seen or heard nothing, but was on bad terms with his neighbors. Adult but mentally immature son Andreas 'Andy' is too easily influenced to believe as witness and keeps chancing his story, ...

Student Annika Haase died after a hit and run in a wine estate. Schubert und Klar first question her simpleton lover, college gardener Markus Braun, who threatened her in a phone call that night. Melina Deinert, who drove the car and maintained it was a sudden accident and she just panicked, was jealous, but also drugged. At the local university, wine student Melina had access to the toxic substances found in Annika, and has the expertise to produce and dose it from a plant grown by Markus, but so did others, including her chemistry professor Fisher, who lost his wife...

Bank loan officer Fischer dies as pedestrian in an apparently intentional hit and run. Bernd Reuther duly tells commissioner Christian Schubert to abstain from the case as the car owner is his pub team mate Gerold Lehmann, who actually hid a rap sheet from him. Yet Schubert can't help 'informally' -on occasion even waving his badge- checking on Fischer's environment, even illegally questioning at the precinct girl friend Jessica Amling, who dumped him recently. Several people might have a motive due to failed credits. Reuther considers other angles when shortly after ...

Slick, paroled ex-drug con Timo Licht's handsome corpse is found in Wiesbaden Park, stabbed repeatedly with an old, broken-off blade, perhaps by a strong and a weaker person. Instructor Sybille Wunderlich, who runs a quasi-retired coupe's fancy dance school, lies as if she didn't know that when hiring him without telling the respectable clientele. Bernd Reuther's team finds Timo systematically seduced gullible teen girl pupils, like jealous Alicia. He even managed as lover boy to lure some into Mirek Kranich's prostitution network, like Josephine Laudahn , whose ...

County court executioner Karl Stetten is found in his office, skull smashed with his perforator. *Reuther naturally thinks of debtors, whose estates he had to action, staring with ruffian Werner Mohr, who wrote threat letters and is about to be evicted by Stetter's apprentice Emil Kamp, whose negative assessment was never turned into with supervising judge Falk, whom Bernd soon realizes was Stetten's inappropriate secret lover. Schubert looks into other debtors who felt wronged, focusing on near-bankrupt interior designer Theo Ibus who misappropriated project funds to...

Astrologer Dominik Acampora was skull-smashed with a ritual chalice at home. Bernd Reuther's team questions his clients and colleagues, primarily last witness Tabea Thau, who worked for him exclusively as hypnotized medium. Acampora, a ruthless manipulator, was found by his separately raised half-brother Frank Märzbacher, who was hired as carpenter. His latest client were a pharmaceuticals-manager, and plant nursery owner Antonia Rumpf spent a fortune frequently consulting Acampora, which wrecked her marriage to non-believer Philip Rumpf, against whom she got a ...

After performing jazz trumpet at the 'Sekt' (German bubbly) vintage presentation in the ancestral villa of his bride, winery heiress Amelie Rose, musician Louis Brenner makes a fatal fall from his inn host Dorfmann's balcony, pushed. Schubert and Klar look into Louis's 'colourful' addict past, yielding many enemies on tip of Amelie's parents Richard and Katharina Rose, who wanted a more dignified heir-in-law, having passed over her elder sister Charlotte. Goth vixen and petty criminal Michelle Reinelt keeps popping up, as turns out having blackmailed Richard.