"Tatort" in the check Abduction, but no demand - does that even exist?
Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter, left) and Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) analyze the crime scene: a child has been abducted.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
New year, new case: Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, left) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) have to deal with the "stilt man" in the first "Tatort" of 2025.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Inspector Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter, right) takes care of Ellen Wagner (Lisa Hofer), the mother of the kidnapped boy.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) has built up a good relationship with 18-year-old Swen (Samuel Benito). Nine years ago, he was the victim of a kidnapping that was very similar.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Swen could have been the victim nine years ago of the same perpetrator who has now struck again.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Aylin (Meryem Ebru Döndü Öz) and Swen (Samuel Benito) are in love. But their relationship is suffering from Swen's trauma.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Jan Wagner (Reza Brojerdi) asks investigator Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) to give him at least a little hope about his abducted son.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Who abducted the child? Witness Oliver Kelm (Ulrich Brandhoff) suspects that two perpetrators may have been involved.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Something is happening in the assistant portfolio: Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweile) and Mara Hermann (Davina Chanel Fox) enrich the Ludwigshafen office.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter, left) and Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) analyze the crime scene: a child has been abducted.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
New year, new case: Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, left) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) have to deal with the "stilt man" in the first "Tatort" of 2025.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Inspector Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter, right) takes care of Ellen Wagner (Lisa Hofer), the mother of the kidnapped boy.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) has built up a good relationship with 18-year-old Swen (Samuel Benito). Nine years ago, he was the victim of a kidnapping that was very similar.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Swen could have been the victim nine years ago of the same perpetrator who has now struck again.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Aylin (Meryem Ebru Döndü Öz) and Swen (Samuel Benito) are in love. But their relationship is suffering from Swen's trauma.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Jan Wagner (Reza Brojerdi) asks investigator Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) to give him at least a little hope about his abducted son.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Who abducted the child? Witness Oliver Kelm (Ulrich Brandhoff) suspects that two perpetrators may have been involved.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
Something is happening in the assistant portfolio: Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweile) and Mara Hermann (Davina Chanel Fox) enrich the Ludwigshafen office.
Image: SWR / Benoît Linder
In "Tatort: Der Stelzenmann", Lena Odenthal and Johanna Stern meet a child kidnapper who has no ransom or other demands. Are there any real-life cases reminiscent of this story?
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- In the first "Tatort" of the new year, Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and Stern (Lisa Bitter) had to deal with a depressing case.
- Eight-year-old Paul had been kidnapped, but there was no sign of any ransom demands. The investigators hoped for help from a traumatized teenager of all people.
- In this country, the 1980s are regarded as the "dark decade of Switzerland" - with a lot of
When a child is abducted, it is usually a case of family drama, i.e. child abduction, or in the case of celebrities and very wealthy people, classic ransom demands.
It is extremely rare to hear of cases such as that of Natascha Kampusch in Austria, in which a psychopathic perpetrator holds children captive for a long time.
Even if the New Year's Day case "Tatort: Der Stelzenmann" with detectives Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and Stern (Lisa Bitter) is the closest thing to the latter category, it was still unusual:
The perpetrator only wanted to exert power over the child for a certain period of time, he apparently had no sexual motives and then released his victim, whom he condemned to silence with a threat.
Is there a case in real life that resembles this "crime scene" plot? And how do you know the former victim from the movie, 18-year-old Swen? You should remember his face, by the way.
What was it all about?
Eight-year-old Paul was kidnapped on the street. The old neighbor, who knows the child well, watched as the boy was dragged into a black car. She was then brutally run over by the same car. The Ludwigshafen investigators waited with the desperate parents (Lisa Hofer, Reza Brojerdi) for a ransom demand to be received.
But Paul remained missing without a concrete demand from the kidnappers. The detectives came across a similar case nine years earlier.
Swen (Samuel Benito), now 18 years old, was kidnapped when he was Paul's age and released after a long period of captivity without any demands. Unfortunately, he was hardly able to say anything about his time with the kidnappers afterwards.
Did Odenthal and Stern succeed in getting the sometimes strange young man on board to finally find a lead to the missing Paul?
What was it really about?
The team of Harald Göckeritz (screenplay) and Miguel Alexandre (director) was already responsible for the penultimate Ludwigshafen case "Avatar", which premiered in January 2024.
In it, Bernadette Heerwagen played a sad programmer, and back then it was also about the manipulation and abuse of children and young people.
What "Avatar" and "The Stilt Man" also have in common: a good plot idea, exciting psychological thriller moments and a clever twist around the middle of the film - when the world of the perpetrator Oliver Kelm (Ulrich Brandhoff) is suddenly revealed to the audience.
This change of perspective is a rather unusual move in a German crime thriller. Author Göckeritz's idea that the perpetrator silences his (then) child victim by threatening him with a mystical monster figure - the aforementioned stilt man - and sends him into a lifetime of trauma is of course interesting, but also rather bold.
Who played the 18-year-old Swen?
A strong actor is needed to make the psychological mystery of Swen work. Actor Samuel Benito, born 24 years ago in Berlin, is a bit like the up-and-coming German star of the moment.
In the sensational but largely overlooked coming-of-age series "Almost Fly" (2022, currently available on Netflix), he played one of three hip-hop discoverers in 1990 Germany.
And in "December", an extremely moving episode of the highly acclaimed anthology series "Zeit Verbrechen" (RTL+), the play of the boyish actor virtually carries the entire tragic narrative.
As a traumatized witness, Samuel Benito now also keeps the new case from Ludwigshafen exciting and in suspense for a long time. Samuel Benito is definitely a name to remember. We should be hearing a lot more about him!
Are there comparable abductions in reality?
The number of child abductions in Switzerland has increased in recent years. In 2023, the Central Authority for International Child Abduction at the Federal Office of Justice opened 142 new cases.
However, as the name suggests, the majority of these cases involve family conflicts and the return of children abroad.
In contrast, the 1980s are also referred to as Switzerland's "dark decade" because there were a whole series of child abductions at that time, which often ended tragically.
A total of 21 children were abducted during this period, seven of whom have disappeared without trace to this day. Twelve of these cases have so far remained unsolved.
Are there now four investigators in Ludwigshafen?
A new generation of assistant investigators seems to enrich the team of Odenthal and Stern. The dialect-speaking former assistants Ms. Keller (Annalena Schmidt) and forensic technician Peter Becker (Peter Espeloer) had to retire in the episode "Avatar" (January 2024).
In the last case, "Dein gutes Recht" (October 2024), two young people were introduced who were competing for an assistant position: the black Palatinate woman Mara Hermann (Davina Chanel Fox) and hairstyle anachronist Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweiler). Both are back in the new episode - and make a significant contribution to the investigation.
Hermann and Langenkamp will also be seen again in the next Ludwigshafen episode - which speaks for a new fixed investigator constellation in Ludwigshafen.
What's next for the Ludwigshafen "Tatort"?
In the summer of 2024, a new Ludwigshafen case was created under the direction of Didi Danquart (script: Annette Lober), entitled "Tatort: Mike und Nisha".
The plot sounds quite interesting: Mike, in his mid-twenties, introduces his girlfriend Nisha to his parents. The meeting is awkward, becomes increasingly hostile and escalates when the young couple talk about wedding plans.
Suddenly Mike (Jeremias Meyer, "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo") and Nisha (Amina Merai) find themselves in the living room of their parents' home with two dead bodies. Panicked, the two decide to cover up their crime. The show is scheduled to air in fall 2025.
