This is what an investigator's nightmare looks like: an armed hostage-taker with a silly mouse mask takes his victims to an untraceable place, which he presents again and again in Internet videos.
He talks without a break, but there is hardly anything to be done with his Suada.
The supposed facts are nonsense.
They only make sense to the perpetrator and other conspiracy theorists out there.
He makes demands that seem so grotesque that one would laugh if the situation weren't so serious.
For the fanatical perpetrator, the victims are representatives of the system.
He dehumanizes them, which is known to make killing easier.
Tabloid journalist is the first victim
Brigitte Burkhard (Elisabeth Baulitz), the editor of the tabloid Flash, was the first abductee in Dresden's "Tatort: Katz und Maus" crime scene, and she was murdered by the perpetrator exactly 24 hours later.
She was adept at making up stories.
For her, the more blatant the headline, the more lucrative it was.
Now there is a different degree of reality being purchasable: conspiracy theorists like the “Cheshire Cat” who generate traffic on the Internet with invented scandals: scaremongering as a business model.
Behind the "Cheshire Cat" hides an asocial computer freak milk boy, Holger Kirbach (Paul Ahrens).
The "mouse", i.e. the kidnapper, believes every post.
Kirbach himself believes nothing.
Here, during the "Cheshire Cats" home visit by the police officers, the "crime scene" becomes cumbersome and slightly fussy.
The superstructure of this "crime scene" about psychological mechanisms and possible real effects of conspiracy myths is a bit unstable.
Incidentally, you will find what you are looking for in this regard in the audio medium, with the award-winning podcast “Cui bono?
WTF happened to Ken Jebsen” and the new season “Cui bono?
Who's Afraid of the Dragon Lord?'.
The makers Khesrau Behroz and Patrick Stegemann also created the educational series "Noise", which is well worth listening to and which explores the question of where the false report came from that there were "600 baby corpses as flood victims" in the disaster on the Ahr.
Children are particularly popular as victims of conspiracies.
The reason for this "crime scene" was "Pizzagate", the false claim in the American election campaign that a Washington pizzeria was home to a child porn ring, which allegedly included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Lady Gaga.
On December 4, 2016, an armed man broke in to free the children who were allegedly hiding and fired shots.
Apart from the temporary basic digressions, the screenplay by Jan Cronauer and Stefanie Veith, as well as the staging by Gregory Kirchhoff, is certainly an excitingly intricate affair (Dino von Wintersdorff's camera).
Because it gets personal.
The second abductee is the Dresden police chief Peter Michael Schnabel (Martin Brambach).
The clock is also ticking against Schnabel, who is getting stuck with his police psychology.
There is no connection to this perpetrator: Michael Sobotta (Hans Löw) is firmly convinced that one hundred and fifty disappeared children are being kept as sex slaves in Dresden cellars.
Also his own daughter Zoe (Alida Beans).
He gives the inspectors Karin Gorniak (Karin Hanczewski) and Leonie Winkler (Cornelia Gröschel) 24 hours to find and free the children.
Should one stage a fake child liberation, as Winkler wants it?
Gorniak thinks it's a bad idea and relies on Inspector Chance, who helps but doesn't convince.
Just like the end of "Cat and Mouse".
Does the viewer now know how conspiracy myths work?
Yes.
Above all, Hans Löw is remembered, who gives a fascinating performance as the kidnapper.
The crime scene: cat and mouse
runs on Sunday at 8:15 p.m. in the first.