"Crime Scene" check How often do children kill their parents?
In "Tatort: Mike & Nisha", Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, left) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) question the neighbors of a couple who have disappeared.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Mid-twenties Mike (Jeremias Meyer) and Nisha (Amina Merai) are deeply in love and want to get married.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Mike (Jeremias Meyer, second from left) tells his parents (Bruno Cathomas and Judith Hofmann, right) that he wants to marry his new girlfriend Nisha (Amina Merai).
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Neighbors straight from hell: Gerlinde Wagner (Anna Stieblich, right), who cares for her mother and sometimes uses alcohol to help her, and her loner neighbor Erwin Ramthor (Wolf Bachofner) don't get along too well.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Nisha (Amina Merai) has Persian roots. Her mother recently died of cancer and her father is unknown.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
In addition to the established investigators Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, right) and Stern (Lisa Bitter, second from left), young investigators Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweiler) and Mara Hermann (Davina Chanel Fox) are now also investigating in Ludwigshafen.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Neighbor Erwin Ramthor (Wolf Bachofner) is considered a difficult contemporary.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Will the pair of murderers be caught, or will the script let them get away with it?
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
In "Tatort: Mike & Nisha", Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, left) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) question the neighbors of a couple who have disappeared.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Mid-twenties Mike (Jeremias Meyer) and Nisha (Amina Merai) are deeply in love and want to get married.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Mike (Jeremias Meyer, second from left) tells his parents (Bruno Cathomas and Judith Hofmann, right) that he wants to marry his new girlfriend Nisha (Amina Merai).
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Neighbors straight from hell: Gerlinde Wagner (Anna Stieblich, right), who cares for her mother and sometimes uses alcohol to help her, and her loner neighbor Erwin Ramthor (Wolf Bachofner) don't get along too well.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Nisha (Amina Merai) has Persian roots. Her mother recently died of cancer and her father is unknown.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
In addition to the established investigators Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts, right) and Stern (Lisa Bitter, second from left), young investigators Nico Langenkamp (Johannes Scheidweiler) and Mara Hermann (Davina Chanel Fox) are now also investigating in Ludwigshafen.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Neighbor Erwin Ramthor (Wolf Bachofner) is considered a difficult contemporary.
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
Will the pair of murderers be caught, or will the script let them get away with it?
Image: SWR/Benoît Linder
In the drastic "Tatort: Mike & Nisha" with Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and Stern (Lisa Bitter), a sympathetic young couple murders their parents. How often does parricide happen in reality? And did you pay attention to the final scene?
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- A sweet young couple become bloody murderers in the new Ludwigshafen "Tatort". Their victims: the parents of Mike (Jeremias Meyer).
- More than just one unpleasant person awaits the detectives Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) in the environment of the dead.
- The unusual ending of the TV thriller is particularly memorable.
Modern storytelling is ambivalent storytelling. Just like in "Breaking Bad", where you constantly struggle to decide whether the cancer-stricken chemistry teacher, who becomes a drug baron out of financial necessity, is a good guy or a bad guy. The "Tatort: Mike & Nisha" from Ludwigshafen also has similar "problems" with morality.
Detectives Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and Johanna Stern (Lisa Bitter) are after a young, likeable, almost sweet couple. They have murdered Mike's (Jeremias Meyer) parents - in the heat of the moment. Parents who seem to come straight from hell, but who are also bloodily slaughtered.
How often do children murder their parents in real life? Did the Mike actor with his Bob Dylan memorial hairstyle look as familiar to you? And did you really pay attention during the spectacular final scene?
What was it about?
Mid-twenties Mike (Jeremias Meyer) and Nisha (Amina Merai) are deeply in love. Before Mike's parents (Bruno Cathomas and Judith Hofmann) set off on a camping vacation, they plan to get to know each other briefly. The meeting escalates when Mike's parents find out that the two newly in love were planning to get married and that a child is on the way.
Father Gustav in particular is furious. The young lovers beat Mike's parents to death in an argument. The noisy neighborhood with its detached houses and gardens notices the high noise level followed by a deadly silence. Mike and Nisha have to clean up the crime scene and dispose of the bodies. Will the couple, who have become murderers through tragic circumstances and high-flying emotions, get away with their crime?
What was it really about?
In the "Tatort" debut of actress and screenwriter Annette Lober (39), the audience's sympathies are likely to lie with the perpetrators - even if their crime is staged in an irritatingly bloody manner. But the parents and Stasi-like neighbors (Anna Stieblich, Wolf Bachofner) are straight out of hell: they are extremely unsympathetic characters. Even the detectives are annoyed by the "helping" neighbors.
When preparing her story, author Lober was particularly interested in true stories that are similar to those of Mike and Nisha. She says of her film: "There were cases in which I read about adolescents who killed their parents with the help of friends. In addition to the shock, the question arose: What has to happen for someone to resort to such means at the beginning of their life?"
When children kill their parents
According to the Federal Statistical Office, this has happened on average three times a year in Switzerland since 2019. Except in one case, the perpetrators were always of legal age. In total, the police crime statistics count between 42 (2022) and 53 (2023) completed homicides in these years. More than half of these were committed in the home.
The total number of all homicides (murder and manslaughter) in Germany in 2024 was 668 completed homicides. A significant proportion of these are relationship offenses. However, family homicides (including parent and child homicides) are very rare. According to the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), there are only a few cases of homicide within the family each year.
A parricide in Berlin (2007), where a young offender killed his mother, became known. The murder attracted media attention because the crime took place under mentally ill circumstances. In Emden (2012), a teenager also killed his mother following a family conflict. Mental illness also played a role here.
The most famous parricide of recent decades is probably the one featured in the Netflix series "Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez" (2024). Brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of the murders of their wealthy parents José and Kitty Menéndez in 1996. To this day, it is not entirely clear whether their motive was inheritance or fear of a life of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Who were the actors of the young couple?
Mike actor Jeremias Meyer in particular is doing well in the business. The 26-year-old from Munich most recently played a teenage hangover in the Upper Swabian province in the classy series "Tschappel" (ZDF-Mediathek). The series was nominated for several awards.
He also plays the lead role in the German Amazon series "Der Greif" (2023), based on the 1989 fantasy novel of the same name by Wolfgang and Heike Hohlbein. He previously appeared as "Axel" in the series "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo", also produced by Amazon.
The 30-year-old Amina Merai, who plays Nisha, is not quite as well known. The Berlin native with Polish-Tunisian roots studied acting at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf until 2019. From 2018 to 2021, she was a member of the ensemble at Schauspiel Stuttgart. Merai has appeared on television in episodic roles in shows such as "In aller Freundschaft - Die jungen Ärzte", "SOKO Leipzig" and "Nord bei Nordwest".
What exactly happens at the end of "Crime Scene"?
Anyone who was confused by the final scene can be told: Yes, the tragic perpetrators Mike and Nisha commit suicide at the end of the crime thriller by throwing themselves off a half-demolished car bridge. In "Tatort", however, we only see the couple taking determined steps towards the abyss. The jump itself is not shown. Only the dismayed faces of the detectives following them are intended to make the suicide clear.
The scene was filmed on Ludwigshafen's Hochstrasse Süd. This was closed at the time of filming because it was being demolished and rebuilt. The SWR team was given permission to film on the bridge for a day and used the spectacular motif of the dramatic demolition edge. In reality, however, it was much better secured than in the movie.
What's next for "Tatort" with Odenthal and Stern?
The next "Tatort" from Ludwigshafen with Odenthal and Stern is scheduled to air in spring 2026. The title is "Tatort - Sashimi special". Johanna Stern spontaneously decides to go undercover to investigate a bicycle courier collective after a rider dies there under strange circumstances.
From mid-November, the next but one Ludwigshafen case will be filmed under the direction of Martin Eigler, but there are no further details yet,
