US - Her - Them (3/4)

US - Her - Them (3/4)

Their third case takes Nina Rubin and Robert Karow to the scene of a gruesome murder in the multistory car park of a shopping center. Katharina Werner, a mother of one, has died after a jeep deliberately and viciously ran her over. CCTV cameras show a car with tinted windows, but the driver and how the events unfolded were not captured.

The investigations home in on the owner of the jeep, Birgit Hahne. She used to be friends with Katharina, but then the two neighbors went their separate ways. They appear, however, to have shared one interest until recently – Katharina's husband Carsten Werner. Despite a possible motive, Birgit Hahne is adamantly protesting her innocence.

On the video surveillance, Rubin and Karow also spot three girls who were present at the time of the crime: Louisa, Paula and Charlotte, school friends of the dead woman's son Ben. The three girls were at the shopping center on the day for a celebration as it was Charlotte's birthday. The detectives, however, are shocked at how indifferent the girls are to what they witnessed in the car park. They are much more concerned with their smart phones, which never leave their hands day or night.

It is bad enough dealing with teenagers lacking entirely in empathy and their overstretched parents, but Rubin and Karow are also frustrated by the wall of silence they meet in their investigations. As they try to break through this, all they get from the teenagers is scorn and derision. Nina Rubin, in particular, finds herself pushed to the limits of her self control by this level of callousness.