Volker Eckert was a Germanserial killer, who killed six women in East Germany, France, and Spain, between 1974 and 2006. Eckert confessed to only six murders, five of whom were sex workers, but is known to have killed at least nine women, and is also accused of committing additional murders of women in several European countries including Italy and the Czech Republic, but investigations were closed after Eckert committed suicide during his criminal proceedings on July 2, 2007.
Murders
Eckert committed his first murder in 1974, aged fifteen, in his hometown of Plauen, East Germany, when he strangled a 14-year-old girl to death. The girl had been a schoolmate, and Eckert succeeded in making the murder appear as a suicide. In 1987, Eckert was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for attempted murder for two nearly-fatal attacks against women. In 1994, Eckert was released from custody and lived in Hof, where he began work as a truck driver, a job which required travelling to several European countries. According to police in France and Spain, Eckert is believed to have killed at least five women working as sex workers in these countries between 2001 and 2006:
In most cases, Eckert strangled the women, performed amateur post mortems on them, and finally photographed them. In addition, he cut off the hair or dressed the dead bodies, and kept them in the cab of his truck or in his apartment.
Unconfirmed murders
Eckert is believed to have at least seven additional murders across Europe, including:
April 1987, an 18-year-old in Plauen, East Germany.
Four other women, three of them in the Czech Republic and one in France, according to the police in these countries.
Arrest
Following the murder on November 2, 2006, footage caught by a surveillance camera showing Eckert's truck next to the naked corpse of his victim, which was located beside the parking lot, was reported to the Spanish police. Eckert could be identified via the truck, and a few weeks later German police detained him in Wesseling, near Cologne, on November 17, 2006. The police found tufts of hair and pictures of his victims subjected to various tortures in Eckert's truck and in his house. During the interrogations, Eckert acknowledged committing six murders, the five sex workers in France and Spain, and that of his classmate in Germany.
Death
Eckert committed suicide on July 2, 2007, in the middle of criminal proceedings against him, and was found dead in his cell in Bayreuth. After his death, the police found evidence that Eckert had killed nine women across Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Furthermore, there are strong indications that he killed another four women. In December 2007, five months after Eckert's death, the German police ceased investigations and closed the file.
