Volker Eckert

Volker Eckert (1 July 1959 – 2 July 2007) was a German serial 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,^[1][2] but investigations were closed after Eckert committed suicide during his criminal proceedings on July 2, 2007.^[3]

Biography[]

Volker Eckert was born on 1 July 1959 in Plauen. He was the eldest of a family of three children. Her mother fired her father from their apartment in the 1960s.

In 1968, aged 9, Volker unexpectedly experiences his first sexual emotion with his sister's doll, after stroking her hair: the prostitutes he will kill after practicing bondage with her will look like this doll. . During his childhood, Volker discovered old wigs from his mother in his own attic.

In 1968 and 1969, having precocious puberty, Volker was forced not to tell his classmates about his premature puberty, for fear of being laughed at and misunderstood. He then imagines that all the people who came before him will react like him.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Volker's "scenario" took on enormous proportions, even going as far as his own dolls. He amplifies his "scenario" because he understands that no woman will let him touch their hair.

During the 1973-1974 school year, when he was 14, Volker Eckert spotted several of his long-haired classmates, in order to strangle them and stroke their hair afterwards.

Murders[]

On 7 May 1974, Volker Eckert lures a classmate Silvia Unterdörfel into her attic and strangles her with a curtain cord. But seeing her victim resist, Eckert strangles her more radically and Silvia dies from her injuries. Once his victim is dead, Volker Eckert strokes Silvia's hair and disguises her murder as suicide, by hanging a cord around her neck and on the doorknob. The case will be classified as suicide and Volker Eckert is not worried about this assassination. Barely 15 years old, Eckert will live with the secret of the murder for more than 32 years.^[4]

In 1975 Volker Eckert worked with his father as a painter. He nevertheless begins to wander the streets of Plauen during the night, looking for "suitable women" according to his words.

In 1977, aged 18, Volker Eckert was arrested again after being caught one night strangling a woman in the street. He is jailed for this sexual assault, but for only eight months. He also confesses to Dr Nedopil that, knowing that the police had his DNA, Eckert said he was relieved to be arrested in the event of a repeat offense. He was released from prison in 1978. He was 19 at the time.

Between 1979 and 1987, Volker Eckert began attacking around thirty different women in the dark streets of Plauen. During his acting out, Eckert strangles his victims, but does not kill any of them. It works by leaving them unconscious. When his parents die, Eckert tries to distract himself by taking care of his younger sister and his brother. He confesses to the psychiatrist that this is "the only valid thing" that he succeeds. Soon after, Eckert's siblings were taken to live with their aunt, her detention having started to crumble and to the best of her memory, over the next eight years.

In April 1987, an assassination is committed in Plauen: The lifeless body of Heike Wunderlich, 18, is found in the woods of Plauen. The young girl was strangled and stripped naked. The murder of Heike Wunderlich is unrelated to the assaults on Volker Eckert, as the victim was murdered. The affair is closed without continuation and Eckert will never be worried for this assassination.

At the end of 1987, Volker Eckert commits another violent assault on a teenage girl. That evening, 16-year-old Claudia is walking through the streets of Plauen. Eckert spots her and decides to follow her discreetly. Eckert approaches Claudia then throws himself on her. A fight takes place and Eckert strangles her then strokes her hair. Following his new stint, Eckert leaves, leaving Claudia unconscious. When she wakes up, Claudia complains and sketches a robot portrait. When the composite portrait is distributed, Dr Nedopil formally recognizes the face of a man he has examined in the past: Volker Eckert, aged 28. Knowing that Eckert is known to the police for acts of sexual assault, Dr Nedopil warns the Plauen police station. Volker Eckert is arrested for the attempted murder committed on Claudia and then remanded in custody.

In 1988, Volker Eckert was tried for the assassination attempt on Claudia. He was then 29 years old. At the end of his judgment, Eckert was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. While in detention, Eckert receives only a few hours of therapy from a psychologist who has heard of his sexual fantasies. But the latter concluded that Volker Eckert could be released without problem.^[5]

In July 1994, Eckert was thus released from prison, after 6 and a half years of detention. Eckert becomes truck driver in 1999. He uses his truck to attract prostitutes and thus rediscover his "childish fantasy"^[6] His victims worked as sex workers in these countries between 2001 and 2006:

• June 25, 2001, a Nigerian sex worker near Chermignac, near the city of Bordeaux in western France.
• October 9, 2001, a 24-year-old sex worker in Maçanet de la Selva, Catalonia, Spain.
• March 1, 2005, a Russian sex worker in Sant Sadurní d'Osormort, Catalonia, Spain.
• October 2, 2006, a 28-year-old Polish sex worker at Reims, France.
• November 2, 2006, a 20-year-old Bulgarian sex worker in Hostalric, in Catalonia, Spain.^[7]

In most cases, Eckert strangled the women, performed amateur post mortems on them, and finally photographed them.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Unconfirmed murders[]

Eckert is believed to have committed at least seven additional murders across Europe, including:

• April 1987, an 18-year-old in Plauen, East Germany.
• August 2002: a 23-year-old sex worker from Sierra Leone in Troyes, France.
• 5 September 2004: a 25-year-old Ghanaian sex worker in Rezzato, Italy.
• Four other women, three of them in the Czech Republic and one in France, according to the police in those countries.

Arrest[]

Following the murder on 2 November 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 17 November 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,^[8] the five sex workers in France and Spain, and that of his classmate in Germany.

Death[]

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Eckert committed suicide on 2 July 2007, in the middle of criminal proceedings against him, and was found dead in his cell in Bayreuth, Bavaria. 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.

See also[]

• List of German serial killers

References[]

Further reading[]

• McNab, Chris; Chris McNab (2018). Tracking a Serial Killer (first ed.). Amber Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78274-613-3.