German Truck Driver Volker Eckert Admits Killing Five Women in Spain and France, Police Say
Spanish police traced Eckert after his tanker truck was filmed leaving the spot where a Bulgarian woman's body was found. Forces across Europe reopened files.
Published
A German truck driver's arrest sent police across Europe back to their files of unsolved murders. On November 22, 2006, German police said he had admitted killing five women.
Volker Eckert, 47, a long-distance driver, was arrested on a Spanish warrant on Friday, November 17, when he reported for work at a trucking company in Wesseling, near Cologne, in a joint operation with Catalonia's police. German police said he first admitted killing a Bulgarian woman, Miglena Petrova, whose body was found earlier in November beside a soccer field outside Hostalric, in northeastern Spain. "He has also admitted to four further murders of prostitutes in Spain and France," they said, adding that the killings he admitted stretched back at least to 1999. German police did not name him, but Spanish newspapers did.
Spanish police identified Eckert as a suspect after his tanker truck was filmed leaving the spot where Petrova's body was found. Police said Polaroid photographs of dead women, locks of hair and items of clothing were found in his truck. One of the photographs was of an unidentified woman, thought to be from eastern or central Europe, whose body had been found near Sant Sadurní d'Osormort, also in Catalonia. Eckert was held in German custody pending extradition to Spain.
About a week later, police said Eckert had also admitted killing a 14-year-old girl in Plauen, in the former East Germany, in 1974, when he was 15. Her death had been recorded as a suicide. He had served six years of a 12-year East German sentence for rape and assault between 1988 and 1994.
Sources
- Police arrest truck driver after six-year murder hunt, The Guardian
- El camioner alemany pot ser l'autor de fins a vuit crims, Nació Digital
- German lorry driver confesses to six murders over 30 years, say police, The Guardian
Related News
- July 2, 2007: Truck Driver Volker Eckert, Who Confessed to Six Murders, Dies in Custody Before He Can Be Charged