Volker Eckert was a German long-distance truck driver who confessed in November 2006 to six killings spread over 32 years. The first, by his own account, was the strangling of a 14-year-old schoolmate in East Germany in 1974, when he was 15. The other five were women he met along his routes in France and Spain between 2001 and 2006. Catalan police found him through a security camera that had recorded his truck near the town of Hostalric, where the body of Miglena Petrova, a 20-year-old Bulgarian woman, was found in November 2006.
He was arrested near Cologne on November 17, 2006, and held in Germany while police in several countries searched their files for unsolved killings of women along the roads he drove. He was never tried. On July 2, 2007, at 48, he died by suicide in his cell in the prison at Bayreuth, in northern Bavaria. None of the killings he confessed to was ever tested in court, and he died legally unconvicted of any of them.
Eckert was born on July 1, 1959, in Plauen, in what was then East Germany, according to a 2019 profile in the Argentine newspaper Diario UNO.
In 1974, by his own later confession, he strangled a girl from his school. She was 14. Diario UNO places the death in Plauen and says it was made to look like a suicide. No one was ever charged. Her death was tied to him only when Eckert described it to investigators after his arrest 32 years later.
In 1987, according to Diario UNO, Eckert was sentenced in East Germany to 12 years in prison for attempted murder over two attacks on women that nearly proved fatal. Diario UNO gives the year of his release as 1994.
By the time of his arrest Eckert lived in Hof, a town in Bavaria near the Czech border. He worked there as a truck driver, a job that took him across several European countries.
He drove for a haulage company with its headquarters in Wesseling, near Cologne. Newspaper reports summarized by The Olive Press, an English-language paper in southern Spain, said that a satellite tracking system used by the company later helped police trace where Eckert had been.
Eckert's confessions, as reported in the press in 2006 and in later profiles, covered five women killed in France and Spain, women he met along the roads he drove.
According to Diario UNO's 2019 profile, the first was a woman from Kenya, killed near Chermignac, in western France, on June 25, 2001. The second, a 24-year-old woman, died at Maçanet de la Selva, in the province of Girona, on October 9, 2001. A Russian woman died at Sant Sadurní d'Osormort, in the Osona district of Catalonia, on March 1, 2005. A 28-year-old woman from Poland died at Reims, in northeastern France, on October 2, 2006. The last was Miglena Petrova, 20, from Bulgaria, who died at Hostalric, in the province of Girona, on November 2, 2006.
The Catalan news site NacióDigital reported on November 22, 2006, that among the photographs police found in his truck was one of a woman killed in the winter of 2005 at Sant Sadurní d'Osormort. Investigators linked that death to Eckert, the site reported, because he had been driving through Catalonia at the time and because both women had been strangled and showed the same signs of violence.
Miglena Petrova had worked as a waitress in a restaurant in the Bulgarian town of Dobrich, the Sofia News Agency reported on November 27, 2006. Her relatives said she was in the third month of pregnancy. Her husband, speaking to the Bulgarian daily 24 Hours, said he had come back from Spain only a few days earlier and found it very hard to talk about her death. "We were expecting a baby," he said.
Miglena Petrova's body was found outside Hostalric, a small town in the province of Girona, in early November 2006. Investigators of the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police, reviewed the recordings of a security camera at a company nearby. The Olive Press and the Sofia News Agency reported that the camera filmed a truck leaving the area.
The truck led the investigators to the haulage company and from there to the man who had been driving it, Eckert. A judge in Girona signed a European arrest warrant, and the Catalan police sent officers to Germany to work with the police in Hof.
Eckert was arrested on Friday, November 17, 2006, at his employer's headquarters in Wesseling, near Cologne. NacióDigital described the arrest as a joint operation of the Mossos d'Esquadra and German police, with officers from Hof and agents sent from Catalonia present. He was 47.
Diario UNO's 2019 profile gave his words on his arrest as "I am so unhinged that I feel relieved by the arrest."
Police searched his truck and later his apartment. They reported finding photographs and personal items that they believed had come from women who had died. Two of the photographs, NacióDigital reported, showed young women who had died in France and in Germany, deaths that police already linked to him.
Within days Eckert confessed. On November 22, 2006, NacióDigital reported, citing the prosecutor's office and Catalunya Informació, that he had admitted killing Miglena Petrova and four other women, two in Spain and two in France, between 1999 and 2006. A special commission of the police in Hof was set up to check his confession and verify the other four deaths. By November 27 the Sofia News Agency was reporting his confession to the killing at Hostalric and to four others.
The Olive Press reported on November 29, 2006, that German police said he had made his first admissions after his arrest and had later told them he had killed a sixth woman in the former East Germany in the 1970s. That was the death of his schoolmate in 1974. German police also wanted to question him about at least three deaths of women in Germany, the paper reported.
His confessions were reported in the press as six killings in all: five women in France and Spain, and the schoolmate.
The arrest set off reviews of unsolved killings of women in several countries. NacióDigital reported that the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Catalan interior department had sent information about Eckert to police forces across Europe, asking them to search their files for killings of women beside roads and to compare them with his routes. The Olive Press reported that police across Europe were going through their files of unsolved murders.
Diario UNO reported in 2019 that police in the Czech Republic and France had pursued other cases with Interpol.
Eckert was held in the prison at Bayreuth, in Bavaria, while the investigation went on. On July 2, 2007, the day after his 48th birthday, he died by suicide by hanging in his cell, according to Diario UNO. Diario UNO said he had been awaiting trial.
Because he died before any trial, no court ever ruled on the six killings he confessed to, or on any of the others that police examined.
German police went on with the inquiry for several months. Diario UNO reported in 2019 that evidence was found that would have supported charges in the deaths of nine women in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, that by the time the case was closed investigators had linked as many as 19 victims to him, and that German police stopped investigating and closed the case in December 2007, leaving open questions in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.
None of these further deaths was ever charged against Eckert, and none was tested in court.
The number of deaths attributed to Eckert has never been settled. His confessions, as reported, cover six. Diario UNO in 2019 reported evidence in nine deaths and a total of 19 linked by police, with no named official source for either figure.
Diario UNO's 2019 profile also listed, as killings attributed to him but not confessed, the death of an 18-year-old man in Plauen in April 1987, of a 23-year-old woman at Troyes, France, in August 2002, of a 25-year-old woman at Rezzato, Italy, on September 5, 2004, and of four other women, three in the Czech Republic and one in France. None of these was ever charged, and Diario UNO names no official source for them.
The period of the five confessed killings abroad was reported in November 2006 as 1999 to 2006, while the dated list in Diario UNO begins in June 2001.
July 1, 1959: born in Plauen, East Germany (Diario UNO).
1974: by his later confession, strangles a 14-year-old schoolmate; her death is made to look like a suicide.
1987: convicted of attempted murder over attacks on two women in Plauen; sentenced to 12 years.
1994: released (Diario UNO).
By 2006: lives in Hof, Bavaria, and works as a long-distance truck driver.
June 25, 2001: a woman from Kenya dies near Chermignac, France (confessed).
October 9, 2001: a woman of 24 dies at Maçanet de la Selva, Girona (confessed).
March 1, 2005: a Russian woman dies at Sant Sadurní d'Osormort, Catalonia (confessed).
October 2, 2006: a Polish woman of 28 dies at Reims, France (confessed).
November 2, 2006: Miglena Petrova, 20, dies at Hostalric, Girona (confessed).
November 17, 2006: arrested at Wesseling, near Cologne, on a European arrest warrant from Girona.
November 2006: confesses to five killings in France and Spain, and later to the 1974 killing.
July 2, 2007: dies by suicide in his cell in Bayreuth, aged 48, before any trial.
December 2007: German police close their inquiry (Diario UNO).