On November 17, 2006, Eckert was arrested in Cologne, Germany. The police found tufts of hair and pictures of his victims subjected to various tortures in Eckert's truck and in his house.
After the arrest, Eckert said: "I am so crazy that I am alleviated for the arrest".
On July 2, 2007, Eckert was found dead in his cell in Germany. He committed suicide. After his dead the police found proofs, that Eckert has killed nine women in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Furthermore there are strong indications that he killed another four women.
In December 2007 the german police has closed the file.
· Polaroids and 'trophies'
allegedly found in cab
· International task force searches for more
victims
The Guardian
- November 23, 2006
Police forces across Europe were yesterday scouring files of unsolved murders after a German truck driver was arrested over the killings of at least five women in two countries.
Lorry driver Volker Eckert was arrested in Cologne at the end of last week on a Spanish warrant after an alleged six-year killing spree across the continent.
An international police task force has been set up to search for victims after police reported they had found a macabre collection of Polaroid photos of murdered women in his truck. Locks of hair and items of clothing taken as "trophies" from victims were also allegedly discovered.
Although German police did not name the arrested man, both Spain's La Vanguardia and El Periodico newspapers named Mr Eckert, 47, yesterday.
German police said he had at first admitted killing a Bulgarian woman, Miglena Petrova, in Spain earlier this month.
"He has also admitted to four further murders of prostitutes in Spain and France," they added.
German police said they would be studying Mr Eckert's possible involvement in three recent murder cases in his home town of Hof, in Bavaria.
Spanish police identified Mr Eckert as a suspect after his tanker truck was filmed leaving the spot in north-eastern Spain where the corpse of the murdered Bulgarian woman, a roadside prostitute, was found earlier this month.
"He is a professional truck driver who works on international routes," Spanish police said yesterday. Mr Eckert was arrested when he reported for work at a haulage company near Cologne on Friday. Investigators were trying to work out which routes around the continent he had taken over the past six years.
The photographs allegedly found in his truck featured both Ms Petrova's corpse, which was found abandoned beside a football pitch outside the north-eastern Spanish town of Hostalrich, and that of another victim killed in Spain.
The second victim was an unidentified woman whose tattooed and naked corpse also appeared in north-eastern Spain, near the town of Sant Sadurni, in March. The body of the woman, thought to be a prostitute from eastern or central Europe, had been abandoned near a busy trunk road.
German police said the murders that Mr Eckert had admitted to stretched back at least to 1999. He had allegedly started taking photographs of victims in 2003.
Police were also investigating the murders of two Thai prostitutes and a Romanian woman in Hof, a town of just 48,000 people, in the past eight months.
La Vanguardia reported that a satellite tracking system used by the haulage company he worked for allowed police to retrace Mr Eckert's movements. They allegedly placed him at the scene of Ms Petrova's killing. Another prostitute working on the same stretch of road in Spain had reported seeing Ms Petrova climb into a truck cab on the day she disappeared. She had refused to go with her because the truck driver had said he wanted to tie them up before having sex.
The arrested man was being kept in German police custody yesterday pending extradition to Spain.
Prostitute killer found dead in his cell in Germany
July 2, 2007
The German lorry driver had confessed to killing three prostitutes in Spain and two others in France
The German lorry driver who last November confessed to killing three prostitutes in Spain between 1999 and 2006, and two others in France, has been found dead in his cell in Bayreuth, Germany. First investigations point to it being a suicide.
48 year old Volker Eckert was arrested near Cologne in mid-November 2006 on a European arrest warrant issued by Spanish authorities investigating the death of a prostitute in Girona province. The 22 year old Bulgarian woman was found strangled to death in Hostalric some weeks before his arrest.
He later admitted to another murder in 2001 in Macanet de la Selva, also in Girona, and a third in Sant Sadurní d’Osormo, Barcelona province, in March last year.
Confessions came also for two murders in France - in Burgundy and Rheims - and a 14 year old girl who was killed in Plauen, in the former German Democratic Republic – East Germany – in 1974.
Dead killer may have murdered up to 13 people, say German Police