All language subtitles for Worlds.Most.Evil.Killers.English

♪

-On November 17, 2006,

police in the German city
of Cologne

searched the vehicle of
a 47-year-old truck driver

suspected of murder.

What they found inside his cab

was a collection
of gruesome memorabilia.

-When they searched the lorry,
they found evidence

that this was not a one-off act.

There were Polaroid photographs
of other victims.

There were trophies
in the lorry.

-The driver was a man
named Volker Eckert.

His arrest brought an end
to a 32-year career of murder.

-Eckert was somebody who became
much more skilled

at committing murder the longer
that his killing went on,

so he had access,
he had opportunity,

and he really honed
his killing routine.

-The police have no idea
just how many victims

this long-distance
serial killer may have claimed.

-There will always be
the question,

"Were there six dead women,

or were there 13
or even 19 or even more?"

-Back then, he was just
beginning his brutal career.

I was incredibly lucky.

-Volker Eckert had terrorized
Europe for decades

and become one of the world's
most evil killers.

[ Theme music playing ]

♪

♪

♪

It was a case that spanned
five European countries.

When 47-year-old truck
driver Volker Eckert

was apprehended
on the 17th of November, 2006,

the police had no idea

of the extent of his history
of murder.

Eckert had been on
the run for two weeks

after killing
a Bulgarian prostitute

in the north of Spain.

When detectives searched the cab
of his articulated lorry,

they found photographs
and hair clippings

from five women
whom he'd abducted and murdered

across Europe.

Eckert's defense lawyer
was Alexander Schmidtgall.

-He confessed immediately after
he got arrested by the police.

You have this quite often
when you have serial killers

or when you have people
who have a burden

carried with them
for a long time.

It was like a relief for him
to speak with someone

and to tell
what he did to us,

so it was like a confession
in a church for him.

-Schmidtgall couldn't believe
the person he was talking to

was the same cold-blooded killer

he'd read about
in the police files.

-So you think there's a monster
in front of you,

but the actual communication
with him,

he was a very normal guy.

He was like someone
selling you life insurance.

He was nothing special.

-Prosecutors wanted to find out

what was going on inside
the head of Volker Eckert.

He was sent off to be assessed
by forensic psychologist

Professor Norbert Nedopil.

-He came from prison,
guided by two policemen,

into my offices,
and then he sat with me

for several hours alone
without policemen

and without any handcuffs,

and we had a long
and serious conversation,

sometimes sad,

sometimes for him,
or frightening events.

Sometimes, also, were very nice
and personal,

and even sometimes,
we laughed together.

♪

-Eckert, who lived in
the small town of Hof,

in Germany, had murdered his
final victim

on November 2, 2006.

Local journalist Rainer Maier
remembers the story well.

[ Man speaking German ]

-Volker Eckert's last victim
was the prostitute

Miglena Petrova near Hostalric
in Catalonia, North Spain.

He picked her up there
and abused her in his lorry.

He spent another day
driving around.

On the morning after, he dumped
her at a nearby stone bridge.

On the way back from the stone
bridge, he was caught on CCTV.

-Somebody was erecting
CCTV cameras,

which hadn't been there before,

and just to test them,
had panned.

One of the images it caught
was Eckert's lorry,

and when the body that he dumped
nearby was found,

almost the first place
that police went was to look

at this entirely accidentally
caught CCTV imagery,

which led them
directly to Eckert.

-Eckert's job took him
all over the continent.

A Europe-wide search
was conducted,

and on November 17, 2006,
detectives found him

and his truck
at a car wash in Cologne.

-When they searched the lorry,
they found evidence

that this was not a one-off act.

There were Polaroid photographs
of other victims.

There were trophies
in the lorry.

It was perfectly obvious
that this was Eckert's lair.

Almost every serial killer,
in one for or another,

has what's come to be known
as a lair,

and in his case,
it wasn't so much a flat

or a cottage or a house.

It was the cab of his lorry.

-After his arrest,
Eckert immediately confessed

to a murderous career that
had lasted for over 30 years.

It was the beginning
of a huge international story.

[ Man speaking German ]

-There were five murders:
three in Spain, two in France,

and from then on,
it was a really hot story.

As a journalist, you don't have
a serial killer very often,

and at that point, I tried
to get as much information

as I could about this person.

-His story begins over
50 years ago.

♪

Volker Eckert was born in
the small East German town

of Plauen
on July 1, 1959.

From a very young age,

he developed a fascination
with women's hair.

-When he was nine years old,

he started to be fond
of the doll of his sister,

a doll which had long hair,

and he put it in front
of him on his bed.

He was feeling sexual arousal

plunging his hands
into the hair of this doll.

-We describe him
as a trichophiliac.

This is somebody who gains
sexual pleasure from hair,

essentially,

and I think he would have been
aware of the fact

that this was something odd.

This was something
out of the ordinary,

and I think that would have
create a bit of a sense

of shame within him,
so he was aware

that this was something
that he had to keep hidden.

-As Eckert entered adolescence,

his parents' marriage
began to break down.

-Well, he had quite a turbulent
time during his teenage years.

His parents divorced, and he
reacted really badly to this.

-The separation for him
was influential

because the father
had to leave the house,

and he said, "I swore to myself,
that will never happen to me,

and I will not marry because I
don't want to work all the time

and then be thrown
out of the house,"

and he took sides
with his father after that,

but he lived -- continued to
live with his mother.

-He went off the rails,
and one incident involved

taking his parents' car

and going off
on a bit of a joyride,

and then he returned home,

and he was in a lot of trouble
for that,

and it wasn't too long after
that incident

that he actually went
and physically attacked

and killed
one of his classmates.

-In 1974, aged just 14,

Eckert experienced taking a life
for the very first time,

but it wasn't until his arrest
in November 2006,

over three decades later,
that anyone knew about it.

[ Man speaking German ]

-Volker Eckert confessed to
killing a classmate

and to disguising her murder
as a suicide,

and that crime was not solved
for years --

for almost 32 years.

-On May 7, 1974,
Eckert had knocked on the door

of his 14-year-old school friend

and neighborhood,
Silvia Unterdorfel.

Realizing her parents
weren't home,

he took the opportunity
of living out the fantasy

he had dreamed of since playing
with his sister's doll

as a child.

-And then he thought,
"Well, I have to do it

with a real girl,"

and he, of course, like many
fetishists, they realize,

"They won't do it
voluntarily with me,

so I have to force them."

-She was somebody who had
very long, very beautiful hair,

and he developed
a real fixation,

a real obsession,
with her hair,

and he went to where she lived,
her home,

and basically
wormed his way in.

[ Man speaking German ]

-First, this girl only played
a role in his fantasy,

as a victim,

but the point came when this
fantasy wasn't enough anymore.

He wanted to do it.

He wanted to stroke her
and then kill her.

-He started right away after
she let him in, closed the door,

and he started getting
at her throat

and started to strangle her,
and when she was unconscious,

he plunged his hands
into her hair.

-Even as a teenager,
Eckert had the sophistication

to try and disguise the murder.

-He strangled her
with a clothesline,

but he was quite cunning

because he thought he needs
to cover this up,

so what he did is attach
the end of the clothesline

to a door handle to make it look
as if she'd killed herself.

-It is physically possible to
hang yourself from a doorknob.

You don't have to have your full
body weight on the neck,

and it's something
that is occasionally seen,

although it's uncommon.

[ Man speaking German ]

-Just as her mother
was getting home from work,

she walked in
to find her dead daughter.

Of course, like with
every unnatural death,

the East German investigational
authorities began their work

and came to the conclusion
that it was a suicide.

-At the end, Eckert managed
to set up the scene

so cleverly that the police
fell into his trap.

And for 32 years, right up until
Volker Eckert's confession,

her parents had lived
with the belief

that their daughter
had taken her own life.

-At the time, the Spanish police
were extremely proud

to have uncovered
this series of murders.

They wanted publicity.

They wanted to be congratulated
for their success.

They needed a pat on the back

and also wanted to show
the public that it was all over.

Nothing like this
would happen again.

We've caught this monster
of the highway.

-Eckert admitted to the killings

of 21-year-old
Nigerian Sandra Osifo in 2001

and Polish national Agneska Bos
in 2006, both in France.

Journalist Francois Barrere
could barely believe

the scale
of the investigation.

[ Speaking French ]

-We realized that we were
dealing with someone

who had been traveling
the roads of Europe

for 10, 15 years

and that this person
had possibly committed crimes,

certainly in many
European countries.

A lot of journalists did
the same as the police, namely,

questioning the existence
of case files of unsolved crimes

that might match Volker Eckert's
style of killing.

-Over the years, Eckert had
developed a very familiar MO.

-They always started
with strangling

and that the woman
got unconscious,

that he felt the power,
and he always spoke about

to see the consciousness
go away from the eyes,

and this was his attraction,
here, to have control

and to have power
over another person

and to have the fetish
with the female hair,

with long female hair.

-He was a man who had come
to have a taste

for strangling the life
out of women

who were not able
to protect themselves.

He wasn't a particularly
big man.

He wasn't a huge strong man,
but he was wiry.

He was capable, and many of
these young women

would not have expected to have
been treated in this way.

-Strangling someone, the main
thing that happens

is that the blood supply
to the brain is cut off,

and once that's cut off,

then you will lose consciousness
in the order of 10 seconds.

It takes a lot longer
to actually die,

but you can render
someone unconscious

very quickly
by strangling them.

-Eckert was somebody
who became much more skilled

at committing murder the longer
that his killing went on,

so his first murder
was quite opportunistic,

and it was somebody
that he knew.

It was incredibly risky,

and I think he was very lucky
to get away with that,

and I think he realized
that his luck

was on his side at that time,

and in later years,
he targeted sex workers

because I think
there was an awareness there

that these people
often go off the radar

for long periods of time.

They're a vulnerable group
of people

who will get into your lorry
willingly, so he had a access.

He had opportunity,

and he really honed
his killing routine.

-Eckert knew that prostitutes
were far less likely

to be reported missing
immediately, if at all.

-Lorry driving was
the perfect subterfuge

for a man who wished to kill
women on the edge of society.

He wasn't picking famous people.

He wasn't picking rich people.

He was picking people
who no one would miss.

-I think he had a real
understanding,

a real knowledge
of the sex-worker community,

of how transitory it is, of how
temporary it sometimes can be,

and he realized that this was
easy pickings for him.

It wouldn't require much effort
to indulge his fantasies

and get away with them.

-After his arrest
in November 2006,

Eckert had confessed
to six murders in total.

He appeared to have a complete
lack of empathy for his victims.

-He's speaking about tremendous,

horrible things
and details of killing

or actually sexually abusing
other women,

and there was no...
Like, there was no fear.

There was no shivering.

There was no turning away
of the eyes.

There was nothing like
a reaction you would expect

if a normal person
was telling this.

I was always asking, "How you
felt when you killed the woman?

What did you do the day after?

Did you look in the newspaper?
Did you think to the parents?

Did you think to the family
of the girls?"

His emotions were missing.

He spoke about himself
like a monster

who was not able
to control himself

and that he has some defects.
He knew this.

-Although he admitted taking
the lives of six women,

Eckert still tried to separate
himself from the murders.

-He spoke about himself
in the third-person,

like he's building a distance
between the Mr. Eckert

who was committing the crimes

and who was really doing
horrible things,

and the person who was
sitting here next to you

and speaking with you.

So I think this was the way
for him to handle this

because to think that the person
who was committing

the crimes is someone else

because otherwise
you cannot live, you know?

You cannot live with this,

knowing that you are
this monster.

-Detectives believe that Eckert
had likely committed

many more murders
over the previous 32 years.

[ Man speaking German ]

-So the investigators are

relatively sure that it
was probably 13 cases in total,

even though it's not possible
to prove this 100 percent.

And in a further six cases,

there was at least
the possibility that it was him

because he was driving
in the area.

-Eckert's movements
as a long-distance lorry driver

were easy to track
using fuel receipts,

GPS records, and details of
where he had spent the night.

[ Man speaking German ]

-Investigators from the whole
of Europe

dug out their old cases

and compared them
with the movements of Eckert

that the police in Bayreuth
had mapped out...

and they tried to find crimes
that had taken place

when Volker Eckert was driving
through this country.

-Scotland Yard came over
to Germany to question.

Then there was the French police
as well

because every police knew
there's a serial killer,

so look at the cases where there
was a woman sexually abused

and maybe this Mr. Eckert
was nearby,

yeah, at the time
she was killed.

-Investigating officers could
link Eckert

to the murder
of three more prostitutes

between 2002 and 2004
based on his movements:

one in France, one in Italy,
and one in the Czech Republic.

Francois remember visiting
a crime scene

that bore all the hallmarks
of an Eckert murder.

-This was a prostitute

who worked near the entrance
to a motorway in Montpellier

who disappeared one day
and was found 300 kilometers

away in a motorway
rest area near Montélimar.

That's in the area
of going back up north,

so in other words,
potential routes Volker Eckert

could have taken when,
for example,

he returned from Spain
to get back to Germany.

And this young woman,
who had a... who was...

I remember because
I used to see her

on my way
to get a newspaper.

She had a very thick head
of brown hair,

and we knew that Volker Eckert
actually had a hair fetish,

and this young woman
was found dead,

stripped naked in a motorway
rest area 300 kilometers

from the place
where she worked.

This matched Volker Eckert's
modus operandi exactly.

He often moved the victims
he had abducted somewhere

and killed somewhere else,
disposing of the bodies

tens of kilometers away
to cover his tracks.

-Back then, he also committed

several more crimes in Plauen.

He waylaid women
during the night,

threw them to the ground
and strangled them

but didn't kill them.

-Eighteen-year-old Eckert
was jailed for a year

for sexual assault

after he was caught
strangling a woman in 1978,

but it did not curtail him.

Between 1979 and 1987,
he assaulted dozens more women.

-He had attacked several of
them.

He talked about 30 women
in the dark

so that they wouldn't recognize
him without killing them.

He strangled them.

He gripped into their hair,

and then he went home
and masturbated.

That was for several years,
or more than two at least,

but he said 30,
maybe more,

attacks against women
like that in his hometown.

-There are no official records

of how many women survived
or died after Eckert's attacks.

He was finally stopped in 1987

after he assaulted
two women in Plauen

and left them for dead.

Both were able to identify him
to police.

One of those women,

whose name we have changed
to protect her identity,

is Claudia,
who was only 16 at the time.

[ Speaking German ]

-I was on the way home from
a party together with my friend.

I took her home first

and wanted to walk
the rest of the way by myself.

As I continued to walk alone,

I noticed after around
100 meters

that somebody
was following me.

When I walked faster, the person
behind me also walked faster,

and when I slowed down,
also he was slowing down.

At that point, I already
felt a bit threatened,

so I grabbed my bunch of keys,

hoping to be able
to defend myself.

Maybe I could hit him
in the case.

He suddenly came up behind me
at a crossroads

and pushed me to the ground.

Then he put his hands
around my neck and choked me.

I then tried to defend myself,
but he was stronger, heavier,

more powerful.

I had no chance.

I tried to play dead in the hope
that he would let go,

but that didn't work.

He knelt on top of my legs,

so there was no chance
for me to move anywhere.

He was strangling me
with his hands.

I really struggle to describe
it, this pain and the pressure.

It was very brutal
and incredibly violent.

At that moment,
I gave up my life.

That was it.

I knew it was over.

I saw a tunnel with a white
light at the end of it.

It was really like that,
a near-death experience.

♪

-Incredibly, Claudia survived
the attack

and was able to give
a detailed description

of her attacker
to the police.

-To this day, I still can't
forget his face.

-Eckert had applied to leave
communist East Germany behind

and move
to the freedom of the West,

but when a drawing of Claudia's
description of his face

was distributed
amongst the police,

an officer recognized him,
and he was immediately arrested

before he could flee
the country.

-The day of
his court hearing arrived,

when he was about
to be convicted.

He was sitting only a few
meters away from me,

and suddenly
he apologized to me.

For me, well, there can be
no excuse for a crime like this.

-In 1988, Eckert was sentenced
to 12 years in prison

for attempted murder.

During his time behind bars,

he underwent therapy
for his sexual deviance,

which the prison authorities
saw as a success.

-The doctor or the psychologist

who saw him
was very certain

that Volker Eckert could control
his sexual urges from then on,

and this was apparently supposed
to have been ensured,

as he was supposed
to undergo more therapy

when he made it out of prison,
but he didn't do it.

-Unbelievably, Eckert served
just six years of his sentence,

and in 1994, he was released
into the world yet again,

and he headed straight
for the woman

who had put him behind bars.

[ Woman speaking German ]

One night, he was standing
in front of my door.

He rang the bell
wearing a boiler suit,

one of these blue ones,
and said,

"There is a burst pipe.
You must let me in."

I had a little peep hole
in the door,

a tiny, little hole
where I could look through,

and there I recognized him.

I did not open the door,
but I know it was him.

He tried to find me.

I don't want to know
what he wanted to do with me.

Now it's over, thank God,

but he definitely wanted
to attack again.

-By 1994, the Berlin Wall
had fallen,

and Eckert was free
to travel wherever he wanted.

-After he got out of prison,
he was able to slip

through the net
of the authorities.

He was able to give them
as much as they wanted,

but not too much, to see that
there is a dangerous person

who is still dangerous
for the society.

He was still running
through life with this...

Yeah, let's call it disease,
with these criminal obsessions.

-I felt sorry for the women

because, one,
he had been in prison,

psychologists and other
similar professionals

would have actually realized

that he was still
a danger to society,

but because of
the reunification of Germany,

he was released,
and nobody seemed to care.

Even though he was
a tried murderer,

he was let go without
any sort of assessment,

and the women could
all still be alive

if only someone
had acted differently.

-Eckert settled in
the small town of Hof,

just 20 miles from Plauen.

[ Man speaking German ]

-So he had landed on his feet

in Hof and settled in well
and was well-liked.

His landlady also said

she had rarely encountered
such a nice tenant,

and everyone was
completely flabbergasted

when they found out just what
sorts of crimes Volker Eckert

had committed despite everyone
considering him

to be a nice guy.

-By 1999, 40-year-old Eckert
had taken a job

as a long-distance
lorry driver,

a profession that suited
the killer perfectly.

-It allows them to go off
the radar

for quite extended
periods of time.

They work unsupervised.

They don't answer to anybody,

and they have these long
stretches of time to ruminate

and to basically get lost
in their own thoughts,

so that creates an environment

in which their fantasies
start to become a reality,

and then when they do offend,

we often find that they can dump
the bodies of their victims

in a completely different
police jurisdiction

to the one that
they picked them up in,

and that creates something
called linkage blindness

within the police who are
investigating these crimes.

They don't always
connect them immediately.

-When police finally caught up
with him in 2006,

Eckert's truck was like
a shrine to his victims.

Photos and hair clippings
had been collected in his cab.

-They were his trophies,
if you like,

along with hair
and various other things.

They represented, for him,
the reason.

The body itself was disposable,

but that memory and that lock
of hair or locks of hair

were his explanation to himself
about why he was doing it.

That was what he was there for.

-He also made notes
of the details of each crime

on the back of these
Polaroid pictures

so that he could later
remind himself

of what had happened
in each attack.

He kept the prostitutes' hair
in little plastic bags,

having cut it off
after the crime.

He kept items of clothing,

but the owners of some items
of clothing

still haven't been
determined today.

-What caught our
attention straightaway

was the fact
that the killer was a fetishist.

In other words, this was someone
who kept souvenirs

of their crimes,

who took things
from their victims,

including locks of hair,
things like that,

keeping things,
souvenirs, fetishes,

keeping them in a kind of...
like some kind of treasure.

He is the kind of character
you don't find too often

in European crime stories,

and in this case, we were almost
imagining a film character.

-He created a little repository,
essentially,

and this is something that's
quite common for serial killers,

and it serves
several functions for them,

so it enables them
to relive their crimes,

to revisit that moment
when they were all-powerful

and fully in control,

but it also acts as a bit
of a stimulus to do it again,

so it really is a vicious circle
when it comes to trophies.

-Most criminals get rid
of any evidence

that could link them to
their victim.

This guy, he kept it all,
and that alone is something

you hardly ever see
in criminal cases.

-Prosecutors had sent Eckert
to be assessed

by forensic psychologist
Professor Norbert Nedopil,

and the killer seemed
to open up during the sessions.

-In the end he said,
"Well, for several months,

I was very withdrawn in myself.

Now I could even laugh,
and I was free."

He said, "I'm glad
I talked to you."

The three or four days
that we were together, he said,

"I slept better.

I talked better.
I was more relaxed than usual."

-Professor Nedopil analyzed
Eckert's psychological condition

for the upcoming court case.

-The actual conclusion is that
he is psychiatrically a sadist,

a sadism developed
from fetishism,

and this, in the legal sense,
is a mental disorder,

and this mental disorder
would lead to a diminished

responsibility
concerning the sexual acts

but not the killings that have
been done to prevent detection

and that he would be
a repeat offender,

and if released,
even after a prison sentence,

would not stop.

-He was really preoccupied

with what other people
thought of him,

and he was being portrayed
in a way

that he didn't think was fair.

He's been committing
these crimes for over 30 years,

and I think he's developed
quite a grandiose sense of self,

and when he's reduced
to the label of a monster,

he's really not happy
about that at all.

-For local journalists in Hof,

the trial of
this perverse killer,

due to take place
in the local courthouse,

was set to be a huge story.

[ Man speaking German ]

-Every headline is good
for a newspaper,

and every spectacular story
is good for a newspaper,

and it isn't the newspaper's
fault that it interests people,

but everything that isn't
normal stirs people,

and if someone living
in a community finds out

that the nice uncle
was not actually the nice uncle

that everyone thought he was,

but a perverse serial killer,
then that stirs people, too.

And then they want to know
as much as possible about it,

and we're there for the purpose
of delivering that information.

-While waiting for his trial
in custody,

Eckert had lost
the support of his family.

-I remember very well.
He was very desperate

that he had completely
lost the contact to his family

because his sister was always
a very important point

of contact for him
through his whole life,

and she didn't want
to have contact with him.

[ Man speaking German ]

-He was sitting inside his cell
in the prison of Bayreuth

and had a lot of time to think.

On his 48th birthday,
the 1st of July, 2007,

he knew that he would be
officially charged with murder

within the next few days.

Nobody came to see him that day.

His sister didn't visit,
and neither did his brother.

-It all became too much for him.

On the night of his
48th birthday,

July the 1st, 2007,

Volker Eckert was left alone
in his cell.

The following morning, his body
was found hanging from the bars.

-He was all alone,

and during the night,
he brought justice to himself

and hanged himself in the cell.

-It would seem rather strange
that here we have somebody

who was obsessed with harming
other people by strangulation

and he makes a decision to take
his own life by the same means,

and it is a way to end your life
when you're in prison,

and it's not difficult
to get ahold of items

to achieve that outcome.

-Eckert's death meant
he would escape justice.

It came as a surprise
to the people

who had got to know
him better than most.

-I talked to him about suicide
on several occasions,

and he said several times,
"I am a coward. I won't do it,

but I know
that I have no chances."

If you ask me how I feel
-about him,

I cannot say I like him,
but you're a human being,

and you are in contact
with this man.

I never see him killing someone.

I only read this,
but you have contact.

You see him twice,
three times a week,

and you see how he's reacting
and you feel how all the court,

all the authority of the state
is against him,

how the press is calling him
a monster, a murder.

In this way, he doesn't deserve
this treatment

also in the public,
and he deserves, for sure,

a fair trial and to defend him
as best as you can,

and I felt sad when I heard
that he killed himself

because you develop
a relationship,

also, with your clients
in prison,

especially when you take over
the case for such a long time.

You develop a relationship,

and he ended this
in a way that...

Yeah, like he ended other lives,
he ended his own life himself.

-Claudia, who survived a brutal
attack by Eckert in 1987,

had been planning
to attend his trial.

[ Claudia speaking German ]

-When I got a call
from a journalist telling me

that Volker Eckert
had killed himself,

my first thought was,

"Coward -- a coward who is
dodging responsibility

for the gruesome acts
he committed."

After a considerable
amount of time,

I was then running
out of accusations.

I had come to terms
with the situation,

and was even glad
that he had killed himself

because this gruesome human
could no longer hurt anyone.

-On the one hand, I believe

it was simply the best solution
and the fairest solution,

as if he wanted to say,
"I'm taking my own life,

just like the lives
I have already taken."

But on the other hand,
a lot of things

that haven't yet been explained
will never be clarified.

-There were many questions
still to be asked

about Volker Eckert's crimes.

His death means
they will remain unanswered.

[ Man speaking French ]

-I has a feeling of frustration
above all.

I knew that Volker Eckert's
death meant the end

of any investigations

that could have been reopened
on the old case files,

that no one
was interested anymore...

And which had only reappeared
in police and media news.

In this end, these mysteries
would never be solved,

and that is what's
truly shocking

about the death
of Volker Eckert,

that those victims
will never be granted justice.

-In December 2007,
five months after his death,

police closed the file
on Volker Eckert.

The Europe-wide investigation
was over.

[ Man speaking German ]

-He could remember many
of his crimes very well,

and, indeed, very precisely.

Surely that would have been
a massively exciting trial

for the press,

and, of course,
also for the readers

who would have wanted
to keep up with the news.

The trial would have
taken months,

with enormous coverage
from international media

because the crimes had been
committed across half of Europe.

-Just how many helpless women

were killed at the hands
of Eckert may never be known.

-I am quite sure that there was
no gap of time

where he didn't do anything,

so because he always spoke
about himself as someone

who is not able to control
the desire and his obsessions,

so if you ask
my personal opinion,

I think there's
a high percentage

that he did more
than he admitted to, yes.

-There will always be
the question,

"Were there six dead women,

or were there 13
or even 19 or even more?"

He has taken this mystery
with him forever.

-There have been estimates
of 22 across Europe:

France, Czechoslovakia,
Germany, Spain.

He was relentless,

and he was successful

in evading
the attentions of the police

for a very considerable
period of time.

-The shadow of Volker Eckert
remains

not just over the women
he murdered

but also the ones
that got away.

-There will always be a part
of me

that will probably never forget.

I can't imagine it.

I experienced it.

I know what I had to go through.

-Volker Eckert was a relentless
predatory serial killer

preying on
vulnerable women.

He took pleasure in it.

He took a great deal of
sexual satisfaction from it.

He was a man who deserves
the epithet evil.

-Eckert was a callous murderer

who showed no remorse
for his actions.

He took the life
of a 14-year-old girl

for his own gratification

before embarking on
a 32-year-long killing spree.

It will never be revealed

exactly how many young women
he murdered.

By cowardly taking his own life,

Volker Eckert robbed
many families of justice

and proved himself
to be one of the world's

most evil killers.

♪

♪

♪