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He strangled women across Europe from the cab of his truck. Then police discovered he had been keeping trophies from his victims — including Polaroids and bags containing locks of their hair.
But somehow, Volker Eckert’s disturbing obsession had begun decades earlier… when he was still a child.
Volker Eckert was a German long-haul truck driver whose routes took him across Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. To anyone passing him on the motorway, he was simply another trucker.
Inside his cab, police would eventually discover photographs of women, handwritten notes, women’s belongings and locks of hair carefully preserved as trophies.
Eckert’s obsession with women’s hair began during childhood and developed into increasingly violent strangulation fantasies. Then, in 1974, when Eckert was just 14 years old, 14-year-old Silvia Unterdörfel was found dead in East Germany.
Her death was believed to be a suicide.
More than Three Decades later, investigators discovered the truth.
Eckert had killed her.
Despite later convictions for violent attacks on women and attempted strangulations, Eckert eventually became a long-haul truck driver travelling across Europe.
And the violence continued.
Women were strangled in multiple countries, but different police forces investigating different murders had no idea some of their cases could be connected by the same man travelling across European borders.
Then, in November 2006, 20-year-old Miglena Petrova Rahim was murdered in Spain.
This time, a camera captured Eckert’s lorry.
When police eventually searched his truck, they uncovered a horrifying collection: Polaroid photographs, women’s clothing and belongings, handwritten notes and locks of women’s hair.
Investigators across Europe began comparing Eckert’s routes with unsolved murders and disappearances, examining more than 50 murders and attempted murders for possible connections. Some of the women appearing in photographs recovered from his truck could not immediately be identified.
Eckert ultimately confessed to six murders — including the 1974 murder of Silvia Unterdörfel — but died by suicide in prison in July 2007 before the full extent of his crimes could ever be established.
This is the disturbing true story of Volker Eckert — the German serial killer and long-haul truck driver whose crimes stretched across Europe, whose obsession with women’s hair escalated into murder, and whose collection of Polaroids and locks of hair helped expose a horrifying trail of violence spanning decades.
A true crime deep dive involving a truck driver serial killer, strangulation murders, a disturbing hair fetish, victim trophies, Polaroid photographs, European cold cases, unidentified women and cross-border serial murder.
Podcast: True Crime w/ Anna Templeton