Robert Keller - True Crime: German Monsters: 24 Horrific German Serial Killers

The Brummi Killer

It started with a doll, a doll with long golden hair. As a child, growing up in the small town of Plauen, in the former East Germany, Volker Eckert was obsessed with the toy, so much so that he stole it from his younger sister, Sabine, and would spend hours caressing its hair. Eckert was only ten years old at the time, but he found himself strangely aroused by fondling the doll. Eventually, he started touching himself while doing so, experiencing an orgasm. Thereafter, the act of stroking the dolls hair, while simultaneously masturbating, became a compulsion.

Some time after, Eckert found a wig in the attic of his family home, and transferred his attentions to that object. He knew by now that it was the hair that stimulated his fledgling libido and he had already begun to fixate on girls at his school who had long hair, in particular his 12-year-old neighbor, Silvia Unterdorfel. Volker fantasized endlessly about caressing Silvias hair. But he was certain that she would reject any advance. Slowly an idea began to form in his mind. If he was going to fulfill his dream, he was going to have to subdue Silvia with violence.

Yet even as this idea took hold, Eckert lacked the courage to carry it through. Months went by, during which his frustration escalated to the point where he became physically ill and was unable even to eat. He vented his anger towards his beloved doll, alternately fondling and strangling it.

Then in 1973, the 13-year-old Eckert had a new problem to concern himself with - his parents separated, sending him into a fury. Stealing his mothers car, he disappeared for several weeks, before the police eventually tracked him down and apprehended him after a high-speed chase.

The punishment for Eckerts rage-filled road trip was 18 months in a juvenile facility. He was returned to his mothers care in 1974, to the apartment where the object of his lust, Silvia Unterdorfel, still lived next door. The time away had done nothing to dim his desire. On May 7, 1974, he decided to act.

Eckert was still two weeks shy of his 15 th birthday on the day that he climbed into the attic of his apartment building. This was a communal space that stretched the length of the building. Creeping to the far end, he took the staircase down into the corridor in front of the Unterdorfel's apartment. Silvia opened the door herself, letting Eckert in when he said that he wanted to ask her about a homework assignment theyd been given. As soon as Eckert realized that she was alone in the apartment, he took his chance, grabbing her by the throat and throttling her into submission. Then with the girl lying unconscious at his feet, he could finally live out his fantasy, burying his hands and his face in her hair, touching himself, reaching an explosive climax.

With his lust sated, cold reason crashed in on Eckert. He realized the gravity of his situation. Silvias father was a policeman and she would almost certainly tell him what had happened. Eckert was in deep trouble, unless

Employing a criminal cunning that belied his tender years, Eckert decided then and there that he was going to have to kill the girl. Taking a length of clothesline he strangled Silvia. Then he fixed one length of the line to a doorknob and wrapped the other around her neck to make it look like a suicide. Having done that he went back to his apartment where he masturbated to the memory of his vile deed.

Not everyone was convinced that Silvia had killed herself, least of all her father. But the East German authorities were reluctant to admit that a policemans daughter had been murdered in her own apartment, so they readily accepted the suicide theory and closed the file on the matter. Volker Eckert had gotten away with his first murder.