Norman Volker Franz

Norman Volker Franz (born January 30, 1970 in Neheim-Hüsten , North Rhine-Westphalia ) is a German felon who is wanted with an international arrest warrant .

Life

After secondary school, an apprenticeship as an electrician and time in the armed forces, Franz wanted to catch up on his Abitur in Dortmund. "An inconspicuous student," one teacher later said of him. Norman Franz finished school half a year before graduation.

Crime series

Norman Franz belonged to a criminal gang that raided banks, smuggled cigarettes, traded in weapons and maintained contacts with pimp circles. When the gang leader Christian K. was blackmailed by three rival Polish cigarette smugglers, he hired Norman Franz and three other men to kill the Poles. In May 1995, K. lured the three blackmailers onto a deserted street near the Syburg district of Dortmund . Franz stopped the Poles' car and asked them to roll down the window because he had a brief discussion. Then he threw a hand grenade into the vehicle. One of the inmates was killed instantly, another tried to run away seriously injured, but was caught up by Franz and his accomplices and shot several times in the head. The third managed to escape, although they chased him in a car, from the window of which they shot him with a pump gun and seriously injured him. That car was Norman Franz's BMW.

After this crime, Franz and his girlfriend Sandra tried to flee to Portugal via the Netherlands , Belgium , France and Spain , but were arrested at a toll station in France and transferred to Germany. The Dortmund jury sentenced him to life imprisonment for two murders in March 1996 and transferred him to the Hagen penal institution . In May 1996, he married his girlfriend in prison. On March 11, 1997, he sawed through the window bars of his cell, climbed onto the roof with a ladder made of bucket handles and broomsticks, and slid down the gutter. He jumped into a red polo in which his wife had been waiting for him and fled.

On March 26, 1997, Franz shot and killed the security guard Rudolf Tamm, who brought a cash box with 10,000 marks to the safe of the Dresdner Bank in Weimar . Franz grabbed the cash box and fled on foot with his wife, who had stood guard in front of the bank. On July 21, 1997, Franz shot dead the two security guards Gerd Koch and Peter Seidel , right behind the Metromarkt in Peißen near Halle (Saale) , who were just about to stow the weekend earnings of half a million marks in the armored car.

arrest

On October 24, 1998, Franz and his wife were arrested by German agents in a Portuguese apartment in Albufeira . Portuguese police officers in the Algarve had become aware of a BMW with a German registration number because it did not want to stop at a traffic control. The police checked the license plate number and found out that the car had been bought under an alias that the wanted murderer Norman Volker Franz had often used. The two did not resist and were imprisoned in Portugal.

Another escape

After Franz had filed an unsuccessful complaint against his extradition to the German authorities before the Portuguese Constitutional Court, he managed to escape from the central prison in Lisbon on July 28, 1999. He had sawn through the window bars and roped down with sheets. Since his escape, the authorities have been searching in vain for the perpetrator. His wife, who was sentenced to six years and three months' youth imprisonment by the court in Halle after another year in Portuguese custody, has since divorced him.

Several institutions and authorities are currently offering rewards totaling around € 100,000 for the arrest of Norman Volker Franz. According to the BKA, it is suspected that Franz is abroad because someone saw him while he was abroad. The work of the police is focused on such clues. As part of the Infra-Red campaign , Interpol has been looking for fugitive serious criminals around the world since June 2010 with the help of witnesses who visit various Internet platforms, including Norman Volker Franz.

In a television documentary by ZDF in August 2007, various police officers suspected that he might still be in Portugal or that he was in contact with Morocco and might be there. Investigators assume that Franz was staying in areas largely avoided by Germans and had broken off contact with all acquaintances and family members from earlier. Public prosecutor Klaus Wiechmann from Halle told Bild.de in summer 2009 that he was sure that Franz would be caught sooner or later if he was still alive. Target investigators would still be looking for him. According to the same report, the BKA had no evidence that Franz had committed other serious crimes since his escape in 1999. The public prosecutor's office in Dortmund announced that the LKA NRW was carrying out covert search measures and was still investigating clues that concern Franz. For example, a telephone conversation recording was published as a voice sample in the ZDF program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved on February 28, 2018.

Web links

• Profile of Norman Volker Franz at bka.de.
• Germany's most wanted criminals at stern.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fivefold murderers and escapees - police are looking for one of the most ruthless criminals in Germany, stern.de
2. ↑ ^{a b} Tim Farin: Killing without pity. In: stern.de , May 23, 2008.
3. ↑ Most wanted persons: Norman Volker Franz. ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website of the Federal Criminal Police Office, wanted details on French. Retrieved on September 26, 2011. 
4. ↑ International criminal search: Interpol is looking for Facebook witnesses. on: NTV.de , June 5, 2010, accessed September 26, 2011.
5. ^ The case of Norman Volker Franz - ZDF August 15, 2007 4/4. on: Youtube.com (user poppixxchecker), uploaded on November 18, 2008. Accessed on September 26, 2011.
6. ↑ WANTED Norman Volker Franz. On: Bild.de , July 27, 2009. Retrieved September 26, 2011.
7. ↑ Norman Franz one of the most wanted criminals: multiple murderers in hiding for ten years. ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on: rp-online.de , July 28, 2009. Retrieved September 26, 2011. 
8. ↑ 20 years on the run - search for Norman Franz ( memento of the original from March 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , File number XY ... unsolved on February 28, 2018. Retrieved on March 1, 2018.