Norman Volker Franz was born in 1970, today he is wanted by target investigators worldwide. His criminal career began shortly after school: in the early 1990s he joined a gang that smuggled cigarettes, traded waffles and robbed banks. In 1995, his gang leader got into a fight with rival Polish cigarette smugglers. Franz was tasked with killing the Poles. He caught the blackmailers in a car in the Syburg district of Dortmund and threw a hand grenade into the vehicle. The explosion killed one of them instantly, and he and his accomplices shot a second multiple times in the head. The third person managed to escape.
While attempting to flee to Portugal, Franz was arrested in France and sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for double murder. But that was not the end of the criminal’s story. The MDR two-part series “A Fivefold Murderer on the Run” from the “ARD Crime Time” series reconstructs this case with the help of LKA officials, police officers and lawyers. From July 15, 2022 it can be seen in the ARD media library.
The documentary format “ARD Crime Time” is very successful in the ARD media library. It deals with unexplained missing persons, spectacular investigations or cases that are rolled up after a long time. Experts analyze the background, while those affected also have their say. After “Amok – Erfurt and the consequences” is “A fivefold murderer on the run” the second “ARD Crime Time” documentary to be produced by MDR. And it traces the life of Norman Volker Franz as one that was in a constant downward spiral – and kept escalating.
In 1997, the convicted murderer was able to escape from Hagen prison with the help of his wife. Together, the couple fled to East Germany and hid in a hotel near Weimar. In order to be taken care of, Franz shoots a security guard who was about to take a cash box containing 10,000 Deutschmarks to the safe of the Dresdner Bank in Weimar. Shortly thereafter, the couple ambushed another money transporter, during which Franz shot two security guards. With the stolen half a million Deutschmarks, they manage to escape abroad. A year later, however, they are tracked down and arrested in the Portuguese coastal town of Albufeira. But once again Franz manages to escape from prison.
Frank Scheulen from the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia tells the ARD documentary that Franz has since gone into hiding and is being searched for internationally. On February 23, 2021, he ended up on the wanted lists of Interpol and Europol. Three years earlier, attention had been drawn to Franz in the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved”. Various authorities have currently offered rewards of around 100,000 euros for the arrest of Norman Volker Franz.
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The original for this post “First crime 27 years ago: Fivefold murderer still on the run” comes from TV Spielfilm.
