Germany's most wanted man who has been on the run since he escaped from prison in 1999 has reportedly been spotted on a Caribbean island.
Serial killer Norman Volker Franz was jailed in May 1995 after he was convicted of murder.
Franz, 51, who at the time was preparing to enter the Westphalia College Dortmund further education college, was involved in a criminal gang that attacked banks, smuggled Polish cigarettes and traded weapons.
After the gang was blackmailed by their cigarette suppliers, Franz and three other men lured some Polish men into an ambush and threw a hand grenade into their vehicle.
Shortly after, Franz was arrested at a toll booth in an attempt to reach France with his then 23-year-old girlfriend, who has been named only as Sandra C.
He was jailed for life and started serving his sentence in the JVA Hagen prison in Germany a year later, but soon escaped after sawing through the bars in his cell on March 11, 1997.
Five days after he escaped, Franz shot a security guard named Rudolf Tamm, and stole a cash box with the equivalent of £4,280 in local currency from the Dresdner Bank in the city of Weimar.
He also killed security guards Gerd Koch and Peter Seidel, who were about to stow £214,000 in an armoured car behind a supermarket in the city of Halle four months later.
A state criminal police office investigator said: "The security guards had no chance. He planned to shoot straight away from the start."
Franz was arrested for the second time by German investigators in the Portuguese city of Albufeira in October 1998, where he had been working as an estate agent under the fake identity, Carsten Mueller.
He managed to escape once again from prison in the city of Lisbon by cutting through the window bars, and he has been on the run ever since.
But now according to North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police Office investigators, the 51-year-old man, who was added to the Interpol and Europol wanted lists in February 2021, was recently seen on the Caribbean island of Curacao.
Investigators said: "A German tourist saw a man on the island in April who matched Norman Franz's description.
"He knows that he is not allowed to be near Germans. They might recognise him."
The head investigator, who has been working on the case for over 14 years, added: "Franz is a polite, intelligent person. He can be very charming towards women.
Franz wants to achieve his material goals, or get money in short. The use of funds is completely irrelevant to him. He's very, very dangerous."
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Germany is offering a £20,920 reward for information leading to his arrest.
