It’s 100 years this week since Interpol, the international crime-fighting organisation, was formed.
Since then it has helped catch some of the world’s most wanted criminals.
Founded in Vienna in 1923 it now has 195 member states and 1,000 staff and aids police forces around the globe with its “red notice” alerts and databases which contains millions of fingerprint, DNA and mugshot records.
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Here we reveal some of the biggest cases it has been involved in and how some didn't stay at large for very long.
The Serpent
Charles Sobhraj, now 79, is a French serial killing conman nicknamed “The Serpent” for his ability to evade capture.
He brutally butchered at least 12 and possibly up to 30 female tourists in Asia during the 1970s which also saw him branded the Bikini Killer.
Played by Tahar Rahim in a recent BBC series, also starring Jenna Coleman, Sobhraj would drug victims before strangling, beating or burning them.
Interpol launched a manhunt for him in 1976, compiling evidence which would help see him jailed for murder in India and later Nepal. In 2022 he was released and deported back to France.
The Unicorn Killer
Eighteen months after American Holly Maddux disappeared in 1977, her mummified remains were discovered in a locked trunk inside a wardrobe at a Philadelphia flat.
She’d shared it with hippie boyfriend Ira Einhorn who, after the pair split, beat Holly, 30 over the head, then stuffed her inside the case with marks inside later showing she’d been alive at the time.
Police arrested Einhorn but he managed to flee the country days before his murder trial.
He remained at large for 20 years until a tip off saw Interpol track him to a tiny French village.
Einhorn, nicknamed the Unicorn after the German translation of his surname, was arrested and given a life sentence back in the US, dying in jail in 2020 aged 79.
The train murders
British student Isabel Peake was pushed from a train to her death while travelling on a French rail service in 1999.
Months later Corinne Caillaux, 36, was found stabbed death in a toilet on a French train.
Interpol helped police forces in France, Spain and Portugal track down Algerian-born suspect Sid Ahmed Rezala, who had killed a total of three woman, to a hideout near Lisbon.
He confessed, before killing himself in his cell by setting fire to a mattress, while awaiting extradition back to France to answer for his crimes.
The stolen masterpiece
In October 1985 five masked gunmen broke into a Paris museum in broad daylight and stole Claude Monet’s famous £3million artwork Impression, Sunrise.
For years the trail of those responsible went cold. But Interpol became involved in the investigation and managed to track two of the thieves Philippe Jamin and Youssef Khimoun, via links to Japanese gangsters.
The painting was finally recovered in a farm building on the French island of Corsica in 1990 and went back on display.
The Bad Apple
American agent Darnell Garcia from the US Drug Enforcement Administration went rogue, stealing hundreds of kilos of heroin and cocaine from evidence lockers and selling them, stashing the profits in Swiss bank accounts.
When he was rumbled in 1988, he fled and remained at large for seven months. Interpol helped police forces track down Garcia in Luxembourg where he was trying use a fake passport.
In 1991 the 44-year-old was sentenced to 80 years in a US prison for money-laundering and drug-trafficking. He was released in November 2011 after serving 21 years.
The Rolex Killer
Conman Albert Walker became No2 on Interpol’s most wanted list after fleeing Canada in 1990 where he had defrauded financial clients out of millions.
He secretly moved to Yorkshire, with his daughter posing as his wife, and then murdered business associate Ronald Platt on a boat in 1996, dumping his body in the sea and assuming his identity.
But when a fisherman dredged up Platt’s Rolex watch it led to Walker’s crimes unravelling, with Interpol’s work helping British police secure a murder conviction and the culprit later being transferred to a Canadian jail for fraud.
The Deadly Lovers
After Derek and Nancy Haysom were stabbed to death in their home in Virginia, US, in 1985 suspicion eventually fell on their daughter Elizabeth, 18, and her German boyfriend Jens Soering, 20, who then fled to Europe.
A year later, when they were arrested for cheque fraud and shoplifting in London, Interpol helped British police link them to the American homicide case and the pair were jailed for double murder.
They were both recently paroled after spending more than 30 years behind bars.
The Drug Lord
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Known as “Lord of the Skies” due to the fleet of jets he used to transport drugs, Mexican kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes ran the Juarez cartel overseeing a multi-million racket.
But he fled justice in Mexico for South America where he was pursued by agents with the help of Interpol.
As the pressure on the drug baron built, the 40-year-old even had plastic surgery to alter his appearance, but died during the botched operation in July, 1997.
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