He had amassed loot of around three million Swiss francs (around 3,070,000 euros), and had been fleeing the police for 36 years. Since his escape from his Swiss prison in Bern in 1988, Marco Müller was wanted to serve a total sentence of 20 years in prison for having committed several robberies. After escaping the first time in 1981 and then a second time seven years later, he disappeared into the wild again. Publishing on its front page the famous photo of Marco Müller, serene look and leather jacket on his back, Le Quotidien Jurassien reveals that the fugitive was found dead on February 26 in Bassecourt, his native village in the Swiss Jura. The remains of the now 71-year-old man were found on a railway track. The Jura Public Prosecutor’s Office ruled out the intervention of a third party and accepted the theory of suicide.
He was considered by Swiss justice as an “extremely dangerous” individual. However, “the thug never used his weapon and mainly attacked banks,” writes Le Quotidien Jurassien. “For many, he helped himself where there was money,” continues the Swiss daily. Marco Müller had built up a little notoriety as a footballer, having worn the jersey of two teams in the Swiss premier league as well as that of the junior national team.
But it was after his first arrest, in October 1980, that Marco Müller built a reputation as a devious bandit: on July 8, 1981, the Swiss daily L’Impartial (today ArcInfo) wrote: “Marco Müller was detained on remand for several robberies. He escaped by sawing the bars”, before continuing: “Let us remember that the escapee had “robbed” (…) on March 31, a cash conveyor of the Swiss Bank Company (SBS)”. He then collected 868,000 Swiss francs then fled on a motorcycle, but was caught half an hour later.
During the interrogation that followed, Marco Müller admitted to having burglarized, in 1979, the Bassecourt headquarters of what was still the Cantonal Bank of Bern (33,600 Swiss francs). Then, he was recognized as the “mastermind” of a hostage-taking hold-up carried out in April 1980, which allowed him to collect 271,000 Swiss francs and 95,000 Swiss francs in traveler’s checks, L’Impartial further details. . Only a few months after his escape in the summer of 1981, Marco Müller did it again by once again robbing an SBS conveyor belt.
Bragging, during his run he sent a case of cognac from French territory to the gendarmes of the Swiss Jura. “A Christmas present,” wrote Le Quotidien Jurassien, before indicating: “People are laughing in secret, the Jura authorities much less so.” It was in February 1982 that Swiss justice sentenced Marco Müller by default to 13 years in prison. However, he did not lose his good habits: in 1983, he raged on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he was involved in the robbery of the Geneva store Le Grand Passage. Marco Müller manages to steal 1.3 million Swiss francs during this coup. The heist was then baptized “heist of the year” by what was Le Journal de Genève.
He was finally arrested at Orly airport in October 1987, subject to a simple identity check, although, according to Le journal de Genève, he was returning from the South American continent. Extradited to Switzerland, he began serving his sentence in Thorberg penitentiary, in the canton of Bern. However, it was a short stay, since Marco was still on the run, in August 1988. After such a “prize list”, this final escape marked the end of his encounters with the police: he would never be apprehended again.
In November 1988, the Jura Cantonal Court sentenced him to an additional sentence of seven years in prison. Having disappeared from the radar of investigators, no one knows what happened to the man nicknamed “Robin Hood”. Some have given him a second life in Belgium or elsewhere: “He returns every year to the carnival in Bassecourt […] I met him during my summer vacation in the south of France,” assures a source cited by Le Quotidien Jura.
