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The Meiwes case

A

Anonymous

Guest
A website for cannibals!! Where is this?

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A German accused of killing and eating a man he met on a website for cannibals has expressed regret for his actions.
Armin Meiwes, who is awaiting trial, told a German newspaper he wants to deter other people from copying him.

Mr Meiwes, from Rotenburg, says his victim was a willing participant who ate part of his own body before Mr Meiwes stabbed him to death and stored his remains in a freezer.

The 41-year-old computer expert is expected to go on trial on 3 December.

Advertised on internet

The grisly details of the case caused a sensation in the German media when Mr Meiwes was arrested in December, 2002.

Mr Meiwes, a computer expert, met 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes in early 2001, after Mr Meiwes advertised on websites for "young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 to slaughter", the German daily newspaper Bild reported at the time of his arrest.

Mr Meiwes told investigators he took Mr Brandes back to his home, where Mr Brandes agreed to have his penis cut off, which Mr Meiwes then flambeed and served up to eat together.

Mr Meiwes says he then killed Mr Brandes with his consent - recording the two-hour event on video.

Life story

"I admit what I've done," Mr Meiwes told Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "I accept that I am guilty and I regret my actions."

Mr Meiwes said he wants to write his life story with the aim of deterring anyone who wanted to copy him.

Disturbingly, a number of websites dedicated to Mr Meiwes have appeared, with people advertising for willing victims.

"They should go for treatment, so it doesn't escalate like it did with me," said Mr Meiwes.

He said he believed there were about 800 "cannibals" in Germany.

Prosecutors are seeking a conviction of murder for "sexual satisfaction", as cannibalism is not technically illegal under German law.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3230774.stm
 
Trial begins:

A man accused of killing, dissecting and eating another man has gone on trial in central Germany.
The court heard how horror films had fuelled Arwan Meiwes's childhood fantasies of eating school friends.

The 41-year-old computer technician is charged with murder, even though the victim allegedly volunteered for his fate by replying to an internet advert.

The gruesome incident was all captured on camcorder and the footage is expected to form part of the evidence.


"I had the fantasy, and in the end I fulfilled it," he said. The fantasy first developed between the ages of eight and 12, he added.

Mr Meiwes spoke of how he felt ignored by his father, and longed for a good-looking younger brother - whom he would bind to himself forever by consuming.

Internet link

It is Germany's first cannibalism case, and the world's media have gathered in Kassel to watch the proceedings.

Television images showed Mr Meiwes - wearing a jacket and a tie - smiling and talking light-heartedly to his lawyer moments before the trial began.

It was the first time that the self-confessed cannibal had been seen in public since his arrest.

The grisly details of the case caused a sensation in the German media when Mr Meiwes was arrested in December, 2002.

In a recent newspaper interview he admitted that he had killed and then partly eaten his victim.

Mr Meiwes advertised on the internet for a well-built male prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed.

"Slim and blond, that would have been the type", he told the court.

The victim, 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, answered the advert in March 2001.

Mr Meiwes told investigators he took Mr Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where Mr Brandes agreed to have his penis cut off, which Mr Meiwes then flambéed and served up to eat together.

Prosecutors say Mr Meiwes then stabbed the victim repeatedly in the neck and dissected the corpse.

Shock value

Legally it is a tricky case, says the BBC's correspondent in Berlin, Ray Furlong.

Cannibalism is not a recognised offence under German law and the defence will argue that, since the victim volunteered, this was no murder.

If the court accepts the defence argument, Mr Meiwes can expect a jail term of up to five years.

But the prosecution will push for a life sentence on the basis that Mr Meiwes is simply too dangerous ever to be released.

Meanwhile, Germans will continue to be treated to a media frenzy that plays on the story's unrivalled shock value.

And among the "highlights" will be the two-hour video that Mr Meiwes took of the whole incident on his camcorder, our correspondent says.

"The public probably won't be excluded from this part of proceedings; we have a tradition of open trials," says legal expert Felix Hardenberg.

"But the panel of judges will show only the relevant parts: what the victim is saying and doing before and during the killing."

Mr Meiwes has said that after his trial he intends to pass the time in jail - if convicted - by writing his memoirs.


The court will hear 38 witnesses and 14 sessions are scheduled in the trial, which is scheduled to end in late January.

The case only came to light when an Austrian student spotted another advertisement placed by Mr Meiwes on the internet and alerted police.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3286721.stm
 
The ones that got away...

A CANNIBAL who admitted eating a willing victim rejected another man because he was "a bit weird", a court heard yesterday.

Armin Meiwes, 42, said the man was one of several who answered his adverts for victims on perverted websites.

But he added: "he wanted me to burn his b***s with a flamethrower and hammer his body down with nails and pins while he was whipped to death. I found that a bit weird."

Another man showed up saying he wanted to be beheaded. But Meiwes said he sent him away because he was too fat and not talkative enough.

Finally, he chose Bernd Brandes, 43, who came to his farmhouse in Rotenburg, near Kassel in Germany, and said: "Now you can see my body. I hope you'll find me tasty."

Meiwes said: "He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten. He was very intelligent and I didn't see any sign that he was disturbed."

He killed him with a kitchen knife in a "slaughtering room" he had built containing meat hooks, a cage and a butcher's table.

Meiwes videoed the killing and the tape may be shown to the court.

It shows Meiwes cutting off Brandes's penis at the victim's request. He said: "It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it. It gave him pleasure."

Ten hours later, Brandes fell unconscious and Meiwes killed him with a knife, hung up the corpse and cut it up, again filming the process.

He said: "I kissed him once, prayed for forgiveness and stabbed him, but I knew he had already gone.

"After I had done it, I felt hate, anger, happiness all at once."

Meiwes, described by his lawyer as a "gentleman of the old school", said it was the fulfilment of a "lifelong dream" for both of them.

"I couldn't regret it because this is what we both wanted. That is why I am not guilty of murder - I helped a man fulfil his biggest wish too."

People in the public gallery gasped as he said he kept plastic bags of flesh in his freezer. He said: "With every piece of flesh I ate, I remembered him. It was like taking communion."

Meiwes said he had fantasised about killing and eating a man since he was 12. As a teenager he wanted "blonde, slim people to slaughter - like Sandy in the TV series Flipper".

The killing has made him a sick cult figure in Germany with websites devoted to him and cannibal supporters in court rooting for his freedom. He denies murder. The case continues.

Source
 
One of my fifteen year-old pupils was ahead of me on this case. He blurted
out some of the details of an on-going German cannibalism case and assured me
there was no law against it there.

"Nonsense! That case was ages ago and I'm sure the Germans have laws against
such dreadful things, Oscar*. Now can we get back to the subject, which is Ten
Ways to Improve your Life!"

Duh! What do teachers know? :rolleyes:


*Name changed to protect the not-so-innocent.


:eek!!!!:
 
Dark Detective said:
A website for cannibals!! Where is this?

This is indeed the question that I have been wondering about - I would have though Portal of Evil would have featured any major sites. If people find any drop them in (even they are 'passed on by a friend' ;) ).

Anyway a slightly different slant on his defence:

'Gentleman' cannibal poses legal dilemma

03 December 2003


BERLIN: The trial of Armin Meiwes, the German computer expert who gained worldwide notoriety by killing and eating a willing victim, is to begin, in a case of sexually inspired cannibalism so perplexing it could make legal history.


Meiwes, 42, described by his lawyer as a "gentleman of the old school", has confessed to killing a Berlin man who answered an advertisement he had posted on the Internet seeking a fit man "for slaughter."

They met in Meiwes's elegant half-timbered home in the town of Rotenburg, central Germany, in March 2001. Meiwes killed the man, named only as Bernd-Juergen B., with a kitchen knife and filmed the deed on video tape which may be shown at the trial.

Meiwes's lawyer Harald Ermel said it took the victim nearly 10 hours to bleed to death and that he had repeatedly urged Meiwes to keep on cutting him.

Meiwes cut up the body and stored parts in his freezer. "He believes he ate about 20 kilograms and there were about 10 kilograms left over," said Ermel.

"He defrosted it little by little and ate it."

Police arrested Meiwes over a year later, in December 2002, after a tip-off from someone who had spotted another of his adverts on the Internet.

Meiwes is expected to repeat his confession at the trial that will be attended by reporters from all over the world. He is already planning to write his memoirs, his lawyer said.

Meiwes told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag last week: "I am guilty and regret what I did." He said he had eaten his victim because he wanted to make him part of himself, a desire that he had satisfied and that would not recur.

Professor Andreas Marneros, director of the Halle Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, said: "This is cannibalism as a sexual perversion, it's a phenomenon that has been known about for centuries. I have examined four such people."

LEGAL DILEMMA

Prosecutors in the city of Kassel say a psychiatric examination found Meiwes is not insane but they added that his victim may have been incapable of rational thought.

So while prosecutors acknowledge the victim said he wanted to die, they are seeking a life sentence on a charge of murder motivated by sexual urges.

Meiwes's lawyer wants him to be convicted of "killing on request", a form of illegal euthanasia which carries a sentence of six months to five years.

The problem, legal experts say, is that Meiwes's victim wanted to be eaten. That could make a murder charge difficult to apply, while the lesser charge of manslaughter carries a term of 15 years or considerably less, after which Meiwes would be free.

Professor Arthur Kreuzer of the Institute for Criminology at Giessen University, said the case might make legal history.

"This is killing undertaken for both killer and victim and cannot be regarded as the worst case of premeditated killing.

"But I don't think it is a killing on request either because it was not an altruistic, but an egoistic deed."

Kreuzer said the case may go as high as the Federal Constitutional Court and that prosecutors may be forced to consult new medical experts to assess Meiwes's mental state.

Meiwes's lawyer has revealed that his client had four other guests in his home, but let them all go.

"There was a teacher, a cook, a hotel employee and a student. He had them hanging from the ceiling head down and they had no chance of freeing themselves. One felt sick, the other didn't want to go on, he let them all down."

Ermel said Meiwes chatted about cannibalism with at least 280 like-minded people on the Internet. In Germany about 200 people on the Internet were offering to be slaughtered, 30 ready to do the slaughtering and 10 to 15 wanting to watch, he said.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2747205a4560,00.html

Emps
 
A general article on our interests in cannibals in real life and films and books:

Curiosity that's all-consuming


WHEN Anthony Hopkins in his role as Hannibal Lecter sauteed slices of a detective’s brain before feeding it back to his victim, audiences across the world shuddered. But it wasn’t just the gruesome sight that sent shivers down the spine, the dual reactions of revulsion and fascination went much deeper.

Perhaps it is because it’s regarded as one of the last taboos, but there is a definite morbid interest in the idea of cannibalism. It stretches back to times when the majority of the world was still being explored and tales of flesh-eating savages in the depths of South American jungles or wandering African plains became popular, but it is a subject that still holds a strange fascination for people.

The recent trial of the German self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes is an example of how cannibalism can be a transfixing subject. People have been eagerly reading about how he advertised on the internet for a volunteer to be eaten. He finally met, killed and ate 43-year-old Bernd Brandes at his house in Rothenburg. Meiwes is arguing in his trial that Brandes was a willing victim.

Similarly, Hollywood has discovered tales of people eating each other also do well at the box office. Alive, the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes in the Andes leaving them no other way to survive but to eat the dead passengers, grossed £21 million, while Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal made £131,585,395 between them. In the UK, Robert Carlyle starred as a cannibal in Ravenous, a movie set during the Mexican-American war, and now the legend of Lothian cannibal Sawney Bean is also being made into a movie.

Bean of course is a fabricated tale, but the story of how he and his incestuous family robbed their victims and dragged them back to their cave where they ate their flesh or preserved it for future consumption, has gripped imaginations since the 18th century. Glasgow-based Posh Pictures and Raygun Films, an American production company, are to bring the Bean legend to life and Scottish writer Robbie McCallum says the film will do for Scotland what Jaws did for swimming in the sea in the 1970s. "People will hear the sound of bagpipes, or grouse in the trees, and think of this gruesome tale," he says. But what is it about cannibalism that holds such a fatal attraction? Dr Keith Ashcroft, an Edinburgh-based forensic psychologist, says: "I think we are fascinated by anything which is regarded as taboo. And then there’s the fact that we want to demonise anything or anyone which is considered out of the norm. Paedophiles, for instance, as well as cannibals. There’s a need in all of us to distance ourselves from these very basic desires and thoughts because it makes us feel better about ourselves that we are ‘not like them’."

He adds: "Our language contains all sorts of references to cannibalism, although people probably don’t think of that, but terms like ‘all-consuming’ basically means to eat, and these are bandied around without a second thought, and yet the motivations for people who do eat others is to consume that person, because that is the ultimate power.

"The fascination with cannibalism probably starts with the idea of whether you would eat someone to survive, but these days, with that being so unlikely, the motivation for the fascination is one of being able to distance yourself from such a basic need."

London-based psychologist Willma Scott agrees. "Part of what goes on in your mind when you listen to these tales is a sort of fantasy in which you almost act out the story with yourself in it and try to reassure yourself that you could have got away where the victim didn’t.

"There’s also some part of your mind which is reassuring itself that it would never do such a thing.

"But cannibalism is a very interesting subject from a psychological point of view, because it fascinates most people even when the story isn’t about a psychopath preying on victims. Even when we’re talking about someone who has eaten human flesh because there simply was no other way to survive, we’re still gripped."

She adds: "The taboo against eating your own kind seems to be such a fundamental part of the human psyche that we feel driven to know as much as possible about anyone who could let themselves go against it."

Scientists believe the need to eat other people has long played a part in human history. Joel Richman, professor of medical anthropology at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), says: "We used to think cannibalism was rare in prehistoric society. It was assumed the holes found in skulls were for releasing spirits. We now find that ancient man got a lot of protein from eating each other."

The reasons for cannibalism have varied. Sometimes it was because food was limited - as recently as the 1930s, cannibalism driven by hunger was common in the Ukraine, where children were eaten by their parents and spouses sometimes killed each other for food, while in impoverished North Korea an outbreak of eating people was reported this year.

Revenge and punishment also fuelled cannibalism. Captain Cook lost a party of sailors to the cooking pot when Maoris in New Zealand took offence. Similarly, the British missionary, Reverend Thomas Baker, was eaten by Fijians after giving offence by inadvertently touching the chief’s head. Just this year the current villagers apologised to his descendants. Even Chairman Mao used cannibalism as a threat during the cultural revolution. "In China, a way of degrading intellectuals was to defile the dead by eating them. Killing them was not seen as punishment enough," says Richman.

But cannibalism for fun or sexual desire is very different. According to psychologist Mike Berry, also of MMU: "The pleasure of eating somebody would be the ultimate in playing God"

And Gerald Bailes, a forensic clinical psychologist based in Norwich, says: "They might take trophies, or body parts, which they get obsessed with and are turned on by. A tangible object can be arousing and reactivate fantasies."

As to why the public are fascinated by such stories, author of Flesh and Blood, a book which documents cannibalism through the ages, Reay Tannahill, says it is because we are increasingly anaesthetised to blood and gore by its proliferation through mass media. "The bulk of Stephen King’s fans, I believe, are teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 18. We are inured to violence so I’ve no doubt that people buy Flesh and Blood for entertainment, as they would watch Hannibal for entertainment."

It’s also why people are drawn to places where cannibalism has taken place. For instance, the home of Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee, where he entrapped at least 11 young men with promises of payment and drink before drugging, strangling, dismembering, filleting and, sometimes, eating them, has many visitors.

But according to Ian Hancock, director of psychological services in Dumfries and Galloway, the reason we respond to cannibalism so strongly is because of its rarity. "When we think of cannibalism, we think of ancient tribes, Hannibal Lecter, and the film, Alive. In real cases, we will be shocked and intrigued in the same way we are intrigued by serial murders. Such cases will continue to sell papers, books and cinema tickets, all the more because they are true."

http://www.news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1383362003

[edit: Also on the general topic:

Cannibalism: A modern society taboo

Kevin McElderry
Posted Wed, 03 Dec 2003

As a German court began hearing chilling details of cannibalism last week, psychiatrists and criminal experts sought to explain a practice as old as history but which remains a taboo in modern society.

Cannibalism, which spans the cultures and centuries, has been seen by some practitioners as a religious ritual, by others as a way of taking revenge and also as a sign of respect — such as devouring the spirit of a brave enemy — or even family tradition.

Earlier this year UN officials accused rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo of acts of cannibalism.

In 1972, survivors of a plane crash in the Andes ate the flesh of dead passengers, a story later told in the film 'Alive!'. Then, it was a matter of surviving against the odds.

But what distinguishes the German case is that, as the prosecution admits, it was carried out apparently at the victim's own behest, in front of a video camera and with the full knowledge that he was to be eaten.

It was also, prosecutors claim, for sexual satisfaction.

Quite what drives someone to such lengths is unclear, however.

A lonely childhood

In evidence on the opening day on Wednesday of his trial, Amin Meiwes pointed to a lonely childhood, abandoned by his father, that caused him to fantasise about having a brother figure who would always be with him.

It spiralled from there, fuelled by horror films and watching animals being slaughtered. The advent of the Internet then made it possible for him to find like-minded souls in Germany and beyond.

The fantasies often start in childhood, agreed Professor Andreas Marneros, head of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

In rare cases, usually due to a personality disorder, they develop over the years until the urge to consume human flesh becomes uncontrollable.

He said cannibals he had studied were "possessed" by their lust.

Marneros said some people were aroused by seeing animals being killed, and the experience could trigger a desire to repeat the moment of lust.

In sexual cannibalism, he added, "fusion with the other person is a central aspect, a pathological escalation of the sentence, 'I'd like to eat you'."

Criminal psychologist Rudolf Egg said Sigmund Freud noted nearly a century ago that by eating a human, a cannibal believes he is ingesting his victim's power and soul.

'I want you to be in me'

"It's an extreme form of a desire that 'I want you to be in me'," he said, "and therefore quite different to something like sadism, in which you torture someone and take pleasure in their pain."

The internet provided the opportunity, he added.

"In Internet forums, probably 80 percent are playing with a fascination for perversion, but five or 10 percent might be ready to go a step further."

Thomas Busch, a psychology expert at Bonn University, told AFP that for a killer, it was like exercising "ultimate control" then prolonging the feeling by freezing the human flesh for later and reviewing the video.

The last alleged case of cannibalism in Germany was when a 33-year-old man claimed at his robbery and murder trial in 1995 that he had eaten the innards of his victim.

Two German serial killers early last century were suspected of eating parts of their victims.

Karl Denke, who killed 31 people between 1914 and 1918, had pans of pickled human flesh in his house, while Fritz Haarmann drank some of the blood of the 26 men he murdered from 1918 to 1924.

More recently, Jeffrey Dahmer was imprisoned for life in the United States in 1992 for the murders of 17 men and boys. Police uncovered partially cooked flesh in his freezer.

Andrei Tschikatilo, a Russian who was executed in 1992, is alleged to have eaten the sex organs of some of his 52 victims

http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/290713.htm

and a similar article touching on the same kind of themes:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3254074.stm ]

Emps
 
Blimey found this while nosing around:

Man eats infant's head after row

Posted Tue, 09 Dec 2003

A Kenyan man has been arrested after decapitating his infant nephew and eating parts of the severed head after a row with the boy's mother, police said on Tuesday.

"The man chopped off the head of a young child using a panga (machete), tapped and sucked blood and then drunk it, before starting to eat part of the head," Rift Valley deputy police chief Peter Leiyan told AFP by telephone, from the regional capital, Nakuru.

"Police were alerted by the wailing mother and neighbours and we arrested the suspect while he was boiling the head to drink the soup as well as eat it," in a village in Koibatek district on Saturday, Leiyan added.

The man's motives were being investigated, said police, adding that he had no known history of cannibalism.

Koibatek Police chief Maurice Kiplagat said the suspect attacked the one-year-old boy after fruitless attempts to send his mother back to her estranged husband.

"They quarrelled and the suspect stormed into his father's house, armed himself with a machete and chopped of the boy's head," Kiplagat told the Tuesday edition of the east African Standard newspaper.

Immediately after the incident, the aggrieved mother ran away screaming, neighbours responded swiftly and found the man quietly seated in the kitchen waiting for soup to boil, the Standard said in a front-page story.

http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/290713.htm
 
In the Meiwes trial they are interviewing two men who bailed out at the last stage:

Two to testify at cannibal trial
14/12/2003 19:51 - (SA)


Kassel - Two men who were invited to be slaughtered by a self-confessed German cannibal are to testify on Monday at the flesh-eater's trial in this German city.

Police say Armin Meiwes, 42, examined both men in his "slaughter chamber" but they refused to be actually killed. According to a justice spokesperson, the men gained a thrill from the "role-play" in a picturesque small town where Meiwes occupied a rambling manor house.

Meiwes is accused of homicide "for sexual gratification".

The trial has thrown light on two complementary groups who make contact with one another over the Internet: people who are excited by the idea of eating human flesh and masochists who fantasise about being eaten.

Meiwes has admitted to killing, carving up and eating a 43-year-old engineer from Berlin in what he says was an act between consenting adults. Cannibalism is not a crime in Germany, so he has been charged with murder.

Judges have said they will issue a legal ruling on Monday, the fourth day of the trial, that will have a bearing on the penalty.

Legal analysts said it was possible the court might rule out murder and reduce the indictment to manslaughter, or possibly that it would open up for debate whether Meiwes should be remanded into psychiatric care instead of being sent to prison. - Sapa-DPA

Article also has links to older reports on this case:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1459451,00.html

Here are reports on their testimony:

Cook Testifies At Gay Cannibal Trial

by Malcolm Thornberry
365Gay.com Newscenter
European Bureau Chief


Posted: December 16, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET


(Kassel Germany) A chef testified Monday that he allowed the man dubbed the Kassel Cannibal to string him up on a meat hook and mark out the choice cuts on his body with a pen.

Jorg Bose, 32, from Villingen, in southern Germany arrived in open court wearing skiing goggles and a baseball cap with ear flaps to avoid being recognized.

Bose testified that he had agreed to become the second victim of Armin Meiwes (pictured), on trial for the death of Bernd-Juergen Brandes. Parts of Brandes' body were found packaged and labeled in Meiwes' freezer. Bones and other "usable" parts were discovered buried in Meiwes' garden. Meiwes told authorities he had eaten about 40 pounds of Brandes. A note left Brandes' Berlin apartment said he was a willing victim.

Bose, the first of five men who initially agreed to become Meiwes' supper and for various reasons never made it to the dinner table said that he, like Brandes, met Meiwes on an internet cannibalism bulletin board about five years ago and they kept up an email dialogue where they discussed their fantasies.

Bose said that shortly after he arrived at Meiwes' home he removed his clothes and Meiwes strung him up on a meat hook, then using a pulley, brought him over a butcher table where his body was smeared in oil and Meiwes marked out his body for butchering.

The man said he finally began to feel ill and Meiwes let him off the hook. He said he left soon after.

Dirk Moller, 27, a London-based hotel worker was the second witness. He told the court how he was chained to a bed by Meiwes and also had his body marked out for butchery before changing his mind and released.

Like the other two, Moller said he met Meiwes on the internet where Moller outlined his desire to be killed and eaten by Meiwes.

But Moller got cold feet after they met in person.

Meiwes has already admitted in court that he killed Brandes insists Brandes, wanted to be killed and consumed.

Meiwes is charged with murder. Cannibalism itself is not a crime in Germany.

Meiwes' lawyers say he is guilty, at worst, of killing on demand, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.

On the weekend it emerged that Meiwes is negotiating with movie producers for a film about his life.

http://www.365gay.com/newscontent/121603cannibalCook.htm

First a Big Mac, then marked up for slaughter

By Roger Boyes
Potential victims of German cannibal panicked and were allowed to go home


A CONFERENCE organiser based in London gave an explicit account yesterday of a winter afternoon spent in a German hotel being marked up for execution by the self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes.

The 27-year-old, cleanshaven, black-haired Dirk Möller was ushered into the Kassel courtroom through a concealed entrance to avoid a battery of television cameras and photographers, and his address was not given in open court. An earlier witness wore ski goggles and a hat. No one wants to be identified as the partner of a cannibal.

After the London witness briefly confirmed his name and profession, Judge Volker Muetze cleared the court of reporters, spectators and the court artist. Even the court stenographer was blind.

The significance of Herr Möller and the preceding witness, Jörg Buse, is that both were in a position where they could have been killed and eaten by Armin Meiwes. Both panicked at the last moment and were allowed to go home.

The cannibal, the court was being told, was interested only in eating someone who actually wanted to be eaten. The defence team has argued that Herr Meiwes should be sentenced only for “killing on request”; that he was a reluctant mercy killer of someone who had suicidal tendencies, the computer programmer Bernd Jürgen Brandes, with whose murder he is charged.

Cannibalism does not appear in the German penal code. If the court accepts that the act of cannibalism was a legal irrelevance and that the killing was made on request, Herr Meiwes stands to serve a maximum of five years in jail and may even get away with just six months. The prosecutor is pressing charges of murder driven out of sexual desire.

Judge Muetze, perhaps recognising that murder might be difficult to prove, reminded the prosecution yesterday that Herr Meiwes could also be tried for manslaughter or desecration of the dead.

Herr Möller was crisp and to the point. Court sources said that he confirmed that he had engaged in hectic e-mail conversations with Herr Meiwes. Eventually the cannibal and his potential victim agreed a date, in the winter of 2001 in the Etap Hotel in Mannheim. This was after the killing and partial eating of Herr Brandes in March 2001.

Herr Meiwes met Herr Möller in the hotel lobby and shook hands. “You must be hungry after your journey,” Herr Meiwes said. The two men went out for a Big Mac and french fries. In the hotel room the men stripped naked and lay with each other.

Then Herr Meiwes wrapped clingfilm around the body of the London manager and placed pins in him as if mapping him out for butchery. “It was just a role play,” Herr Möller said, according to a source inside the courtroom.

Part of the game was that Herr Meiwes should pronounce a death sentence. Herr Meiwes had accordingly printed an “execution order” on his computer and presented it to the prone and handcuffed man.

Harald Ermel, the defence lawyer, speaking outside the courtroom, admitted that Herr Meiwes had wanted more than a game: he was sizing Herr Möller up for eating.

“My client was still looking for victims after the death of Brandes,” he said. “That desire went only after he was taken to prison and saw a psychiatrist. Then the urge to eat humans disappeared.”

But when the cannibal showed pictures of Jörg Buse to Herr Möller, the London conference organiser took fright. “Not like that; I don’t want to do it like that.”

Herr Buse said yesterday that he had been shaved under his armpits and in the pubic region, and then hung upside down on a hook as part of a slaughtering game. Herr Buse — who met the cannibal five times in 30 months — wanted to be let down from the hook because his ankles were hurting.

“This supports my client’s testimony,” Herr Ermel said. “If you’re hanging naked upside down, you have to trust that the man standing opposite you. Herr Meiwes did not betray this trust.”

After some hours in the hotel room, Herr Miewes and his London visitor went to see the film Oceans Eleven. They parted on good terms; it was not an example of a victim fleeing from his potential murderer, the court was told.

The case continues.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-933667,00.html

I suppose the thing I'm struggling with is that he didn't even have to go out and hunt them down but they wilingl showed up at his hosue asking to be slaughtered.

Emps
 
And trial reports on toxicology (pretty crucial if we are to believe his testimony about events) and the video screening of the process:

'Volunteer' was alive during cannibal carvery

December 16 2003 at 11:15AM


Forensic and toxicology experts told a German court that the victim of an act of cannibalism was still alive - but probably drugged - when his alleged killer was carving him up before administering the fatal knife wounds.

Forensic scientist Manfred Risse told the court in Kassel that self-declared cannibal Armin Meiwes knew his victim was alive when he began to cut him apart.

Meiwes, 42, has admitted killing and eating his victim in an act of cannibalism. He denied it was murder, however, claiming to have slashed the victim's throat before cutting him up.

But Risse's testimony countered this claim.

"He (the victim) was still moving his head back and forth. He was still breathing, his lips were moving," the forensic scientist said, describing what he had seen on the video tape taken of the deed.

Risse, giving evidence on the third day of the trial, said if help had been sought in time, the 43-year-old victim's life could have been saved after his penis had been severed earlier.

In later testimony, toxicologist Harald Schuetz said the victim was heavily under the influence of alcohol and medication in the final moments.

Schuetz said the victim had drunk two bottles of a cold medicine containing alcohol and a bottle of schnapps, and had swallowed 20 sleeping tablets. The combination had made him drowsy and had made him less sensitive to pain, the expert told the court.

But the toxicologist did not indicate to what extent the victim's own free will may have been impaired by the drugs and alcohol. He said the effects of such combinations differ from person to person.

The two experts' testimonies appeared to diverge in some aspects about the victim's final hours. Meiwes said the victim had drunk the bottle of schnapps after his penis was severed, but that this could no longer be proven.

Also, the moment when the fatal stabs of the knife were applied came 10 hours later, when in any event the alcohol would have worn off, the forensic expert said.

During all the testimony with its grisly details, Meiwes sat quietly, showing no emotion.

A police officer said Meiwes often helped colleagues in private matters and visited the sauna with workmates.

Meiwes is charged with murder "for sexual satisfaction" and "disturbing the peace of the dead" for butchering the corpse. He could be jailed for life.

His defence is pressing for a lesser charge of "killing on demand" which carries a maximum five-year jail sentence.

In previous evidence, Meiwes described how he cut up and ate his victim, saying he was merely carrying out his partner's wishes.

The court also viewed video tapes of the killing and butchering of the body in a session held in private.

Meiwes has, meanwhile, begun writing his autobiography in custody, his lawyer, Harald Ermel, said. Reports said Meiwes has also received a number of film offers for his story. - Sapa-DPA

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=24&art_id=vn20031216111521389C429000&set_id=1
 
Warning strong meat ahead

Emperor said:
This is indeed the question that I have been wondering about - I would have though Portal of Evil would have featured any major sites. If people find any drop them in (even they are 'passed on by a friend' ;) ).

Righto I did some digging and found a site that dealt with this.

Before the link some warnings - it deals with cannibalism in a very frank way it also has a lot of porn ads (although no popups which is odd) there is a lot of information on various cannibals there but some of the pictures are gruesome (although in the 'baby cannibal' and 'biker chick' do give you fair warning). It was clearly registered to take advantage of his notoriety hence the domain name:

http://www.arminm.com

they have alleged copies of some of his Internet postings here (the originals were removed by the respective site owners), however, they also rely on the Google cache and that is now cleared):

http://www.arminm.com/armin's_post.htm

However, the site (necrobabes.org) they claim he posted on is a listings directory and either it is a blag or they have cashed in on their notoriety.

Also whoever registered the arminm domain also has other serial killer domains with the same content on it e.g.:

http://www.garyridgway.org

so they may alo be up to something.

His email is said to be [email protected] and searching on that may reveal more information.

OK I did a quick search and it appears he was posting to the alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism newsgroup and those morbid souls who wish to see can find the posts here:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&meta=group=alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism

The whole NG (well the 0.5% that isn't spam):

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=alt.sex.snuff.cannibalism

is pretty distrubing although where fantasy ends and reality starts is unclear.

[edit: And to keep all the reall disturbing stuff in one post Dark Sites has a full page of links to other sites which deal with cannibalism:

http://www.darksites.net/can01.shtml

again the above warnings apply]

Emps
 
This article claims they met in the 'Gay Cannibals' chatroom (but that sounds awfully convenient):

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/12/04/1070351719640.html

but its is confirmed here:

http://www.365gay.com/newscontent/120403cannibalTrial.htm

There seems to have been a Gay Cannibals mailing list at yahoo but they took it down.

------------------

This site has a lot of pictures of his house (exterior) and screencaps of some of his message board postings:

http://www.4law.co.il/cann1c.htm

which also has this claim:

The family's next-door neighbour was self-avowed Satanist Ulla von Bernus who claimed to "cast death spells with 90% reliability."

now I'd read soemthing about this somewhere.......

[edit: So I did a quick search and found this:

Cannibal's fairy tale obsession

December 18 2002


The probe into the cannibal murder case in Germany took a further bizarre turn today with reports that the suspect's next door neighbour was a self-professed witch who was once taken to court for casting death spells.

The reports coincided with a police statement saying they had confiscated an electric saw and a barbecue grill from the murder site - both allegedly used by the murder suspect for criminal purposes.

The suspect himself reportedly has told investigators he had a childhood obsession with the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, and was especially fascinated by the passage in which the storybook witch "fattened up little Hansel" in hopes of cooking and eating him.

This fixation may have been exacerbated when his family moved to the rambling, 30-room, half-timbered manor house in Rotenburg an der Fulda when he was 16, experts were quoted as saying today.

The family's next-door neighbour was a self-avowed Satanist called Ulla von Bernus who published occult tracts and gave interviews to German print and broadcast media about her prowess at "casting death spells with 90 per cent reliability", according to Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Von Bernus made headlines throughout Germany in the early 1980s when she was taken to court by a disgruntled woman who claimed she had paid von Bernus 30,000 marks ($A26,525) to put a death curse on her husband, who then did not die.

A court ruled that von Bernus was guilty of an "illusory crime exempt from punishment" and ordered her to repay the 30,000 marks.

The court in Kassel judged that the whole business "had been objectively impossible from the start".

Von Bernus was on close terms with the mother of the cannibal murder suspect, according to a reporter for Der Tagesspiegel who said he interviewed von Bernus in the 1980s and recalled meeting the suspect's mother, described as the witch's best friend.

The suspect himself has told investigators he was "in and out of Ulla's house all the time", according to a report in Bild newspaper today, which said von Bernus died in 1998 at age 86.

The cannibal suspect's family moved to Rotenburg in the mid-1970s, purchasing the derelict property as a holiday get-away. His parents divorced, and he rarely saw his policeman father or two step-brothers again.

He remained there with his mother. He stayed on in the old half- timbered house after her death in 1999.

"He was a mama's boy," a neighbour told reporters. "He was totally fixated on his mother, who he said never let him date girls. After she died, he began to thaw out."

Investigators are combing the house in search of clues to a grisly case in Germany.

More details of the case emerged today, indicating the victim willingly ate his own flesh and allowed himself to be killed.

The 41-year-old suspect, identified only as Armin M., reportedly told investigators he arranged via the Internet to met his victim at the Kassel train station on March 9, 2001, and that they discussed the impending "slaughter" in detail on arrival at his home in Rotenburg.

Both men were computer experts, both described as "Internet addicts". Authorities filed murder charges against the reclusive computer systems expert Armin M. last Thursday.

His 42-year-old victim, a computer chip developer at Siemens corporation in Berlin identified only as Bernd Juergen B., agreed to have sex with Armin M. but afterward had second thoughts about going through with the rest.

The suspect said he drove his guest back to the train station where he bought a ticket to Berlin. But, changing his mind again, the victim decided to remain, and they returned to the house in Rotenburg.

Investigators were told how the suspect severed the subject's penis and how the two men cooked and ate it. The victim then placed himself in a bathtub as he bled to death. His final request was for the Armin M. to wait until he lost consciousness from loss of blood before slashing his throat.

The suspect made a videotape record of the entire ordeal and transferred the images to a CD-ROM. Investigators who have seen the images are said to be undergoing psychological counselling.

Dismembering the body, the murderer packaged the flesh in freezer bags for later consumption and disposed of the bones on his property.

He said he defrosted and ate the contents over a period of months.

Asked why, he told investigators, "I got a kick out of the idea of having another person inside me."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/18/1039656422590.html ]

Emps
 
Self-confessed cannibal is ruled sane by psychiatrist

Ben Aris in Kassel
Tuesday December 30, 2003
The Guardian

A psychiatrist who evaluated Germany's self-confessed cannibal told the murder trial yesterday that Armin Meiwes was completely sane but had "emotional problems".

Heinrich Wilmer said Mr Meiwes had no self-control, and that he would not have been able to act out his fantasies without the internet.

Mr Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert, is accused of murdering a Berlin engineer, Bernd Brandes, 43. The pair met after Mr Meiwes advertised online for a "young, well-built man who wants to be eaten".

Dr Wilmer has interviewed the accused, who is being held in a psychiatric hospital, six times. "He is healthy in mind and body but needs therapy," the doctor told the court in Kassel.

"If the internet didn't exist then this could never have happened. He has the desires, the fantasies, we all have. But he doesn't have the self-control or the self-discipline to keep a grip on them."

Mr Meiwes admits cutting off Brandes' penis, causing him to bleed to death. He butchered the corpse and ate at least 20kg (44lb) of flesh over the next weeks.

He was arrested when police discovered Brandes' remains.

Dr Wilmer blamed Mr Meiwes's father, who abandoned the family when the boy was eight, for his emotional problems. "It was a very painful experience for him. His father drove off leaving him crying and never once looked in the mirror."

Mr Meiwes's relationships with women were short-lived and superficial, and "crushed by his domineering mother".

Dr Wilmer said the accused had strong sexual desires, but sex had not been his motive.

"Sex plays a secondary role here. The most important is sensation seeking. He is always looking for strong emotions.

"He doesn't lose his head. To all his neighbours he is polite and friendly - the nice man from the station - but the rest is a fantasy world."

He said Mr Meiwes had shown little remorse and was enjoying the attention generated by the trial. He had been "like a child waiting for Father Christmas" as the trial approached.

The defendant had told him: "I have achieved my life's ambition. I am happy and what comes next is not important."

Cannibalism is not illegal in Germany and the prosecution hopes to prove "murder for sexual gratification".

The judge read out tran scripts of explicit correspondence between the men. Using the pseudonym Frankie, Mr Meiwes wrote in an email: "I hope you will bite a piece of muscle tissue from my arm or my leg because I want to see the blood trickle from your mouth, and at the same time have an orgasm in your arse."

On discovering that they were both smokers, Brandes wrote: "Good, smoked meat lasts longer." He was worried about having his nipples bitten off and asked Mr Meiwes how he would dispose of his bones.

"Maybe you can use my skull as an ashtray," he suggested.

"I don't want there to be anything left from my ex-person."

"Don't worry," Mr Meiwes replied. "I am just interested in your flesh. I will get rid of the rest. I'll throw it into an autobahn parking lot."

Mr Meiwes's lawyer, Harald Ermel, has argued that Brandes was not murdered because he went to his death a willing participant. "Today has shown that Meiwes is not the monster he has been painted," he said after the hearing.

The verdict is expected early next year. If Mr Meiwes is cleared of murder but convicted of the lesser crime of "killing on demand" he could serve just five years in prison.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1113835,00.html
 
I am suprised by the sheer number of people who would apply for this (surely we'd all be better of if a mad German ate them all?):

German cannibal had 204 ‘applicants’

16 January 2004

KASSEL - Self-confessed gay cannibal Armin Meiwes had more than 200 "applicants" expressing wishes for him to slaughter and devour them, a court in Germany heard Friday.

Taking the witness stand in the precedent-setting murder case in Kassel, Hesse state police inspector Wolfgang Buch said Meiwes' computer files showed he had received internet offers from 204 men in Germany, Britain and elsewhere.

Meiwes has admitted killing and partially eating one Berlin man he met via the Internet, but has steadfastly insisted he killed no one else.

However Buch told the court it is entirely possible that others may also have been his victims, despite the fact that investigators have unearthed no physical evidence that more than one person was killed.

"It is at this point in time impossible to say whether others among these 204 persons might also have been homicide victims," Buch told the court.

In other testimony, the father of the sole known victim testified before the court Friday that his son had displayed no suicidal tendencies prior to his disappearance in March 2001.

Because Germany has no law against cannibalism, Meiwes is charged with murder "for sexual satisfaction" and "disturbing the peace of the dead" in the death of Brandes.

His defence is pressing for a lesser charge of "killing on demand" which carries a maximum five-year jail sentence and is normally applied in cases of "mercy killing". Meiwes contends his victim had wanted to be killed and was aware of his fate.

But Brandes' father, taking the witness stand Friday, said his won had never shown any signs of depression.

That supported earlier testimony by Brandes' last male lover as saying Brandes was cheerful and showed no signs of depression ahead of his fateful encounter with Meiwes on 8 March 2001.

"Bernd-Juergen had absolutely no suicidal thoughts and had no crises or major problems of any kind," testified the witness, who added that he and Brandes were making plans for their summer holidays when he suddenly vanished in March.


Also appearing before the court Friday was Meiwes’ father who described his son as having been a quiet and well-behaved little boy who never displayed any desire to harm anyone or anything.

The elder Meiwes testified before the court in Kassel that he had no inkling of his son's purported "Hansel & Gretel" obsession.

However, he pointed out that he had had little contact with Armin since the Meiwes marriage broke up when the boy was 8 years old. Armin stayed with his mother when the elder Meiwes abandoned them in what he said was the result of long-standing domestic disputes.

Young Armin remained in the custody of his mother Waltraud while the father took an older son to live with him.

The defendant himself has told investigators he had a childhood obsession with the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel", and was especially fascinated by the passage in which the storybook witch "fattened up little Hansel" in hopes of cooking and eating him.

This fixation may have been exacerbated when his mother moved to the rambling, 30-room, half-timbered farm house in Rotenburg an der Fulda when he was 16.

Earlier, a former boyhood friend described Armin as having been a polite and mild-mannered mama's boy.

The witness said Meiwes was firmly under the thumb of his mother who ordered him about the house "like a drill sergeant" and who chaperoned him on his rare dates with women and who even insisted on accompanying him on field exercises when he was in the military.

"The other soldiers in his company thought that was pretty weird, to say the least," the witness testified.

When he was 20 she even had the temerity to post a stick-on label saying "Kinderzimmer" (Child's Room) on the door of Armin's bedroom. He never removed the label, the witness said, even after his mother died in 1999.


The witness said it was only after her death that Armin began talking about "horrible things" he had discovered while surfing the internet in search of gay companionship, the witness said.

Because Germany has no law against cannibalism, Meiwes is charged with murder "for sexual satisfaction" and "disturbing the peace of the dead" in the death of Brandes.

His defence is pressing for a lesser charge of "killing on demand" which carries a maximum five-year jail sentence and is normally applied in cases of "mercy killing". Meiwes contends his victim wanted to be killed and was aware of his fate.

Meiwes was tracked down and arrested in December 2002 after police became aware of an advertisement he had placed on the Internet looking for volunteers willing to be killed and eaten.

Thousands of pornographic pictures depicting acts of violence and torture were also found at the house near the town of Rotenburg, south of Kassel.

One police witness said prosecutors were investigating another man who was allegedly plotting an act of cannibalism.

Meiwes was tracked down and arrested in December 2002 after police became aware of an advertisement he had placed on the internet looking for volunteers willing to be killed and eaten.

Thousands of pornographic pictures depicting acts of violence and torture were also found at the house near the town of Rotenburg, south of Kassel.

The trial continues. Sentencing is expected on 30 January.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=3695

Emps
 
mmm! tasty thread :D

i wonder if the servers (not pun intended) and the website will get done (nother not intended) for aiding and abetting then?
 
More Meiwesings

Sundry updates:

This isn't an easy readbut it does provide a good overvie of things so far - for those wanting a quick synopsis Meiwes had a domineering mother who wen ton about Hans and Gretel and he ended up creating an imaginary brother called Franky whos name he used as his online persona when he went hunting for victims. Brandes seems to have blamed himself for his mother's death and had tried to get a male prositute to castrate him earlier.

As weird as it sounds a conviction for assisted suicide wouldn't be too outrageous.

Posted on Sun, Jan. 18, 2004


Germany's cannibal trial reveals utter horror


By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD
Knight Ridder Newspapers


KASSEL, Germany - The e-mail that brought together cannibal and meal was simple, direct.

"I'm your meat," 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes wrote in the month before he died.

There is little more that needed to be said to cement the relationship between a man desperate to be eaten, and one craving human flesh. But much since has been said, throughout Germany, Europe, and the rest of the world, about what happened next.

On March 9, 2001, Brandes took a train to Kassel, where Armin Meiwes was waiting for him. Meiwes' murder trial opened in December and will wind down this week. The gruesome highlights along the way have included:

- A videotape of the slaughter.

- Meiwes explaining that his first meal of Brandes was accompanied by a South African red wine and tasted like pork.

- His defense, as told by attorney Harald Ermel, who recently wore a purple suit to court and shares an occasional joke with his client during proceedings. Ermel pointed out that because cannibalism is not against the law in Germany, and because the "victim" was wholly willing, the only crime committed was assisted suicide. This crime carries a maximum sentence of five years.

- And the prosecution acknowledging that the victim was willing. Brandes even repeatedly said this on the videotape of his slaughter.

Still, prosecutors are pursuing a conviction of "murder for sexual satisfaction," combined with "disturbing the peace of the dead."

Volker Mutze, the provincial presiding judge explains, "In many cases, the court would announce its verdict on the last day of proceedings. But this is such a complicated matter. I hope to have a ruling by January 30."

Of course, this is not the first, or most famous, scary story to come out of Kassel. Home to 200,000, it's a 12th-century town that was reduced to rubble by allied bombing in World War II. Rebuilt since, it's nestled between rolling hills - some high enough for skiing - and surrounded by postcard villages, where the apples are produced that make the area's hard apple cider. And it's chief claim to world fame is that here, the Brothers Grimm started out, working at the local library as they wrote and collected their tales, from Cinderella to Godfather Death.

But there is little doubt that even the Grimm Brothers would have blanched at much of what has been revealed in the courtroom.

The first oddity is that neither of the principals seemed the type to take part in such horrors. Both were respected by neighbors. Meiwes lived in a massive gingerbread-style house surrounded by meadows in Rotenburg, about 100 miles southeast of Kassel, in central Germany.

People knew only that Meiwes was single, repaired ATMs and computer screens for a living, and fixed up classic cars as a hobby.

Brandes was a software developer for Siemens, highly respected for his work on telecommunications systems. He was athletic, organized, well liked.

But beyond that, both were troubled. Psychiatrists, two of whom sit in on the trial and question witnesses, maintain that both men had troubled relationships with their mothers. They believe Brandes might blame himself for his mother's death when he was 12-years-old. She died in a car crash, which his father often described as a suicide.

Meiwes' mother was domineering, berating him loudly and publicly, living with him until her death, accompanying him on dates and even going along on troop outings in the early 1980s when he joined the German Army. Meiwes claimed that such treatment led him to create "Franky," an imaginary brother who listened to him.


But both men had large secret lives. Brandes, while openly bisexual - living with a man, dating women - was frequenting a tall, male prostitute named Emmanuel, and demanding more and more violent sex.

Emmanuel showed up for trial recently, his head wrapped in a black scarf to hide his face from the cameras. He sat, as witnesses do in German court, alone, surrounded on three sides by the defense, the panel of judges, the prosecution and the expert witnesses. His back was to the gallery, which is no longer overflowing, but still full of spectators.

After telling the court that, "mostly, Brandes wasn't happy … he was addicted to sex," he went on to explain that Brandes frequently asked him to either cut off, or bite off, or eat, his penis.

"Once, I brought a knife to him during sex, and told him I was going to cut it off, but I thought it was fantasy," Emmanuel said, pausing to cry before finishing. "Unfortunately, he really had it done."


This revelation led to more than an hour of discussion from all sides on the exact meaning of the request, about whether Brandes had asked to be eaten by others, before meeting Meiwes in an Internet, cannibal chat room.

Police investigator Wolfgang Buch told the court about the secret online lives that brought Meiwes and Brandes together. Both had become chat-room addicts, hanging out in rooms such as the Cannibal Cafe, where humans are described as cows, and their preferences for slaughter are discussed.

Buch told the court that in such sites, Meiwes, calling himself Franky, posted more than 80 notes asking for a "well-built man, 18-30, who would like to be eaten by me."

At night, he dismembered Barbie Dolls and even, in his childhood bedroom, videotaped himself, smeared with ketchup, pretending to be slaughtered. He stored images of violent death and violent pornography on his computer.

But Buch explained that he also spent time answering e-mail from the 204 people who wrote to volunteer to be his meal. He would e-mail photos of the slaughter room he'd built in his house, using mattresses to soundproof the room, and an old metal patio table that would allow blood to drain to the floor.

A few he met, some coming to the house and allowing themselves to be strung by their feet, as if for slaughter, as he outlined in marker the cuts of meat on their bodies. Meiwes has said none of these were ultimately willing to be eaten, and that he only wanted a totally willing victim. Others agreed to meet him, but didn't.

"We found e-mail describing how he went up to Holland to meet a potential victim, who wouldn't open the door when Meiwes knocked, later explaining he got too scared when he saw him."


All this ended in February 2001, when Brandes offered himself, and insisted he was serious. Brandes made out a will, leaving his possessions to his lover, and bought an untraceable cash ticket to Kassel.

The videotape shows the two men caressing and joking about the shapes of the shadows on the walls. It shows them both taking part in Brandes castration, as agreed upon before the meeting. It also shows their frustration at the fact that the penis is too tough, once cooked, for them to eat.

Meiwes later would cook pieces of Brandes along with his morning eggs or for lunch. He believed that with each piece he ate, he became closer to Brandes, even telling Stern magazine that Brandes' skills at speaking English passed on to him. In fact, he told police that while he hated himself for having killed, he felt the consumption of Brandes completed him, gave him a soul mate.

Still, in the months after Brandes' death, Meiwes would go back online, seeking another willing victim. Police were alerted this time and went to Meiwes house.

Once arrested, he freely admitted his crime and led police to evidence, the videotape, ground bone-meal, freezer bags of meat.

"I had the fantasy, and, in the end, I fulfilled it," Meiwes told police.

Recently, he has said he hopes to use his time in prison to write his memoirs.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/7741970.htm

Horror becomes chic

January 16, 2004


It may be fantasy, rather than a genuine fad. But, as Peter Fray reports, cannibalism is far from a joke.

They exist under half-names and phoney identities in the darkest crevices of cyberspace. People like Laura who pleads her bona fides in poor English: "Please don't tell me I'm sick," she writes. "It is just a fantasy, but the realism of it turns me on so much."

Or, Robert, who cuts to the chase: "I already have a young, pretty, slightly plump married women from Iowa offering herself ..."

They are probably fantasists, sexual deviants and plain old fruitbats, but their messages are nonetheless chilling; especially chilling because one of these modern cannibals - and their allegedly willing victims - has stepped out of cyberspace, evolving before our eyes from the virtual to visceral.

It may be hard to digest, but it appears we live in a time of cannibals. The question is, how can such apparent savagery exist in a supposedly sophisticated world?

ARMIN Meiwes used to be a nondescript, polite, middle-aged, even sensitive, German computer nerd, or so his friends and neighbours say, but now the world knows him as the Rotenburg Cannibal or the Hesse Hannibal.

A lonely bisexual, the product of a tortured, cold and unloving relationship with his late domineering mother, Meiwes, 42, collected sex and torture scenes off the net - and advertised to meet a "well-built man who wants to be eaten". In gruesome, often stomach-challenging detail, the world heard how his fantasy became frighteningly true.

Almost three years ago, he met Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, a computer engineer from Berlin, via an online cannibal "cafe". Like Robert and Laura above, Brandes posted an explicit and challenging note: "I offer myself to you and will let you dine from my live body. Whoever REALLY wants to do it will need a REAL VICTIM." Unlike Laura and Robert, it seems he wasn't playing out a sexual fantasy.

Meiwes, using the name Franky, replied and after an internet courtship, he killed and ate Brandes in March 2001. Meiwes stabbed his willing victim and cut him up into joints of meat.

Meiwes now attends a packed court room in Kassel, waiting to find out if he is guilty of murder for sexual satisfaction or, as he claims, guilty of the lesser charge of killing by demand. According to Meiwes's legal team, the Berliner "could not wait to be eaten".

It is tempting to think of Meiwes as an aberration, a throwback to the kind of savage society fiercely debated by anthropologists in texts on the Aztecs (who had a taste for eating enemies) or Australian Aborigines (a colonial myth perpetuated for political reasons, argues the respected Australian researcher Michael Pickering). But the Meiwes case raises questions far beyond the realms of academe.

THE word cannibalism comes from the West Indian Carib tribe who, according to Christopher Columbus, supplemented their fruit and fish diet with human flesh. Why they did is not known, but armed with such evidence, many a white Christian missionary has sought to civilise natives away from such voodooistic practices.

When the Meiwes case first came to light, sections of the German press painted him as a kind of hereditary witch. Papers found people who supposedly knew the family and were prepared to say his mother, Ulla von Bernus, who died about five years ago, was a witch who would kill on Satan's orders. But the main magic Meiwes employed is available to most Westerners. It is called the internet.

And, as his trial has gone on, it has become impossible to throw him into the same repulsive category as the American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was murdered in prison as he served a life term for killing and eating 17 men and boys, or his Russian counterpart Andrei Tschikatilo. He was executed in 1992, the same year as Dahmer was sentenced, for killing 50 people and eating their sexual organs.

But Meiwes, psychologically challenged as he undoubtedly is, is now not being seen as a violent maniac or serial killer or a member of a Satanic, flesh-eating cult. A female friend, who could not be identified, told the court he was sensitive and friendly. "He came across as being very childlike," she said. Another female witness, a neighbour, said he had tried to start a relationship with her and had wanted to start a family.

The Meiwes case has opened the door on something more insidious and pernicious: the secret world of the suburban cannibal, with the internet as the key. A criminologist, Rudolf Egg, a psychologist from Germany's leading criminology institute, believes there are thousands of would-be, Meiwes-style cannibals. "There are several hundred people with cannibalistic tendencies in Germany alone," he has told the court. "And many thousands around the world. Cannibalism has always been around, but the internet reinforces the phenomenon. You can be in contact with the whole world and do this anonymously."

Most are fantasists who only play with the sexual allure of being eaten or eating someone else - and never come out from behind the veil of cyberspace. As Meiwes lamented to Brandes, "there are a lot of people out there who are interested, but only a few really mean it".

Not so Meiwes. He had so much correspondence from cannibal forums he could fill two trucks, police say. He was in contact with more than 400 cannibals, mainly from Western Europe and America. In the manner of the net, they conversed frankly, with the talk carrying a frisson of the illicit, of two people being very, very naughty.

"Did you kill any young men over the holidays?" asked Jorg, one of Meiwes's many correspondents, in January 2002.

He replied: "It was the only thing I didn't do over the holidays. Do you think that I have slipped out, that I want to kill a young man and eat him?"

Jorg: "No, there is nothing sexier than to be killed like a pig."

Meiwes met four men after he killed Brandes, and he is being investigated over the deaths of two more people, one in Frankfurt and one in Austria. He has yet to be charged with these murders.

SEX lurks behind cannibalism. Egg has described Meiwes's actions as "sexual cannibalism", a highly elevated form of the sexual act. "Sexual cannibalism ... is the 'highest' form of intimate behaviour." He believes Meiwes had been trying to find in cannibalism the intimacy he never found with another human, especially his uncaring mother.

The four men who met Meiwes after he killed Brandes were clearly prepared to indulge in a deep and dark sexual fantasy, part bondage, part flagellation. They allowed him to wrap them up in cellophane and mark out their body parts as joints of meat. When they chickened out, Meiwes let them go. As his lawyers argue, this is hardly the act of a depraved serial killer.

CAN cannibalism ever be justified? Yes, when it's the choice between life and death. History abounds with instances of so-called survival cannibalism, among them the Donner party of 90 American frontier settlers who survived being trapped in Sierra Nevada snows in 1846 by eating their dead comrades, and the members of an Uruguyan rugby team who used their dead teammates as food after an Andean plane accident in 1972.

Their exploits were later recreated in the film, Alive, and condoned by the Catholic Church. Archbishop Rubio of Montevideo compared their survival tactics to a medical transplant.

"Eating someone who has died in order to survive is incorporating their substance, and it is quite possible to compare this with a graft," he said. "Flesh survives when assimilated by someone in extreme need, just as it does when an eye or heart of a dead man is grafted onto a living man."

Citing the Uruguyan crash, the late Australian philosopher, Richard Routley (later Sylvan), argued that "there is really nothing extravagant at all in contending that sometimes cannibalism is perfectly right: any extravagance is due to the fact that the admissible cases lead, naturally and coherently, once human chauvinism is properly left behind, to much more controversial cases."

A known stirrer, Routley's 1982 paper, In Defence of Cannibalism, hit a raw nerve among the nation's philosophers, as his former colleague, William Grey, recalls. "Apparently some philosophers believed it was outrageous, or evidence of a corrupt mind, to be prepared to seriously address such a topic as cannibalism. Perhaps, too, more timid members of the philosophical community were alarmed that Sylvan might be a Hannibal Lecter in the world of philosophy."

In the paper, Routley asks: "Since it is not eating human flesh per se that is wrong, what is it that is wrong, if anything, with raising humans or other creatures for food? Is it the raising, or the killing, or is it both?"

The German court listening to the evidence against Meiwes will not be afforded such rhetorical flourishes. Cannibalism is not on trial in Kassel as it is not illegal in Germany, just as it isn't in Britain and several other Western nations. The question is, did Meiwes murder Brandes or, as he maintains, did he just help him fulfil his wishes. This would put the case on a par with euthanasia. Brandes's ex-boyfriend, Rene Jasnik, has told the court that his lover had "no thoughts of suicide".

For murder Meiwes faces life, for the lesser charge, about five years. Either way, he will have time to finish his autobiography which he has reportedly started. There is talk of a movie. Sentencing is expected within the month. Whatever Meiwes receives, the secret world of cannibals - real or imaginary - will never be so secret.

"In Defence of Cannibalism" by Richard Routley/Sylvan can be found here (with an interetsing forward):

http://www.uq.edu.au/philosophy/can/cannibalism.html

More evidence on his sanity:

German cannibal 'fit for trial'

Self-confessed German cannibal Armin Meiwes "is fully fit for trial and not mentally ill", a second psychiatrist testified on Friday.

"He carried out an act that was planned and prepared," Georg Stolpman told the court in the city of Kassel.

His testimony, along with that of other experts, means that Mr Meiwes can be held criminally liable.

He has admitted killing and eating Bernd-Juergen Brandes, but says it was "killing on demand" and not murder.

Professor Stolpman said Mr Meiwes was incapable of showing "warm and tender feelings towards others".

With this act, Meiwes thought only of his goal, not of Brandes needs - Meiwes realised his dream
Professor Georg Stolpman

His difficult relationship with his mother meant that he did not learn how to maintain relationships.

He apparently fantasised about a friend who would never leave him, and the arrival of the internet and e-mail encouraged him to act out this fantasy, Mr Stolpman said.

The expert described Mr Meiwes as "extremely smug and self-assured" and as having a "schizoid personality" - but said he detected no indication of mental illness.

He said the accused enjoyed the publicity he was getting.

Verdict in a week

"I believe the accused was above all fascinated by the act of cutting up corpses. Killing was a necessary evil to achieve that end
Sexologist Klaus Beier

Sexologist Klaus Beier told the court on Monday that the 42-year old computer technician "had at least average intelligence and showed no signs of psychiatric illness".

"I believe the accused was above all fascinated by the act of cutting up corpses," he said.

"Killing was a necessary evil to achieve that end."

Another psychiatrist testified last month that the self-confessed cannibal had a personality disorder but did not need to be kept in a psychiatric hospital.

A verdict is expected next Friday.

Cannibalism is not a crime under the German constitution, but the crime of murder carries a minimum 15-year prison sentence.

The maximum sentence for "killing on demand" is five years.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/3423767.stm

Published: 2004/01/23 16:16:45 GMT

© BBC MMIV

which isn't to say he isn't right upstairs:

Jan. 23, 2004. 02:44 PM


German cannibal has 'schizoid personality'


ASSOCIATED PRESS

KASSEL, Germany ? A German who confessed to killing a man and eating his flesh is incapable of showing "warm and tender feelings" toward other people, but is not mentally ill, a court-appointed psychiatric expert testified at his murder trial today.

Defendant Armin Meiwes, 42, has a "schizoid personality" and difficulty in forming relationships, expert Georg Stolpmann told the state court in the central city of Kassel.

"What we have here is an inability to have warm and tender feelings toward others," Stolpmann testified. But, he added, "there is no indication of mental illness" and Meiwes is fully fit to face trial ? an assessment shared by other experts who have testified.

When his trial opened Dec. 3, Meiwes confessed in detail to the March 2001 killing of 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at his home in Rotenburg, some 30 kilometres southeast of Kassel.

Brandes, who had travelled from Berlin after answering his ads, wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness, Meiwes testified.

Prosecutors say the killing was sexually motivated and filed murder charges against Meiwes despite concluding that the killer had the victim's consent.

If convicted of murder, Meiwes could face life in prison. But his lawyer argues that the slaying was a form of mercy killing, which would carry a maximum five-year sentence.

Stolpmann described Meiwes as a "calm and balanced" prison inmate who enjoyed the publicity he was getting.

Meiwes has told the court that following Brandes' death, he looked for further willing victims through Internet ads and chat rooms.

Police tracked down and arrested him in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to an advertisement Meiwes had placed on the Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten.

A verdict in the trial is expected next Friday.

Source

Cashing in:

Sun 25 Jan 2004

Cannibal killer wants £1m for his memoirs

ALLAN HALL IN BERLIN


ONE of the most sensational and lurid court cases in recent history ends this week, but if the self-confessed cannibal at the centre of this extraordinary saga has his way the verdict will not be the end of the story.

Armin Meiwes, on trial in Germany for the murder of Bernd Brandes, who he mutilated, killed and ate, is seeking £1m for his memoirs, which he has chillingly promised will contain some of his favourite recipes for human flesh.

It is also understood there has been some interest from Hollywood about a movie deal - Meiwes has told his lawyer he would like Kevin Spacey to play him on film.

However, legal sources close to the case, which is due to end on Friday, believe the three-judge panel are moving closer to convicting Meiwes for murder, which carries an automatic life sentence in Germany, meaning he would never benefit from any earnings he makes from his shocking story.

Meiwes is charged with "murder for sexual gratification" for the March 2001 killing of Brandes, a homosexual whom he met through internet chatrooms with names such as ‘Flesh and Bone’ and ‘Gourmet Cafe’. But he denies murder, claiming he was carrying out the last wish of Brandes.

During the trial a videotape showed Brandes apparently willingly having his penis cut off. Both tried to eat it, but found it "too tough" because Brandes had begun to feel so faint he could not wait for it to be fully cooked - in garlic, salt and pepper.

The tape, described by a judge last week as "perhaps the ultimate snuff video", ends with Meiwes plunging a knife into Brandes as he begs for forgiveness.

There appear to be some key facts which point to a conviction for the 42-year-old whether or not Brandes was a willing victim. The first is that the erudite, often smiling, cannibal was responsible for his actions and knew what he was doing, and secondly that he would probably kill again if found not guilty or sentenced on a lesser charge of assisting a suicide, which could see him freed within a year.

Constitutional law expert Hermann Grollmann, from Berlin, said: "I think they will sentence him for murder and I think they will believe he is not guilty of it," he said. "They have, quite simply, been presented with an erudite, often charming, psychologically sound individual who performed something another human being required.

"His victim left behind a will stating that he wanted to die at his hands and that he knew what he was letting himself in for. There is no ‘victim’ in the classic sense here. But society and its mores have to be satisfied: colleagues I speak with believe the judges will have no choice but to pin a murder conviction on him and subject him to 15 years or more of intensive therapy behind bars."

The four-hour videotape itself both supports and condemns Meiwes. While it shows the apparent pleasure of Brandes, 43, at the amputation of his own penis - "there, it’s finally gone!" he exclaims - his subsequent massive blood loss, which the cannibal did nothing to staunch, save for wrapping a towel around him, points, judges believe, to a calculating, almost demonic streak in him.

Then there is the bloody end to Brandes, videotaped in ‘the butchery‘ of Meiwes’ farmhouse home near Kassel, where he later stripped 65lbs of flesh from his victim’s body, then froze and ate it over the course of the next few months.

The final images have Meiwes saying "forgive me" as he plunges a nine-inch knife repeatedly into Brandes’ throat. Meiwes’ lawyer, Harald Ermel, tried to argue that Brandes was virtually "brain dead" when this happened. This was seen as a bizarre defence ploy, paving the way for the prosecution to bring in its own experts to rebut it. Pathologists who sat through the video said there is a flicker of recognition in Brandes’ eyes as the knife goes in and out.

The trial has oscillated between black comedy and horrifying reality as Meiwes took the courtroom on a bizarre journey of kinky sex, lurid fantasies and Keystone Kop-style encounters with potential victims seeking to be killed and eaten.

After nurturing fantasies of slaughter since he was a boy, he began his internet trawl for a willing victim in 2000. Using the moniker Franky - the name of an imaginary friend he invented during his lonely childhood - he posted advertisements on English language websites visited by like-minded souls.

But the last stop on this odyssey was the videotaped mutilation and butchering of a fellow human being - e-mail no. 430 - who turned out to be the only person deranged enough to go along with Meiwes’ scheme.

"After I had done it," said Meiwes, "I felt hate, anger, happiness all at once. But I couldn’t regret it because this is what we both wanted.

"That is why I am not guilty of murder - I helped a man fulfil his biggest wish too."

There is little doubt that a murder conviction would leave the door open for Meiwes to appeal to Germany’s supreme legal body, the Constitutional Court. And there are constitutional lawyers who believe the cannibal would have a very good case.

And if Meiwes escaped a life sentence his fortune could be made. Heyne Verlag, which publishes serial killer and cannibal killer books, has announced that it would publish Meiwes’ memoirs if they were available.

"With the level of interest in him we would most certainly be interested," said a spokesman.

And it is understood Stern magazine has offered £100,000 to the cannibal’s lawyers for first publication of his autobiography.

HARD TO SWALLOW

IF KEVIN Spacey star of American Beauty and The Usual Suspects, takes up the German cannibal’s challenge he would be following in a fine tradition of films tackling cannibalism.

Anthony Hopkins has become best-known for his portrayal of Dr Hannibal Lector, the brilliant and murderous cannibal from Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

Delicatessen, set in France in a post-apocalyptic future, saw tenants of an apartment building lure strong, healthy men, planning to eat them to combat famine.

And in the black comedy, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, an explorer tries to ingratiate himself with a tribe of cannibals in the Brazilian jungle in a vain attempt to avoid becoming their next meal.

The 1968 horror film, Night of the Living Dead, shocked cinema-goers with its plot, which saw the dead rise with a hunger for human flesh after radiation from a fallen satellite caused them to wake.

Alive dealt with the issue of enforced cannibalism, telling the true story of the Uruguayan rugby squad, whose chartered plane crashed in the Andes in 1972. Stranded in freezing temperatures some of the team eventually decided they would have to eat their dead comrades in an effort to survive. The story which made headlines worldwide when it became known.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=92492004

Recipes for human flesh? I'd imagine they are pretty much like ordinary recipes - its actually acquiring the meat that is the tricky bit.

Emps
 
Meiwes sentenced!

Manslaughter verdict for cannibal

A German court has convicted self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes of manslaughter and sentenced him to eight years and six months in prison.
Meiwes, 42, admitted killing and eating Bernd Juergen Brandes after sex and hours of sado-masochism but insisted his victim had volunteered.

It has been Germany's most sensational trial for decades.

The verdict falls well short of the prosecution's demand for a 15-year sentence for sexual murder.

They were two deeply psychologically disturbed people who both wanted something from the other

Judge Volker Muetze

The defence had sought a verdict of illegal euthanasia, carrying a far shorter sentence of six months to five years, on the grounds that it had been a "killing on request".

But while rejecting the defence's argument, the court also ruled that Meiwes had had no "base motives" for the crime and settled on a manslaughter verdict, as Judge Volker Muetze told the packed courtroom.

Meiwes had not, he said, committed a murder in the legal sense "but a behaviour which is condemned in our society - namely the killing and butchering of a human being".

"Seen legally, this is manslaughter, killing a person without being a murderer," he said.

The judge described the killer and his victim as "two deeply psychologically disturbed people who both wanted something from the other".

The case could make legal history in a country which has no laws against cannibalism.

Video killing

Dressed in a dark suit and tie, Meiwes sat impassively as the verdict was read out in court. The BBC's Ray Furlong says that for Meiwes, the verdict was a good result.


Meiwes had a "slaughtering room" in his huge house

The well-spoken computer technician killed and ate Brandes three years ago, after placing an advert on the internet.

It was, he told the court in Kassel, the realisation of a dream he had nurtured ever since having schoolboy fantasies about consuming his classmates.

Despite this, psychologists said he was mentally fit to stand trial.

His victim, also in his 40s, bought a one-way ticket to the defendant's home village and spent an evening with him, before volunteering to be killed.

The court also saw a grisly home video of Brandes being stabbed to death.

Memoirs

The defence had argued that the crime was a form of mercy killing but the prosecution said this did not apply because the victim had been mentally disturbed.


Brandes "asked to be stabbed to death," according to Meiwes

A psychiatrist who testified at the trial said Meiwes had a "schizoid personality" but was not mentally ill.

Investigators found he had been in internet contact with more than 200 people who shared his fantasies.

Meiwes, who may be eligible for early release for good behaviour, has said he plans to write his memoirs in order to persuade other people with similar fantasies to seek help in time.

The internet cannibal, who ate the flesh of Brandes over a period of several months, defrosting cuts from his freezer, may now be the most notorious cannibal in modern German history.

However, his record pales in comparison with the crimes of his countryman Fritz Haarmann, the "Monster of Hanover".

Haarmann, a butcher, murdered at least 24 boys and youths between 1918 and 1924 and sold their flesh to customers seeking cheap meat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3443293.stm
............................................................................................
Eight years and six months!
:eek!!!!:
 
Quixote: Thanks for posting that - it is a pretty amazing verdict - not quite the assisted suicide the defence were going for but still.......

That said I think it is probaby the right one - this whole thing was beyond even your run-of-the-mill abnormal stuff and it must have tricky trying to even understand what was going on in their heads - I feel sorry for the jury who also had to see some of the most distrubing you could possibly imagine.

Emps
 
I presume Armin will be in solitary for eight years. I can't imagine many people wanting to share a cell with him - you might end up as his midnight snack!
 
I also hope he isn't allowed to work in the kitchens or work with the chickens (techncially its not the chickens I'm worried about its the..... rooster).

Emps
 
Some good round ups of the case:

January 30, 2004

On the spot: the German cannibal verdict



Armin Meiwes, a German cannibal, escaped a murder conviction today. Roger Boyes, left, reports from Kassel on the conclusion to an extraordinary trial.

Is there negative reaction to the manslaughter verdict?

No. Meiwes was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison which in Germany is quite a stiff sentence. Murderers get between ten and 15 years.

But the German newspapers tomorrow will probably lead on how he will be out of prison in four and a half years on good behaviour.

It was a difficult call for the judge, as murder couldn't be proven (no obvious motive), and without knowing what the victim wanted, a mercy killing verdict was difficult to establish. So the judge had to find that it was manslaughter and handed down a strong sentence.

How did Meiwes react?

There was a little flicker and a grimace when the verdict was announced. He was looking thinner and paler than when the trial started six weeks ago.

His lawyer considers it a victory on points. He wanted Meiwes to be convicted of killing on demand – with a maximum sentence of five years – and the prosecution wanted 15 for murder. The sentence came out closer to the defence's wishes.

Meiwes told his lawyer: "I'm relieved. At least I'm not being branded a murderer."

He has a week to consider an appeal but it is unlikely. The prosecution are more inclined to appeal, they said that they are still convinced that it was murder. But they will have to look at what kind of legal challenge they can mount and decide if it is likely that they could achieve a longer sentence.

What have we learnt about Meiwes?

He never left home, he was completely dependent on his mother – in an unhealthy way.

The judge said that he remained a child, companion and carer to her, despite her death some years ago. He was caught in different roles including that of a child – he had Mickey Mouse comics in his child-like room, but he's 42.

He is reminiscent of a Norman Bates character, from the Hitchcock film Psycho. I have been to the house – a sprawling 44-room mansion – that he shared just with his mother and it's just like in the film. His mother's room is kept as it was. Her dressing gown is laid out on the bed and a mannequin's head lies on the pillow.

He has drawn a beard on it. He's like a naughty schoolboy making faces.

His father left them when Meiwes was eight or nine years old. Meiwes ran after the car as it drove away. His mother was married and divorced three times and hated men.

Psychologists said that he lacked a male role model. He had two half-brothers from his mother's earlier marriages but they were much older than him and left home when he was relatively young.

He was incredibly lonely and made up imaginary friends. Then he imagined eating them. Because if you eat them, then they will never go away, he said.

The judge conceded today that he was not motivated by sexual gratification, as the prosecution alleged, but what he really wanted was to have someone inside him.

Has his personality made the case difficult?

Yes. All along there was the question – if he had these imaginary friends, how much is he pretending now? Was he really this lonely little boy?

He has read about Jeffrey Dahmer, the US serial murderer who said that he ate his victims because he loved them and wanted them to become part of him. I have wondered if Meiwes is a bit of an actor.

What about the man that was eaten?

If you study the e-mails between the two men, they appear to be talking on two levels.

The victim wanted all sorts of things done to him but he didn't talk about death. He had a return train ticket when he arrived at Meiwes's house in Rotenburg.

Meiwes told him he wanted to eat him, but we don't know if he went along with that. Their e-mail discussions were in the context of fantasy.

Meiwes said that the man, Bernd Juergen Brandes, a fellow computer specialist, had begged him to finish him off once he had carried out the Berliner's main desire – to have his penis cut off – and was bleeding to death. But it turned out, from the video evidence, that Meiwes had been the one to suggest relieving him of his agony.

He didn't call an ambulance so that is manslaughter.

Has there been any reaction from the dead man's family?

Both men appear to have been disowned by their families. The judge commented today on how these were two disturbed people, living parallel lives.

On the one hand they were both balanced nice people, good employees in the same kind of job. But they had these strange interests.

The reaction from their families has been parallel too.

One of Meiwes's brothers is a priest but has never visited him and refused to testify on his behalf.

A former girlfriend and a former boyfriend of Herr Brandes, the man who was killed, spoke in court on how he had never had suicidal tendencies, but his family did not. His father, a prominent doctor in Berlin was too shocked.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-983396,00.html

and on the verdict:

Cannibal killer jailed

From Kevin McElderryn in Kassel, Germany
January 31, 2004


A GERMAN cannibal who killed and ate a man was cleared of murder, but jailed for manslaughter today, after a court agreed that his victim had been seeking "the ultimate kick".

Armin Meiwes was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail after a trial that fascinated and appalled Germany and exposed a hitherto secret market in cannibalism.

Meiwes, 42, in a grey suit and shirt, gave no reaction as the verdict was read to the packed court in Kassel, central Germany.

"It was the act of two psychologically sick people," presiding judge Volker Muetze said in his ruling.

The judges rejected prosecution calls for a murder conviction, which would carry a life term of 15 years.

State prosecutor Marcus Koehler said he would lodge an appeal.

Defence lawyer Harald Ermel said Meiwes was content with the verdict.

"He said he was happy that we had achieved something, that he was not found guilty of murder. He did not want to be a murderer and that was confirmed by the court."

With time off for good behaviour - "He is a model prisoner," Ermel said - Meiwes could be free by mid-2008.


Ermel said he might appeal to try to reduce the conviction to one of killing on demand, punishable by up to five years in prison, saying he was convinced Meiwes, who will undergo psychotherapy, would not re-offend.

The computer technician had admitted slaying, carving up and eating 43-year-old engineer Bernd Juergen Brandes, but insisted it was consensual.

Muetze said the two were "deeply psychologically disturbed people who both wanted something from the other".

Among the evidence was hours of video footage taken of the events of March 10, 2001. The judges also heard from five would-be victims who had answered Meiwes' internet advertisement for someone willing to be killed and eaten.

Muetze said Meiwes, who was assessed as mentally sane by psychologists, did not commit murder in the legal sense but "behaviour that is condemned in our society, namely the killing and butchering of a human being".

He said Meiwes had suffered a damaged childhood. His father abandoned the family when he was young, his two elder brothers also left and his mother was domineering.

"He yearned for someone who would always be with him," Muetze said.

Meiwes contacted like-minded souls on the internet, wrote stories and made pictures the judge said he "could never have dreamed of before this trial".

He also converted an upstairs room in his home in Rotenburg, near Kassel, into a slaughter chamber.

Neighbours and work colleagues had a totally different picture, seeing him as a "decent, friendly person" and "that nice man next door".

Brandes also lived in parallel worlds, Muetze said in his ruling. The son of doctors, he had a steady job in Berlin and a girlfriend.

But he began developing masochistic fantasies which he soon wanted to turn into reality. He offered people money to bite off his penis, which he saw as a "final act" before death.

"He wanted the ultimate kick," Muetze said. He asked to feel Meiwes' teeth marks on his body, then to have his penis bitten off. "Death was a necessary consequence."

After making contact in early 2001, Brandes, who had written a will, bought a one-way rail ticket to Meiwes' home.

After sex at Brandes' request, they cut off his penis and tried to eat it.

Losing consciousness, Brandes was then killed by Meiwes, who dissected his body like an animal's. The judge said his thrill was in the carving and consumption, not the slaying.

Meiwes ate 20 kilogrammes of the flesh - with such accompaniments as pepper sauce or wine sauce with potatoes - stored more in a freezer and buried the rest.

Afterwards he continued to trawl for willing victims - he was in internet touch with more than 200 people with similar fantasies - but was arrested in December 2001 after a student alerted police.

His defence argued that since victim Bernd Juergen Brandes, 43, had volunteered to be killed and eaten, the crime should be classified a mercy killing carrying a five-year maximum penalty.

Explaining the Kassel court's verdict, Muetze said perpetrator and victim used each other as means to an "ultimate climax".

A German victims' rights organisation, White Ring, condemned the ruling, saying it could encourage others to carry out homicidal fantasies.

"The people out there will find it hard to understand the verdict," said Helmut Ruester, a spokesman for the organisation. "I can only hope that there are no copycats."

Meiwes, a computer expert, chatted calmly with his attorney and grinned for cameras before the verdict was announced. Afterward, he shook his lawyer's hand and nodded to reporters.

When his trial opened on December 3 in the central city of Kassel, Meiwes confessed in detail to the killing.

Brandes travelled from Berlin in reply to an internet advertisement seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption".

Meiwes testified that Brandes wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.

"Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life," Meiwes said in his closing statement in court. "For him, it was a nice death."

Still, he said he regretted the killing.

"I had my big kick and I don't need to do it again," he said. "I regret it all very much, but I can't undo it."

During the trial, doctor Manfred Risse testified a grisly video Meiwes made of the crime showed Brandes was still alive when Meiwes stabbed him in the throat, despite the defendant's insistence his victim was already dead.

The doctor testified Brandes died from loss of blood and that the medication, along with a half-bottle of liquor and 20 sleeping pills he took beforehand, could not have lessened his pain.

Several experts testified that Meiwes was fit to stand trial and was not mentally ill. Under German law, this precludes authorities from forcing him to seek counselling.

If today's verdict stands, Meiwes would be eligible for parole in about five-and-a-half years. He has said he will write his memoirs in prison.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the internet.

"If I hadn't been so stupid as to keep looking on the internet, I would have taken my secret to the grave," Meiwes said in his closing statement.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8543878%5E1702,00.html

Summary:

Fri 30 Jan 2004

12:36pm (UK)

Smiling Cannibal Cleared of Murder

"PA"


The smiling cannibal who ate his willing victim was cleared of murder today at the end of a trial that shocked Germany with its macabre revelations.

A court ruled that Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert who met his victim on the Internet, had no ”base motives” – sparing him a possible murder conviction.

The judges convicted him of manslaughter and jailed him for 8 1/2 years.

Prosecutors, who called Meiwes a “human butcher” who acted simply to “satisfy a sexual impulse” and had sought a life sentence for murder, immediately said they would appeal.

His defence argued that since the victim had volunteered to be killed and eaten, the crime should be classified a mercy killing, which carries a five-year maximum penalty.

Before the verdict Meiwes looked calm, chatting with his and occasionally grinning for cameras allowed inside the courtroom before the session began.

After the sentence was read he appeared satisfied, shaking his lawyer’s hand and nodding curtly to the cameras.

Explaining the verdict, Presiding Judge Volker Muetze said Meiwes’ intention was not evil but “the fulfilment of his fantasy.”

His primary motive was “the wish to make another man part of himself,” Muetze said. “Meiwes reached this bonding experience through the consumption of the flesh.”

When his trial opened last month in the central German city of Kassel, Meiwes confessed in detail to the March 2001 killing of 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes at Meiwes’ home in the nearby town of Rotenburg.

Brandes travelled from Berlin in reply to an Internet advertisement seeking a young man for “slaughter and consumption.” Meiwes testified that Brandes wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.

“Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life,” Meiwes said in his closing statement in court on Monday. “For him, it was a nice death.”

Still, he said he regretted the killing.

“I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again,” he said. “I regret it all very much, but I can’t undo it.”

A grisly video he made of the act was shown to the court during a closed session.

A doctor testified that Brandes died from loss of blood and that the medication, along with a half-bottle of liquor and 20 sleeping pills he took beforehand, could not have lessened his pain.

Several experts have testified that Meiwes was fit to stand trial and was not mentally ill.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the Internet.

“If I hadn’t been so stupid as to keep looking on the Internet, I would have taken my secret to the grave,” Meiwes said in his closing statement.

The court rejected the defence argument that Meiwes should be convicted of “killing on request”, a form of illegal euthanasia carrying a far shorter sentence of six months to five years.

Meiwes may be eligible to be released earlier for good behaviour.

Judge Volker Muetze said the deed was “viewed with repulsion in our civilised society” but he said the very clear video evidence showed that Meiwes could not be found guilty of murder.

“Seen legally, this is manslaughter, killing a person without being a murderer,” he said.

Meiwes, a well-spoken computer repair man, had shocked the court during his two-month trial with his calm, unemotional testimony.

Judged sane and fit to stand trial, Meiwes recounted how his desire to eat another man began as a teenager.

A psychologist said Meiwes was subconsciously trying to eat a human being to fill the void caused by the departure of his father and brother, which left him to care for his domineering mother until her death.

A video Meiwes took of the macabre slaughter was shown in court. woman almost fainted watching the video, which showed Meiwes talking to the severed head while he disembowelled the body, hung from a butcher’s hook in his slaughter room.

Meiwes recalled the killing began by him trying unsuccessfully to bite off the victim’s penis at the victim’s request, then cutting it off with a knife.

They both tried to eat it raw, and then fried it, trying again unsuccessfully to eat it. Meiwes then waited for hours until the victim, weakened by loss of blood from his wound, fell unconscious.

He then laid him out on his butcher’s bench, cut him in pieces and ate 44 lb of the body over the following months, defrosting pieces portion by portion.

The meals were often washed down with Muscat or a red South African Cabernet.

He kept the skull in the freezer and buried other body parts in his garden.

Meiwes’s obsession with cannibalism was such that he made life-size models of bodies from marzipan

Using the pseudonym Franky, he inserted internet advertisements which read: “If you are 18-25 you are my boy, Franky from Germany” and “Come to me, I’ll eat your delicious flesh.”

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2471736

and on my question about online cannibalism:

INTERNET CONTACT

Meiwes, who said in court he had fantasised since puberty about consuming a man to fill the void caused by the sudden departure of his father, had been in touch with hundreds of people on the Internet, where he posted ads seeking fit men for "slaughter." His desires were such that he made models of limbs with marzipan.

He built a "slaughter room" complete with butcher's bench and meat hook and a cage in the sprawling half-timbered house in Rotenburg near Kassel left him by his late, domineering mother.

The judge said both Meiwes and his victim, a 43-year-old Berlin computer specialist named only as Bernd-Juergen B., had led double lives, with good jobs and "normal" friends who knew nothing of their fantasies, which grew stronger as they found like-minded people on the Web.

The fateful meeting came in March 2001 in Meiwes's house after Meiwes responded to Bernd-Juergen B.'s Internet ad seeking someone to bite off his penis and kill him.

With no trace of embarrassment, Meiwes told the court how the killing had begun with him trying unsuccessfully to bite off the victim's penis, then cutting it off with a knife.

They both tried to eat it raw, and then fried it, trying again unsuccessfully to eat it. Meiwes then waited for hours until the victim, weakened by loss of blood from his wound, fell unconscious shortly after calling out that he needed to urinate.

He then laid him out on his butcher's bench and cut him in pieces. He ate 20 kg (44 lb) of the body over the following months, defrosting pieces portion by portion. He kept the skull in the freezer and buried other body parts in his garden.

Legal experts expect the case to be appealed and say it could ultimately go to the Supreme Court because it creates a legal dilemma -- does killing a victim who wants to die constitute murder?

"We've seen people growing accustomed to a sub-culture that we couldn't imagine existed before this trial," Muetze said.

"We've opened a door we would rather close again but which shows how many people in need of help live out their fantasies on the Internet," he said.


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=449382&section=news

and:

Time for contracts

German experts say that while there may be hundreds of people with "cannibalistic tendencies" in Germany, only a tiny proportion of those would be willing to see their fantasies through to their fatal conclusion as Mr Brandes apparently did.

The kind of internet message boards where Mr Meiwes placed his own request still exist, but the real cannibals on these sites appear to be hard to find.

Messages which request people for slaughter are often written off as jokes by other participants, many of whom are keen to stress that their interest in cannibalism is only a fantasy.

While Mr Meiwes received dozens of responses to his postings, he is believed to have only met four other men beside Mr Brandes, none of whom went through with the act.

There were fears that should the court punish Mr Meiwes lightly they would unwittingly encourage real cannibals.

But Mr Meiwes's defence lawyer argued that is his client was put away for life, the true horror of murder will be belittled.

Harald Ermel has said that murder "always happens against somebody's will".

Mr Ermel advised those planning similar forays into the world of cannibalism to ensure both parties draw up a contract before the act takes place.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3437587.stm

A contract??

and:

More Cannibal Cases Probed

by Peter Moore Newscenter London Bureau | 365Gay.com

(Kassel, Germany) The trial of a man accused of killing another gay man in a bizarre sex ritual has been told this is not an isolated case. The investigator in charge of the case testified Monday that Armin Meiwes is one of possibly hundreds of other men interested in killing, carving up, and eating their sexual partners.

Meiwes is on trial for the murder of Bernd-Jürgen Brandes in 200. Meiwes has admitted slaughtering Brandes but maintains he was a willing victim. Other evidence presented in the case also points in that direction.

Inspector Isolde Stock told the court that the two men met on the internet through a cannibal website. Stock testified that when police seized Meiwes' computer they found enough violent gay pornography, email correspondence with others involved in cannibalism, and postings in "cannibal forums" to fill two trucks if all the material were printed out.

According to Stock the investigation has shed light on a global network that links "maneaters" from nearly every continent.

"There were also lots of pictures of naked men he had contact with, although many of these seem to have been erased," Stock told the court.

Meiwes and Brandes met after Meiwes posted an ad on one forum for a "young well-built man who wants to be eaten".

Two naked pictures of Brandes taken from Meiwes' computer have been submitted as evidence against him.

Stock said that under questioning by police Meiwes said that there are at least 800 active participants in cannibal forums, and that he was in contact with at least 400 of them. Other experts say the real number is probably much higher.

"There are several hundred people with cannibalistic tendencies in Germany alone, and many thousands around the world," said Rudolf Egg, a criminologist in the German central criminal service.

Only a tiny proportion of those entering cannibal chat-rooms were willing to follow through and meet in real life. Meiwes met only four men and Brandes appears to have been the only one willing to be killed.

The judge read out selections of Meiwes' email conversations. In one Meiwes after exchanging emails back and forth with a man identified only as "Jörg" in which they described their sexual and cannibalistic fantasies "Jörg" noted "there is nothing sexier than to be killed like a pig."

http://www.q.co.za/2004/01/1201_cannibal.htm

and:

Murky world of net cannibalism

The case of Armin Meiwes, the smiling, smartly dressed computer technician who killed and ate someone he met through the internet has shocked and fascinated Germany.

Day after day the court heard grisly revelations of Meiwes' life-long cannibal fantasies - and actions.

The case turned the spotlight on the murky world of cannibalism and extreme fetishism, particularly in a macabre corner of cyberspace.

The detective investigating the case told the court that he had stumbled upon a vast cannibal scene in Germany involving a number of professionals.

"We are talking about dentists, teachers, cooks, government officials and handymen," federal investigator Wilfried Fehl told the court. "These are people who come from the middle reaches of society."

Internet

Among the most startling revelations of the trial was Meiwes' revelation that he had been in internet contact with dozens of people who answered his ad seeking a young man who wanted to be eaten.

Using the pseudonym "Franky", he inserted internet advertisements which read: "If you are 18-25 you are my boy, Franky from Germany" and "come to me, I'll eat your delicious flesh".

But, clearly, not all of those who replied wanted to die. Some would have been hoaxers, others would have wanted to play out their sexual fantasies.

Only four men - other than the one who was eventually eaten - were interested enough, the court heard, to travel to Meiwes' farm in central Germany to meet him.

None of them went through with the act.

But London-based hotel worker Dirk Moller testified that he had even got as far as being chained to the bed and marked out for butchery before changing his mind. He asked to be released and Meiwes complied.

German experts say that while there may be hundreds of people with "cannibalistic tendencies" in Germany, only a tiny proportion of those would be willing to see their fantasies through to their fatal conclusion as Mr Brandes apparently did.

'Just fantasy'

The kind of internet message boards where Mr Meiwes placed his own request are plentiful but the real cannibals on these sites appear to be hard to find.

Messages which request people for slaughter are often written off as jokes by other participants, many of whom are keen to stress that their interest in cannibalism is only a fantasy.

Meiwes' lawyer, Harald Ermel, advised those planning similar forays into the world of cannibalism to ensure both parties drew up a contract before any act took place.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/3444333.stm

Published: 2004/01/30 11:47:31 GMT

© BBC MMIV

Emps
 
Chilling pictures of hidden world

Cannibal's House of Horror

From Neville Thurlbeck, in Kassel, Germany

HOME is where the heart is—and the lungs, liver and kidneys too.

For this is the chilling house of horror where jailed cannibal Armin Meiwes, pictured right, butchered, froze and cooked his willing victim.

As the killer yesterday began his controversial 8-year sentence for manslaughter, locals in the central German village of Rotenburg were calling for the rotting half-timbered mansion to be pulled down.

For Meiwes' spooky, 44-roomed half-timbered sprawl was nicknamed "the ghost house" long before he started luring potential dinners back.

Police took away truckloads of contents after discovering Berlin computer expert Bernd Brandes had been stabbed to death, filleted and eaten there.

But although Meiwes was sensationally found not guilty of murder on Friday—as the victim was a consenting participant—our exclusive pictures reveal the isolated house on the hill still reeks of evil.

It looks eerily like the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock's classic big-screen heart-stopper Psycho.

And, just like mad killer Norman Bates, 42-year-old Meiwes was obsessed with his domineering mother.

When she died in 1999, aged 77, he stayed on in the house they shared— keeping all the gloomy heavy antique decor she chose.

He even wore her clothes, mimicked her voice and kept her room as a shrine—laying a manikin's head on the pillow.

Snack

But with Mum gone Meiwes could live out his lifelong fantasy of feasting on human flesh. After wooing Brandes on the internet Meiwes met him up at the station and took him to the house.

He led him along the lino-floored corridors to show off his "slaughter room"—a narrow windowless upstairs chamber with a meat hook fixed to the ceiling, a cage for holding victims and walls now flecked with mould. After romping on a damp, bare bed the men went down to the kitchen.

There—after downing 20 sleeping pills, a bottle of Vicks cold relief and schnapps—Brandes, 43, agreed to be killed. First Meiwes cut off his manhood with a butcher's knife, bandaged him and fried the organ with garlic for a snack.

It took Brandes 10 hours to die after Meiwes put him in a warm bath to "bleed out".

Meiwes whiled away the time reading a Star Trek adventure and finished off the job at 4.15am by hauling his guest to the slaughter room and stabbing him in the throat.

As an easy listening radio station played, Meiwes stripped 65lb of flesh from the body, which he portioned into plastic bags and hid in the cellar, under pizzas in the deep freeze.

He cooked some every day for 10 months, even trying to make flour by grinding baked arm bone. The leftovers and teeth were buried in the garden— near a barbecue used regularly for human grills.

It was only when supplies started running low that Meiwes began trawling for fresh victims. Police arrested him when a young Austrian man he contacted was horrified to discover it was no joke.

When cops raided Meiwes' ramshackle home they found just 15lb of Brandes left in the freeezer.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Martin Knobbe & Detlef Schmalenberg/Stern/Picture Press/SOA



Come on over for breakfast...

A STRING of blood-curdling e-mails today reveals the sheer horror firing the twisted mind of convicted cannibal Armin Meiwes.

The German sicko, jailed on Friday for slaughtering, cooking and eating another man, trawled the internet for willing victims then set about luring them to the dinner table and onto his plate with THOUSANDS of bizarre messages.

Eventually, after months of fishing with adverts on pervert websites, he hooked disturbed computer technician Bernd Brandes.

From Valentine's Day, 2001, until the final banquet of blood on March 9, the two men conducted a deadly courtship.

Leftovers

The drama that unfolds in the chilling e-mail traffic between cannibal Meiwes and victim Brandes rivals anything Hollywood could concoct—in fact the killer now hopes for a £1million payday as moviemakers vie for his story.

In an early message the cannibal teases by announcing he is making spaghetti carbonara for dinner. Relishing his gory end the victim replies: "You don't have to buy meat again, there will be plenty left."

Then came a terrifyingly matter-of-fact exchange about the fate of any human leftovers.

VICTIM: "What will you do with my brain?"

CANNIBAL: "I'll leave it, I don't want to split your skull."

VICTIM: "Better bury it, preferably in a cemetery; nobody notices skulls there. Or maybe pulverise it?"

CANNIBAL: "We have a nice small cemetery here."

VICTIM: "You could use it as an ashtray."

The anticipation got 43-year-old Brandes, pictured bottom right, sexually excited and he described in great detail the relief he expected from being bumped off and devoured at Meiwes' isolated house near Rotenburg.

He wrote: "I hope you are serious because I really want it. My nipples look forward to your stomach."

As the fatal rendezvous approached the weird cyber banter between the two men grew...

VICTIM: "Are you a smoker?"

CANNIBAL: "Yes, but my teeth are still pretty white."

VICTIM: "That's good, I smoke, too. I hope you like smoked meat."

CANNIBAL: "Just bring yourself for breakfast."

But, before discovering his human meal-ticket to notoriety, Meiwes had plenty of near-misses.

Incredibly, he was in touch with around 200 would-be dinners, attracted by his ads on websites with names like ‘Flesh and Bone' and ‘Cannibal Cafe'.

Calling himself Franky—after a fantasy friend he invented during a lonely childhood—Meiwes, 42, e-mailed one eager applicant and declared: "I hope you can come quick to me, I am a hungry cannibal. Please tell me your height and weight and I will butcher and eat your fine flesh."

Portion control was obviously important to obsessed Meiwes. An e-mail to a man called Hansel read: "Hi! Being roasted alive, that is absolutely a beautiful concept.

"But keep in mind that with your weight there is about 35kg of your flesh available for eating. If everyone eats 500gms you need 70 people. And there shouldn't be anything left of your delicious flesh.

"To get such a high number of diners could be difficult so if you do decide to have yourself slaughtered then please contact me."

One of the first oddballs to respond was an Italian called Matteo.

But his tastes were a bit strong even for Meiwes. Without a hint of irony, he told the judges in court: "Matteo wanted me to burn his testicles with a flame thrower.

Whipped

"And he wanted me to hammer his body down with nails and pins while he was whipped to death. I found that a bit weird."

At Christmas Meiwes made contact with a man who said he could provide a young boy for dinner.

But a couple of days later he was off the menu. Meiwes recalled: "He said he was being eaten at a Russian Orthodox feast. I tried his website after Christmas but there was no reply so perhaps it happened."

The killer also spoke of another e-mail pal, Andreas, from Regensburg in southern Germany. "He wanted me to pick him up in a cattle truck and slaughter him like a pig," said Meiwes.

"I told him to take the train. I picked him up at the station and we went back to the butchery at my house. He wanted me to wear rubber boots, which he licked. I wrapped him in clingfilm ready for slaughtering but he backed out. So we just fooled around, drank beer and ate pizza."

Wannabe lunch Dirk Moeller, a German conference organiser living in London, was next.

Meiwes said: "He wanted me to pronounce a death sentence upon him like in a court so I got one made up from a document on the internet. He came to the house but he backed out, too. We ended up going to the pictures to watch Ocean's Eleven."

Alex from Essen had a specific request, too—to be beheaded. Meiwes refused because he was "too fat".

And Stefan from Kassel almost made it into the pot—only to be pardoned because of the weather.

He got as far as being hung up on the slaughter chamber's meat hook, wrapped in clingfilm with labels pinned into his flesh denoting various cuts like steak, ham and bacon.

Meiwes said: "We called it off because it was so damn cold in there."

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news2.shtml

It all looks quite sad and homemade - films clearly spoil us on the lairs of such monsters. That said the dining room looks straight out of Psycho.

I suppose you have to admire the NotW for making 'puns' in such dark circumstances.

Emps
 
Another summary which brings up some things I don't think have been mentioned before - like dressing up like his dead mother:

Bidding war for 'caring cannibal'

From The Sunday Times
February 02, 2004

A GERMAN computer engineer who killed a willing victim he had found on the internet, and cooked 20kg of human flesh in olive oil and garlic, could make more than a million dollars from his story.

As Armin Meiwes, 42, began on Saturday an 8 1/2-year sentence for manslaughter, his lawyer disclosed a bidding war had broken out for the rights to a film of his life. A British production company was said to be among those interested.

"At this point I'm contractually bound not to give out the name of the company," said Harald Ermel, his lawyer. "But it's early days and we're getting more offers all the time."

The film rights could net Meiwes, whose cannibalism has earned him international notoriety, more than
Bidding war for 'caring cannibal'

From The Sunday Times
February 02, 2004

A GERMAN computer engineer who killed a willing victim he had found on the internet, and cooked 20kg of human flesh in olive oil and garlic, could make more than a million dollars from his story.

As Armin Meiwes, 42, began on Saturday an 8 1/2-year sentence for manslaughter, his lawyer disclosed a bidding war had broken out for the rights to a film of his life. A British production company was said to be among those interested.

"At this point I'm contractually bound not to give out the name of the company," said Harald Ermel, his lawyer. "But it's early days and we're getting more offers all the time."

The film rights could net Meiwes, whose cannibalism has earned him international notoriety, more than $1 million.

Germany allows criminals to make money from writing about their crimes, although Meiwes could have to pay back the cost of the trial, estimated at up to $140,000.

"It's very Hannibal Lecter," said Randy Sanchez, the marketing director of Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based company that analyses audience tastes for Hollywood studios.

Meiwes, meanwhile, is preparing to write his memoirs.

There is no denying Germany's macabre fascination with the tale of a real-life Lecter who devoured brussels sprouts and fried potatoes with his victim's flesh, rather than the fava beans and chianti favoured by his fictional forerunner in The Silence of the Lambs.

The portrait that emerged during Meiwes's eight-week trial was of a disturbed individual who had been obsessed since puberty with eating another man to become "one with him".

One of his early fantasies was to kill and consume the actor who played Sandy in the 1970s television show Flipper. He also ripped apart Barbie dolls to act out the dismemberment of imaginary victims.

Meiwes claimed he was trying to fill a void left by his father, Dieter, who abandoned the family when he was 12.

Another factor in his psychological make-up was his domineering mother, Waltraud, who bullied him remorselessly. She forced Meiwes to wear Bavarian-style lederhosen to school, exposing him to unrelenting mockery from his classmates. He fantasised about eating them, too.

The turning point came in 1999 when Waltraud died, aged 77, after a long illness. Like Norman Bates, the motel manager in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Meiwes started imagining he was his mother, dressing in her clothes and impersonating her voice.

Shortly afterwards he began a relationship with a woman named only as Martina. It was a curious romance. Martina was so worried about becoming pregnant again that she insisted on wearing thick underwear during their love-making.

She was even more concerned when he professed a taste for young men. The relationship ended abruptly. Meiwes turned back to his fantasy – and the internet provided him with the perfect instrument to transform it into reality.


Adopting the online pseudonym Frankie, an imaginary childhood friend, he placed advertisements on the web seeking fit men for "slaughter". Astonishingly, hundreds volunteered.

Before making his selection, Meiwes built a "slaughter room" complete with a butcher's bench, meat hook and cage in the half-timbered 44-room house he had inherited from his mother in the hills above Kassel.

A steady trickle of would-be victims made their way to the house – but Meiwes was a fussy eater. One, from London, was too fat for his liking. Another, a 31-year-old hotel cook named Jorg, was rejected because although he was excited by talking about death, Meiwes did not think he would enjoy it when the moment came.

In the end, it was Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, an engineer from Berlin, who was chosen.

The pair made contact in early 2001 and, after a flurry of emails, Brandes arrived in Kassel that March. He was met at the railway station by Meiwes, who took him to a bar and plied him with brandy.

After a few hours, Brandes had second thoughts and wanted to go home. But Meiwes talked him round and they went back to the house. A couple of bottles of cough mixture helped calm him. Later, Meiwes severed Brandes's penis with a knife and sliced it into strips. The two men tried to eat it raw and then fried it with garlic and onions, but it was still too tough. The scene was filmed with a video camera set up by Meiwes.

They decided to have another go at eating the penis the next morning – with a grisly side order. "If you hold out, we will eat your eggs (German slang for testicles) for breakfast," Meiwes told his friend.

Weakened by blood loss as he lay in a bath, Brandes eventually fell unconscious. Meiwes hauled him out of the bath and killed him with several stabs to the throat with a long-handled chef's knife. Then he lay the body on his butcher's bench and cut it into pieces. The flesh was stored in the freezer to be eaten later. The skull and bones were buried in the garden.

Even as he ate his way through Brandes, barbecuing some parts and following gourmet recipes for others, Meiwes continued to advertise for other victims. It was not until December 2002, after he was reported to the police by an Austrian student, that he was arrested.

Meiwes quickly confessed, but pointed out that Brandes had wanted to be eaten. Cannibalism is not a crime in Germany and Meiwes claimed he was guilty only of assisting in another man's death.

Although the judge disagreed, there was surprise at the relatively light sentence he handed down last Friday for manslaughter. The cannibal – a model prisoner in custody – could be free in four years.

There were other worries too. Meiwes's former colleagues recalled with a shudder the meatballs and other savoury snacks he had brought to the office.

With a book and film on the way, however, an intriguing future beckons for the man portrayed by his lawyer as a caring cannibal.

"At the trial, Meiwes opened his soul to the world and everyone knew that what he was saying was the absolute truth," Ermel said.

"He would never have eaten his victim against his wishes, and when he has served his time he will indeed have plenty to look forward to."
million.

Germany allows criminals to make money from writing about their crimes, although Meiwes could have to pay back the cost of the trial, estimated at up to 0,000.

"It's very Hannibal Lecter," said Randy Sanchez, the marketing director of Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based company that analyses audience tastes for Hollywood studios.

Meiwes, meanwhile, is preparing to write his memoirs.

There is no denying Germany's macabre fascination with the tale of a real-life Lecter who devoured brussels sprouts and fried potatoes with his victim's flesh, rather than the fava beans and chianti favoured by his fictional forerunner in The Silence of the Lambs.

The portrait that emerged during Meiwes's eight-week trial was of a disturbed individual who had been obsessed since puberty with eating another man to become "one with him".

One of his early fantasies was to kill and consume the actor who played Sandy in the 1970s television show Flipper. He also ripped apart Barbie dolls to act out the dismemberment of imaginary victims.

Meiwes claimed he was trying to fill a void left by his father, Dieter, who abandoned the family when he was 12.

Another factor in his psychological make-up was his domineering mother, Waltraud, who bullied him remorselessly. She forced Meiwes to wear Bavarian-style lederhosen to school, exposing him to unrelenting mockery from his classmates. He fantasised about eating them, too.

The turning point came in 1999 when Waltraud died, aged 77, after a long illness. Like Norman Bates, the motel manager in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Meiwes started imagining he was his mother, dressing in her clothes and impersonating her voice.

Shortly afterwards he began a relationship with a woman named only as Martina. It was a curious romance. Martina was so worried about becoming pregnant again that she insisted on wearing thick underwear during their love-making.

She was even more concerned when he professed a taste for young men. The relationship ended abruptly. Meiwes turned back to his fantasy – and the internet provided him with the perfect instrument to transform it into reality.


Adopting the online pseudonym Frankie, an imaginary childhood friend, he placed advertisements on the web seeking fit men for "slaughter". Astonishingly, hundreds volunteered.

Before making his selection, Meiwes built a "slaughter room" complete with a butcher's bench, meat hook and cage in the half-timbered 44-room house he had inherited from his mother in the hills above Kassel.

A steady trickle of would-be victims made their way to the house – but Meiwes was a fussy eater. One, from London, was too fat for his liking. Another, a 31-year-old hotel cook named Jorg, was rejected because although he was excited by talking about death, Meiwes did not think he would enjoy it when the moment came.

In the end, it was Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, 43, an engineer from Berlin, who was chosen.

The pair made contact in early 2001 and, after a flurry of emails, Brandes arrived in Kassel that March. He was met at the railway station by Meiwes, who took him to a bar and plied him with brandy.

After a few hours, Brandes had second thoughts and wanted to go home. But Meiwes talked him round and they went back to the house. A couple of bottles of cough mixture helped calm him. Later, Meiwes severed Brandes's penis with a knife and sliced it into strips. The two men tried to eat it raw and then fried it with garlic and onions, but it was still too tough. The scene was filmed with a video camera set up by Meiwes.

They decided to have another go at eating the penis the next morning – with a grisly side order. "If you hold out, we will eat your eggs (German slang for testicles) for breakfast," Meiwes told his friend.

Weakened by blood loss as he lay in a bath, Brandes eventually fell unconscious. Meiwes hauled him out of the bath and killed him with several stabs to the throat with a long-handled chef's knife. Then he lay the body on his butcher's bench and cut it into pieces. The flesh was stored in the freezer to be eaten later. The skull and bones were buried in the garden.

Even as he ate his way through Brandes, barbecuing some parts and following gourmet recipes for others, Meiwes continued to advertise for other victims. It was not until December 2002, after he was reported to the police by an Austrian student, that he was arrested.

Meiwes quickly confessed, but pointed out that Brandes had wanted to be eaten. Cannibalism is not a crime in Germany and Meiwes claimed he was guilty only of assisting in another man's death.

Although the judge disagreed, there was surprise at the relatively light sentence he handed down last Friday for manslaughter. The cannibal – a model prisoner in custody – could be free in four years.

There were other worries too. Meiwes's former colleagues recalled with a shudder the meatballs and other savoury snacks he had brought to the office.

With a book and film on the way, however, an intriguing future beckons for the man portrayed by his lawyer as a caring cannibal.

"At the trial, Meiwes opened his soul to the world and everyone knew that what he was saying was the absolute truth," Ermel said.

"He would never have eaten his victim against his wishes, and when he has served his time he will indeed have plenty to look forward to."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8558417%5E29677,00.html
 
NHS inquiry after dismembered body found

Psychiatric patient newly released from hospital in police custody after being discovered at scene of brutal killing

Rosie Cowan and John Carvel
Thursday February 19, 2004
The Guardian

The NHS launched a serious incident inquiry last night after a psychiatric patient released from a London mental hospital was found hours later in a flat in which a man had been brutally killed.

Managers at East London and City mental health trust were investigating how the patient came to be discharged from one of its hospitals. The patient was in police custody last night having been arrested on Tuesday evening in north London. That morning he left a mental ward where he had been a voluntary patient.

The victim, a man in his 40s also believed to be a former psychiatric patient, had been hacked to death. A police spokeswoman said he had suffered "multiple injuries, including some dismemberment".

One leg had been severed from his body and his head cracked open with a blunt instrument. There was also the possibility that some of the body had been cooked - parts of what is believed to be human tissue were found by police frying in a pan.


Forensic experts are testing items, including possible weapons, recovered from the scene. Detectives from Scotland Yard's serious crime directorate are investigating.

Mental health campaigners have expressed doubts about the adequacy of discharge procedures. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said there were about 50 homicides a year by people in contact with mental health services because they had a mental illness or disorder or both.

Police were called to the north London flat at 7.40pm on Tuesday. A post mortem examination was being carried out last night.

SNIP

• A 34-year-old man is expected to appear at Waltham Forest magistrates court this morning charged with the murder of a 45-year-old man.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1151280,00.html
 
Follow ups:

Trust the Currant Bun:

Cannibal horror

By IAN HEPBURN

A CANNIBAL has been caught by cops as he cooked his victim’s brain in a pan on the hob.

Horrified officers found the dismembered body of the dead man after they were called to a flat in East London.

Blood was splattered on the walls and floor — and the maniac was frying the brain in the kitchen.

The sickening discovery came after neighbours made frantic 999 calls about a “terrible attack”.

The body, believed to be that of the 45-year-old bachelor tenant of the flat, had suffered multiple injuries including dismemberment.

One police officer leaving the scene on Tuesday evening was reported to have told a neighbour: “It’s horrible. It’s terrible in there.”

A man was arrested at the flat in Walthamstow, East London.

Two women — aged 29 and 19 — were held in nearby Chingford but were both later freed.

Last night it was revealed that the murder suspect had been released hours earlier from a mental home. The victim, named by neighbours as Brian Cherry, is also believed to have received psychiatric treatment.

One neighbour said: “His mother died a few weeks ago. Brian didn’t work. He lived on his own.”

A number of weapons, believed to include knives, were seized at the scene and sent to forensic labs for examination.

A senior police source said: “One real possibility is that the body was being cut up and prepared for a meal.

“The brain was being fried in a pan on the hob when officers raided the flat. There are aspects of the Mental Health Act which are being addressed. Cannibalism is a motive that cannot be overlooked at this time.”




Jailed ... Meiwes

The crime has chilling echoes of the Hollywood movie Hannibal in which cannibal Hannibal Lecter, left, played by Anthony Hopkins, fried his victim’s brain.

It also comes after computer technician Armin Meiwes, 42, was jailed for 8½ years after he ate a man he befriended over the internet in Germany.

A 34-year-old man appeared in court today charged with murdering Brian Cherry, of Walthamstow, and was remanded in custody until February 26.

Peter Bryan, whose address was given as Newham General Hospital in east London, spoke only to confirm his name and address during the brief hearing at Waltham Forest Magistrates Court. No bail application was made.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2004081045,00.html

Also this one very similar to the Gaurdian and not worth posting in full:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/9236182?source=Evening Standard

Emps
 
Who was the US TV (television) clairevoyant who predicted the world would be over run by cannibals by the end of the 1960s? I think he used to act for Ed Wood (other sort of TV). Perhaps he was right - just off with his dates!:blah:

I shall Google this when I have time.

Ah I've got it now, Criswell!
There are some predictions here also.
 
More on Meiwes (perhaps we need a thread dedicated to him):

No pretend penises in cannibal documentary

Channel 4 says there will be no shots of pretend penises in a documentary about a German cannibal killer who fried his victim's member in garlic before eating it.

Bodyshock: The Man Who Ate His Lover, to be shown on March 1, will show how Armin Meiwes, who was jailed for eight years in January, killed Bernd Brandes and ate 20kg of his flesh over the next two years.

A Channel 4 spokesman told TV Plus: "The programme will not be graphic, there are no shots of pretend penises being cut off or anything like that."

It tells the story of how Meiwes, 42, contacted fellow German Brandes on the web. They met to indulge in extreme erotic cannibalistic fantasies which led to Brandes's death after his penis was severed, cooked and eaten.

The spokesman said: "It's a very intelligent look at the story with interviews with friends and neighbours of the men and psychologists."

Channel 4 is unlikely to screen a warning before the programme, reports TV Plus.

The spokesman said: "I don't think a warning will be required as there's nothing graphic in the film."

Story filed: 10:24 Friday 20th February 2004

http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_868230.html

Emps
 
The main page for the upcoming Channel 4 Bodyshock doc:

The Man Who Ate His Lover

Dr Martin Brookes

March 2004

Consider the following story line for the ultimate video nasty. Single man meets radical male masochist on the Internet. On their first date, the masochist offers up his penis as main course in a romantic dinner for two. After some teething problems over the best way to prepare the food, the two men enjoy a meal of garnished genitals. Satiated, and feeling woozy, the masochist is led upstairs to the bathroom, where he is left to bleed to death. Hours later, our host pops in to see how his date is doing, and finishes him off with a knife to the throat. He then butchers the body and barbecues the meat.

Even as fiction, this extreme tale of human weirdness would be difficult to stomach. So how do we respond when two middle-aged computer engineers turn this incredulous plot into jaw-dropping fact? Two words: shock and awe. Just when you thought you'd heard it all, along comes a German cannibal, Armin Meiwes, and his willing victim, Bernd-Juergen Brandes, to rewrite the book of bizarre human behaviour. Rarely has a criminal investigation aroused such ghoulish curiosity or raised such difficult questions about the dark places that the human mind can go.

Amid the media scramble surrounding the recent courtroom drama, there has been a clamour to understand and to explain this behaviour, which, incidentally, is not even illegal under either German or British law. In desperation, we turn to science for answers. What can rational objectivity tell us about such irrational acts of violence and mutilation? Perhaps not very much. But with little else to go on, we must be content with what morsels of knowledge we can find.

Nothing new

Cannibalism itself is hardly original. It has been documented in both ancient and modern human societies in various guises. Sometimes the motivation seems ritualistic or aggressive. In other cases it is simply a matter of survival, as it was during the infamous tragedy in 1972, when a plane carrying a team of rugby players crash-landed in a remote region of the Andes. Stranded for 70 days in a frozen wilderness, the only survivors were those who resorted to eating their dead teammates.

In court, Meiwes explained that by eating Brandes he felt that he was acquiring his victim's spirit and skills. It is a belief that seems to have been widespread in societies that have practised cannibalism. From the cannibalistic tribes of New Guinea to the Wari' Indians of the Amazon, the consumption of human flesh hasn't just been about eating, it was also about absorbing the qualities of the deceased.

Animal cannibals

Meiwes is certainly not alone in his taste for familiar flesh. The animal kingdom is littered with cannibalistic species. Snails, insects, spiders, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals all contain unscrupulous members that are undaunted by eating their own kind. When food is scarce, there is a clear Darwinian logic to cannibalism. It can even make evolutionary sense for a mother to eat her own young during especially hard times. Reproduction is a costly business, and if there is little chance of your offspring surviving to adulthood then why not eat them and recoup the energy you have invested, thus saving up for better times?

For some animals, food shortages are not the only occasions when cannibalism is a good evolutionary strategy. Take lions, for instance. When a new male joins a pride, he may kill and eat cubs fathered by other males. In doing so, he effectively removes individuals to whom he is genetically unrelated. Females will then come back into oestrous, enabling the male to father new offspring of his own. This way, he gets to re-populate the pride with his own cubs, and have a nice meal to boot.

Clearly, natural selection has favoured cannibalistic behaviour in some species. But in humans? Surely Meiwes' rather gauche attitude towards nutrition had little to do with getting his own genes into the next generation. In this case, it seems, evolutionary biology can give few clues in our hunt for explanations. Perhaps psychology, then, can offer some more salient pointers.

In mind

The cannibal mind has provided a veritable feast for hungry psychologists. But results have been difficult to digest. For a start, cannibals, we can only assume, just don't come in the kind of quantity required for rigorous scientific studies. So speculation has become the order of the day. And, judging by the number of theories now doing the rounds, cannibals may be a diverse little bunch. If we can safely say anything at all, it may be that there is no such thing as the typical cannibal.

Not surprisingly, mothers feature prominently in psychological explanations of cannibalism. Some psychologists believe that the desire to eat another person stems from the time when a child is weaned from its mother's breast. The separation anxiety may lead to frustration, aggression, and cannibalistic fantasises. It's as if the child acquires an intense urge to absorb its mother into its own body. Even if this desire becomes sublimated, it may re-surface in later life, particularly in response to stress or trauma. An overbearing mother is only likely to amplify these effects in children that are already susceptible. This pattern, if true, would certainly concur with the path Meiwes has taken. He first fantasised about eating people when he was a schoolboy. But it was the death of his domineering mother, when he was 37, that seemed to send him off the rails.

Sexual highs

But this can't be the whole story. If overbearing mothers were to blame then surely we'd be witnessing a feeding frenzy of cannibals. Time then to turn to that second psychological gold mine, the sexual disorder. The sketchy evidence that exists does suggest that sex may be a prominent feature in many cases of cannibalism. In the 1920s, for instance, the notorious American cannibal Albert Fish raped and murdered a string of children. But the real fun, he insisted, was in the eating. Fish experienced extreme sexual pleasure as he devoured his victims.

During the 1950s, American farmer Edward Gein combined his twin passions of cannibalism and necrophilia. More recently, in the 1980s, a Japanese cannibal, Issei Sagawa, fell in love with and then ate a French woman, declaring her breasts and buttocks to be delicious. Others who claim to have eaten human flesh, say that they experienced a sense of euphoria and heightened sexual pleasure. Some have even compared it to the effects of taking mescaline.

In 2002, the results of a psychological survey suggested that people would be much more likely to eat someone that they found sexually attractive. Meiwes did reject several potential victims before finally settling on Brandes. But his choice seems to have been based on culinary considerations rather than sexual ones. At the beginning of his trial, he declared that sex was not the prime motivation behind his consumption of Brandes. But the court heard later that Meiwes did derive sexual satisfaction from watching re-runs of his video nasty.

Mental illness

Perhaps the strongest factor linking the pedigree of criminal cannibals is serious mental illness. Some of the most infamous flesh eaters like Fish, Gein, Sagawa, and the Russian cannibal Andrei Chikatilo, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. Hallucinations, blackouts, and a heightened sense of awareness seem to be common experiences that accompany cannibalistic activity. Yet Meiwes has not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and psychiatrists found him mentally competent to stand trial.

We might never know what it was that drove Armin Meiwes to snack on his own sort. Maybe it was nothing more sordid than the pursuit of money and publicity. After all, a book is already in the offing. But while Meiwes is undoubtedly an enigma he is, in many ways, the less interesting of our two protagonists. For if the actions of Meiwes are difficult to explain, then those of his victim are bewildering by comparison.

Why be eaten?

According to Meiwes, Brandes had fantasised about being killed and eaten since he was a child. Yet Brandes' homosexual partner, a key witness in the trial, testified that Brandes had shown no signs of depression. Nor had he offered any hints of his peculiar suicidal fantasy. In fact the two men had been planning a holiday together shortly before Brandes bought his one-way train ticket to Meiwes' home in Rotenburg.

Few people have so comprehensively explored the antithesis of reason as much as Bernd-Juergen Brandes. So bizarre was his behaviour that it makes that apocryphal migratory journey of the Norwegian lemming seem like sound common sense. Here is a man who was a willing volunteer in his own demise; someone who not only ate his penis, but enjoyed it in the full knowledge that it was to be his last supper. In those final few hours, what thoughts could possibly have been swirling around his semi-conscious mind as he lay bleeding to death, alone in the bath? His behaviour seems to go way beyond the pleasure and pain principle of sado-masochism into far more perplexing territory. Sadly, his own account will never be told.

Find out more

Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third party sites

Websites

Albert Fish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish
Synopsis of the life and crimes of Albert Fish who ate some of his young victims and derived sexual pleasure from it.

BBC News Europe Armin Meiwes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/
europe/3254074.stm
Article about the trial of Armin Meiwes and the modern taboo of cannibalism.

Brief History of Cannibal Controversies
http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/
news_cannibalism_pt2.htm
Online interview and video of Beth Conklin, well respected anthropologist and author of Consuming Grief (see Books below).

Cannibalism 'rife among prehistoric humans'
http://www.newscientist.com/news/
news.jsp?id=ns99993615
Article in the New Scientist that sheds light on the history of cannibalism through genetic research findings.

Cannibalism: The ancient taboo in modern times
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/
psychology/cannibalism/index.html?sect=19
In-depth look at the history of cannibalism and the different reasons that it occurs.

Giving Cannibalism a Human Face
http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/
news_cannibalism_nsv.htm
Anthropologist Beth Conklin discusses her work with the Wari' tribe.

Government in Shock Move to Legalise Cannibalism
http://www.deadbrain.co.uk/news/
article_2004_02_02_2208.php
Spoof article in the online magazine, Deadbrain.

Mad Ignorance USA
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/
ignorance12004.cfm
Disturbing article that looks at the meat industry in the US and argues that BSE has been able to spread through livestock by agribusiness changing cows from herbivores into carnivores and cannibals.

Books


The Cannibal Within (Evolutionary foundations of human behaviour) by Lewis Petronovich (Aldine de Gruyter, 2000)
Argues that cannibalism is an evolutionarily derived instinct that arises as a survival strategy in extreme circumstances such as chronic famine or acute starvation and not a pathology that erupts in psychotic individuals. Neo-Darwinist Petrinovich explores the historical and archaeological evidence.
Buy this book from Amazon



Consuming Grief: Compassionate cannibalism in an Amazonian society by Beth Conklin (University of Texas Press, 2001)
As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased. Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this text presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded.
Buy this book from Amazon



Divine Hunger: Cannibalism as a cultural science by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
The practice of cannibalism is in certain cultures rejected as evil, while in others it plays a central part in the ritual order. Through a detailed examination of ritual cannibalism in selected tribal societies, and a comparison of those cases with others in which the practice is absent, Reeves shows that cannibalism is closely linked to people's orientation to the world.
Buy this book from WHsmith




Films


Alive (1993)
Directed by Frank Marshall
A team of young rugby players, survivors of a plane crash in the Andes, discover that the search for them has been called off. With their food and water nearly gone, their lives become a nightmare and they resort to eating their dead colleagues.
Buy this book from Amazon



The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989)
Directed by Peter Greenaway
A French restaurant is the setting for murder, sex and revenge in this disturbing and sumptuous offering by Greenaway. Michael Gambon plays the thief and Helen Mirren his downtrodden wife. The final scene of revenge involves Mirren's lover, murdered by her husband, being cooked and carved up, and Gambon being made to eat him.
Buy this book from Amazon



The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
A serial killer who skins his female victims is on the loose. FBI agent Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, seeks the help of psychiatrist-turned-cannibal, Dr Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. The film is based on Thomas Harris' novel, in which Lecter is actually inspired by the infamous Albert Fish, who ate many of his young victims in 1920s/30s America.
Buy this book from Amazon



Hannibal (2001)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Doctor Hannibal Lecter escapes from incarceration and travels to Florence. Once again, Clarice Starling, this time played by Julianne Moore, finds herself on the trail of one of the FBI's most wanted. He's back and he's still hungry!
Buy this book from Amazon



Red Dragon (2002)
Directed by Brett Ratner
The first chapter in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, this is the story of FBI agent Will Graham, played by Edward Norton, who is assigned the task of catching 'The Tooth Fairy'. In order to do so he must try to persuade Lecter to advise him.
Buy this book from Amazon

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/body/bodyshock_cannibal.html
 
Meiwesical

Erika Shuch stretches to tell macabre tale

Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle

Saturday, April 3, 2004




Erika Shuch is just 29, but her raw and intuitive form of dance theater has cried out for a larger audience since she settled in San Francisco in 2000. Now with the Thursday-night opening of the Erika Shuch Performance Project's fourth full-evening work, running three weeks at Intersection for the Arts, Shuch has the platform to find a wider fan base and a show that deserves great word of mouth.

"All You Need" has an air of youthfulness, with its rollicking live music, fresh-faced performers and quirkily episodic sensibility. If the wry tone sometimes recalls the radio show "This American Life," Shuch herself claims it as a primary influence.

This is precociously mature work. In 2002, Shuch eerily captured our post- Sept. 11, 2001, reality in a wordless scene involving a stack of suitcases, a crossbow, an apple and a Johnny Cash song. "All You Need" does not carry the same degree of chilling urgency, but it's a high-energy, challenging and often insightful display of Shuch's gift for provocative imagery.

The inspiration is macabre. Earlier this year, Shuch came across the true story of a German cannibal, "M," who advertised on the Internet for a "well- built man for slaughter." Reportedly more than 400 people volunteered, and the leading candidate ended up in M's refrigerator -- and stomach. Rowena Richie briefly plays the murderer who, when her victim pleads, "I want you to eat me, " coolly replies, "I'll get some utensils."

"Sweeney Todd" redux this isn't; Shuch uses the metaphor of consumption to investigate all forms of desire. Jesse Howell and Jennifer Chien retread the "eat me" exchange as a tentative sexual proposition: "It's gonna hurt. ... It's not safe," they warn. An ensemble dance to the old standard "All of Me" takes on sinister shadings with the lines "take my lips ... take my arms." Love appears ultimately a matter of consensual pain and unsatisfied appetites as Howell roams the stage like a rabid dog, begging, "Do you trust me?"


Shuch can turn the mood of a scene like throwing a light switch. When the ensemble sings in angelic harmony, it's as stirring as a Baptist hymn. A few moments later, the atmosphere is as edgy as the power tools buzzing in the background while Melanie Elms embraces, then body-slams, the poet/actress Victoria McNichol Kelly (who also contributes a poem to the work). But the imagery is more tightly constrained than in Shuch's previous efforts, and one wishes she would have given her imagination the usual free rein.

More impressive than the development of the theme is the multidisciplinary form Shuch is steadily forging. Her five singer-actor- dancers are somehow superbly ordinary; the music, sung by virtuoso Dwayne Calizo, is fully integrated; and Sean Riley's clever set and lighting and Ishan Vernallis' video never seem like window dressing.

The obvious comparison is to the veteran Joe Goode, but he is different altogether, posturing where Shuch is pedestrian, polished where she is ragged. Goode tends to deal in characters; Shuch may be more purely image-driven. The point is that Goode built his own visual logic. Shuch is rapidly doing the same, and the pictures in her head are all her own.

The Erika Shuch Performance Project "All You Need," 8 p.m. Thursdays- Saturdays through April 17 at Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco. -, (415) 626-3311 or http://www.theintersection.org.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/04/03/DDG7S5UV4T1.DTL
 
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