pardon the twin submissions from a few days ago. my computer crashed when i was typing them so i got to submit neither and figured i had just lost them. anyhoo, i felt the need to share this story with you since the link didn't work. it is...dun dun dun...cannibal man.


Chilling smile of a German cannibal
From The Times
December 05, 2003

An extraordinary tale from the dark nether world of cannibalism unfolded in a shocked German courtroom yesterday as a self-confessed eater of human flesh explained how he came to butcher and barbecue a computer software expert.

The trial of Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old former soldier, is the first cannibal case in Germany since that of Fritz Haarmann, who killed at least 26 young men and drank their blood in the 1920s.

He was executed in 1925.

Meiwes, by contrast, is a thoroughly modern cannibal who used internet chatrooms to line up a parade of apparently willing would-be victims.

One, identified only as Matteo from Italy, wanted to be nailed to a St Andrew's Cross and have a flamethrower directed at his genitals.

Another wanted to be eaten in time for the Russian Orthodox Christmas.

A man identified as Andreas from Regensburg wanted to be collected in a cattle wagon, pushed into a cage in Meiwes's improvised attic "slaughter room" and given the chance to lick his bloodstained rubber boots.

An unidentified German living in London visited Meiwes and wanted to be handcuffed and have labels pinned to his body marking him out for butchery.

"Later we went to watch a film," Meiwes said. "I think it was Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney."

Some victims were rejected for being too fat. One allowed himself to be hung on a hook in Clingfilm awaiting slaughter. "He changed his mind and said it was too cold to be killed, so I drove him back to the station," Meiwes said. In the end, after more than 400 emails and hundreds of phone conversations, Meiwes settled on Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, a 43-year-old computer specialist from Berlin.

"I did nothing against his will," he said of his victim.

"He knew he could have stopped at any time, but he didn't. He wanted to die and to be eaten. 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."

Meiwes, a fit-looking man with a ready smile for the gallery in the Kassel courtroom, argued that he was an instrument of Brandes's wish to commit suicide. His defence is that he "killed on request" – effectively a mercy killing, which carries a three-year jail term. Prosecutors argue that he committed sexually driven murder, and is likely to demand life imprisonment.

Several reporters left courtroom D103 to vomit or splash their faces with water. There were gasps from the public gallery as Meiwes described in a flat baritone how he amassed his catalogue of potential victims. In the event, only Brandes was sliced up and eaten.

Meiwes said Brandes signalled during a long email relationship that he wanted to be eaten. Meiwes used the pseudonym "Franky" in internet adverts that read: "If you are 18-25, you are my boy", or "Come to me, I'll eat your delicious flesh".

On the day of the killing he had collected Brandes from the local railway station. Brandes swallowed non-prescription sleeping pills and they drank tea together in the conservatory of the killer's sprawling but rundown half-timbered house in Rotenburg, close to Kassel.

The two men had already agreed that Brandes should be "nullified". The increasingly drowsy victim laid his penis on the kitchen table. Meiwes chopped it but failed to sever the organ. Brandes screamed with pain and told him to find a sharper knife. The operation was completed, the wound wrapped, and Meiwes proceeded to cook the severed penis.

"We had agreed to eat it half and half, but he was growing faint and couldn't wait for his half to be cooked through," Meiwes said. "So he tried to eat it more or less raw and of course it was too tough. This made him furious."

Meiwes said he had filmed the dismemberment; the video may be shown to the court later in the trial.

"It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it. It gave him pleasure," Meiwes said.

Brandes lay in a bath and partially recovered. "He got out and said, 'If I survive until the morning let's have my testicles for breakfast'," Meiwes said.

That statement could prove important as the case develops over the next month.

It could indicate Brandes in fact wanted to live and sought mutilation not death.

State prosecutor Marcus Kohler claimed Meiwes always intended to kill and that he exploited a mental disorder that left Brandes with a death wish.

"Spurred by sexual motives", Kohler said, Meiwes had laid Brandes on a bench, stabbed him and hung his body from a hook in the ceiling of his kitchen.

Judge Volker Mutze struggled to keep some dignity in the court and refused to give details of the cannibal recipes found in Meiwes's home. However, the German magazine Stern reported in July that these included "penis in red wine" and "breaded young man's liver".

Meiwes, however, simply sauteed Brandes's penis with garlic, salt and pepper.

Meiwes described his eating of some 30kg of Brandes – during a long summer of barbecues – as an almost religious event. He was "internalising" a loving friend. "On the night of the killing I had the hope that part of his body would become part of mine; it was like Holy Communion," Meiwes said.

The court is now adjourned until Monday, and the case will continue at least until the middle of January.