December 04, 2003
Eaten by a thoroughly modern
cannibal
By Roger Boyes

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, was 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.

Herr 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 Herr Meiwes's
improvised attic "slaughter room" and given the
chance to lick his bloodstained rubber boots.

An unidentified German living in London visited Herr
Meiwes in a Mannheim hotel. The man wanted to be
handcuffed and have labels pinned to his body
marking him out for butchery. "Later we went to
watch a film," Herr 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," Herr Meiwes said.

In the end, after more than 400 e-mails and
hundreds of phone conversations, Herr 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."

Herr 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. The prosecutor is arguing 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 Herr Meiwes described in
a flat baritone how he had amassed his catalogue of
potential victims. In the event, only Brandes was
sliced up and eaten.

Herr Meiwes said that Brandes had signalled during
a long e-mail relationship that he wanted to be
eaten. Herr 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. Herr 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 Herr 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," Herr Meiwes said, talking as if he
were describing a trip to the supermarket. "So he
tried to eat it more or less raw and of course it was
too tough. This made him furious."

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

Brandes lay in a bath and partially recovered. "He
got out and said: 'If I survive until the morning let's
have my eggs for breakfast'," Herr Meiwes said. The
German word for eggs is slang for testicles.

That statement could prove important as the case
develops over the next month. It could indicate that
Brandes in fact wanted to live and sought mutilation,
not death.

Marcus Kohler, the state prosecutor, claimed that
Meiwes always intended to kill and that he exploited
a mental disorder that left Brandes with a death
wish. "Spurred by sexual motives," Herr Kohler said,
Herr Meiwes had laid Brandes on a bench, stabbed
him and hung his body from a hook in the ceiling of
his kitchen.

Seeking to explain his motivation, Herr Meiwes said
that his parents had split when he was young and
his domineering mother found it difficult to cope. His
two elder brothers -one of them now a priest-
left home and Herr Meiwes felt abandoned. First he
made up imaginary friends and then fantasised
about eating them. "My ideal type was Sandy in the
television series Flipper - blond and slim boys,
that's how I like them."

Herr Meiwes was briefly engaged to a woman "even
more domineering than my mother", but was drawn
to men in the German Army, where, as a computer
logistics expert, he rose to the rank of Sergeant
Major. He said he was propelled towards
cannibalism by a combination of an unhappy affair
with a male soldier while on military manoeuvres in
Canada, his growing mastery of sexual fantasy
websites, his mother's death in 1999 and a brief
affair with a woman who insisted that they make
love in thick underpants.

"When I had a partner my fantasies could be
repressed," he said. "But if there was no one there,
my longing for a substitute brother drove me to
search for young men to eat."

By the end of his last affair in 1999, he was already
living in the realm of fantasy, downloading
thousands of pictures of male bodies, which he
would lovingly cut up.

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

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

Herr Meiwes described his eating of some 30kg
(65lb) 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,"
he said.

His semi-religious sentiment did not stop him from
slicing off Brandes's foot and preserving it. "I knew
that there were many foot fetishists on the internet
and I thought it might come in handy." Herr Meiwes
later pulverised the foot, along with other bones, lest
they be discovered.

The court is now adjourned until Monday, and the
case will continue at least until the middle of
January. Some 36 witnesses are to be called,
including some of Herr Meiwes's potential victims.

Taste for human flesh

* 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 pickled human flesh in his house, while
Fritz Haarmann drank some of the blood of the 26
men he murdered from 1918 to 1924.

* In 1972, desperate survivors of a plane crash in
the Andes ate the flesh of dead passengers. The
story was told in the film Alive!

* The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in
1991 and imprisoned for life in the United States the
following year for the murders of 17 men and boys.
His cannibalism was linked to homosexual
necrophilia. Police found partially cooked flesh in his
freezer.

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

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

* Some societies eat their dead as a respectful way
to dispose of their bodies. Until the 1960s the Gimi
women of the Papuan highlands used to eat their
dead menfolk; the practice is still re-enacted in
mime with dummy corpses.

* Sigmund Freud wrote that by eating a human, a
cannibal believes that he is ingesting his victim's
power and soul.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk