Cannibal Convict Speaks …
- October 18th, 2007
- Posted by Imogen Brennan
The first television interview with the imprisoned cannibal, Armin Meiwes, was aired in Germany on Monday night (15.10.07).
Armin Meiwes, a computer repair man from the town of Rotenburg in central Germany was convicted of murder and sentenced by a court in Frankfurt to life imprisonment in 2006 — after killing and eating a man he met on an internet chat site.
Meiwes, now 45, said he had suppressed the obsession to eat another man’s body since puberty.
The victim Bernd-Jürgen Brandes, a Berlin computer engineer, responded to his internet ad “fit men for slaughter” and was killed by Meiwes in 2001.
On Meiwes’s account, the two had engaged in a grizzly tryst in which parts of Brandes’s body were cut off and eaten by the two of them.
After Brandes then passed out from loss of blood, Meiwes killed him and cut him into meal-sized portions that were frozen and made into ‘gourmet’ meals over the next months.
He talked of preparing a “steak” with pepper sauce and Brussels sprouts.
During the extensive court trial counsel for Meiwes argued that the killing was less than a murder, a consensual death, as Brandes had begged to be eaten.
Controversy in Germany has surrounded that claim and the idea of the prisoner being allowed to speak publicly on the details of his crime.
The television premiere exposed a softly spoken, average looking man who implored that he was a normal person.
“I wanted to eat him but I didn’t want to kill him,” said Meiwes.
“Yes, people who can’t think their way into this find it monstrous.
“But in principle I’m a normal human being,” he told Günter Stampf, who has spoken with him over 30 times while he has been imprisoned.
Meiwes described how he found the first bite of flesh “peculiar” yet good.
“The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger; it tastes quite good,” he said.
Stampf uncovered that when Meiwes was a child he enjoyed his mother reading the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel to him and particularly enjoyed the part where Hansel was being prepared to be eaten.
Meiwes, who becomes eligible for a parole application in 2021,revealed he is not the only human flesh-obsessed person in the world.
“You wouldn’t believe how many Hansels are whizzing around the Internet,” he said.
Reference:
“Human Flesh Tastes Like Pork”, Spiegel Online, 16.10.07.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,511775,00.html (18.10.07)
“German Cannibal Gets Life For Eating Willing Victim”, Spiegel Online, 9.5.06.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,415313,00.html (18.10.07)
Armin Meiwes, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org … (18.10.07)
Picture: Armin Meiwes, Google – BBC