Cannibal on trial in Germany

By RUTH ELKINS


Armin Meiwes was the perfect gentleman, or so his neighbours thought. But the 41-year-old computer expert had a darker side. Two years ago, he met a man through the internet, killed him and ate him. He did it because the man wanted to be killed. Or at least that's what he told the police.

This week he appears in a German court charged with "murder for sexual satisfaction", the first case of its kind in the country. The gruesome details of the man dubbed the "Hesse Hannibal" are forcing prosecutors to grapple with a difficult legal issue: is consensual killing really murder?

It was late 2000 when Meiwes, then 41, did something he had dreamed about since he was a young boy. Using his internet pseudonym, Franky, he posted an advertisement in an online chat room visited by enthusiasts of cannibalism. "Seeking well-built man, 18-30 years old for slaughter," the advert read. "Applications with age."

Meiwes received a number of replies. Many were hoaxes: others simply lost their nerve.

It was not until early February the following year that he found a kindred spirit in Bernd-Jurgen Brandes. Brandes was a highly paid microchip engineer for the electrical engineering giant Siemens. He had told friends and colleagues he was bisexual but had recently ended a seven-year relationship with a woman. Brandes lived alone in a penthouse apartment in Berlin. It was just a few hours from Rotenburg, the small town on the banks of the River Fulda in central Germany where Meiwes lived.

In the darker reaches of the virtual universe there are sites with names such as Necrobabes, Cannibal Cafe and Gourmet where would-be internet cannibals chat away about eating human flesh. Brandes posted a message on one of these in early February 2001.

But unlike most visitors, who were playing out fantasies, Brandes was deadly serious. "I offer myself to you and will let you dine from my live body. Not butchery, dining!!" he wrote. "Whoever REALLY wants to do it will need a REAL VICTIM!!"

Meiwes replied immediately.

Brandes' and Meiwes' initial emails read like a courtship. Brandes was 42 at the time, but Meiwes had specified he wanted a younger man so Brandes made himself seven years younger. Meiwes fuelled Brandes' fantasies of torture and sent him pictures of his teeth. He told Brandes he would use them to bite his tongue out.

The flirtation worked. Brandes agreed to go to Rotenburg on March 9, 2001.

Meiwes picked him up from the train station. In one of the few interviews Meiwes has given - to German news magazine, Stern - he recalled the drive to his house. Brandes made one thing very clear: he wanted to be mutilated and killed that day.

There was only one problem. Brandes did not think Meiwes was up to killing anyone. So Brandes drank a bottle of Night Nurse, a flu remedy which causes drowsiness. An hour later, the medication still had not taken effect. Brandes became frustrated and decided to go home.

Then he had another change of heart and drank another bottle of Night Nurse with some sleeping pills. Then they would try again.

Meiwes stabbed and killed Brandes after he had cut off his penis, and the two had eaten it.

Meiwes said Brandes' breathing was light and he stabbed him.

Meiwes told police later that the killing made him feel hate, power and happiness all at once. He hated himself for doing it. He hated Brandes for coming to him in the first place. And he was "furious" at his own perverse fantasies, he told Stern. He says now that he regrets going through with it. Nevertheless, he butchered Brandes' corpse, put the pieces in the deep freeze and had eaten many of them by the time police arrived. He said the flesh tasted like pork.

Meiwes proceeded to trawl the internet for younger and more tender victims. In all, four men, including one from London, were lured to his home. As it turned out, none wanted to be killed, they just wanted to role-play. Uninterested, Meiwes let them go: he wanted the real thing.

His manic search was his downfall. As he continued trawling cannibal sites, he boasted of the killing. In the summer of 2001, a student contacted Germany's Criminal Investigation Bureau. Investigators searched Meiwes' house and he was arrested. By then he had already admitted to his lawyer that he had killed a man, but a man, Meiwes maintains to this day, who wanted to be killed.


- INDEPENDENT