Detectives investigating the sensational trial of the self-confessed German cannibal Armin Meiwes revealed on Monday that two other people in Europe may have been eaten.
New evidence in the trial of Meiwes, 42, accused of killing and eating a man he met on the Internet, shed light on a global network that links maneaters from Austria to America, the police told the court.
Meiwes looked relaxed and confident as he listened to the gruesome evidence.
Inspector Isolde Stock said that Meiwes' e-mail correspondence with members of "cannibal forums" would fill two lorries if it were printed out.
"We downloaded over 3,000 pictures of gay and heterosexual sex, torture scenes and violence from Meiwes' computer and two PCs," she said.
"There were also lots of pictures of naked men he had contact with, although many of these seem to have been erased."
Meiwes was arrested after killing and eating Bernd-Jurgen Brandes in 2001, who the defence claim went willingly to his death.
The two men met on the Internet after Meiwes advertised 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.
Meiwes estimates that there are at least 800 active participants in cannibal forums, and says he was in contact with at least 400 of them.
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.
The police said that Meiwes' willing cooperation had helped shed light on the murky world of online cannibals, and his case was not an isolated one.
It was revealed yesterday that Meiwes had been questioned as part of the investigation of two more deaths, in Frankfurt, Germany, and in Austria. He has not been charged with these murders.
Meiwes was in regular contact with people in Switzerland, Austria and America, including Dirk Moeller, a British-based hotel worker who travelled to Germany to meet him and spent an evening at his house in Rotenburg playing sexually charged role games, but left unharmed.
The judge read out selections of Meiwes' e-mail conversations with Jorg, another correspondent, describing their sexual and cannibalistic fantasies.
"Did you kill any young men over the holidays?" Jorg asked in January last year.
"It was the only thing I didn't do over the holidays. Do you think I have slipped out, that I want to kill a young man and eat him?" Meiwes replied.
"No, there is nothing sexier than to be killed like a pig," replied Jorg.
To satisfy another correspondent, whose fantasy was to be killed and eaten by a woman, Meiwes set up a new e-mail account and pretended to be a woman.
Even couples were attracted to the cannibal forum. Meiwes and Brandes discussed the pros and cons of eating female flesh compared with male, after a couple using the alias Hansel & Gretel began writing to Meiwes.
They also joked that cannibalism would be a solution to overpopulation problems in south-east Asia and China
Egg told the court: "Cannibalism has always been around, but the Internet reinforces the phenomenon. You can be in contact with the whole world and do this anonymously. Many people have these fantasies, but few act on them."
For serious cannibals, this can be frustrating.
"There are a lot of people out there who are interested," Meiwes told Brandes mournfully in an e-mail. "But only a few really mean it."
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS