A cannibal fried and ate 20kg of his victim. But Germany’s laws couldn’t stop him

To the family next door, Armin Meiwes seemed like the perfect neighbor. He mowed their lawn, fixed their car and even invited them round for dinner. Other people in the small German town of Rotenburg also believed there was nothing strange about the 42-year-old computer expert, whose light burned late into the night inside his old mansion.

In December 2003, however, Meiwes appeared in court charged with killing and then eating another man, according to The Gurdian. In one of the most unusual trials in German criminal history, the self-confessed cannibal admitted that he had met a 43-year-old Berlin engineer, Bernd Brandes, after putting an ad on the internet, and had chopped him up and eaten him. It was something he had wanted to do for a long time.

The case showed that Meiwes had fried and ate 20kg of his victim who agreed to be killed, showing a shocking gap in German law. The case proved difficult for German lawyers who discovered that cannibalism is not illegal in Germany. Instead, they charged Meiwes with murder for sexual pleasure and with disturbing the peace of the dead. The accused, however, had a unique defense: that his victim actually agreed to be killed and eaten.

How the horrific act happened

In March 2001, Meiwes put an ad on the internet for a young well-built man who wanted to be eaten. Brandes replied. On the evening of March 9, the two men went up to the bedroom in Meiwes’ farmhouse. Brandes took 20 sleeping tablets and half a bottle of schnapps before Meiwes cut off Brandes’ penis, with his agreement, and fried it for both of them to eat.

Brandes, by this stage bleeding heavily, then took a bath, while Meiwes read a Star Trek novel. In the early hours of the morning, he killed his victim by stabbing him in the neck with a large kitchen knife, kissing him first. The cannibal then chopped Brandes into pieces and put several bits of him in his freezer, next to a takeaway pizza, and buried the skull in his garden.

Over the next few weeks, he defrosted and cooked parts of Brandes in olive oil and garlic, eating 20kg of human flesh before police finally showed up at his door. Behind bars, Meiwes told detectives that he had eaten his victim with a bottle of South African red wine, had got out his best cutlery and set his dinner table with candles. He tasted of pork, he added.

The key part of the case was a horrific videotape made by Meiwes of the entire evening, during which Brandes clearly shows his consent. In January 2004, a court in Kassel found Meiwes guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to eight years and six months in prison. However, in a retrial in May 2006, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The case remains one of the most bizarre true crime stories ever recorded.