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Body Shock: The Man Who Ate His Lover

Consider the following story line for the ultimate video nasty. Single man meets radical male masochist on the Internet. On their first date, the masochist offers up his penis as main course in a romantic dinner for two. After some teething problems over the best way to prepare the food, the two men enjoy a meal of garnished genitals. Satiated, and feeling woozy, the masochist is led upstairs to the bathroom, where he is left to bleed to death. Hours later, our host pops in to see how his date is doing, and finishes him off with a knife to the throat. He then butchers the body and barbecues the meat.

Even as fiction, this extreme tale of human weirdness would be difficult to stomach. So how do we respond when two middle-aged computer engineers turn this incredulous plot into jaw-dropping fact? Two words: shock and awe. Just when you thought you’d heard it all, along comes a German cannibal, Armin Meiwes, and his willing victim, Bernd-Juergen Brandes, to rewrite the book of bizarre human behavior. Rarely has a criminal investigation aroused such ghoulish curiosity or raised such difficult questions about the dark places that the human mind can go.

Amid the media scramble surrounding the recent courtroom drama, there has been a clamour to understand and to explain this behavior, which, incidentally, is not even illegal under either German or British law. In desperation, we turn to science for answers. What can rational objectivity tell us about such irrational acts of violence and mutilation? Perhaps not very much. But with little else to go on, we must be content with what morsels of knowledge we can find.

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  1. Gotta love those wacky Germans! 😛

  2. the thing that kills me is that he only got 8 years?!?! wtf

  3. In the last few years i have read so many horror stories about cannibalism,and the majority seem to come out of Europe especially Eastern Europe,why?Is it because they experienced horrible famine in the the not so distant past?

  4. highly recommend that whomever wrote the summary text learn the definition of the word “incredulous”. 

  5. GROSS!!! that’s not curiosity, its stupidity and it’s definitely inhuman. I never thought people like them exist.

  6.  I don’t even know what to think about this. I’ve heard worse but wow….

  7.  I don’t even know what to think about this. I’ve heard worse but wow….

    • Issei Sagawa was far, far worse, for one. At least Armin’s victim gave some kind of consent. The idea that Sagawa is some kind of celebrity in Japan makes me think the Allies shouldn’t have stopped ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’ in 1945 :/
       

      • ah 🙁 that’s horrible… Don’t say that. Sagawa is bad, but just because the japanese are interested, it doesn’t mean we should have had them killed in advance… Ah 🙁 Don’t say that!

      • ah 🙁 that’s horrible… Don’t say that. Sagawa is bad, but just because the japanese are interested, it doesn’t mean we should have had them killed in advance… Ah 🙁 Don’t say that!

  8. i was starting to reckon i could possibly be the sole woman whom thought about this, at the least currently i know i’m not weird 🙂 i am going to be sure to examine some different posts soon after i get a bit of caffeine in me, adios for now 🙂

  9. Well, this website looks way more professional than my aol blog. I think I might use WordPress aswell.What do you think? Regards.