Armin Meiwes kept portions of Bernd Brandes’ flesh in a freezer after they made a fatal agreement. The cannibal consumed his victim over a lengthy period and was later jailed for his murder
Armin Meiwes spent 10 months dining on his voluntary victim after he ate him alive following a sick pact. With cannibalism highly illegal, depraved Meiwes was later jailed for life for murdering Bernd Brandes.
The fetishistic killer had posted an advert called ‘Dinner – or your dinner’ more than 60 times on a German forum when his offer was taken up by Bernd, a 43-year-old engineer in 2001. Meiwes, then 42, invited his victim into his home in Rotenburg, southern Germany, feeding him sleeping pills and Schnapps before cutting off his penis and feeding it to both of them.
The next gruesome course was Bernd’s back, telling a documentary called Docs: Interview With A Cannibal: “I took out my best dinner service, and fried a piece of rump steak – a piece from his back – made what I call princess potatoes, and sprouts.”
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“The first bite was, of course, very strange. It was a feeling I can’t really describe. I’d spent over 40 years longing for it, dreaming about it.
“And now I was getting the feeling that I was actually achieving this perfect inner connection through his flesh. The flesh tastes like pork but stronger.”
Meiwes prepared his dinner table with candles and cooked and consumed the illegal feast he had been “longing” for. Bernd then took a bath as Meiwes read a Star Trek novel to him before he stabbed him in the neck, killing him.
He cut him into pieces and buried him in his garden, saving some of his flesh in the freezer which he ate over the next 10 months. After the deed was done, Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 and lied to the police, telling them the meat in his freezer was wild pig.
The former computer technician had developed a sick obsession with eating someone alive when he was a teenager, inviting his victim to his home in Rotenburg, in southern Germany. He told a subsequent criminal trial that the engineer “came to me of his own free will to end his life. For him, it was a nice death.”
The dead man was later reported to have a fetish to be castrated and had agreed to accommodate Meiwes’ cannibal wish in return, and said to have feared he would be committed if he lived. The pair spent a month communicating daily by email discussing their plans, and the day before Bernd left, he sold his car, wiped his computer and wrote a note leaving his possessions to his boyfriend.
In January 2004, the cannibal was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. In a subsequent retrial in May 2006, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, where he remains behind bars at the age of 63.
In April 2023, Meiwes’ former home and the scene of the murder was destroyed in a suspected arson attack.