Depraved Armin Meiwes enjoyed his illicit feast with potatoes and sprouts after hunting for a person willing to be eaten alive – he was later convicted of murder
Cannibal Armin Meiwes dined on his lover’s flesh after he agreed to be eaten alive. Sick Meiwes carried out his highly illegal fantasy in 2001, when he killed Bernd Brandes and cooked his penis for dinner.
The cannibal had posted an advert called ‘Dinner – or your dinner’ more than 60 times on a German forum when Bernd, 43, took him up on his offer. Meiwes then decorated his table, adding candles for ambience, before he carried out his gruesome act.
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.”
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Bernd first took sleeping pills and drank Schnapps before Meiwes cut his penis off and they both ate it. He then ate part of his voluntary victim’s back, describing how he had been “longing” for it.
The cannibal told 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. After I prepared my meal, I ate it.
“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.”
After the sick feast, Bernd 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.
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.
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. He was 42 when he had videotaped the killing, dissection and consumption of Bernd.
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.