Eat Thy Neighbour

by Daniel Diehl

  The vast majority of Brandes would eventually be cooked and eaten, but well before the meat supply ran out Meiwes was back on-line looking for a new source of groceries. Meiwes complained to an on-line friend at one of the cannibal chat-rooms, ‘I hope I will soon find another victim, the flesh is almost gone.’ Now, as before, there seemed to be no shortage of people willing to sacrifice themselves to an on-line cannibal. In the coming months Meiwes would meet up with four of them, but in every case things seemed to go wrong at the last minute. Stefan from Kassel travelled to Rotenburg and got as far as the slaughter room, where Meiwes hung him on meat hooks, wrapped him in cling film and labelled the various parts to be dissected ‘steaks’, ‘chops’, ‘ham’ and so forth but, according to Meiwes, ‘We called it off because it was so damn cold in there.’ Whatever Armin Meiwes was, he was neither an out-of-control killer nor an inconsiderate host.

  In the end it was one of Meiwes’ own correspondents who tripped him up. An Austrian student who had entered into conversation with Meiwes thinking the whole thing was a joke, soon realised he was in contact with a real-life cannibal who had his eye firmly planted on some Wiener schnitzel. In July 2001, the student contacted the German police and told them everything he had learned about Armin Meiwes. For seventeen months the police tracked Meiwes’ progress on the net before finally closing in in December 2002, arresting Meiwes, and confiscating the remaining 15lb of Brandes’ body from the freezer. It was only a matter of days before a salacious international press was publishing photos of the German ‘Internet Cannibal’, his ramshackle house and the gory slaughter room on the third floor.

  While Meiwes was sent off for examination by psychiatrists the local prosecutor’s office, under the direction of Marcus Kohler, set about putting together their case. The preliminary psychiatric report was a prosecuting attorney’s dream. Dr George Stolpmann described the 42-year-old Meiwes as having ‘no evidence of a psychological disorder’, but admitted that Meiwes did have a ‘schizoid personality’. Explaining this apparent contradiction, Stolpmann said, ‘What we have here is an inability to have warm and tender feelings towards others.’ With such a clear-cut case dropped into their laps, prosecutors must have been deeply chagrined to find that Germany had no laws against cannibalism. Considering previous cases such as Karl Denke and Georg Grossman, who were covered in an earlier chapter, this would seem to be an egregious legal oversight. Even at this early stage, prosecutor Kohler knew that because of Meiwes’ videotape of the killing, it would be virtually impossible to get a conviction for first-degree murder. Consequently, he decided to go for a charge of ‘murder for sexual pleasure’, with second-degree murder held in reserve as a back-up. The former charge would guarantee a sentence of fifteen years in prison, the second only eight-and-a-half. For good measure, they would also charge him with ‘disturbing the peace of the dead’. Whatever they could get him on, Kohler would do everything in his power to keep Armin Meiwes behind bars for as long as possible. In Kohler’s words, Meiwes ‘slaughtered his victim like a piece of livestock and treated him as an object of fancy’.

  Meiwes’ defence team knew there was no way their client was going to walk away when two hours of videotape showed his crimes in grisly, living colour, and the psychiatric report had already disallowed an insanity defence. They finally agreed on pleading guilty to ‘killing on demand’, a term usually used in cases of assisted suicide and euthanasia. This lesser charge would carry a maximum sentence of only five years in prison.

  The trial began on 3 December 2003 with a slate of 38 witnesses to be questioned over 14 days. A major part of the prosecution’s case would be an airing of the two-hour video of Brandes’ death and dismemberment, but the three-judge panel requested that only the ‘relevant parts’ – those concerning ‘what the victim is saying and doing before and during the killing’ – be shown.

  As he walked into court with his attorneys, Meiwes seemed amazingly relaxed, talking casually and joking. For his time on the stand, however, he was much more serious. Addressing the court, Meiwes explained that what he had done was a benefit to both himself and Brandes; saying that he had only wanted ‘someone to be part of me’ and that Brandes ‘enjoyed dying, death. Bernd came to me of his own free will to end his life . . . For him, it was a nice death.’ If he had any regrets it was in how long Brandes took to bleed out. ‘I only waited horrified for the end after doing the deed. It took so terribly long.’

  As much as anything, it was Brandes’ state of mind that occupied the court’s attention. While psychiatrists had declared Meiwes to be sane, had Brandes been emotionally capable and mentally stable when he invited his own murder? Could anyone in their right mind consent to be slaughtered and devoured? The testimony, like much in the case, was contradictory.

  Brandes’ father insisted that his son had never shown any signs of depression, and his most recent lover, 27-year-old René Jasnik, agreed. He said Brandes and he were happy together, that Brandes had never entertained morbid or suicidal thoughts, and that they were in the midst of planning a summer holiday when Brandes took off for Rotenburg. Jasnik did admit that he had received a letter from Meiwes apologising for having eaten his boyfriend.

  The flip side of this picture of Brandes as a stable, seemingly happy man came from a former, occasional sex partner who insisted that Brandes had once offered him 2,000 Euros to bite off his penis. At the end of the day, the only thing prosecutors and defence could agree on was the version of Brandes who appeared on video. ‘The victim appeared to be fully aware of the situation. Videotape material definitely shows both him and the suspect engaged in eating his own flesh prior to his death.’

  Although not directly related to the Brandes case, Detective Inspector Wolfgang Buch told the court that Meiwes was under investigation for the presumed disappearances of at least two other men – one from Frankfurt and one from Austria – with whom he had been corresponding through the Cannibal Café. Buch concluded, ‘It is at this point impossible to say whether others among the 204 persons [with whom Meiwes had been corresponding] might also have been homicide victims.’

  In his final statement before the court, Meiwes said, ‘[I] regret all that I have done’, insisting that he would not kill and eat anyone else in the future. Expounding on this theme he added, ‘I always had the fantasy and in the end I fulfilled it. I had my big kick and I don’t need to do it again. I regret it all very much, but I can’t undo it.’

  On Friday, 30 January 2004 the court concluded that Armin Meiwes had no ‘base motives’ in his killing of Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, but that he was undoubtedly guilty of his death. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison. While Meiwes’ defence attorneys seemed satisfied, the prosecution immediately lodged an appeal. In April 2005 the German courts ordered a retrial and it seems likely that the case will make its way through the system all the way to the German Supreme Court.

  While he waited to find out what would happen, Armin Meiwes whiled away his time in prison writing his memoirs. Since there is no law in Germany prohibiting criminals from making money by selling their story to the press, publishers and movie companies, Meiwes looks forward to being a very rich man whenever he is finally released. Already a German film company has been awarded a government grant equivalent to $25,000 to begin work on a cinematic version of Meiwes’ story – tentatively titled Your Heart in My Head – and even Hollywood has its eye on the marketing possibilities of the Rotenburg Cannibal. Says Randy Sanchez, marketing director of a Los Angeles firm that analyses markets for the American film industry, ‘It’s all very Hannibal Lecter.’ Meiwes hopes for a $1 million advance for the film rights to his story. The German heavy metal band Rammstein has already climbed on the bandwagon with a Meiwes-inspired song ‘Mein Teil’, or ‘My Piece’. In German, ‘piece’ is a slang term for penis.

  Thanks to the dogged persistence of Prosecuter Marcus Kohler when Meiwes’ case was retried in May 2006, the internet cannibal’s sent
ence was increased to life imprisonment.

  Nineteen

  Something Completely Different: Marc Sappington (2001)

  Big cities worldwide harbour both the best and worst examples of the human condition. In this respect, the American midwestern metropolis of Kansas City, Kansas, is no different from any other city. The city centre and wealthy neighbourhoods in the suburbs stand in stark contrast to the crime-ridden, largely black ghettos of the north side. While drugs, guns and violent gangs rule the streets, good, honest, hard-working people struggle to survive in the face of poverty and despair.

  When Clarice Sappington’s son, Marc, was born in 1980, she vowed that no matter what it took her boy would be brought up properly. She knew from the start it would be an uphill struggle all the way. Marc’s father had disappeared before he was born and Clarice, although a good church-going, hard-working woman, was plagued by recurrent bouts of mental problems. As often as possible she took, or sent, the boy to church, provided for his needs in every way she could and on those occasions when she had to attend the mental hospital, she sent him to stay with her parents who loved him as much as she did.

  To all appearances Marc Sappington looked like one of those rare few who might actually escape the worst effects of the ghetto. He was never a brilliant student, but he did well enough at school and was liked by everyone who knew him. He was charming, articulate, funny and always greeted everyone with a smile. A former classmate remembers him as the class ‘goofball’ who joked a lot but was always ready to defuse a tense situation by quietly quoting a passage from the Bible. A neighbour once described him, saying ‘nobody was afraid of him’, which, in the violent youth culture of Kansas City’s north side, was a compliment indeed. But his mother’s schizophrenia, and the death of both of his maternal grandparents while he was still an adolescent, took a huge emotional toll on Marc. Still, he loved his mother and had the support of a few good friends. Chief among his buddies were Terry Green, who was four years his senior, Michael Weaver, who was in Marc’s class at school and Alton ‘Freddie’ Brown, a skinny neighbourhood boy who was five years younger than Marc and looked up to him with the worshipful eyes of a kid brother.

  By the time Marc graduated from high school in 1998, he had matured into a muscular, 5 foot 11 inch, 12-stone (170lb) man with the smiling face of an ebony cherub. But ultimately, the poverty of the ghetto began to take its toll on Marc. Unable to find work and bored out of his mind, he slowly drifted into drug use. He began smoking ‘danks’, cigarettes soaked in embalming fluid, and worked his way up to the deadly PCP, known as ‘angel dust’, which can have long-term, if not permanent, mental and emotional side-effects. His reliance on drugs reached a point where even those who had always supported and defended him were forced to admit he was a ‘heavy smoker’. What no one could possibly know was that Marc was developing other problems, too. He had inherited his mother’s schizophrenia and it was slowly eating away at his mind.

  While wandering the streets one day early in 2001, Marc, now twenty-one, ran into sixteen-year-old Armando Gaitan, a casual acquaintance who was everything his mother had warned him against. Gaitan was one of those violent, foul-tempered tough guys who was well on his way to becoming what black youths refer to as a ‘gangsta’. Wandering along the streets, getting deeper and deeper into conversation, Gaitan tried to enlist Marc’s help with a little problem. It came out that Gaitan had bought a car from another kid named David Mashak but that only days later the car had been impounded by the police and Gaitan had been unable to get satisfaction from Mashak. With Marc’s help, he was sure he could force Mashak to give him his money back. A year or two earlier, Marc would have turned him down flat, but now, for some reason, all he did was ask for more details. What would he have to do? Warming to his subject, Gaitan took Marc to where he had stashed an AK-47 assault rifle, showed it to him, and told him that together they would confront Mashak. All Marc had to do was stand there holding the gun while he, Gaitan, did all the talking. He assured Marc that once Mashak saw the gun there wouldn’t be any trouble. Foolishly, Sappington agreed.

  On the afternoon of 16 March 2001 Marc and Armando Gaitan confronted David Mashak while he was eating lunch in his garage. Gaitan threatened Mashak. Mashak threatened Gaitan and then, for no apparent reason, Marc Sappington opened fire with the AK-47. As the torrent of bullets sprayed across the walls of the garage, one of them ricocheted, striking Mashak in the back. As if the hail of gunfire was not terrifying enough, the look of pure glee on Marc’s face sent Gaitan fleeing from the scene. He did not stop running until he reached Texas. Two hours after the assault, David Mashak was pronounced dead.

  The long-running argument over the car soon led police to connect Armando Gaitan with Mashak’s murder and only a few weeks later he was arrested and shipped back to Kansas City. Under police questioning, and later at the juvenile detention centre, he admitted his own, secondary role in the killing, but refused to give the name of the other man who had been seen entering Mashak’s garage with him. The police assumed it was some ‘honour among thieves’ thing that kept him from talking. It wasn’t. Remembering the maniacal look on Marc Sappington’s face as he wielded the AK-47, Gaitan was simply too scared to give them Marc’s name. It would be a lot safer in prison than to risk coming face-to-face with that crazy man again.

  If the Mashak killing was a disaster for Mashak and Gaitan, its effects on Marc Sappington were more subtle, but no less profound. In those few seconds, something inside him had snapped. Whether it was the incipient schizophrenia, the effects of the danks and the PCP, or a combination of the two, may never be known, but only days after the killing, something began talking to Marc. Something inside his head. And it was saying very frightening things.

  Curiously, according to psychologists and psychiatrists, most people whose mental state is such that they imagine voices will ascribe the source of the voices either to God, the devil, or some kind of demon. If their background is religious, as Marc’s was, they tend to believe that they are either being directed by the Almighty, or threatened by Satan. Marc was never able to determine who the voices belonged to, nor did he seem to care: all that mattered was that they were threatening him. If he did not do what they told him to do, they were going to kill him. It was as simple as that. Terrified, Marc agreed to do the voices’ bidding. That’s when they told him to kill people. They also told him there would be other things to do later, but for now, all he had to do was find someone to kill. In compliance with his orders, Marc began stashing weapons in a corner of his mother’s basement, the one area of the house that was his and his alone. He gathered a shotgun, knives, an axe, all kinds of weapons. When he seemed to have enough to cover any possible eventuality, the voices told him it was time to go hunting. They did not, however, offer him any specific guidance. He would have to select the victim himself.

  For days he wandered the grimy streets of the north side, staring at every passer-by, appraising their suitability and asking the opinion of the voices in his head. Him? How about her? What about him? But after three weeks of looking the voices remained steadfastly silent. Marc did not know what to do. If he didn’t find a sacrifice soon the voices might make good their threat to kill him. Finally, pure chance made the decision for him.

  On the afternoon of 7 April, his old friend Terry Green, now twenty-five, dropped by at the Sappington home to spend some time hanging out with Marc. Marc had barely opened the door when the voices told him this was the one. Nervously, Marc invited Terry inside and led him to his own, personal space in the basement. Minutes later, Terry Green lay dead on the floor, bleeding profusely from multiple knife wounds. His friend, Marc Sappington, was leaning over the body, furiously lapping up the spreading pool of blood as it oozed from Green’s body. As the gore smeared across his face and hands, Marc looked up. He was sure he had heard a noise. Had his mother come home from work early? He was confused, but the voices told him to be calm and get rid of the body as quickly as he could.


  Wrapping Terry’s carcass in an old tarpaulin, he lugged it out of the house, heaved it into the boot of his mother’s car, and drove through the city, across the Missouri river into Kansas City, Missouri, and then to a nightclub he and Green liked to frequent. Even at this early hour there were a few cars scattered around the edges of the car park. Marc tried one after another until he found one that was unlocked. Pulling up alongside the car, he lugged Terry’s body out of the boot and into the back seat of the other car. He tossed the tarpaulin over the body and drove away.

  When the body was found a short time later, Kansas City, Missouri Police assumed it was a Missouri murder, but alerted the police across the river in Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas police were more than happy to leave the matter on the Missouri side of the river; they had plenty of murders of their own to deal with. It would be three days before Terry Green would be identified as a resident of Kansas and his connection with Marc Sappington would come to the investigating officers’ attention. In those three days, Marc Sappington, and the voices living in his head, would be very, very busy.

  On 10 April, a mere three days after Green’s murder, Marc was wandering up and down the streets looking for the next person to sacrifice to the voices, but the voices had not been any more help today than on any other day. No one seemed to please them. Finally, wandering around the neighbourhood, he spotted his old classmate and friend Michael Weaver sitting on the front steps of his parents’ house, so he stopped to chat for a while. They talked and laughed and agreed that they were both bored silly. Finally, Marc suggested they go for a ride in Michael’s car. At least it was better than standing there on the street. Weaver agreed. They were still negotiating the narrow alleyways near Michael’s house when Sappington pulled out a hunting knife, killed his friend and began drinking his blood. He had to. The voices told him to do it and he had no choice. But only moments after the horrible deed, he panicked, jumped out of the car and fled on foot. As he ran he cleaned himself up as much as possible. Finally, his feet slowed to a walk and headed towards home.