10 Gruesome Details Surrounding Armin Meiwes, The Cannibal Who Placed An Ad To Eat Someone

6 /10 Bernd Brandes

It was only in February of 2001 that Meiwes received a message from the person that would become his actual victim, Bernd Brandes, who wrote: “I am 36 years old, 175 cm and weigh 72 kg. I hope you are really serious about it because I really want it.”

Meiwes was interested, and the two started talking for around a month, exchanging messages detailing how they would proceed.

Eventually, on March 9th, 2001, Brandes arrived from Berlin to a soundproofed slaughterhouse that Meiwes had built in one of the rooms of the big house he had inherited from his mother.

5 /10 Chewy

After spending an evening talking about computers, smoking, and drinking coffee, for a moment, it seemed that Brandes wasn’t going to go through with it and requested to leave.

Meiwes accompanied him to the train station, where, just before boarding his train to Berlin, Brandes turned back and suggested that he might be able to do it with the aid of alcohol and sleeping pills.

A few hours later, Meiwes was severing Brandes’ penis and cooking it in a pan: they both tried to eat it but described it as too “chewy.” Meiwes fed it to his dog.

4 /10 A Star Trek Novel

There was no going back from that point onwards, as Brandes had been losing too much blood and growing weaker.

He is seen in a video (that both of them made of the events) consent to his murder until he passes out in a bathtub filled with water and blood.

Meiwes, who had no interest in seeing him die, retired to an adjacent room to read a Star Trek novel until the morning.

Upon returning and seeing that Brandes was still alive, he hesitated, but ultimately, after praying “to God for forgiveness,” he slit his throat in one single movement.

3 /10 Meat For Months

Armin Meiwes took his “friend’s” body, hanged it from a meat hook, and proceeded to cut his flesh, label it and freeze it. For the next ten months, he would eat it with wine, fried with garlic, or accompanied with Brussels sprouts.

Interviewed during his trial, Meiwes stated: “The first bite was, of course, very strange. It was a feeling I can’t really describe. I spent over 40 years longing for it, dreaming about it.”

But it was not enough for him, as he posted new ads online to find his next victim: it was then that his tone particularly upset an Austrian student, who alerted the police about him.

2 /10 Manslaughter Or Murder?

After being arrested during a quick check of his home (he promptly confessed that the meat in his fridge was human and what he and Brandes had done), a curious legal problem arose: cannibalism wasn’t illegal in Germany.

Trying to prosecute him for something, he was accused of manslaughter instead of murder and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison in 2004.

The second trial in 2005 saw him charged with murder, however, and sentenced to life imprisonment after the prosecution noted the component of sexual gratification in his actions.

1 /10 A Vegetarian Cannibal

Since then, Meiwes has become the leader of his prison’s Green Party and organizes fellow violent criminals to help with the Party’s furthering the causes of ecologism and humanitarianism in Germany.

Not content with this, he has expressly discouraged others from following through with similar tendencies, noting that “they should go for treatment, so it doesn’t escalate like it did with me.” News reports have informed that he is now, paradoxically enough, a vegetarian.