Episode 04: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I’m your host Julie Mattson. Today we are going to talk about Armin Meiwes. Armin was born December 1st of 1961, he was a German computer repair technician, and he achieved international attention because he advertised on a website called the Cannibal Cafe. He was looking for a voluntary victim who wanted to be slaughtered and consumed, so he found his victim in a gentleman named Bernd Brandes. Bernd was a 43-year-old engineer from Berlin. He was the one that Armin actually chose for the position, although many responded, which is crazy to me to think that anybody would respond to that. Armin killed Bernd and then proceeded to eat a large amount of His flesh. This to me is just crazy, but it’s so interesting. I usually look back at someone’s life or history or the way they were raised, and you can somehow put two and two together as to why they turned out this way or why they think this is acceptable behavior.
Let’s take a closer look together, ready?
SHOW NOTES:
• I usually look back at someone’s life or history or the way they were raised, and you can somehow put two and two together as to why they turned out this way or why they think this is acceptable behavior. But Meiwes actually had two older half brothers and his father abandoned him when he was 8. He had a desire for cannibalism, and he said it was related to the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. He was always lonesome and had the feeling that his family was falling apart, and that was kind of the life that he grew up in without his father. And then looking for a volunteer, he advertised on the website, the Cannibal Café, which is no longer there, but it was basically a forum for those with a cannibalism fetish. So, he advertised that he was looking for a normally-built man between the ages of 18 and 20 that wanted to be slaughtered and consumed. A lot of people responded to the ad, but most of them backed out. Meiwes actually did not attempt to make them do anything that they didn’t want to do if they backed out, he let them leave. (02:02)
• He basically made a meal out of Brandis and he stored the body parts in a freezer. He would put them in pizza boxes and those types of things to try to hide them. So, if someone looked in his freezer, they wouldn’t know what was there. He consumed over a period of 10 months, about 44 pounds of flesh, and he said that this was for sexual pleasure, that’s the reason that he committed this crime. He actually wasn’t arrested until 2002 when a college student saw an advertisement for victims online that Meiwes had posted. Investigators went and looked into his home at that time, and they found body parts and they found the video tape. He was schizophrenic, he was also deemed fit to be on trial back then, even then, it attracted a lot of media attention, he did express sorrow and regret for what he did to the German newspapers. (05:37)
• He wanted to write a biography to keep people from following in his footsteps while he was in prison, ironically he became a vegetarian. But when he was retried, the German court ordered a retrial and the prosecutors felt like that he should have been convicted of murder because he killed for sexual gratification, then they actually had a motive which was proved by him videotaping the crime. They actually ordered that the original trial be ignored and the psychologists were sure that he still had fantasies and he wanted to devour people and craved flesh. So, that’s when he was sentenced to life in prison. It’s a really crazy story, but at the time he was interviewed, he said he felt like there were over 800 cannibals in Germany at that time. I don’t know what kind of person would want to do that, but it was actually a consensual crime, and that was his argument whenever he went to court was like, Hey, he obviously wasn’t fighting me, he wasn’t trying to get away, I have it all on video tape, he was a willing participant, he wanted this, and he didn’t feel like that he should have been convicted of murder because it was voluntary. (06:44)
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