I infiltrated terrifying cannibal forums where real-life Hannibal found stranger to EAT along with potatoes and red wine
HE’S one of the world’s most notorious cannibals, who severed the penis of his willing victim before eating his body parts over a period of 18 months.
Armin Meiwes lured Bernd Brandes to his remote farmhouse in rural Germany in March 2001, before stabbing him in the neck then eating his flesh with potatoes, sprouts and red wine – in scenes reminiscent of infamous movie psycho Hannibal Lecter.
Now a new documentary delves into the twisted forums for wannabe flesh-eaters – including the now-defunct Cannibal Cafe, where suicidal Brandes sealed his fate and offered himself up to Meiwes on a plate.
The Cannibal Next Door, which airs on Channel 5 tonight, reveals Meiwes, now 61, used the forum to advertise for a “Slaughter boy” who was willing to die and be “worked into delicious schnitzels and steaks.”
It also reveals the sinister messages between the pair before their fatal meeting, with Brandes calling himself “your dinner” and revealing his fantasy of having his penis bitten off, saying: “I’d like to feel and see your teeth. Then I’ll be ready for slaughter.”
Crime expert Professor Mark T. Hofmann, who has spent years investigating the dark web, says the Cannibal Cafe site was instrumental in pushing Brandes to his death.
“Some people believe these forums prevent crimes by giving people a chance to fantasise and get some gratification without actually doing it,” he tells The Sun.
“In reality, what they do is fuel a fantasy with pictures, videos and extreme dirty talk and that makes it more likely that people will go further and further and act out these fantasies.
“Even if it’s unlikely, and I would say 90 per cent of members in these forums won’t do anything extreme, there are people who may do it and the forums make that more likely.”
Teenage fantasy
Growing up on a remote farm in Wüstefeld, Meiwes’ world was shattered at eight when his older brother and father suddenly left the family home – leaving him alone with his mother.
Desperately lonely and bullied at school, he made up an imaginary friend, or little brother, called Franky – the name he later used as a pseudonym on Cannibal Cafe.
After reading Robinson Crusoe and Hansel and Gretel, he became obsessed with the idea of fighting loneliness by consuming someone, so they would be unable to leave him.
As a teenager, the fantasy took on a sexual element but Mark says he was not driven by the thought of killing, but of butchering the body afterwards.
“It was a post-mortem fantasy, of cutting up a dead body and removing the inner organs,” says Mark.
“On the one hand, it was a desire to combat loneliness by having someone inside that never leaves, and that’s what he likes to talk about because it sounds more peaceful. But at the same time, there was clearly a sexual component.”
In chilling messages on the forum, Meiwes joked that some of his classmates were “juicy boys” and added: “I imagined how I would seduce them, then drug them, slowly undress them and really enjoy their bodies before eating them.”
‘Slaughter boy wanted’
After the death of his mother in 1999, Meiwes stumbled across the dark web, and would spend hours on the Cannibal Cafe site.
There he discovered a world where he was not alone in his twisted thoughts but could talk to other would-be cannibals, known as ‘chefs’ and others who fantasise about being eaten, dubbed ‘long pigs’ or ‘piggies’.
In early 2001, Meiwes, then 39, placed a disturbing advert headed “Slaughter Boy Wanted”, which read: “You are between 18 and 25 years old. Have a normal body and you are healthy? Do you wish to end your life?”
“I will slaughter you and I will use your body afterwards. I will work it into delicious schnitzels and steaks.”
Incredibly, Brandes wasn’t the only respondent. Another man travelled to the 30-room farmhouse, where Meiwes had converted a bedroom into a soundproof “slaughter room”.
He lay naked on a table while Meiwes used a pen to draw the “cuts of meat” that he would get from his body, but did not consent to being killed – an all-important detail.
“Armin wanted the person inside him to be a friend,” explains Mark. “It was really important to get to know that person, and to have their strength forever inside him. To do it involuntarily was absolutely not his fantasy. He would never do that.”
Gruesome fantasy
Although he had a boyfriend and a full-time job as an engineer, 43-year-old Brandes was himself a disturbed man.
Since his childhood, he had blamed himself for the death of his mother, who took her own life by driving her car into a tree.
He himself craved death and fantasised about having his penis bitten off, even attempting to persuade male sex workers in Berlin to carry out the gruesome deed, to no avail.
“His motive is primal,” says Mark. “He wants to feel as much as possible. Extreme masochism, he wants to be humiliated, he wants to be destroyed. At the same time he wants to be dead so there’s a lot of sadness there.”
Brandes replied to Meiwes’ sick advert calling himself “your dinner”, and added: “I’m offering you the chance to eat me alive.”
The pair exchanged sick messages for weeks and in the final message, the night before they met, Brandes wrote: “I’ll bring myself as breakfast”. Meiwes replied: “I’ll have an appetite – rely on it.”
On March 9, 2001, Brandes bought a one way train ticket to Wustefeld station where he was picked up by Meiwes, and consented to his own murder being filmed.
After the pair had sex in the “slaughter room”, Brandes took sleeping pills to sedate himself and asked Meiwes to cut off his penis and cook it so they could eat it together.
But the flesh burned and became inedible, and over the next few hours Brandes bled out into a warm bath while Meiwes calmly read a Star Trek novel in the bedroom next door.
Finally, Meiwes carried his unconscious victim back into the slaughter room where he fatally stabbed him in the neck before hanging his body from the ceiling, removing his organs, washing and decapitating him.
That night he ate his first human flesh, washed down with wine, as his victim’s head stared across the table.
Buried bones
Over the next 18 months, Meiwes worked his way through the many body parts he had stored in small packets in the freezer.
“He had the person inside him that could never leave – mission accomplished,” says Mark.
“But he didn’t stop. The fantasy can never be as good as the reality and they need to do it again and again. It is the reason serial killers kill many victims, because they never fulfil the perfect fantasy and, if he hadn’t been stopped, Armin would definitely have become a serial killer.”
Meiwes returned to the forum to look for another willing victim – even confessing to being an “experienced cannibal” – but was reported to the police who raided his house in December 2002.
They found 30 bags of meat and hard drives full of masochistic pornography as well as Brandes’ bones and skull buried in the garden and the incriminating film of the gruesome mutilation. By this time he’d eaten two thirds of the body.
At his trial, he argued that he wasn’t guilty of murder because he had the consent of the victim.
While he was initially jailed for eight and half years for manslaughter, he was convicted of murder at a retrial in 2005, and jailed for a minimum of 15 years.
“Armin believes he has done nothing wrong and many people support that view because it was voluntary,” says Mark.
“I disagree. If someone comes to you and tells you, ‘I really want to die,’ you would call for help, not kill and eat that person.
“Armin was exploiting depression or other mental illness for his own sexual and personal gratification. This is why I say he’s definitely guilty, even though it was consensual.”
‘Hero’ to 80,000 members
Mark, who has himself infiltrated the cannibal forums by posing as a 19-year-old girl who “wants to be eaten”, says the membership is constantly growing and that Meiwes has become a hero in the warped community.
The founder of Cannibal Cafe – which was shut down in 2002 – later set up a new forum which had around 40,000 members in 2003.
Two decades on, the number stands at 80,000 members with up to 1million page views per month.
“Today you can even find content on more mainstream platforms like YouTube, Reddit or Telegram, if you know what keywords to look for, but there are also two or three main sites that mainly or exclusively deal with cannibalism content,” he says.
“There are many, many more potential victims than people who want to do it and for most it’s a very extreme form of dirty talk,” says Mark.
“Sometimes you have content which you would not even see as pornography if you don’t know the sentiment behind sharing it.
“For example, there’s a video for Katy Perry’s Bon Appetit, where she plays with the cannibalism stereotype, laying naked on a table, with cooks around her, touching her and putting her on a plate with some vegetables.
“That may be a funny Hollywood music video to us, but in reality for these guys, it’s pornography and triggers their sexual fantasies.”
‘Piggies’ outnumber ‘chefs’
Mark says the ‘piggies’, who want to be eaten, outnumber the ‘chefs’ by nine to one on the forums and believes that 99 per cent would never actually carry out their fantasy.
But, while there have been 120 fatal cannibal incidents around the world since Meiwes’ conviction, he says consensual non-fatal incidents are much more common.
“If you read some of the ads you would come to the conclusion fatal crimes happen every single day but they don’t.
“But there is another form of voluntary cannibalism, which happens much more often than people think, where two people might decide to cut off a foot or a finger then cook and eat it together. But there’s no police involved and they go undetected.”
Mark believes the internet has led to dark fantasists crossing the “last human taboo” of cannibalism and allowed fantasies to become realities.
“Imagine you had cannibalistic tendencies in 1910, you would feel like the weirdest, most awkward human being in the whole world and very lonely with your fantasy, because you think you’re the only person who has these fantasies.
“You can’t go into the street and say, ‘Hello, I have cannibalistic tendencies and I’m looking for voluntary victims.’
“In Armin’s case, it was really important for him to have a willing victim, but he would never have found one without these anonymous online forums.
“So I argue that these forums fuel the fantasy and without them, the phenomenon of voluntary cannibalism would not exist.”
The Cannibal Next Door airs on Channel 5 tonight