I wanted to kill again, says German cannibal
Mon Dec 8, 9:51 AM ET Add World - AFP to My Yahoo!
KASSEL, Germany (AFP) - A German cannibal standing trial for murder admitted that he had been on the hunt for another person to eat when he was arrested for killing and consuming a first victim.
Armin Meiwes, who insists the man he ate had given his consent, wrote to a friend saying that the flesh was nearly all gone.
The court was due later Monday to view the key evidence -- hours of graphic home-made video tapes showing the killing, dissection and partial consumption of his allegedly willing victim.
It was understood the public would likely be excluded when the footage was shown at the court in Kassel, central Germany.
In evidence Monday, the 42-year-old computer technician, who denies murder but admits killing and eating a man, said he had been looking on the Internet for a fresh victim when he was arrested a year ago.
"I hope I will soon find another victim, the flesh has almost all gone," he wrote in an email to a friend.
Explaining the email, he said: "It was still my wish to slaughter a human, in other words, to dissect a body."
His plan was to share the final remains of his victim, Bernd-Juergen Brandes, with his next prey before proceeding to the killing, he added.
But he insisted he never got that far.
"I'd just like to say that I didn't kill anyone else although I would have done if the chance had presented itself," he told police under interrogation, according to a transcript read out in court.
In another email he gave tips to a contact on how to "chat up" a potential victim.
A police official said in evidence that suggestions of other cannibalistic activities could not be confirmed.
Meiwes said Brandes "disappointed me in many ways."
Brandes, an engineer aged 43 from Berlin, had lied about his age, claiming in emails to be 36, and did not want to get to know Meiwes better before his planned death, the accused said.
He insisted Brandes was a willing accomplice in his own death.
"I saw the killing as helping him, helping him to die, helping him to kill himself," he said. "That is a taboo for which I must justify myself before God and the whole world.
"It was the most terrible moment in my life, far worse that I had imagined it in my fantasies."
He said he wished he had seen a psychologist about his cannibal fantasies, "then things wouldn't have gone so far."
Prosecutors, however, claim Meiwes is guilty of murder for taking advantage of his victim's apparent death wish.
He faces life in jail if convicted of the main charge of murder for sexual satisfaction. He is also accused of disturbing the peace of the dead. (New one to me
)
Defence lawyers argue that he is guilty only of "killing on demand," which is punishable by up to five years in prison.
On the first day of his trial last week, Meiwes explained in graphic detail how he met Brandes over the Internet after advertising for someone willing to be killed and eaten.
(He advertised on the interent?
)
Brandes travelled to his home in Rotenburg, near Kassel. There, Meiwes cut off his victim's penis, which they tried to eat.
Later on the evening of March 10, 2001, Meiwes stabbed Brandes, carved the body into pieces, stored some of the flesh in a freezer, most of which he ate, and buried bones and the skull in the garden.
He was arrested after an Austrian student saw another advertisement Meiwes had posted on the Internet
and alerted police.