Armin Meiwes, "Hesse Hannibal" and the murder and cannibalisation of Bernd Jürgen Brandes.
Often referred to as "The Cannibal Cafe Murder", this is not a niche case and is infamous for the victim being a consentual and willing participant.
this is very long and one of my first infoposts, pls be kind, and correct me on any incorrect information :'3
Armin Meiwes' Early Life
Armin was born in Essen, Germany on December 1st, 1961. He was the third child of Waltraud Vetter, and his father was Deiter Meiwes. The pair would marry in the year following Armin's birth. He had two older brothers, both of whom had different fathers and were raised with him in Holsterhausen district.
In 1969, Dieter would split from Waltraud and later file for divorce when Armin was 9. Armin's grandmother told him that his father left the family for a younger woman, however it's been recorded that Waltraud's former 2 husbands cited mental cruelty as reason for divorce, and Dieter himself stated that Waltraud did not want a third child, but did so anyway to "bind [her husband] more tightly to her."
Armin said that during the farewell, he even ran after the car, but his father didn't even look in the rearview mirror. He would later describe in court that he felt he "had no one with whom he could confide," that his father ignored him, and "he felt totally abandoned." He stated that he was closer to his father growing up, but after their seperation, his mother was his closest contact for almost all his life.
After Armin's older brothers moved out in 1980, he and his mother moved into a 44 room Gründerzeit-era house that had pony stables in the secluded village of Wüstefeld, in which the family had owned the estate since 1966. Armin stated that after his father had left, he felt responsible for the family, but especially for his mother. He continued to live alone with her in this house until her death in 1999. His mother was said to be controlling over her son and sought to make him fully dependent on her, with accounts from Armin's former partners and coworkers stating that she would always accompany him on work trips and dates. Armin later stated he was raised to believe this was normal.
Armin enlisted in the German Armed Forces as a contractual soldier in 1981 after dropping out of secondary school and attending commercial training. Allegedly, he largely spent his time stationed at the Alheimer Barracks outside of Rotenburg, and became a non-commissioned officer of the 52nd Panzergrenadier Brigade. He was later discharged from the army in 1993 after getting into 2 car accidents while under the influence, as at some point during his time enlisted he had picked up drinking.
After the discharge, Armin picked up a job as an IT specialist for the data centre of a bank in Kassel, a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse.
Between 1984 and 1985, he was said to have been engaged to a woman whom he'd met through a matchmaker, but Armin ended the relationship because he found her too similar in character and appearance to his mother. It's unclear whether this relationship was fabricated or not. Despite this, his friends had stated they had long suspected that Armin was gay. He had also allegedly had 2 relationships with local women from Wüstefeld, both of which ended after Armin disclosed his preferences for both sexes.
Fascination With Cannibalism
Armin's fascination with cannibalism had started during his adolescent years. Having spent summers in rural Wüstefeld, he was introduced to home slaughtering of cattle by neighbors, and taught how to gut small animals such as rabbits around the early age of 6.
He named "Hansel and Gretel" and a film adaptation of "Robinson Crusoe" as early inspirations. The latter stood out to him because it featured a scene in which the character voiced interest in "showing his reverence" for a fellow tribesman by consuming his remains.
As a child, he had felt very lonesome after his family fell apart. He was said to not have a great relationship with his older brothers. This, as well as his lack of friends, resulted in him creating an imaginary little brother named Franky, allegedly after a classmate named Frank. Franky resembled the character Sandy Ricks from the TV show Flipper, a boy with short blonde hair. His mother had forbade him from making girlfriends, which ultimately lead to Armin experiencing sexual fantasies about Franky. Primarily, he fantasized about disemboweling and cannibalizing Franky, stating he desired to "become one" with Franky by consuming his body. Armin allegedly had a classmate who bored resemblance to Franky, but avoided speaking to out of fear of being rejected and ostracized for wanting to "take a piece of him".
Armin stated that as he grew older, his fantasies would fade into the background during relationships, but the death of his mother in 1999 lead him to focus much more intensely on it. He's stated that although he is bisexual, Armin's cannibalistic fantasies were mainly directed towards men.
In adulthood, Armin owned recordings of TV documentaries about the Vietnam War and read literature about serial killers like Fritz Haarmann and (of course) Jeffrey Dahmer.
Since at least 1998, Armin began frequenting cannibalsm and fetish forums on the internet, such as the Cannibal Cafe and Nullo, a forum dedicated to "fantasies of emasculation" and male genital mutilation. He used Franky as an alias with the username "Antrophagus", and also stylized himself as a butcher. He mainly voiced interest in killing, dismembering and cannibalising another person, but also fantasized about being cooked and eaten by someone else.
In early 2000, he posted around 60 online advertisements to Nullo, stating that he was "looking for a well-built 18 to 30 year old to be slaughtered and then consumed." These ads also appeared on the Cannibal Cafe, however, contrary to the media surrounding this case, the forum was not where Armin and Bernd met due to it being primarily centered around the (fictional) cannibalisation of women.
Several people had responded to these ads but inevitably backed out after discovering Armin was serious about fulfilling his fantasies and not just roleplaying; Armin was specifically looking for willing volunteers, however, and never attempted to force them against their will.
During this, Armin also scoured ads made by people who were looking to be eaten, and ultimately ended up chatting at length with an Italian man named Matteo. Matteo had expressed the wish to be "whipped to death," "grilled" by either a flamethrower or two electric heaters, all while being nailed to a St Andrew's Cross.
At Matteo's request, Armin had transformed a part of his attic that used to hold a smoke chamber into a "slaughter room." The room had a metal bed frame, two nightstands, a foldable table, the two heaters, the St Andrew's Cross, two rubber mannequins, a hatchet, a cat o' nine tails, a self crafted whip, and a cage made with leftover packaging. He also soundproofed the walls with mattresses and particle boards. Matteo ended up backing out due to the cannibalism aspect, but Armin still sent pictures of the room to him, and used the room for future sexual encounters.
In June 2000, Armin met a man named Jörg Buse in a cannibal chat group on Yahoo Messanger. They shared similar fantasies and ultimately ended up meeting the following autumn, and after two meetups in October, Armin convinced Jörg to 2 "slaughter sessions." The first, on November 12, occurred in a hotel in Kassel, where Armin slathered the other man in olive oil and drew circles on his body of what parts he'd like to cut meat from. They also discussed the "edibility" of two acquaintances of Jörg, who offered to bring them to Armin to be dismembered and eaten by the both of them. During the second meeting, on the 19th, Jörg ended up leaving early after seeing the "slaughter room" in Armin's house in person.
On February 5th, 2001, Bernd Jürgen Brandes responded to one of Armin's advertisements, after nearly a year of them being up. Bernd was a 43 year old bisexual engineer from Berlin, who went by the username "Cator99". He was dating a man at the time of contacting Armin, who had stated that he had never shown any interest in masochistic actions during sex with him. He would instead solicit male prostitutes for these requests.
Between Armin and Bernd's first online meetings and their in-person meetup, they had near-daily email exhanges discussing their plans and fantasies in detail. Bernd did not desire to be cannibalised, but was willing to accommodate Armin's cannibal fetish in return for his castration. Bernd had previously stated that he was scared to carry out the mutilation himself out of the fear of being involuntarily committed, so he was willing to be killed and consumed by Armin after the fact.
The day before Bernd left to visit Armin, he sold his car, wiped all the files from his computers, took a day off work and put a handwritten note in a cabinet, leaving all of his property to his 25 year old boyfriend René J.
The Murder of Bernd Jürgen Brandes
On March 9th, 2001, Armin and Bernd met at Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe Station. Initially, Armin wanted to live together for a few days and get to know each other, but Bernd insisted that the murder needed to happen that day.
At Armin's house, they proceeded to cuddle and have sex on a mattress. Afterward, Bernd had decided that Armind was too tentative and shy to carry out the murder, saying, "if you can't even have sex with me, how are you going to inflict the pain I want?" Armin, although disappointed at another man backing out of his fantasy, drove Bernd back to the station. However, just before getting back on the train, Bernd changed his mind and decided to follow through with the slaughter. He took a couple of Vivinox sleeping pills and at least half a bottle of cough syrup, but stated that the intended effects weren't kicking in and he was instead experiencing mild hallucinations. To soothe himself, he drank some schnapps and was later deemed to have a blood alcohol content of 1.4%.
The pair set up video equipment to record the mutilation. Armin had also readied 6 knives, a hatchet, and a meat grinder, as well as downloading and translating a step-by-step guide for butchering a man.
Per Bernd's original wish, Armin tried to bite off his penis but ultimately failed. He asked to use a knife instead, and had Bernd drink another 180ml bottle of Vicks MediNait cough syrup to slow his breathing and make the process easier.
At around 6:30pm, Armin attempted to castrate Bernd. He ended up having difficulty cutting the flesh, so he switched to using a sharper blade, in which was successful. Bernd yelled in pain for about 30 seconds, but afterwards said that it didn't hurt that much and was dismayed that the pain wasn't as much as he'd hoped.
Afterward, Armin bandaged the wound, and the pair made their first attempt to eat his penis together. This was to little success, with Bernd saying it was too tough and "chewy." Armin then fried the organ in a pan with salt, pepper, garlic, and wine, but in between cooking it and checking on Bernd, he ended up burning it past consumption. According to officials who had seen the video, Bernd was too weak from blood loss to consume any of the burnt penis, and told Armin, "if I hold out until the morning, we can still have my balls for breakfast. You get one, I get one." Allegedly after this, Armin chopped up the burnt organ and fed it to his dog.
Armin ran Bernd a bath before leaving the room to read a Star Trek book. He checked on Bernd every 15 minutes, in which Bernd was bleeding out into the bath, drifting in and out of consciousness. After 2 hours, Armin returned Bernd to the slaughter room to cuddle and sleep on the bed together.
Soon after this, at around 3 or 4 AM, Bernd attempted to get up to use the restroom and collapsed to the floor immediately due to blood loss. Armin believed this meant he had died, and proceeded to tie him to the foldable table, and cut off various parts of his body. He later said after reviewing the tape that it was possible Bernd was still breathing at this time. Armin hesitated, but ultimately killed Bernd by stabbing him in the neck, then finishing the dismemberment and hanging Bernd's body on a meat hook. The tape ended up being four hours long, and while it has never been released, there are screenshots that are allegedly from the video around the internet.
Armin would continue to dismember and consume Bernd's corpse over the next 10 months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes. He ended up consuming about 44 lb (20 kg) of the flesh. Bernd's bones were buried in the ground of Armin's estate, and his head, while initially kept in a deep freeze, was buried 6 months after his death. Bernd was only reported missing by his boyfriend, in which the case found no leads after he had left Berlin.
Between 2001 and 2002, Armin would proceed to arrange between 30 and 40 meetings with men over the internet. Most of the men he met with backed out of Armin's more drastic desires, but at least four men had agreed to being slaughtered, and all but one backed out after realising he was serious. Despite this, Armin had no further victims after Bernd and this search would ultimately lead to his arrest.
The Arrest and Sentancing of Armin Meiwes
On July 9th, 2002, an Austrian university student found one of Armin's new advertisements while searching for something online. He wrote an email to Armin, asking if he had actually ever killed anyone, and when Armin replied with the affirmative, the student was disgusted and on the 27th of October, reported Armin's email address to the police on suspect of homicide. It took police two months to identify "Franky" as Armin.
He was subjected to a house search on the 10th of December, 2002, and agreed to be put in police custody in Bad Hersfeld for questioning. Investigators had found the slaughter room and Bernd's remains, which had been portioned into 3 bags in Armin's freezer, but couldn't identify it as human flesh at first glance. They were confiscated and sent to the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Giessen regardless.
Initially, during Armin's first 3 hour interrogation, he admitted to the interaction with the Austrian student and that he would kill someone with their explicit consent, but refused to answer any questions regarding the meat found in his freezer. He was charged with representation of violence, but released because there was not enough evidence to keep him in remand. On the same day, Armin called his lawyer and confessed to his murder, in which he was advised to go to the police, so he repeated his confession to them and agreed to turn himself in at his lawyer's office in Rotenburg.
On the 11th of December, 2002, police recovered the head, hands, feet, a few of the bones, and a wristwatch of Bernd on Armin's property. After the search, a total of 1,742 diskettes, 228 video cassettes, 221 hard drives, 16 PCs, 95 CD-ROMs, and 23 magnetic tapes were confiscated from Armin's home. Of what was obtained, only 21 of the cassettes were deemed case-related.
Two Hesse State Police officers reviewed the four hour video, but didn't finish it, stating that transcribing the castration and murder alone met the evidentary requirements and that there was no need to watch and document the dismemberment of Bernd after his death. On the 19th of December, the case was passed to Hesse LKA and a special investigative commission was formed.
While jailed at Justizvollzugsanstalt Kassel I, Armin had been diagnosed with a schizoid personality but was deemed mentally fit for trial. In interviews, he had described Bernd's death as an assisted suicide, and even wrote a letter to Bernd's former boyfriend, expressing his "deepest condolences," and that the murder was "a beautiful death, which Bernd had wished for years."
The trial acknowledged that Bernd had consented to his murder, but emphasized that it did not make the act of killing legal, taking specific consideration of Bernd's mental state and the possibility that it was further altered by the drugs he had taken at the time of his death. Despite Germany typically having open trials, people who weren't deemed necessary to watch were asked to leave when they played a 19 minute clip from the 4 hour video of Bernd's death.
On the 30th of January, 2004, Armin was convicted of manslaughter and sentanced to 8.5 years in prison. Prosecutors were not satisfied with this sentancing, however, and on the 22nd of April, 2005, the German Federal Court ordered a retrial. They believed that he should have been convicted of murder because he killed for sexual gratification, and the court ruled that the original trial had ignored the significance of the video.
Armin's retrial began on the 12th of January, 2006. A psychologist suggested that Armin could reoffend because he still fantasized about killing and eating young people, and Armin was finally convicted of murder and sentanced to life in prison on the 10th of May, 2006.
