On 19th August 1989, 28 year old Daniel Rakowitz murdered his 26 year old girlfriend and flatmate Monika Beerle, a dance student, in New York City. They had apparently had an argument which led to Beerle demanding he left the apartment, to which he retaliated by hitting her forcefully in the throat with a blunt object. The trauma to her trachea ultimately led to death shortly afterwards. However, far from feeling remorseful for his actions, Rakowitz proceeded to dismember and cannibalise her deceased body. He later boasted to a friend that he had boiled her head and made soup with her brain, adding that it “tasted pretty good”. He had also apparently handed out the remnants of this soup to the homeless.
After receiving word of the murder, police pursued Rakowitz and took him into custody. After openly discussing his dedication to devil worship, he did not deny the accusations of murder against him and willingly led police to Monika’s bones which he had stored inside a bucket after boiling and bleaching them. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity on 22nd February 1991 and was consigned to a state psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane instead of receiving a prison sentence. In 2004, Rakowitz was determined by a jury to no longer be a dangerous threat to society, but his mental illness is still acknowledged and so he remains at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York.
