He Posted an Ad Seeking a Man to Kill and Eat. Someone Responded By Christina Coulter 173

Content warning: The following article contains graphic and disturbing descriptions.

Two decades ago, a German court faced an unthinkable question: Was it murder to kill and eat a man who had signed a contract agreeing to it?

The case centered on Armin Meiwes, who admitted to killing and cannibalizing Bernd Brandes, a man he met through an online forum devoted to extreme sexual fantasies. Meiwes had posted an ad seeking a “well-built male” for “slaughter and consumption,” and Brandes responded, according to NBC News. The two men later met in person and drafted a written agreement outlining what would happen.

Meiwes’ defense team argued that the killing should have fallen under Germany’s laws governing so-called “killing on demand,” rather than murder, because Brandes had explicitly asked to be killed and had formalized that consent in writing. Under German law at the time, per The Guardian, killing on demand was punishable by up to five years in prison, far less than a murder conviction. Prosecutors insisted Meiwes was a murderer.

Before his death, Brandes was a successful and financially secure professional who lived with his girlfriend. The girlfriend, identified as Bettina L., told German television that the couple had enjoyed a healthy sex life but later split up after Brandes revealed that he also liked men, according to The Guardian. Prosecutors said Brandes was suffering from a severe psychiatric disorder and had a strong compulsion for self-destruction.

Brandes drank alcohol and took sleeping pills, according to trial accounts described by CBS News, before Meiwes cut off his genitals with Brandes’ consent. The two men then attempted to eat the victim’s private parts together.

Brandes did not die immediately. Instead, he bled for hours.

Brandes lay in a bathtub as he bled, and Meiwes kept him company by reading aloud from a Star Trek novel. When Brandes did not succumb to blood loss, prosecutors said, Meiwes fatally stabbed him before later dismembering the body and storing portions in a freezer.

The cannibalism continued over several months, during which Meiwes consumed portions of Brandes’ remains that he had stored, Meiwes said in a prison interview, per Spiegel International.

Meiwes later said his cannibalism was driven by a lifelong desire to absorb another person into himself. During interviews conducted in prison, he said he had always dreamed of having a younger brother — someone he could make part of himself — and that cannibalism became a way to fulfill that obsession.

“The first bite was of course a peculiar, indefinable feeling at first,” Meiwes said. “Because I had yearned for that for 30 years, that this inner connection would be made perfect through this flesh.”

Meiwes told investigators he had received hundreds of responses to his online advertisement but rejected many of them, the BBC reported. He chose Brandes, he said, because they had sexual chemistry.

In 2004, Meiwes was initially convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison. Germany’s Federal Court of Justice later overturned that sentence as too lenient and ordered a retrial, ruling that consent could not negate murder in a case involving sexual gratification and cruelty.

At the retrial, prosecutors again emphasized the sexual and ritualistic elements of the killing. In 2006, a German court sentenced Meiwes to life in prison for murder, Al Jazeera reported.

The case resurfaced in 2020 when The Times of London reported that Meiwes, described by officials as polite and cooperative in custody, had been allowed limited supervised day releases — a development that reignited public unease over the disturbing crime.