In September 2020, the accused allegedly gave his victim a drink with GHB before slitting his throat, letting him bleed and devouring him.
A German was sentenced to life in prison on Friday by a Berlin court for having killed, dismembered and partly eaten a 43-year-old man he met online.
Stefan R., a 42-year-old teacher, was convicted of “murder” and “breaching the peace of the dead”. In view of the gravity of the facts, his conviction was accompanied by a mention making any early release almost impossible.
The president of the court, Matthias Schertz, declared that Stefan R. had committed this crime “to carry out his cannibalistic fantasies”, calling it “inhuman”. In my thirty-year career, “nothing like this has ever landed on my desk,” he said. The accused remained silent and expressionless as the verdict was read.
A drink with GHB before slitting his victim’s throat
On September 6, 2020, the victim had agreed to a sexual encounter with the accused via a dating platform. The man then took a taxi to the suspect’s apartment in Berlin-Pankow, in the north of the German capital.
Stefan R. then administered a glass of GHB, the “rapist’s drug”, which made him lose consciousness. The accused then cut the throat of his victim and left her bleeding, “because it gave him sexual stimulation,” said prosecutor Martin Glage in his requisitions. Once dead, it would have devoured part of its limbs.
The investigation into his disappearance had remained at a standstill until the discovery in November 2020 by walkers of human bones in a park in northern Berlin.
“Concrete and detailed” research on forums related to cannibalism
The investigation had established that these were the remains of a missing man. It was by analyzing the victim’s phone that the investigators were able to identify a taxi driver who had driven him to the home of the accused.
The police then found traces of blood, other parts of the body and several tools, including a bone saw.
There was “a lot of blood from the victim,” according to Martin Glage. There is no indication of a consensual homicide: the victim “wanted to make it out alive”, he continued.
Investigators then revealed that the accused had already done “concrete and detailed” research on various forums related to cannibalism.
A case reminiscent of that of the “cannibal of Rotenburg”
The case recalls the case of Detlev Günzel, a former police commissioner, convicted of having killed and butchered, obviously at his request, a man met on a website of anthropophagy fetishists. There was no evidence to establish that he had eaten his victim.
Another case that froze Germany in the early 2000s is that of Armin Meiwes, nicknamed “the cannibal of Rotenburg”, sentenced to life in 2006 for a homicide followed by anthropophagia, all filmed.
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