6 Famous Cannibals

1. Albert Fish
Albert Fish was the ultimate in nightmare fuel. He was a sadistic monster who took pleasure in his repulsive acts. Fish kidnapped, murdered, and consumed a 10 year old girl from Manhattan. Years later, Fish taunted the innocent girl’s family by sending a letter to them graphically detailing his crime. Investigators traced the letter back to him and he was arrested and convicted. He was executed on January 16, 1936 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York.

2. Alfred Packer
On February 9, 1874, Packer, a gold prospector, left with 5 others for an expedition in the Colorado mountains. He returned two months later – alone. He said that he was forced to kill the others in self-defense, and was forced to eat their bodies to survive the elements. While he originally was sentenced to 40-years in prison, he was granted parole because there was doubt about his guilt.

3. Issei Sagawa
Sagawa’s tale is one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in history. In 1981, he was a Japanese student completing an English Literature degree at the Sorbonne in Paris. He met and murdered Renée Hartevelt, and then proceeded to cannibalize her over the next two days. He was arrested but found unfit for trial due to insanity. However, after a year in a mental institution, a paperwork error allowed him to simply check himself out. He’s now a free man living in Japan.

4. Andrei Chikatilo
Chikatilo was a Ukrainian born serial killer and rapist whose motives were purely sexual gratification. In custody, Chikatilo confessed to over 50 murders and mutilations. He befriended, killed, and ate his victims. Chikatilo was executed in Rostov on February 14, 1994.

5. Armin Meiwes
In 2001 Meiwes posted an advertisement on an internet site which read in part “looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed”. To his delight, he received several serious responses, and he eventually met Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, an engineer from Berlin. They proceeded to videotape Meiwes murdering and consuming Brandes’ flesh. Meiwes is currently serving a life sentence in a German prison.

6. Jeffrey Dahmer
The American serial killer with fantasies of creating perfect “sexual zombies” would lure male victims to his home, then murder and dismember and eat parts of them. After disposing of parts of his victims, he’d experiment with their other remains, leaving some in his freezer for years. He was convicted of 15 murders and given many life sentences.. He was beaten to death in prison in 1994.