Armin Meiwes recruited voluntarily edible victim Bernd Jürgen Brandes online, killing and consuming the latter's flesh, including his penis.
Meiwes posted an ad on The Cannibal Cafe, an online cannibal forum, looking for "a male between the ages of 18-30 who is willing to be killed and eaten and in good physical shape". In March 2001, Bernd Jürgen Brandes, a Berlin engineer with transvestites, responded to the ad and was eventually selected by Meiwes.
On March 9, 2001, the two met in a small town in Rothenburg. They made a videotape of everything, including Meiwes' efforts to cut off Brandes' penis with Brandes' consent, before the pair attempted to eat the contents of the severed penis. Before doing all this, Brandes took a lot of sleeping pills and cough drops to numb himself. Initially, Brandes wanted Meiwes to bite off his own penis, but it didn't work, so Meiwes ended up slicing off each other's penis with a knife. Brandes tried to eat his penis, but was unsuccessful because it was difficult to chew. According to court officials who watched the tape, Brandes was actually too weak to eat his penis due to blood loss. So Meiwes tried cooking the penis with garlic, red wine, Brandes' fat and salt and black pepper, but it was so overcooked that he ended up cutting it into small pieces and feeding it to his dog.
Meiwes made Brandes lie in the bathtub bleeding, reading Star Trek books while checking on Brandes every 15 minutes. Eventually, after prayers and hesitation, Meiwes took Brandes into the family's purpose-built slaughterhouse, kissed Brandes first, and stabbed the latter in the neck, causing his death. Finally, Meiwes hung Brandes' body on a meat hook. The four-hour video recorded everything from the attempt to bite off the penis to Brandes' death. In it, Brandes has repeatedly claimed that he voluntarily chose to be eaten.
For the next ten months, Meiwes kept Brandes' body in a refrigerator and consumed at least 20 kilograms of Brandes' meat. According to Meiwes, Brandes' meat tasted like pork.
Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after trying to find new willing victims on the Internet.
In 2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for eight and a half years. But in 2005, the prosecution appealed against the verdict, and Meiwes was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In prison, he became a vegetarian.
— Both Meiwes and Brandes are said to be deeply troubled by their relationship with their mother. Brandes may have attributed the death of his own mother, while Meiwes' mother was a control freak who lived with Meiwes until her death.
— Brandes is openly bisexual. His sexual partner claimed that Brandes had repeatedly asked him to cut, bite and eat his penis.
—Meiwes had invited other people who responded to his post to come to his home and visit his slaughterhouse, but none of these people really wanted to be eaten, he just wanted someone who was completely willing.
— Meiwes claims that the more Brandes' meat he eats, the closer he feels to each other. He even felt that Brandes' English was passed on to himself. He said he felt consuming Brandes' meat made him whole and gave him a soul mate.
— In 2006, Martin Weitz directed the film Grimm Love starring Thomas Kretschmann. However, due to various reasons, the film was not released in Germany until 2009.
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