Armin Meiwes

Armin Meiwes (; born 1 December 1961) is a German former computer repair technician who received international attention for murdering and cannibalising Bernd Brandes, whom he had found via the Internet as a voluntary victim, in March 2001.

After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes murdered his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh. He was arrested in December 2002. In January 2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. In a retrial in May 2006, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of his acts, Meiwes is also known as the Rotenburg Cannibal or (The Master Butcher), from the signature he used in his e-mails.

Early life Armin Meiwes was born in Essen as the third child of Waltraud Vetter (1922–1999) Through his mother, Meiwes had two older half-brothers by different fathers, who were raised with him in Holsterhausen district. Dieter separated from Waltraud in 1969 Meiwes dropped out of Hauptschule and attended commercial training without completion.

Both of her ex-husbands cited mental cruelty as the reason for their divorce; the father of her second child, whom she met after his return from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, died in a mental hospital after attempting to kill Waltraud in a failed murder-suicide gas explosion. Her third husband Dieter stated that Waltraud did not want a third child, but that she did so anyway to "bind [her husband] more tightly to her".

Adulthood

Military service and career Between 1981 and 1993, Meiwes served as a contractual soldier in the German Army, largely spent stationed at the outside of Rotenburg, and became a non-commissioned officer of the 52nd Panzergrenadier Brigade. Due to the close proximity to his home, Meiwes drove back and forth to continue to live with his mother. Soldiers and civilian employees described him as professional and obliging, always allowing leaves and offering to help in the private lives of his subordinates. Between 1984 and 1985, he was engaged to a woman, but Meiwes ended the relationship because he found her too similar in character and appearance to his mother. Meiwes claimed to have met his ex-fiancée, as well as other women, through a matchmaker and that after the break-up, he focused more on his career, finishing administrative training in Sonthofen and Unna in 1986. On 16 December 1986, Meiwes totalled his car after crashing into a telephone pole while driving home drunk from a Christmas party, resulting in a 1,500 mark fine and a nine-month driver's licence suspension. Shortly after regaining his driving privileges, Meiwes had another traffic collision, this time causing another vehicle to overturn, injuring the two occupants. The case led to Meiwes hiring attorney Harald Ermel, who remained his legal counsel for the later homicide trials. Meiwes was ultimately sentenced to a 1,280 mark fine. According to Meiwes, the drunk driving convictions led to his military superiors excluding him from promotions. In 1988, Meiwes had a brief romantic relationship with a fellow male soldier while stationed in Canada on CFB Shilo.

Cannibal fetishism During sessions with police experts, Meiwes had explained that his desire for cannibalism had developed during his adolescent years. Having spent summer vacations in rural Wüstefeld, he was introduced to home slaughtering of cattle, poultry, hogs, and deer by neighbours at an early age and taught how to gut small animals such as rabbits around the age of six. Combined with his lack of friends, Meiwes created an imaginary little brother named "Franky", after a classmate named Frank. In Meiwes's imagination, "Franky" resembled the character Sandy Ricks (portrayed by Luke Halpin) from the American TV show Flipper. Specifically, he desired to "become one" with "Franky" by consuming his body, with the fantasy branching out into evisceration and slaughterhouse imagery. Meiwes only attempted to live this fantasy out once before, having wanted to ask a male classmate who bore a close resemblance to "Franky" to "cut off a piece of him", but decided against it for fear of being refused and subsequently ostracised. Meiwes is bisexual, but stated that his cannibal fetish was exclusively directed at men. Several people responded to the advertisement but backed out; Meiwes specifically requested volunteers and did not attempt to force them to do anything against their will. The ads also appeared on another site, the Cannibal Café,

At the same time, Meiwes scoured adverts by people who claimed they were willing to be killed and eaten, chatting at length with two users, though neither ultimately followed up on their offer. "Luke", self-identified as a 20-year-old Austrian man, stated that his family was going to undertake the slaughtering instead of Meiwes, set for 7 January 2001 during Orthodox Christmas.

At Matteo's request, Meiwes had converted a part of his attic, which formerly held a smoke chamber, into a "slaughter room". He furnished the room with a metal bed frame, a foldable table, and two nightstands, one holding a comic and the other containing air fresheners. In addition to the two heaters and cross, Meiwes decorated the room with two rubber mannequins, a hatchet, a cat o' nine tails, a self-crafted whip, and a cage made from leftover packaging, also soundproofing the walls with mattresses and particle boards. While Meiwes ultimately only sent pictures of the room to "Matteo", he ended up using the attic for future sexual encounters. engineer from Berlin, answered one of them under the alias "Cator99".

Bernd Brandes

Bernd Jürgen Brandes was born on 19 January 1958 in Berlin-Schöneberg as an only child to a wealthy family. His father was a physician and his mother was an anaesthesiologist, working at clinics in Berlin-Zehlendorf. In 1963, Brandes' mother died in a traffic collision during a vacation in Sylt. Police investigation found evidence that the death was a suicide disguised as an accident, likely stemming from guilt due to a medical error she had made the prior year, which led to the death of a patient. Brandes' father never told his son about the true circumstances of his mother's death, which, according to psychologist Klaus Michael Beier, resulted in Brandes developing anxiety issues. Brandes was subsequently raised mostly by au pairs hired by his father, to whom he grew distant after remarriage to an employee at his doctor's office. Beier posits that his negative relationship with his stepmother contributed to his abnormal psychosexual development and wish for castration, later compounded by self-hatred for his sexual orientation. Contrary to most media reports, Brandes did not desire to be eaten, but was willing to accommodate Meiwes' cannibal fetish in return for his castration. Brandes previously spoke of being fearful that undertaking the mutilation himself could lead to him being involuntarily committed, so he was willing to be killed and consumed by Meiwes after the act. At the house, Brandes claimed that the intended effects were not kicking in, but that he was instead having mild hallucinations of moving animal shapes. Brandes drank some schnapps to calm himself and was later determined to have had a blood alcohol content of 1,4‰. At around 18:30, Meiwes made his first attempt at castrating Brandes. Because he had difficulty cutting into the flesh, Meiwes then used a sharper blade to cut off Brandes' penis. Brandes cried out in pain, but was dismayed that the sensation was not as intense as hoped. After Meiwes bandaged the wound, the pair attempted to consume Brandes' penis together. Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw but could not, because it was too tough and, as he put it, "chewy". Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine, and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes' fat, but by then it was too burnt to be consumed by either man. According to court officials who saw the video (which has not been made public), Brandes may already have been too weakened from blood loss to eat any of his own penis. Disappointed by this outcome, Brandes told Meiwes, "If I hold out until morning, we can still have my balls for breakfast. You get one, I get one".

Disposal of body and later meetings Meiwes dismembered and ate the corpse over the next ten months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes and consuming up to of the flesh. The bones were buried in the ground of the estate, while the head of Brandes, initially kept in deep freeze, was also buried six months after his death. According to prosecutors, Meiwes committed the act for sexual pleasure. Meiwes for his part claimed that he had now "assimilated" Brandes, and that he possessed better English and math skills from consuming his flesh. The family of Brandes did not report him missing and a missing report by his boyfriend on 12 March 2001 found no leads after Brandes left Berlin.

Arrest On 9 July 2002, a 23-year-old Austrian university student from Innsbruck, browsing online using a search engine with the key words "Horror and Nervous Thrills", found one of Meiwes' new advertisements and wrote an e-mail to Meiwes, asking if he had actually killed anyone. When Meiwes answered in the affirmative, the student responded with disgust and disapproval and on 27 October of the same year, the student reported Meiwes' e-mail address to the authorities on suspicions of homicide. Wiesbaden police took two months to identify "Franky" as Armin Meiwes.

Meiwes was subjected to a house search on 10 December 2002 and agreed to enter police custody in Bad Hersfeld for questioning. Investigators found the "slaughter room" and the remains of Brandes, portioned into three bags, in the freezer, but could not identify it as human flesh on first glance. The bags were nevertheless confiscated and sent in for analysis to the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Giessen. Meanwhile, during a three-hour interrogation, Meiwes admitted to the exchange with the Austrian student and affirmed that he would, as written in his advert, kill someone with their express permission, but refused to answer questions pertaining to the suspicious meat found in his residence. Based on these responses, Meiwes was charged with representation of violence , but released since there was not enough evidence to keep him in remand. The same day, Meiwes called his lawyer, Harald Ermel, and confessed to the murder. Meiwes was advised to contact police, to whom he repeated his confession and agreed to turn himself in at his lawyer's office in Rotenburg.

On 11 December, police recovered body parts in the yard and personal belongings of Brandes. Only the head, hands, feet, and a few of the bones were found. Meiwes had pointed out the burial locations and handed in a wristwatch owned by Brandes he wore at the time of his arrest. In total, 1,742 diskettes, 228 video cassettes, 221 hard drives, 16 PCs, 95 CD-ROMs and 23 magnetic-tapes were confiscated from Meiwes' home. Of these, only 21 of the cassettes were deemed case-related. The same evening, two Hesse State Police officers reviewed the tape, but did not watch it completely, reasoning that they "satisfied the evidentiary requirements" by transcribing the mutilation and act of killing alone, with no need to watch and document the dismemberment. On 13 December, police conducted a second search of Meiwes' property with sniffer dogs to ensure that no other body parts were buried. On 19 December, the case was passed to Hesse LKA and a special investigative commission was formed. Most of Meiwes' later partners were identified, of whom one was criminally charged. Jörg Buse faced legal action on suspicion as an accomplice/conspiracy of murder for offering to provide victims to Meiwes, but the case was suspended, with a monetary fine and compulsory psychiatric counselling imposed. Buse was required to write apology letters to the two colleagues he had named, but neither provided responses. Eugen A., listed as a "slaughter colleague" in Meiwes' contacts, was tried for representation of violence because he received four photos of Brandes' dead body via e-mail, two on 21 February 2002 and another two on 5 December upon request. While in jail, Meiwes sold the rights to his life story to the German magazine Stern. During interviews, Meiwes initially described his actions as assisted suicide. The trial acknowledged the agreement of the victim as not occurring under force, but emphasised that this did not make the act of killing legal, with special consideration for Brandes' impaired mental state, possibly further altered by his intake of sedative drugs, at the time of his death. During the trial, a 19-minute snippet of the four-hour tape depicting the murder of Brandes was played. The case attracted considerable media attention.

When speaking to a German newspaper, Meiwes admitted to cannibalising Brandes and expressed regret for his actions. He added he wanted to write a biography with the aim of deterring anyone wanting to follow in his footsteps. Websites dedicated to Meiwes started appearing after his 2002 arrest, with people advertising for willing victims. "They should go for treatment, so it doesn't escalate like it did with me", said Meiwes. While in prison, Meiwes has since become a vegetarian. From prison, he kept correspondence with criminologist Petra Klages and a former neighbour from Wüstefeld. because he killed for sexual gratification, a motive proved by his having videotaped the crime. The court ruled that the original trial had ignored the significance of the video in disproving the argument that Meiwes only killed because he had been asked to kill. On 10 May 2006, the higher regional court of Frankfurt am Main convicted Meiwes of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Incarceration Between 2006 and 2018, Meiwes was imprisoned at , a sociotherapeutic correctional facility. In June 2018, he was transferred to JVA Kassel I, where he remained as of August 2025. As of 2020, Meiwes has been allowed to go outside of prison for supervised excursions in disguise around town in a different state. In prison, Meiwes works at the laundry and often attends church service.

In October 2018, Frankfurt court ruled that Meiwes would not be eligible for parole after 15 years and would only receive any form of release if psychiatrists judged him to pose no further danger to society at large. and August 2020. A complaint filed against the higher regional court of Frankfurt for the former appeal denial was dismissed with the specific reason that Meiwes was deemed likely for recidivism.

In July 2025, after replacing his original attorney earlier in the year, Meiwes again requested early release on parole. Frankfurt's public prosecutor's office filed for a denial of the request but agreed after talks with Meiwes and his legal defence to have any hearings related to the request adjourned until 2026. Meiwes' new lawyer, Frank Füglein, also complained that Meiwes had been deprived of regular psychotherapy appointments and supervised furlough in recent years. Following reports on the release request in August 2025, Meiwes wrote a letter to the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allgemeine newspaper, as he disagreed with their description of the cannibalism. Meiwes emphasised that while he and Brandes had attempted to eat the latter's penis, neither managed to actually consume it, also repeating that the castration occurred at Brandes' insistence. The Guardian, citing sources close to Grant, claimed that Brad Pitt was being considered to star as Brandes, with other candidates including Matt Damon and Benicio del Toro. Meiwes' lawyer disputed the reports, saying that his client had received multiple film offers but none from Grant. In return for film rights, the offers reportedly promised up to €1 million for Meiwes.

Meiwes' house Since the arrest of Meiwes, his house was considered a "lost place" destination for urban explorers and the true crime fandom. In January 2004, while Meiwes' trial was still ongoing, an American investor attempted to buy the property to turn it into a theme hotel called "Cannibal World", complete with shuttle bus service, photoshoots, and a "Cannibal Café". The offer was retracted due to refusal by both Meiwes and local residents. The home was frequently broken into and there were several incidents of small-scale fires being set inside. Such a fire in 2007 resulted in a garden shed burning down.

On the night of 16–17 April 2023, Meiwes' former home was burnt down in an arson attack. Meiwes' lawyer Harald Ermel stated that his client, who was still the legal owner of the home, has continued to deny offers to sell either the property or his Mercedes-Benz car. Rotenburg mayor Christian Grunwald voiced hope that the fire would stop the flow of true crime tourists from coming into town but was also concerned that the site would remain a "place of pilgrimage" if the rubble was not cleared completely. Ermel was in discussions with city officials about who would pay to clear the debris in order to prevent looting of Meiwes' house for crime memorabilia.

Cultural impact

Films Grimm Love (German title: Rohtenburg; 2006), a feature film directed by Martin Weisz and starring Keri Russell, was banned in Germany in March 2006 after Meiwes complained that his personality rights had been violated, but the film had already been sold for international release and was shown worldwide. In May 2009, the Federal Court of Justice, Germany's highest civil court, annulled the ban in favour of freedom of arts. The film won multiple awards at the 2006 Sitges Film Festival, including Best Director, Best Actor for the two male leads, and Best Cinematography. Cannibal, a Marian Dora feature. The film is notable for its graphic portrayal of the cannibalistic incidents.

Music The death metal band Bloodbath released the song "Eaten" on their 2004 album Nightmares Made Flesh, inspired by the Meiwes case. The German industrial metal band Rammstein released the song "Mein Teil" in 2004, which specifically references the Meiwes case. MTV Germany restricted airing the video to after 11:00 p.m. The rock musician Marilyn Manson has identified Meiwes as an inspiration in the titling of his album Eat Me, Drink Me. The heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne released his 12th studio album, Ordinary Man, in February 2020. The album includes a song titled "Eat Me", which was inspired by Armin Meiwes. Australian industrial rock band Skynd released a track entitled "Armin Meiwes" in 2022.

Television In 2008, MORE Music and Media released the four-hour interview and documentary from RTL Extra on DVD as Der Kannibale von Rotenburg; it was released in the UK as Armin Meiwes: The Cannibal. Season 1, episode 1 of the TV series Rake, titled "R.V. Murray", features an accused cannibal who eats his volunteer in similar circumstances to the Meiwes case. Season 2, episode 4 of the TV series Room 104, titled "Hungry", features two strangers who meet to fulfill a mutual fantasy, in similar circumstances to the Meiwes case. In season 3, episode 7 of Hannibal, the character of Mason Verger refers to the incident after interrupting Hannibal Lecter's attempt to murder Will Graham; specifically, Hannibal cutting open Will's skull to consume his brain: "You boys remind me of that German cannibal who advertised for a friend and then ate him—and his penis—before he died. Tragedy being the penis was overcooked. Go to all that trouble to eat a friend and you overcook his penis! They ate it anyway. They had to. They committed. But they didn't enjoy it." Season 2, episode 3 of the British sitcom The IT Crowd is based on Meiwes. Titled "Moss and the German", it follows character Maurice Moss signing up for what he believes to be a German cookery course, responding to an advert that states "I want to cook with you" however this is due to the poor English of Johan, the German, who actually wanted to cook Moss, rather than teaching him to cook. Moss notices Johan's impressive home cinema and they instead watch Ocean's Eleven, which Meiwes reportedly did with a previous volunteer, who had also changed his mind. Writer and Director Graham Linehan states that the episodes was based on Meiwes and this story in a behind-the-scenes extra on the Season 2 DVD.

Theatre In 2014, TASTE, an award-winning play inspired by the case, premiered in Los Angeles at the Sacred Fools Theater Company. The play was written by Screenwriter Benjamin Brand and directed by Stuart Gordon. The production was nominated for various awards from all of the major Los Angeles theatrical critic organisations. The production starred Chris McKenna and Donal Thoms-Cappello, and was produced by Gordon, Dean Schramm, Ben Rock, and Adam Goldworm. In 2022, The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, premiered the play KANNIBALEN by playwright Johannes Lilleøre. The production featured the actors Patrick Baurichter and Morten Burian. On the opening night, the show had to be paused for about fifteen minutes due to the fact that one audience member vomited and another experienced an epileptic seizure. Also in 2022, Conflicted Theatre's play FIJI premiered at Omnibus Theatre in London, UK. Co-written by actors Pedro Leandro and Eddie Loodmer-Elliott together with director Evan Lordan, a Guardian reviewer called the two-hander funny, disturbing, and "surprisingly gentle". The production was twice nominated for the 2022 Offies for Best Lead Performance, and was subsequently revived at the Edinburgh Fringe. An Edmonton Fringe festival production in 2023 received 5 out of 5 stars from the Edmonton Journal, which described it as "charming, emotional and calmly unnerving, this is easily some of the festival's finest fare."