Category: Cannibal News

Cannibalism news July 2023: Two men arrested for eating partially-cremated human flesh

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Two men in Odisha (eastern India, formerly known as Orissa) have been arrested and accused of cannibalism after locals found them eating half-burnt flesh from the body of a woman who was being cremated at a funeral in Mayurbhanj, Odisha. 

The incident happened in a tribal village called Bandhasahi. The accused were identified as Sundar Mohan Singh, 58, and Narendra Singh, 25, both from Dantuni village. The deceased woman was identified as Madhusmita Singh, 25, who had died in the Bandhasahi village hospital. The family took her body to the cremation ground and performed the last rites. In Hinduism, the preferred way of disposing of the dead is Antyeṣṭi (अन्त्येष्टि), a composite Sanskrit word of antya and iṣṭi, meaning “final sacrifice.”

The two men, who were said to be drunk, were overseeing the proper burning of the body. As the cremation progressed, the body had been burnt almost entirely to ashes, except for a single unburnt piece of flesh. Mohan and Narendra claimed that it wouldn’t burn unless it was cut into smaller pieces and then thrown back into the fire.

Lobo Singh, the grandfather of the deceased girl, watched the men pull the unburnt flesh out of the fire. Narendra proceeded to divide it into three pieces, with Mohan tossing two pieces back into the flames. However, Lobo Singh said he witnessed Mohan concealing the remaining piece in his left hand, He questioned Mohan about this, to which Mohan casually replied that he would discard it later.

The woman’s uncle said that, when he asked them what they would do with the flesh, one of the accused, Sundar Mohan Singh, replied, “You don’t know about witchcraft.” After around 10 minutes, he announced that he would eat the piece of flesh. Before the others could do anything, Mohan put the piece in his mouth and began chewing it; he also offered a portion of flesh to Narendra, who also commenced eating it. 

The villagers caught and beat the accused duo, tied them up in rugs, and informed the local police. Both accused admitted committing the crime, claiming that they had consumed the flesh in an inebriated condition. They were charged under section 297 of the Indian Penal Code. Senior police officer Sanjay Kumar Parida stated that the accused were arrested based on the complaints of the villagers, but no trace of human flesh was found on them. Further investigation into the case continues.

This sort of phantasy, that eating human flesh will give the eater special powers, is not uncommon in Cannibal Studies texts; essentialist speculations that some part of the ‘donor’ remains imbued – such as the courage embodied in the brave enemy’s heart or strength in his or her limbs. Brigid Brophy, one of the seminal voices in the animal justice movement, called this “the primitive superstition that eating the flesh of bulls endows you with the strength of the bull”. Even Freud seemed to have subscribed to such thoughts, claiming in Totem and Taboo that the birth of civilisation occurred when a group of young prehumans came to resent their father’s monopolisation of the tribe’s females (common among primates) and rose up, killing the father to take their mothers and sisters for themselves. “Cannibal savages as they were, it goes without saying that they devoured their victim as well” and, Freud added, as well as the protein they ingested from the fresh meat, the brothers would each have “acquired a portion of his strength”. Freud went on to speculate  that their sense of remorse created the first ethical basis for civilisation, which seems rather far-fetched, and there is no evidence that the Singhs, even when they sober up, will be creating a new form of civilisation in Odisha. Although, to counter my obvious scepticism, there are reports that Armin Meiwes, currently in prison in Germany, allegedly claimed that, after he ate his bilingual lover in 2001, his own English improved considerably. We absorb the nutrition of our food, why should cannibals not absorb the strength, spirit and experiences of their victims?

The Orissa Post called the incident “extremely rare”, but this blog has reported on similar incidents in the past. In Assam in 2022, another inebriated man found edible flesh within the cremation flames.

In 2019, The Global Report on Food Crises estimated that there were some 135 million “acutely food-insecure people in crisis or worse”, including 17 million acutely malnourished children under 5 years old. The changing climate, or future pandemics, could easily double that number, leading to what the head of the UN’s food relief agency warned could be “a famine of biblical proportions”. Globally, over a million people die each (normal) week, many of them still covered in healthy flesh; if human meat is similar to that of other animals, why not let those who are starving eat some of the corpses, at least those who are minimally diseased? Is an agonising death by starvation less abject than eating human meat? And if, as most societies (not including Hindus) seem to believe, it’s OK to eat animals, and humans are animals (a species of Great Ape), then from carnivory to cannibalism is only a very thin red line.

Cannibal News July 2023: THE CANNIBAL OF PUEBLA

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A 32-year-old Mexican man, identified only as Alvaro N, and also known now as the CANNIBAL OF PUEBLA and the CANNIBAL OF RESURRECCIÓN (a town in the Municipality of Puebla), has allegedly killed his wife while under the influence of drugs. He is accused of dismembering her body, consuming parts of her brain inside some tacos, and using her shattered skull as an ashtray.

The incident occurred on June 29 2023, and Alvaro was apprehended at their home in Puebla on July 2. Authorities say that he claimed he committed the crime under the orders of Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Holy Death) and the devil. Death and the devil were contacted for comment, but have not responded.

His wife, known as Montserrat, was the mother of five daughters, aged 12 to 23. She and Alvaro had been married less than a year.

After committing the murder, Alvaro alegedly called the victim’s mother, Maria Alicia Montiel Serran, and said one of the victim’s daughters should come and collect their mother because “I already killed her and put her in bags”.

Grieving Maria Alicia added that Alvaro chopped up the 38-year-old victim’s body ‘with a machete, a chisel, and a hammer’. She went on: ‘I called him crying, asking why he did that to her if she wasn’t a bad person.’

According to Maria Alicia, the suspect confessed: ‘I killed her, I cut her into pieces, and I threw her into the ravine in bags.’ She added that he claimed: ‘She didn’t suffer.’

Alvaro’s family have requested his release, presumably on the basis that, you know,

Montserrat’s family believe otherwise, and he will be held in custody for at least two months while investigations continue. The victim’s mother, Maria Alicia Montiel Serran, said that Alvaro subjected her daughter and the youngest two stepdaughters (who lived with them) to violence and sexual abuse. She described instances of voyeurism while they showered, and lamented that her daughter often sided with Alvaro, despite the offensive behaviour.

The family claims that Alvaro, a builder, struggled with substance abuse and was often violent towards his wife.

The couple frequently posted about their devotion to Santa Muerte on social media, and the police reportedly found a black magic altar in their home. Maria Alicia mentioned Alvaro’s drug use, including cocaine, and said she had expressed concerns about his mental state. She disclosed that her daughter had a tattoo of Santa Muerte.

The victim’s family is still awaiting the opportunity to lay Maria Montserrat to rest as authorities continue their search for some of her remains. These remaining body parts need to undergo DNA testing for identification. Maria Alicia has called for justice, urging that her daughter be buried with dignity and emphasising that no mother would want her child sent back in pieces.

Mexico has a proud record of acts of cannibalism. Last year, we learned that eating rival sicarios is standard training to graduate as a fully-fledged member of certain Mexican cartels. Refugees from South and Central America are sometimes kidnapped by criminal gangs as they try to enter the United States, and sometimes eaten if a ransom is not paid. In 2021, a 72-year-old man was arrested in the Mexican municipality of Atizapan de Zaragoza and reportedly admitted to slaughtering around thirty women over the last twenty years, eating their body parts and saving their faces and scalps. And don’t forget the wonderful Mexican cannibalism film We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay) in which a family in Mexico City live on human flesh, and the coroner famously says “It’s shocking how many people eat one another in this city”.

Of course, the taco is now enjoyed internationally, and particularly in the US, where a man who calls himself Incrediblyshinyshart, served his friends tacos, made from his own amputated leg.

One news report used an image of a taco to illustrate the story of the Cannibal of Puebla, noting only that it was a “representative image”. In other words, this particular taco contains no human brains (as far as can be ascertained), but certainly includes body parts of some other unfortunate earthling. There is a thin red line between eating humans and eating other animals, and the difference is very hard to distinguish once the meat cooked, and particularly when minced and thrust into a taco.

Buen apetito!

“they were cannibals, and they were going to eat him” – Texas teen arrested for killing family

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A Texas teen has been arrested on murder charges, accused of slaughtering his parents and two siblings — including a 5-year-old brother — because he believed they were all “cannibals” planning to eat him.

Cesar Olalde, 18, was arrested after a standoff with police on Tuesday May 23 in suburban Texarkana and charged with capital murder — punishable by the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Police in the town of Nash — population about 3,800 — went to Olalde’s home after getting a report that a man had harmed his family and was threatening to kill himself.

When they arrived, they found the teen holed up, while family members were inside.

An affidavit by Nash Police Officer Craig Buster, said that the teen, barricaded inside, had called police, saying “he had pulled the trigger, and shot his family.”

After persuading Olalde to end his standoff and surrender, police went inside the home and found the bodies of his parents, Reuben Olalde and Aida Garcia, older sister, Lisbet Olalde, and 5-year-old brother, Oliver Olalde — all in a bathroom.

“It appeared as if the victims had been shot at various places in the residence and [had been dragged] to the bathroom,” according to the affidavit. Multiple spent cartridge casings were found throughout the home, and “blood spatter on multiple surfaces.”

The affidavit said Joseph Flieder, a colleague of Lisbet Olalde, had gone to the house because she’d missed work that day. He knocked on the door but got no response.

Flieder, together with a family member who had also arrived to check on the family, forced his way inside, where he was confronted by Cesar Olalde. The teen allegedly pointed a gun at the man several times and brandished a knife.

Flieder told responding police officers that Cesar Olalde said,

“he had killed his family because they were cannibals, and they were going to eat him”

Olalde was jailed on a $10 million bond.

Neighbour Robert Ward described the victims as a “beautiful family” made up of “extremely nice” and “hardworking people.” He said the daughter had recently graduated from college and planned to become a teacher, and that Cesar was “such a good kid. He was going to get into an apprentice program to be a plumber.”

There is no actual cannibalism involved in this story (unless Cesar Olalde was right about his family, as suggested by several people online).

But what is interesting is the fear of cannibalism that must have been strong enough to drive him to this desperate act, killing those closest to him. There are clearly major mental problems involved, but that’s not a sufficient explanation. Why see them as cannibals – why not aliens or pirates or something else?

The terror of cannibalism relates directly to our experience as babies, when we are altricial – totally dependent on caregivers, for far longer than any other animal of similar size. We gestate as cannibals, eating from the placenta – our mother’s body. We are born and fed from a breast (usually human or bovine), which is more eating of the body. As we grow, we experience rage when our needs are not immediately recognised and satisfied, and this rage may be homicidal in nature (Freud called the first six months of a child’s life the “cannibalistic stage”). We want to eat our mother, and are terrified that, being so much larger and more powerful, she may feel like eating us first. We fear, in other words, reabsorption into the maternal body from which we emerged.

The only difference between eating human meat and that of other animals is that we fear consumption by other humans, whereas the animals we eat – cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, fish, etc, are generally herbivorous or gentle, peaceful animals. We don’t recognise this fear at a conscious level, but under stress or psychic collapse, we find ourselves back inside our mental image of Freud’s primal “cannibalistic phase”.

Spanish influencer “practiced cannibalism”: eats part of her own knee

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@paulagonu

no me dio poderes

♬ sonido original – Paulagonu

Cannibalism is usually defined as eating the flesh of another animal of the same species. In the case of humans, this of course means eating the flesh of another human. But sometimes people eat their own flesh. Is this still cannibalism, and is there anything wrong with it?

The answers usually given seem to be yes and yes. I agree that eating your own flesh is, by definition, a form of cannibalism, but I really cannot see what all the fuss is about. What about people that chew their fingernails, called onychophagia, or (oww!) their cuticles? Or perhaps more extreme is the fashion of eating placentas after childbirth – some women take them home and cook them, or there are companies that offer to sterilise and morcelise placentas and make pills from them. There is not, unfortunately, universal agreement on the supposed health benefits.

British social anthropologist Alfred Gell reported that in the 1970s he was conducting fieldwork among the Umeda people of West Sepik in Papua New Guinea, when he accidentally cut his finger and, as people often do, put it in his mouth to suck the wound. The locals were horrified and considered him a cannibal:

“the shocked countenances and expressions of disgust evinced by my Umeda companions told me soon enough…”

If Gell was thought a cannibal for sucking his own blood, what would the Umeda think of Spanish ‘influencer’ Paula Gonu, who announced that she ate some cartilage that was removed from her knee during surgery? In an interview with the Club 113 podcast, Gonu, who had opted for local anaesthesia, spoke of watching the doctor operate on her knee in real-time on a screen. After the doctor finished the procedure, the influencer said he asked her if she wanted to keep the part of her meniscus that he had removed. Gonu said yes and the doctor put the piece of cartilage in a small bottle filled with preservative.

Gonu explained that she had to undergo surgery to remove her meniscus (cartilage in the knee joint) following an injury. A week after the surgery, Gonu decided she wanted to eat the cartilage.

“I was talking with the boyfriend I had at the time, and I told him, ‘I want to eat it. It’s mine and I have to reinsert it into my body’. He asked, ‘But why do you want to eat it?’ I answered, ‘Why not? It’s not going to hurt me.’ So, then I made a Bolognese sauce, I added it in, and I ate it.”

Gonu previously shared the story in a viral TikTok last November, which has been viewed more than 4.3 million times, with the caption: “It didn’t give me super powers.” However, after Gonu retold the story on the Club 113 podcast, it entered the news cycle again.

Spanish media was quick to trumpet Gonu’s cannibalism. “Paula Gonu practiced cannibalism: She ate her own meniscus,” read one headline. Another headline from November, when the influencer originally shared the story, stated: “The rich eat meniscus.”

One Twitter user  called it “Bizarre”. This was one of the more moderate comments.

Autocannibalism or autosarcophagy is in a sense universal, in that we all consume dead cells from our tongue and cheeks all the time. But autocannibalism is not always voluntary. The Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Báthory (the one who allegedly used to bathe in the blood of virgins in the early 17th century) is supposed to have forced some of her servants to eat their own flesh. In 1934, Claude Neal, a 23-year-old African-American, was brutally lynched by a group of white men who had stormed the county jail in Brewton, Alabama where he was being held after confessing to the murder of a 20-year-old white woman in Greenwood, Florida. One member of the mob told an NAACP investigator that during the lynching, which lasted ten-to-twelve hours, the men cut off Neal’s penis and testicles and forced him to eat them. Other incidents of coerced autocannibalism were reported in the years following the 1991 Haitian coup d’état. and in the 1990s, young people in Sudan were forced to eat their own ears.

As for the other kind, voluntary autocannibalism, there are many cases documented, well before Paula Gonu thought of the idea. A recent one was the case of Incrediblyshinyshart who told Vice that he had served his friends tacos, made from his own amputated leg.

So Gonu’s idea was far from original. But nor is there much wrong with it. Cannibalism is frowned upon when it involves disturbing a corpse, and definitely disapproved when it involves killing someone as prey. But Gonu did none of that – she merely ate a part of herself, with her own full consent, instead of throwing it away. You could almost say she was into recycling.

From transphobia to cannibalism of children – with a side of Nazis

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The recent tour of Australia by British anti-trans campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull— who also goes by the name of Posie Parker — added cannibalism to the culture wars already raging over transsexual rights.

Keen-Minshull organised a “Let Women Speak” tour of Australia and New Zealand, holding rallies in several cities to claim the push for transgender rights is “silencing”, endangering and discriminating against women.

There has been a lot said about Keen-Minshull, mostly debating her claim to be a warrior for women’s rights and accusing her of being an extremist, expressing views that are designed to be harmful to the transgender community. The rhetoric she uses is far more extreme than usually expressed in Australian politics, although it has become common in other countries, particularly the USA. She suggests, among other claims, that trans women are sexual predators who pose a safety threat to girls in female bathrooms. She describes gender affirmation healthcare as mutilation, and being transgender as a “fetish” — positions totally at odds with the views of experts who work with people who are transitioning. 

Keen-Minshull’s rally in Melbourne was attended by far-right extremists who performed Nazi salutes. Although organisers claimed the masked thugs had “gate-crashed” the event, a trans rights activist and TikTok star known online as LilahRPG said “everyone was just furious, seeing Nazis doing salutes uninterrupted and interacting with the TERFs.” TERF is an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist“.

This is one of the clearest indications that far-right social media is using the “gender-critical” movement to promote membership of their groups.

Keen-Minshull has made a series of videos (see Twitter message above) about “Grooming Gangs” – repeating unproven claims that a young girl in England was killed and eaten as kebab meat. These claims are then used as racist conspiracy theories, saying that the botched police investigation was in fact a cover-up of paedophile elites who, they say, control everything. Keen-Minshull says:

“What we know is that there’s grooming gangs in Telford. A young woman that never actually really made it to mainstream news, wasn’t a big story, was cut up and I think she was put into meat that was sold for human consumption. We know that there are vast numbers of men involved in these grooming gangs, and we know that there’s weird cover-up stuff going on, that only makes sense if the other people in power are also raping children.”

The case she is referring to seems to be the disappearance of 14-year-old Charlene Downes, who disappeared in Blackpool in north-west England in November 2003. Accusations were made of a child-grooming ring, which induced young girls into having sex in return for cigarettes, food and alcohol. At least one newspaper was quick to claim that investigations had been “hampered by political correctness”, because the girls were white and the perpetrators non-white.

Two men, Ilyad Albattikh and Mohammed Reveshi, were tried in May 2007—the first for Downes’ murder, the other for helping dispose of the body—but the jury failed to reach a verdict. A re-trial was scheduled, but in April 2008 the accused were released because of concerns about serious errors in the evidence compiled by Lancashire Constabulary, who were chastised for their inept handling of the case.

The prosecution had claimed Charlene’s body had been cut up and minced into kebabs in a Blackpool takeaway called “Funny Boys”.

At the time of the trial, the court was told the fast food shop owner had “joked” that Charlene Downes had been chopped up and put into kebabs that were sold to the public. 

There is a lot of racism involved in this story. White children being raped by men of colour is stated or implied in many of the reports, although there is little evidence to show that white offenders were not also involved. Many actual cases of the cannibalism of children indicate the opposite – that white men like Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish prey on children of colour, because such missing children are less likely to be investigated by white detectives. Meanwhile, the Indian current affairs website OpIndia did not mince its words about the alleged mincing of the victim:

Groomed by Muslim gangs, minced into pieces, fed as kebabs

Of course, Ms Keen-Minshull did not invent the idea of using cannibalism as a weapon of dehumanisation (Christopher Columbus did that very successfully) or even as a part of the culture wars – recall the hate and scorn aimed at the New York Times when it suggested the “cannibalism has a time and a place… and others suggest that that time is now”.

Classical mythologies told of savage gods who ate their own children, and paranormal entities such as witches, who used body parts for their rituals. Such usages were not exclusively supernatural, with “blood libel” accusations that Jews were killing Christian children to use their blood for religious rituals and cannibalism dating back to the twelfth century, and being revived with nauseating regularity up to the present day.

QAnon has been very successful recruiting members in the US, partly based on accusing everyone from Hillary Clinton to a pizza shop owner of killing and eating children. The accusations are meant to dehumanise the alleged perpetrators, but usually end up doing the same to the victim. Poor little Charlene is now almost unknown, except as the “kebab meat girl”.

Lots more details of her case are available on YouTube investigations such as the one below, some of them are quite lurid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMTJb9kGO0

Ohio man sentenced to 26 years to life for killing Menlo Park woman in order to stay young through cannibalism

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Francis Wolke, 30, was found guilty on March 2, 2023 of first-degree murder for killing 62-year-old Kathleen Anderson in her Menlo Park bedroom in December of 2018, and sentenced on April 5 to a term of 26 years to life in prison.

San Mateo County prosecutors stated that a friend of Anderson found her body while the killer was still inside the house. The friend called the Menlo Park Police Department and detained Wolke at knifepoint until police arrived.

When the trial opened on Tuesday, February 14, Wolke’s attorney, Connie O’Brien, had declared, in a rather unusual opening statement, that her client was driven to murder by a desire to engage in cannibalism. She stated that Volke believed that, if he committed cannibalism, he would “stay young forever” and join the “1%” of people who eat human protein to become rich.

Anderson had never met Wolke, 30, before the murder. “There was no known relationship or contact between defendant and victim, nor a known motive for the crime,” prosecutors said. Wolke lived in Cincinnati, Ohio and had arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area just days before the murder. He was also wanted in Santa Clara County for prowling and drug possession. According to the Palo Alto Daily Post, Anderson worked as the City of Atherton’s arborist for two decades.

In 2020, Wolke had pleaded not guilty due to insanity. The trial jury deliberated for three days before finding him guilty, and then reconvened to consider the insanity issue, which could have seen Wolke sentenced to state hospitals, instead of state prison. The jury handed down its ruling on March 8 2023 in San Mateo County Court in Redwood City, finding that Wolke was sane at the time of the murder.

Defence lawyers had argued the insanity defence based on Volke’s belief that he had to commit cannibalism in order to join “the 1%” and stay young forever. They testified that Wolke said he wanted to join an elite group of wealthy people whom he believed killed humans and ate their flesh to become “protein harvesters” and that he, too, would enjoy wealth and eternal youth after consuming human stem cells.

Deputy District Attorney Tricia Povah argued the case for Wolke’s intent to murder. Povah laid out in graphic details the injuries that Wolke inflicted during multiple attempts to take the life of Anderson, including attempted strangulation.

Wolke was accused of stabbing Anderson in the eye with a pencil, hitting her brain. The allegation that Wolke used a deadly and dangerous weapon in this act was also accepted by the jury.

Wolke also attempted to behead Anderson, which his defence lawyers alleged was due  to his intention to engage in cannibalism. Wolke reportedly told investigators he:

“wasn’t very good at (it) because (he’d) never done it before.”

Wolke, according to court testimony, had a history of heavy methamphetamine use, but did not test positive for any drugs at the time of the murder. According to defence attorney Connie O’Brien, he was experiencing psychosis in the form of auditory hallucinations while on the bus ride from his family’s home in Cincinnati to the Bay Area, with voices telling him that he had to commit sins to join the 1%.

Despite Wolke’s hallucinations, the prosecution argued that Wolke had an understanding of the morals surrounding murder and that he was aware of his actions as he committed the killing. Dr George Wilkinson, a forensic psychiatrist and expert witness for the prosecution, testified that Wolke understood his actions.

“He was well aware of what he was doing, in fact, it would have been necessary to fulfil the delusions.”

Povah argued that he showed awareness of his situation. When police officers went to enter the house to investigate, Wolke told them where to find Anderson, saying:

“The body’s in the basement. I have a mental problem. I very seriously killed that woman.”

Lots of interesting Cannibal Studies issues are raised by this case. Cannibals are almost routinely labelled as psychotic, on the anthropocentric assumption that human flesh is sacred and inviolable. But to be found insane, as Wolke discovered, a murderer has to prove that he (or she) did not know what he was doing, or that it was wrong. Hannibal Lecter, in the books, movies and TV series, was not executed for his crimes because the jury found him insane. He strongly denied this.

An intention to achieve social status through the ingestion of human flesh seems to show a clear understanding of (some rather dubious) causality. That is, he knew what he was doing, even though he was doing something that would seem to most people irrational.

Or is it? The mythology of the Wendigo tells of cannibals who gain strength, size and often healing powers or long life through eating the flesh of other humans, but also develop an insatiable appetite for ever more of the stuff. What appetites distinguish and define the so-called “1%”, that tiny group of uber-rich who absorb around a quarter of the nation’s income and own 40% of the wealth? Psychiatrists will happily tell you that those who achieve huge fortunes or high office are often psychopaths, immune to fear of failure, or empathy for those they exploit. The accumulation of capital, whether by imperialists or corporate raiders, is metaphorically a form of cannibalism, feeding on the flesh of others in a zero-sum game, that is supposed to gain them enormous wealth and eternal life (or a botox version of it).

A part of Wolke’s mind must have worked out that he was not made of such stern stuff, and told him that, to get there, he would need to cultivate his inner cannibal.

April 2023: CHINESE ZODIAC KILLER SENTENCED

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A man calling himself The Chinese Zodiac Killer has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for sending threatening letters to various establishments for over a year.

46-year-old Jesse Bartlett of LaFargeville in Jefferson County was arrested in Jefferson County on May 19 2022 for sending letters to media outlets, government offices including the White House, and other organisations in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington D.C. In the letters, he claimed that he killed people, ate their flesh and plans to kill more, including an unidentified bus driver. Bartlett was arrested by the FBI and charged with Mailing Threatening Letters.

Bartlett, a school bus driver who, according to prosecutors, owned multiple firearms, was arrested after he was allegedly caught on surveillance cameras placing brown envelopes into U.S. Postal Service collection boxes. On May 12, the FBI filmed Bartlett dropping 21 envelopes into U.S. Postal Service boxes in Watertown and Clayton, and another 21 in the same Watertown bin on May 15.

Further investigation found that the letters were consistent with those written by the so-called “Chinese Zodiac Killer.” Authorities said the letters were signed “Aleister Crowley,” a name that was also referenced in earlier Chinese Zodiac Killer letters, and presumably refers to the late English occultist and artist.

The letters said in part:

EVERY MONTH SINCE NOVEMBER I HAVE KILLED BOTH MALE AND FEMALES. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT I AM KILLING INDIVIDUALS WHOSE IDENTITIES ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO TRACK (I.E., HOMELESS, RUNAWAYS, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS), AND DESTROYING ALL EVIDENCE SO EFFICIENTLY.

In August 2021, a letter was received by a retail company in Syracuse. In the letter, Bartlett allegedly stated:

“EACH MONTHLY LETTER CONTAINS MY CURRENT KILL COUNT – AND WHETHER OR NOT I FEASTED ON THE FLESH OF MY VICTIMS.”

Another letter sent to The Day newsroom pledged to enslave people in a “macabre paradice”, using the same misspellings as the original Zodiac. The case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, along with New York State Police, and the United States Postal Inspection Service.

The original Zodiac Killer stabbed or shot to death five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969. He had sent taunting letters and cryptograms to police and newspapers that included astrological symbols. As far as we know, he did not eat anyone (human).

That original Zodiac Killer was never caught. Bartlett copied the original Zodiac by inserting cryptic codes into his letters, which have not been interpreted (if, in fact, they are not simply gibberish.)

Bartlett pleaded guilty to mailing a threatening communication in December 2022. District Judge Brenda Sannes also imposed a three-year term of supervised release once Bartlett completes his sentence. He also faces local counts of third- and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon brought on March 21 by state police. He was allegedly found to be in possession of two illegally owned long guns and expandable magazines, in violation of the state’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013, or “SAFE Act”. According to troopers, the charges are a result of the investigation and execution of a search warrant in May 2022 at Mr. Bartlett’s residence in the town of Alexandria.

Bartlett is clearly not Chinese, the Zodiac Killer or, it seems, a cannibal killer, but simply a copycat who added cannibalism to his modus operandi because it’s so fashionable. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett, there’s no evidence that Bartlett ever tried to carry out any of the things he described in his letters. Bartlett was not charged with any homicide offences, although he was acquitted of killing a friend in 2010 after pleading self-defence. His main motivation seems to be recognition and celebrity, warning “I WILL MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF ANYONE WHO REFUSES TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC OF MY EXISTENCE”:

I HAVE ALREADY KILLED SOMEONE IN THE NEW YORK AREA. HEAR MY PROPHECY: I WILL KILL AGAIN.  HELL WANTS MORE SOULS. I AM A SEXUAL PREDATOR AND A KILLER AMONG THE LIVING. I AM NOT HIDING.  I AM VERY EASY TO FIND …BECAUSE I NEED TO BE FOUND. BUT I MUST TEST YOU.

Prosecutors also said that Bartlett had stated that he is “a sexual predator” and is “on the hunt for your women at all times.” Although prosecutors have not pursued any leads to do with murder or cannibalism, we may never know for sure what Jesse Bartlett got up to. Could it be the case, as he wrote, that he is killing people whose identities are impossible to track (i.e. homeless, runaways, illegal immigrants), “AND DESTROYING ALL EVIDENCE SO EFFICIENTLY”?

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barnett said that Bartlett’s sentence includes the time he has already served behind bars. So, he’ll be out pretty soon. There are a range of hilarious comments on social media already, many of them ingeniously weaving partisan politics into the story.

Suspected cannibal in ‘bloody clothes’ arrested at Lisbon airport with ‘suspicious meat’ in luggage

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A Brazilian murder suspect and Dutch resident who police believe may have participated in “cannibal practices” was arrested at an airport in Portugal with a suitcase containing “suspicious meat” and bloodstained clothing.

Begoleã Mendes Fernandes, 26, was taken into custody at Lisbon Airport on Monday February 27, 2023, after getting off a flight from Amsterdam, where he was suspected of killing 21-year-old Alan Lopes a day earlier. Both the victim and suspect are of Brazilian descent. Fernandes was at first arrested on suspicion of travelling on falsified documents.

Portuguese media reported that pieces of meat were found inside a plastic bag packed into Fernandes’ luggage, and that the meat could be human flesh. The meat is still to be analysed in a laboratory, to determine its origin. The Portuguese Immigration and Border Services (Servico De Estrangereiros E Fronteiras or SEF) issued a statement:

“After contacting the authorities in the Netherlands, the country where he resided, it was confirmed that he was wanted on suspicion of committing a crime of murder that occurred on February 26, in Amsterdam, which led the judicial authorities of that country to issue, yesterday afternoon, a European Arrest Warrant for extradition purposes.
By indication of the Dutch authorities and the Lisbon DIAP, in addition to the documents that the suspect had in his possession, a bandage and clothes with traces of blood, a plastic package containing several pieces of meat and a mobile phone were seized, with the foreign citizen taken to the PJ’s Scientific Police Laboratory.”

Fernandes drew border officers’ attention because he had a bandage on his right hand and bloodstains on his clothing. He was scheduled to board a flight to Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

The police found the body of Lopes in his home on Vegastraat in Amsterdam at around 9:20 p.m. that Sunday after calls from his concerned friends. “It was clear that he died in a violent crime,” the police said in an initial statement. Specialists were deployed to the scene to do a forensic investigation.

The Portuguese daily newspaper Jornal de Notícias noted that

“The suspect claimed that he killed the victim because the latter forced him into cannibalistic practices.”

Lopes’ friends told Dutch daily paper Parool that they called the police after Fernandes messaged them to say that he had killed the young man. Several of Lopes’ friends received the voice notes at around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. Marco Cunha (23) told Parool:

“He said that he tried to defend himself against Alan because he had pretended to be a cannibal. Other friends received the same vague message.”

The 26-year-old Fernandes, who described himself on Facebook as “2% genius, 98% crazy” made his initial court appearance in Lisbon and was placed in custody pending his extradition to the Netherlands.

Lopes was found dead Sunday night at a house in Amsterdam that he shared with his mother and sister, who were away at the time. According to Lopes’ friends, the young man was trying to help Fernandes, who worked as a delivery boy and had descended into drug-taking in recent months.

“He went crazy in a short time. He was on drugs, and it drove him crazy. His brain just stopped working.”

“Alan tried to help him. He had a big heart, even for the one who killed him,” Lopes’ mother, Antonia Lima (45), said to Parool. Her partner, Freek Posthumus (60), said that the young man was building a life in the Netherlands. “He was busy with his driver’s license and worked hard. I am convinced he had a bright future ahead of him.”

Kamila Lopes, the victim’s sister, told the news site Notícias ao Minuto that Fernandes was homeless and would stay with the family whenever he had nowhere to reside.

However, in an interview with the Portuguese television channel SIC, Fernandes’ mother, Carla Pimentel, suggested that her son may have killed Lopes in self-defence, according to the Portuguese-language news outlet RFI.

According to Pimentel, Fernandes was having dinner with the victim when Lopes offered him human flesh, and also showed him videos about cannibalism. The 21-year-old then allegedly tried to kill Fernandes.

The mom claimed that the meat found in her son’s possession in Lisbon was the same that was offered to him by Lopes, and that her son had kept it as evidence that he planned to hand to the authorities. Some reports are claiming that forensics have shown the meat is not from the body of the victim, Lopes, suggesting that the claims about cannibalism of a third person may be accurate.

Fernandes is expected to be extradited to the Netherlands sometime “this week” (i.e. week commencing 20 March). In the meantime, he has been locked in a jail cell in Lisbon airport for 22 hours every day for his own safety. According to tabloid Correio da Manhã, due to the media frenzy, he is now known as “the cannibal”, and authorities hope to “contain any untoward reactions with other inmates”.

Cannibalism in HK? Model ABBY CHOI murdered and cooked

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On February 24 2023, Hong Kong model Abby Choi was found dead in a rental unit in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district. Or at least, some of her; Choi’s corpse was not complete. Her head was missing, to be found by the police, after some analysis, in a cooking pot. The police described the crime scene as a “slaughterhouse”, and they found other parts of her body in the refrigerator.

An electric saw and a meat-grinder that had been used to mince human flesh were found at the crime scene, as well as soup pots containing human tissue.

Police have taken into custody her ex-husband Alex Kwong, his father Kwong Kau and his brother Anthony Kwong. All were charged with murdering model Abby Choi a day earlier. Alex Kwong’s mother, Jenny Li, faces one count of perverting the course of justice. None of the four were granted bail.

The former husband, one of the main suspects in the murder, was arrested the next day at a pier in Tung Chung, on one of the city’s outlying islands, Lantau, while trying to flee with just the clothes on his back, and half a million HK dollars and four million $HK worth of fancy watches.

On Sunday, authorities confirmed that a young woman’s skull believed to be Choi’s had been found in a cooking pot that was seized from the house. Officials believe that a hole on the right rear of the skull is where the fatal blow was struck.

Ms Choi lived at Kadoorie Hill in Ho Man Tin and had been missing since Tuesday (Feb 21). Police discovered two legs in the apartment’s refrigerator, as well as the victim’s ID card, credit cards, and other belongings, according to Police Superintendent Alan Chung. Human tissue was found in pots of soup, while the victim’s torso and hands were not at the scene. Chung said:

“Police also have found that the flat was arranged by cold-blooded killers meticulously. Tools that are used to dismember human bodies were found in the flat, including meat grinders, chainsaws, long raincoats, gloves, and masks.”

According to China Underground, Choi’s former father-in-law had rented the flat, which was almost bare of furniture, as were the two bedrooms. Police found two types of choppers, a hammer, face shields, black raincoats, and a purple handbag that belonged to Choi. The suspects reportedly covered the walls with a sail and wore face shields and raincoats to prevent being bloodstained while dismembering the body. This was clearly not a spur of the moment crime.

 More than 100 police personnel were sent to search the Tseung Kwan O Chinese Permanent Cemetery on Saturday, including a diving team who were deployed to the nearby catchwater.

The motive of the murder has yet to be determined, but it is believed to be a financial dispute between Choi, who was only 28 years old, and her ex-husband’s family, involving around 100 million Hong Kong dollars.

As a model, Choi enjoyed international exposure and was photographed at the Elie Saab Spring Summer 2023 Haute Couture show in Paris, France, as recently as January. She also appeared as the digital cover model for the luxury magazine L’Officiel Monaco and attended this year’s Paris Fashion Week.

Choi, who was also known as a social media influencer, has nearly 100,000 followers on her Instagram account, which features photographs of her posing with various luxury brands in locations from London to Paris and Shanghai and aboard yachts in Hong Kong. In her bio she writes that she’s “embracing every moment in life.”

Choi’s friend Bernard Cheng said she had four children: two sons ages 10 and 3, and two daughters ages 8 and 6; a son and a daughter from her ex-husband, who have been placed in the care of the model’s mother, and two children with her present partner.

The murder case has been adjourned to May.

The news has been greeted with horror in Hong Kong. But social media is already making tasteless comments about cannibalism and cunnilingus.

The comment in the social media posts about HK people “always” cooking their murder victims seems a little hard to swallow (sorry). No one has yet accused the alleged perps of eating the human flesh soup found in the pots, and there is some speculation that they were cooking the flesh just to render it down for disposal, or to stop it decomposing. But if you find pots of soup on a stove, you’d imagine that the most likely explanation would be that they were there for degustation. Everything else about the case uses metaphors of carnivorous virility and factory farming – the flat being a “slaughterhouse”, the grinders and protective equipment, and the motivation for the killing – lots of money.

Except in times of chronic famine, or during the Cultural Revolution, China is not known for many cases of cannibalism, unlike some other countries we could (and often do) name. But the Chinese do make some great cannibal movies, including Herman Yau’s Human Pork Buns and Ebola Syndrome (伊波拉病毒), and Fruit Chan’s Dumplings. Check them out, and then ask yourself, what exactly was planned for those pots?

“…CANNIBALISTIC URGES” – Man on trial for brutal murder of four Idaho University students

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A forensic psychiatrist has told Newsweek that the man charged in connection with the slayings of four University of Idaho students in November 2022 had battled with “cannibalistic urges“.

Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, was arrested at his parents’ home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania.

Kohberger is accused of breaking into a rental house in Moscow, Idaho, and fatally stabbing Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in the early morning hours on November 13.

Reports have surfaced divulging that Kohberger follows a strict vegan diet and has reportedly struggled with heroin addiction in the past.

Forensic psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told Newsweek that Kohberger’s “obsessive-compulsive eating habits” indicate he was afraid he would become addicted to meat if he ate it.

“He was not only vegan, he refused to eat off of pots or plates that had had meat on them. Psychologically, this represents his struggle against his cannibalistic urges. He was afraid that if he let himself go to taste meat once, he would become addicted to it—like he had become to heroin—and start killing and eating people.”

A relative told the New York Post last week that Kohberger’s dietary restrictions were “very, very weird” and that he seemed “very OCD,” referring to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The woman, who asked not to be named, but said she was previously married into Kohberger’s family, said:

“It was above and beyond being vegan. His aunt and uncle had to buy new pots and pans because he would not eat from anything that had ever had meat cooked in them.”

Casey Arntz, who was friends with Kohberger in middle and high school, said in a video posted on TikTok that he had been “a heavy heroin user” in high school. Kohberger’s struggles with drug addiction continued into his college years, a friend from Northampton Community College told Fox News. Criminal profiler John Kelly told Fox News,

“This kind of person has this volcanic rage inside that’s going to explode on is victim of choice.”

Lieberman told Newsweek that Kohberger had probably studied criminology both to “calm the demons inside him that were telling him to kill” but also to “learn how to commit the perfect crime.”

It is possible that he had been in touch with the so-called BTK killer, Dennis Rader, whose serial killings in Wichita were the subject of a book by his supervisor, Katherine Ramsland.

Kohlberger may have corresponded with Rader (a lot of criminology students do) but we don’t know that yet. We have to wonder if Rader would have told him about working in the meat department of a Wichita IGA a few years before his murder spree began.  

Kohberger has been held without bond in Pennsylvania since his arrest. He will be tried in Idaho, the state in which the crimes took place, the only state in the US with a law against cannibalism, although no such charges have been laid against Kohberger.

His next court appearance will be June 26.

Kohlberger’s obsession with meat reflects a lot of issues considered in Cannibal Studies. Firstly, the question of human meat: there really is no significant difference between the meat of humans and other large mammals such as cows, pigs or sheep. Hannibal Lecter takes delight in feeding human meat to his guests, such as the flesh of the flautist of the Baltimore Philharmonic, whose Board members subsequently enjoy the meal immensely in the book and film Red Dragon, thus becoming innocent cannibals. Incidentally, being the Baltimore flautist seems to be a rocky road – their principal flautist Emily Skala, was fired in 2021 for spreading misinformation about the safety of coronavirus vaccines, the efficacy of face masks and the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, relieved of her post, but not eaten.

But the point is that once meat is prepared (cooked, seasoned, presented) it is very hard to tell its provenance. Cannibals who have been asked have mostly compared it to pork or veal, with Armin Meiwes telling an interviewer

“It would have made no difference in somebody else had tasted it; he wouldn’t have questioned the meat…. During preparation, it is not as dark, but bright and fresh as pork, and tastes so very close to pork.”

Kohlberger’s belief that he might like human flesh if he tried any meat at all therefore has some logic to it. Since Charles Darwin’s writings overthrew the special status of humans as closer to angels than animals, anthropocentrism has been amended to offer a story of humans as the culmination of evolution and thereby continues, rather less successfully, to obscure human animality. Should such beliefs falter, as happens repeatedly in many cases of contemporary cannibalism, it becomes a very short step from eating other animals to eating the human one.

But why should he become addicted to any meat? Well, we know Kohlberger has an addictive personality, shown by his very heavy usage of heroin. But we’re not talking drugs of addiction but lumps of protein, aren’t we? Well, there are plenty of studies about that. Marta Zaraska, for example, wrote in her book Meathooked that meat is highly addictive on several fronts – genetic, cultural, historic and commercial, and coined the term “meathooked” for the incongruous compulsion to eat meat despite the pangs of cognitive dissonance – the repressed feeling of guilt when considering oneself an animal-lover while also paying big corporations to kill them. Then there is the mythology of the Wendigo, a creature from Algonquin legend who starts off as a human but becomes a being who can only live on human flesh, which makes him grow bigger and at the same time hungrier. If you believe in Wendigos, then the slippery slope from carnivore to cannibal seems reasonably clear.

This leads us to the issue of Kohlberger’s apparently very strict veganism. Most people seem to believe (or want to believe) that vegans are fanatics, obsessed with animal welfare (or environment or their own health) who therefore compulsively avoid meat. But in fact most vegans I know would wash a pot well after a relative had cooked meat, but are unlikely to throw it out as irretrievably ruined, as Kohlberger purportedly did. Veganism is an ethical system that attempts to minimise harm to sentient animals, which includes humans (yes, Virginia, we are animals). If there is a slippery slope from the flesh of other animals to the flesh of Homo sapiens, then the vegan is furthest from the edge of that slope. If Kohlberger did kill those students (and at this stage it’s only alleged), then he is no vegan, even if he didn’t sample them on the way out.