EPISODE 49 - Cannibal café

So the waves were coming at him and MC Hammer was going for a run on the beach and he saw what happened and he dragged my dad out of the water and saved him , and then I was in a buggy and he said that I was cute .

Also for my birthday we went to Jimmy's Farm , big fan and I loved the tapirs . It was my mum's favourite animal . So I always go and see the tapirs and a couple of years ago I had a . Claire's mum bought me an experience to go in with the tapirs . It was bought for me for my birthday from Claire's mum and Claire's sister . I thoroughly enjoyed it .

It spent hours in there rolling around with the tapirs . So then when we went this year , the guy said to me oh look , there's the tapirs over there . Go and see if they remember you Like ha-ha-ha .

And so we all went over and they came to the fence and that and I was obviously like trying to get to them and this tapir came over and he only did this to me but he put his little snout because they've got like little baby elephant snouts , yeah and he was all over the place and he was putting his little snout all over my head and over my face and

oh , lulley . I thoroughly enjoyed it . It made my birthday that did . Yeah , yeah , it was great , yeah , and he was there for a while like podding me all over my face , and he didn't do it to anyone else , so I think he maybe did recognise me .

I've come to terms with that a long time ago , so yeah , yeah , that might happen at the weekend when you come here .

So it took me a long time to write this episode because I couldn't focus , I just couldn't focus , I couldn't get into it . But last night I committed to it and got it all out , and it's a story that I've been wanting to tell for ages , so I'm really excited for it .

So this is the story of Armin Meyers and he was born in December the 1st 1961 in Germany . He lived with his parents and two half siblings in a 44 room farmhouse . Jesus Christ , 44 rooms , 44 rooms . It was a massive , massive farmhouse .

He was out playing and he saw his dad leave and was like , oh , I wonder where they're going . They got in the car and then they just left , didn't say a word , anything , just left and never came back . So Armin was now left solely in the care of his mother , and his mother was quite authoritarian .

She was very controlling and I think , because obviously her husband had left , she'd become quite bitter and she took that out on Armin . So she liked to humiliate him and talk down to him , especially in public , and she liked to make him feel small and made him do all the chores around the 44 room farmhouse .

One of the chores as well would be to help his mum with the slaughtering of the animals . So he became quite obsessed from a young age with the slaughtering of these animals . So I think that was a bit of a trauma perhaps .

Oh no , so he became quite obsessed just with the part about fattening up Hansel to be eaten .

it . So Armin was a bit strange . He was bullied , incredibly at school . He was a loner , he was an outsider . He literally didn't have any friends at all , nobody that he could say that he spoke to . At school he just kept to himself . He was extremely lonely .

So when he was 12 , armin created an imaginary friend I've put friends slash brother because it was just an imaginary person for him and he called him Frankie .

So Frankie for him was somebody that he , that didn't bully him , that didn't tell him what to do , and it was somebody that he could actually control and that it was somebody that he knew wouldn't leave him .

But it's about a sailor that shipwrecked on an island and that island is inhabited by cannibals , and he then became from Hansel and Gretel . He then became obsessed with the story of Robinson Crusoe and after reading that and becoming obsessed , what Armin actually took from that story was that there was a way that he could be with someone forever .

So by cannibalism and ingesting these people , they would always , forever , be a part of him .

Armin's interest in cannibalism turned sexual and he started to fantasise about his classmates and cutting up their bodies and then ingesting them . And you often find that , especially at that sort of pivotal age where they're going through puberty , those sort of fetishes do turn into a sexual nature .

So , he was getting off on the idea of cutting up bodies and then ingesting them . At the age of 19 , armin joined the army and he said himself that he absolutely thrived in the army . He was used to working hard , he was used to taking orders following orders . His fellow soldiers thought that he was quite a nice normal man .

He didn't think anything of him , he wasn't weird . Armin kind of put his fetish to a side and he just blended into society . He served in the army for 12 years and then , once he left the army , he trained as a computer technician and he settled down into a normal life and a normal job .

And he was still living with his mother and even though he had a very strange relationship with his mother , she was the only person that he had and his life up until that point , because he had led a relatively normal life until 1999 when his mother actually died . So Armin was absolutely devastated .

Like I say , his mother wasn't the best mother that she could have been , but it was still somebody that was in his life and he kind of knew where he stood with her .

And now he literally had nobody , no one at all , and he feared being alone so much that he constructed a shrine to his mother in the house , in her bedroom , and created a plastic mannequin that he would dress in her clothes .

But he used to dress this mannequin up in his mother's clothes and he used to tuck the mannequin up each night in his mother's bed , you know , pillow under the head , like really tuck her up and then in the morning get her up and ready for the day .

He would also Norman Bates dress in her clothes and he would impersonate her voice in the house and he would take on her role in the house as well .

And it was while he was searching these deep , dark corners of the internet , on the dark web , that he found that he actually had something in common with other people in these forums . These forums contained like-minded people .

So for the first time in his life , he actually fit in and he found a website called Cannibal Cafe , and that really baffled me that something like that can exist . I know there's so much worse out there , but the fact that somebody can create a website like that and it be allowed to run really baffles me , tell me more about it . So the website was for ?

It was a forum for people to post about their fantasies , about their fetishes . They would talk about what they wanted to do to people , what people what they wanted to do to them . It was just like for people to talk about their fantasies and stuff .

It was the first time that he could actually talk to other like-minded people about how he was feeling , about what his fantasies were . Yeah , he was getting encouraged and he fit in there and he quickly consumed all of the content that was available to him Consumed . He consumed it .

And once he'd consumed this content , armin started to create his own content and he started posting things on the forum . And he was always at the computer . He studied computer technology , so he used his skills on the computer to manipulate images and he made it appear as though he was a real cannibal and that he'd done this before .

So he became quite creative , actually , and he fashioned figures out of marzipan and he would take photos of himself chopping up these marzipan figures and then he would use Photoshop and he would , you know , detail them and whatever else . So it looked like he was cutting up real human flesh and then he would post that on the forums as well .

I think he didn't really realise what his fetish was . What you see most in serial killers and things like that is that they relished the killing , that they've got a fantasy about killing . Armin didn't . So Armin's fetish was quite specific . He wanted male flesh from a person that he knew and liked who would voluntarily give themself up .

He didn't want to take people off the street and kill them for his purposes . He wanted to dismember the body , and what he said was he wanted to slaughter the body . So it was for him . It wasn't about that person living that . He wanted them dead . That was a means to an end . He was somebody that was willing to be eaten .

That was very important to him .

So he turned one of the bedrooms in the upper floors of the farmhouse into what he called the slaughter room and I use air quotes because I think what you're thinking and what I'm thinking are probably quite similar . But I'll describe to you the slaughter room . So it was quite a small room .

It wasn't huge at all and it was extremely bare and there was no wallpaper or decoration . It literally looked like the walls had been burnt . I couldn't tell whether it was like black , but it looked like peeling paint maybe . But it was a disgusting room . It's not somewhere I'd want to be .

I didn't know if it was mould or something growing on the walls because it was speckled in black , but it wasn't a very inviting room anyways .

There was a single bed with a disgusting looking mattress on top .

There was a chair in there that he would strap people to , and then every single sort of instrument , a torture instrument that could be available was in that room . So Armin Meier's slaughter room was not that at all . It literally was just a bed and a box .

And now that he'd got this room set up , Armin began searching the Cannibal Cafe for his willing participant and he posted under the pseudo name of his imaginary friend , Slash Brother Frankie . So he posted an advert on the Cannibal Cafe that read Slaughter Boy Wanted .

And he put I am looking for a young , well-built man aged 18 to 25 to be slaughtered and then consumed . And that was his advert and , believe it or not , people responded .

I've had less replies about selling some shoes on the internet . That's quite a lot 200 people , yes , that were willing to be his slaughter boy . So he went through a sort of screening process . So one of the replies that he actually received , I'm going to read it to you .

So he put out his search , looking for somebody to be slaughtered , and he received a reply . They said hello , frankie , I've been looking for a seasoned butcher for some time who could slaughter me and let me bleed out If you're interested . Here's my email address .

And another response that he got says dear Frankie , I've been looking for an experienced butcher who stuns me like a cop with a nail gun and then lets it bleed and bleed . When do you have time for it ? I'm in reply . I hope I can cut you up soon . Tell me more about yourself . And he said .

The reply was Frankie , I am 178 centimeters tall , 78 kilograms in brackets when I'm naked Blackhead , strong , build and healthy . When would you like to slaughter me ? Very blasé , when would you like to come for a viewing of the card ?

And Yorg he said he was aroused by the whole idea and they went through the motions . But he said when Armin strung him up on , he'd kind of there was like a pulley where Armin had set up so that he could like , but once they were dead he would butcher them and put them on this pulley , like a pig , I suppose .

But when Armin started going through that process , yorg was like actually no , this is a bit too much for me , I don't want to go through this anymore . Change my mind . And Armin was like , no , that's fair enough . Armin wanted a willing participant , so he let Yorg down and let him go on his way .

And we know all of this because Armin actually recorded the whole thing from start to finish . He recorded his interaction with Yorg Like on video .

But what generally tended to happen is that Armin would meet up with these people , they would talk about their fantasies , they would have sex and then when Armin started getting serious about cutting up their bodies and , you know , drawing on them about where he was going to cut out , I think the imminent thought of death generally scared these people and they was

like that . Just the fantasy of it was enough for them . They didn't need to actually fulfill it , they just wanted to go through the roleplay and that was enough . But that wasn't enough for Armin . So for a long time Armin was obviously seeking the correct person that he wanted . And then Bernd Brands came along .

Bernd Brands was a 42-year-old man and he also lived in Germany . Now , as a child he was a normal , happy , healthy boy . His dad , I think , was a doctor and his mum was an anesthetician . She used to anesthetize people and knock them out . Yep , when one of her clients died or one of her patients died on the table , she felt that it was her fault .

I think she'd done something wrong because she got the dosage wrong and the patient had died . So she ended up committing suicide because of it . And I think Bernd was five or something at the time , so he was very young when that happened and as a little boy he blamed himself quite heavily for his mum's death and he hated himself because of it .

So from a young age that hate turned into this like self-destructive fantasy that he had , and he was intent on inflicting as much pain as possible to himself to almost compensate for what he felt that he'd done .

So while Armin was posting on the internet forums looking for willing participants , bernd was also putting out posts on the Cannibal Cafe and his post was titled your Dinner and he put I offered to let myself be eaten alive . Therefore , whoever really wants to do it needs a genuine victim . And that was his post , and he previously posted on there as well .

And another one of his posts said since puberty , I've wanted to be bitten and eaten . This desire has lasted a long time and will last until it finally comes true , and I can't I couldn't tell you where this comes from .

This this is all sorts of dark , and I know that from his mother's death he turned inwards and that that self loathing turned into this obsession with wanting to cause himself pain . But Bernd had an obsession with wanting to have his penis bitten off , oh God . So he was a gay man and I think coming out to his dad had been incredibly hard .

So I think that perhaps that self loathing he said he loathed the fact that he was gay as well , so I think perhaps that's why , yeah , directed it at his penis .

So it seemed that the pair were actually a perfect match for each other . Yeah , so when Bernd came across Armin's post , he wanted to make sure that Armin was actually a man of his word and it wasn't just a fantasies , and that he would genuinely go through with it , the same as Armin was doing exactly the same .

He wanted someone that genuinely wanted to go through with it . So Bernd asked Armin how many people he had butchered , and Armin replied this is his actual reply . Okay , well , let's say I have experience . In any case , you wouldn't be the first 23 . That's an optimal butcher in age . The body has just matured and is still very tender .

Write me more about yourself , your height and weight . I'm 38 , six feet and 165 pounds . I look forward to your reply , your master butcher .

So Bernd actually lied to Armin about his weight and his height and his age , because he was older than what Armin was looking for and he was bigger , heavier than what Armin was looking for , so he actually lied to fit into Armin's required bracket , madden it , which is incredibly strange .

So the pair got to talking and they realised that actually they had a lot in common . They agreed to meet in one month's time and during that month they discussed how they would do it and they kind of planned out every little detail of what they both wanted to do , because Armin had lied as well , hadn't they ?

I thought it was going to be like the 80s or something , but it wasn't massively long ago .

So in preparing for their meat day , I said meat day , the meat day that they were going to meet , but actually meat day Byrne sold his car , he updated his will , he cleared his whole browser history on his computer and he deleted any correspondence that he had between himself and Armin . He took the day off work . He said that to his work .

They had to attend a personal matter and then he told his partner , renee , so he'd been with his partner for a few years . They lived together , they were quite a serious couple and he told his partner that he was going to travel for work and Renee had no reason to suspect anything .

Byrne often traveled for work and he actually was still asleep when Byrne left early that morning .

So even from the train station it was still a 50 minute car journey to the farmhouse because he literally was in the middle of nowhere . So they'd exchanged pictures online . They knew what each other looked like . So when Byrne got off the train Armin was there straight away . He knew who he was .

So he was quite polite and courteous and he was like oh , do you want a coffee ? I'll make you . You know , just exchanging pleasantries . But Byrne was there for one reason . So he wanted to get straight to the point . He stripped completely naked and he said to Armin Adm this is your dinner , Admire your dinner .

And honestly , the pair then went and had sex and it wasn't what Byrne had been hoping for . He was a masochist , so he wanted he got off on pain yeah . And he wanted Armin to be , you know , to inflict as much pain as possible yeah . But he said to Armin that he'd been too soft and too gentle .

So Byrne was worried that Armin couldn't dish out the level of pain that he was after . So he was like I don't think that you're the right person to do this to me . I think I'm just going to go home . But the issue that Armin had was that he didn't get off on inflicting pain . That was just a means to an end .

He didn't want to have to do all those things , but he did , however , want Byrne's body . So to get Byrne's body , he had to oblige by what Byrne wanted . And what Byrne wanted was to have his penis cut off and eaten .

Hmm , it had been agreed that Burt would take some sleeping pills and he Armin wanted him to be a little bit more sedated because he didn't enjoy seeing that amount of pain and whatever else . So Burt took some sleeping pills and some cold medicine to sedate him , but he was adamant that he wanted to remain conscious . He didn't want to be asleep .

He wanted to be fully involved in the cutting off of the genitalia . So with all that in place , burt actually popped his penis on the kitchen table . What did you do ? And Armin took a kitchen knife and cut it off . As you can imagine , he was screaming . Blood was squirting out like a fountain , oh gosh .

But Burt said to Armin that after about 30 seconds it didn't hurt anymore . So he actually was really disappointed with the level of pain that he'd suffered . He thought that it would be the worst pain imaginable , but it hadn't . So the next part of the plan was to eat the penis , and that again , was something that Burt wanted to do .

He wanted to eat his own penis . So Armin blanched it . I don't , some , it's gone seriously wrong , if that's what you want to eat . Armin blanched it in boiling water , just you know . Shortly , just to tender it up a little bit more , he added some salt and pepper and then he fried it in a pan .

But to Burt's utter devastation , it shriveled up and it burned very quickly . I don't , I don't think you're supposed to be laughing at that . Okay , I'm not Okay . So they tried to eat the bone shriveled up penis , but it was inedible . It was completely inedible . So they ended up cutting it up and then feeding it to Armin's dog .

So by 9 , 30 , it's now been three hours Burt was getting quite cold and close to losing consciousness and he said that he wanted to be in a warm bath so that death would be more comfortable . So Armin ran him a bath and helped him in and Burt spent the following two or three hours in that bath slowly dying .

And it was said that Burt was actually incredibly happy in that bath because he was surrounded by his own blood and that that made him quite happy . So while Burt was in the bathtub leading out , armin was in the room next door , just super chill , lying on his bed reading a Star Trek novel , as you do as you do , but he was getting chewing on a penis .

He was getting really impatient because , as I've said , he wanted Burt dead , burt dead , and then that that's when his fun could really begin . So around midnight Burt was still in the bathtub and he called out to Armin and said that he no longer wanted to be in the bath .

And he managed to get himself out of the bath but then he collapsed on the bathroom floor . So Armin dragged him out and dragged him into the slaughter room and popped him on the bed and he wanted Burt basically to hurry up and die . He was like , for God's sake , hurry up , I'm starving Hours . Yeah , he asked to die .

In the early hours of the morning , though , burt was still clinging to life oh blimey . So Armin took a knife and stabbed him twice in the neck . So Burt was now dead and Armin could begin his lifelong fantasy . He dragged Burt's body off of the mattress and hoisted him up , hung him upside down on the meat hook in the ceiling .

He then dismembered Burt's body painstakingly , slicing him up like a butcher , how they would cut all the different cuts of meat from the animal . And again , we know all of this because it was recorded on camera .

No , I was saying that , but I didn't know how else to say it . So it was Burt's flesh that he was cutting off . So I don't want it to come across that cold heart and I was like , oh , we just cut all the meat off the body and slant it a bit . I just didn't know how else to say it .

And this is a quote directly from Armin about his first cannibal meal . And he says I decorated the table with nice candles , I took out my best dinner service and fried a piece of rump steak , a piece from his back , made what I call princess potatoes and Brussels sprouts . After I prepared my meal , I ate it . The first bite was , of course , very strange .

It was a feeling I can't really describe . I'd spent over 30 years longing for it , dreaming about it , and now I was getting the feeling I was actually achieving this perfect inner connection through his flesh . The flesh tastes like pork , but stronger , more substantial .

Although I don't think that other people would have noticed the difference had they eaten it , it tasted really good .

So Renee then reported him missing , but Bern had been so careful about covering his tracks that it was kind of as though he just vanished off the face of the earth . He deleted all his history , sold all of his stuff , and police had no leads or clues or any idea of what had actually happened to Bern .

However , three months after Bern's death , armin was back online looking for his next meal . He went back on the Cannibal Cafe , but this time he didn't need to recreate his photos . He didn't need the marzipan . He actually posted on the forums and included photos and proof of what he'd done .

He wanted people to know that he was serious about what he was doing and that he didn't want any time-wasters , and he wanted genuine people that were genuinely interested in being eaten .

So it took them about five months to track Armin down and then to get a search warrant for his home . Bloody hell . And when they did , police give it their due . They actually found the false bottom in the freezer . So they removed all the remaining meat . There was still some left that had belonged to Byrne .

These bags of flesh were confiscated , they were tested and they obviously revealed that they were human . They had belonged to humans . Police also found the Byrne's hands , the skeleton of his hands , his feet and also his skull which they just dotted around the farmhouse . They weren't necessarily anywhere . They weren't in his bedroom , I think .

They said they found the skull just out by the shed . But Byrne had actually joked with Armin and said that you can use my skull as an ashtray . But I don't think that he did do that , just lying it out . So Armin was arrested , obviously while police searched his apartment for more evidence . But unbelievably , armin was let go .

There wasn't enough evidence there to say that Armin had actually committed a crime . There was no evidence there that Armin had killed Byrne . Yes , he had his head . Yes , he had his hands . Yes , he had his body . But cannibalism is not a crime .

Now in Germany and in most countries actually even in the UK , I believe cannibalism is not a crime . There is no punishment in the law for cannibalism . Most people are generally put away for crimes relating to the cannibalism , like murder , for instance or desecration of a corpse , all of other charges that kind of relate to that .

But cannibalism itself is not a crime , and cannibalism is defined as the non-consensual consumption of a human being .

There wasn't enough evidence to charge Armin with murder or even manslaughter at the time , but what he did plead guilty to was a charge of assisted suicide . So on January 30th 2004 , armin Meyers was found not guilty of murder , but he was instead found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter and he was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison .

Armin was outraged and he maintained that Byrne wanted to die and he said that it was a killing by request , which in Germany carries a maximum sentence of five years . So the public were also outraged . They believed that Armin should have been given a murder charge .

His acts were horrific and they wanted him quite rightly to pay , and the prosecution felt the same . The prosecution really wanted to get him on a murder charge .

So a year after his sentence in , the prosecution filed an appeal which was granted , so the judge's sentence was reversed and that meant the prosecution could go back to trial , and this time charging with murder . The prosecution said that on the video it was clear that Byrne was still breathing when Armin had stabbed him in the neck .

They also said that because Byrne had taken so many sleeping pills and so much cough medicine that he was in no fit state to consent to anything . So although there was a tremendous amount of blood loss from the castration , that's not how Byrne died . Byrne died because Armin had stabbed him in the neck and to be able to prove a murder charge .

So according to German law , murder is the act of ending someone's life motivated by greed , or to satisfy the killer's own sexual desires or to cover up another crime . So in order to proceed with his sexual fantasy , Armin had to kill Byrne . Yeah , that is how they proved that it was a murder , so goodness .

Yeah , their case stated that Armin Myers killed Byrne for his own sexual pleasure , which is essentially what he did . So in May 2006 , armin Myers was convicted of the murder of Byrne and his sentence changed to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years . Goodness , and that is the story of the Cannibal Cafe .

It wasn't even as brutal as Byrne wanted it to be .

Yeah , but , Armin was getting impatient .

That also fit in with Armin's yeah Needs , or it's almost like the same as if you met someone on the street and they leapt out the bushes and they strangled you for a bit , you know , and you kind of almost lost consciousness and you would then report that to the police and they would be charged with I don't know .

You know ABA or attempted murder , or attempted murder or whatever it is . But what happens when you met online through mutual fetishes or whatever you met online and that you meet that same person but it's at their house and you're like I want you to strangle me until I lose consciousness , and you know the .

If the police just suddenly happened to appear and they said , well , that's a assault . And you were like no , no , no , that's why I'm here , that's what I wanted , mm , and they'd go all right , each to their own , each to their own . You know behind what goes on behind closed doors , mm-hmm . So what's the difference with this ?

But he was going through with this fetish and he's then , to me , that makes him a dangerous person because , although this time he might have been able to control it , when that fetish gets more and more and more same as serial killers and they start they start killing animals , but then that's not enough . And they start stalking women , but that's not enough .

And then they start raping women , then that's not enough . So I feel like he would have been incredibly dangerous . So it's probably best that he was locked up for this , because otherwise it could well have escalated . The fact that he was looking for willing , it's very , very fine line , isn't it ?

I think if it's two people , it was two adults and they were both consensual . He wanted to do that , he wanted him to do that to him and they did it . Why have they ? Why has he now been punished ? I get it . I get why . Because they're saying he was still alive . You went up and stabbed him , but clearly that is why he was there .

Yeah , I'm going to go and maybe not have some breakfast right away , but maybe go and have a lay down .