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Courts Wont Release "Rohtenburg"
By John Marrone
Mar 3, 2006, 11:13

This is a little Hannibal - a little too freakin' real.  Anyone ever heard of Armin Meiwes?  Just found out who this sick bastard is after reading a news article about this "cannibal killer", who has blocked a "biopic" on his life through German courts.  Found it interesting that a German court agreed that "Meiwes' rights superceded the artistic goals of the film-makers".  But then I looked more into who this person is...   If you dont know what he did, read on and it will blow your mind.

Printed below are two articles.  The first is from Guardian Unlimited Film - it briefly tells of the legal victory of Armin Meiwes, and how he managed to block a filmmaker's attempt to do a movie based on his horrific life. 

Rohtenburg - German Horror Film Held Back By Courts

The notorious German cannibal killer Armin Meiwes has won an appeal to ban an upcoming biopic of his life after he objected to becoming the subject of a horror film.

A German court agreed that Meiwes' rights superceded the artistic goals of the film-makers.  Martin Weisz was expecting his film Rohtenburg starring Thomas Kretschmann to open in local theatres on March 9. That date has now been put on hold.

Meiwes was jailed for eight years in 2004 after he was found guilty of manslaughter for killing and partly eating a 43-year-old-man. The case was complicated because the victim allegedly consented to his gruesome fate after replying to an advert on the internet.

The second article is pulled from wikipedia, who happened to have an almost too detailed account of his crime that is discomforting to say the least.  Hold onto your hats...

Armin Meiwes - Wikipedia Bio

Armin Meiwes (born 1961 in Germany) is an Internet user who became known as the "Rotenburg Cannibal" or "Der Metzgermeister" (The Master Butcher). Over the Internet, Meiwes arranged with Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes to kill and eat Brandes.

As is known from a videotape the two made when they met in March 2001 in Meiwes' home, Meiwes amputated Brandes' penis and Meiwes and Brandes ate the penis together before Brandes was killed. Brandes had insisted that Meiwes bite his penis off, but this didn't work, so Meiwes used at first a knife that turned out to be too blunt, and then a sharper knife to finally slice the penis off. Brandes apparently tried to eat his share of his own penis rare, but couldn't because it was too tough and as he put it, "chewy". Meiwes then sautéed the penis in a pan with salt, pepper and garlic.

According to journalists who saw the video (it has not been made public), Brandes may already have been too weakened from blood loss to actually eat his share of the penis. Meiwes apparently gave him large quantities of alcohol and pain killers against his pain, and then slaughtered him in a slaughtering room that he had installed in his house for this purpose. He ate the body over the next few years, storing parts in his deep freezer.

Meiwes was arrested in December 2002, after apparently posting new advertisements for victims on the Internet. Investigators searched his home and found body parts and the videotaped slaughtering. The video is apparently so disturbing that of those who saw it many sought psychological counseling.

In 2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. The case attracted considerable media attention and led to a debate over whether Meiwes could be convicted at all given that Brandes had voluntarily and knowingly participated in the act.

In April 2005, a German court ordered a retrial after prosecutors appealed his sentence. They believe he should have been convicted of murder, not manslaughter, and given a life sentence. Among the question courts will have to determine is whether Brandes agreed to his killing, and whether he was legally capable of doing so at all at the moment of killing, taking into account his apparent mental problems as well as his significant intake of alcohol and drugs. Other aspects of the re-trial are to determine whether Meiwes killed to satiate his own desires (in particular sexual desires), and not because he was asked to, a claim that Meiwes has repeatedly rejected during testimony. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment.

A similar Internet-mediated consensual homicide is the 1996 case of Sharon Lopatka, who sought and found a male who would torture and kill her by strangling her to death.