CANNIBALS IN COURT
People-eaters on trial in Germany, Russia & Poland
He bought a freezer, which he told his sister was “for storing pizza”
IN BITS IN BERLIN
A Berlin court has sentenced an ex-teacher to life in prison for murdering a man he met on an online dating site. Stefan R, a 41-year-old maths teacher, was accused of killing Stefan Trogisch, a 43-yearold power line technician he met on a dating site. Shortly after meeting the man, he killed him, chopped up his body, then ate parts of it “for sexual gratification” before distributing the rest of his remains around different parts of Berlin.
After weeks of searching for the missing man, a dog walker found a femur in a forest to the north of the city, with more bones being found by police two weeks later in a Pankow park, near Stefan R’s flat. Police said that one bone was “totally devoid of flesh” and there were other indications “which make us strongly suspect that Stefan T was the victim of a cannibal.” The discovery of the park bones led to them tracking him down with sniffer dogs and arresting him.
In court, Stefan R claimed Trogisch died in his sleep on the sofa after they had sex and that he did not call emergency services “because it would have come out that I am homosexual.” He said that he then decided to dispose of the body himself and that he had cut off Trogisch’s genitals, “since my DNA could still have possibly been present due to the oral sex I performed.” However, police noted that before his date with Trogisch he had bought a set of butcher’s knives and a bone saw, which he kept in his bedroom and had put up a sex swing in his living room with a note beside it entitled “Instructions for emasculating and slaughtering a person”. When police searched his apartment, they found 25kg (55lb) of sodium hydroxide, which they described as “suitable for dissolving human tissue”, as well as traces of the victim’s blood in the hallway. Stefan R had also bought a freezer five days before he met Trogisch, which he told his sister was “for storing pizza”. Examination of his Internet search history showed that he had trawled the dark web using terms that included “long pig” and “fatten and slaughter people” as well as whether or not a person could survive after having their penis cut off. He frequented forums dedicated to cannibalism, and allegedly posted “I have it [the penis] now!” in one of these after Trogisch’s death. An autopsy that examined the additional remains recovered after Stefan R’s arrest determined that Trogisch had most probably died from blood loss after having his penis severed. irishexaminer.com, Independent, 10 Aug; pinknews. co.uk, 1 Oct; thesun.co.uk, 20 Oct; torontosun.com, 12 Nov 2021; BBC News, 8 Jan 2022.
RUSSIAN ROADKILL
Yegor Komarov, 23, fled into the woods with two friends after his car crashed into a safety barrier in Sortavala in northern Russia, and a headless body fell out into the road. Police found the corpse on the tarmac and spades, ropes and sacks in the car. They swiftly rounded up Komarov and friends and identified the dead man as a 50-year-old businessman who Komarov had killed during an argument. When questioned, Komarov said: “In general, I like killing people.” As well as admitting to the murder of the businessman, he confessed to previously killing a 38-year-old man in a park in St Petersburg. He said he had stabbed him because he wanted to taste human flesh, adding: “When he died, I gutted his neck and tasted the blood and meat, but the meat was difficult to cut, as the knife was blunt, and I did not like the taste of his veins.” He explained that he had disposed of the body in a drainage pipe, but not before cutting out the man’s tongue, which he took home and cooked with butter. “I tried it, but I didn’t like it,” he said, “but I probably would have liked another part of the body.” Russian media said that Komarov lived in a communal apartment in St Petersburg with his parents and grandparents and had shown an interest in psychedelic music, “anarcho-primitivism” and the “elixirs of immortality” on social media. dailymail.co.uk, 22 Nov 2021.
CANNIBAL CONUNDRUM
In a slightly surprising case in Poland, a man, known only as Robert M due to reporting restrictions, was imprisoned for 25 years for murdering and eating someone almost 20 years ago, despite the body never being found and the man’s identity never being discovered.
The case only came to light when police received an anonymous tip-off that one of Robert M’s alleged accomplices, known as Zbigniew B, had made a deathbed confession about the murder. This led them to another man, Rafal O, who had apparently given clear and consistent accounts of the murder on at least six occasions despite having severe alcohol problems and poor mental health, and it was solely on his evidence that Robert M was convicted. According to Rafal, during a drinking session in the village of Lugi in 2002, Robert got into a fight with the victim, after which the three men dragged him to a nearby lake. There, Robert told Zbigniew to cut his throat, which he did, then, instructed by Robert, he dismembered him and cut pieces of flesh from the body, which they cooked over a fire on skewers and ate, with Robert threatening anyone who didn’t partake with the same fate. The rest of the man’s remains were then dumped into the lake. These have never been found, and the victim fits no missing persons records, nor has anyone come forward to provide a name for him. Despite this, the judge convicted Robert M, saying that Rafal O’s consistent story had been recounted in “such a way that it is impossible to consider the possibility that he invented the story.”
Robert M, who has always denied having any part in the alleged events, is, not surprisingly, appealing against his conviction. D.Telegraph, 28 Sept 2021.