From LGBT campaigner to eunuch maker
Leader of body mutilation cult who made £300,000 from images of ‘butchery’ is jailed for 22 years
‘He was a big boy. He had to have something to spend his time on’
‘After the barbaric encounters … I can still feel the physical pain’ ‘I am entirely satisfied that the motivations of all involved were a mix of sexual gratification as well as financial reward’
IN his north London basement flat, Marius Gustavson castrated and sexually tortured dozens of men for the enjoyment of paying viewers on his Eunuch Maker website.
Over four years, Gustavson made £300,000 from the 22,800 subscribers paying to watch the “human butchery” unfold on their screens.
At the Old Bailey yesterday, the 46-year-old Norwegian national was jailed for life with a minimum custodial sentence of 22 years.
To his online followers, he instilled a “cult-like” atmosphere, recruiting “likeminded” back-street surgeons to help run what a judge called the “large-scale, dangerous and extremely disturbing enterprise”.
With the help of his six co-defendants, he was involved with at least 30 mutilations – including one on a 16-year-old boy – using kitchen knives and farming tools normally used on livestock.
Many victims were vulnerable men questioning their own identity, whose research into gender dysphoria or body dysmorphia had led them into Gustavson’s “spider web”.
One was Jacob Crimi-appleby, a then 17-year-old who was later manipulated into helping amputate Gustavson’s leg after “falling down an internet rabbit hole” while looking up gender dysphoria online.
Caroline Carbery KC, prosecuting, said it was “remarkable” that the Eunuch Maker website “operated in plain sight, not on the dark web, accessible to anyone who stumbled upon it and had the inclination and means to pay to view the gruesome footage”. Users were offered a “VIP” yearly subscription of £100, along with free unlimited messaging.
Gustavson sought to blame his sado-masochistic behaviour on the break-up of his marriage in 2016, which he claimed had awoken his previously “dormant” condition of body integrity dysphoria, in which a person feels a limb or healthy body part should not be part of their body.
Neither Gustavson nor any of his co-defendants were formally diagnosed.
Many of the “amateur and dangerous” surgical procedures had been carried out on those identifying as “nullos”, a term for people who do not wish to identify as male or female and, in Gustavson’s words, want to “look like a Ken doll, with nothing down there”.
Gustavson is wheelchair-bound after willingly having his penis, leg and nipple amputated, claiming £18,500 in benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions for his self-inflicted disability.
Yet many of those who knew him in his past life, as an LGBT charity campaigner with a passion for the Eurovision Song Contest, think he has been unfairly vilified for his crimes.
“He is far from a monster,” Gustavson’s ex-husband told The Telegraph, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I do want people to understand his background and who he is.” He claimed Gustavson had done a lot of “admirable work” in his native Norway, and had been looked up to by his fellow charity workers.
Friends and former colleagues described an isolated loner who dedicated all his spare time to gay activism in his home city of Drammen, a 45-minute drive south-west of Oslo.
He served as the regional chairman of Norway’s National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation (LLH), once the country’s largest LGBT group, and campaigned for more sex education in schools.
Gustavson hosted “gay weekends” in Drammen and complained about school textbooks containing “almost nothing about homosexuality”.
Camilla Lochen, an ex-member of LLH, described Gustavson as a “big teddy bear”. Ms Lochen told The Telegraph: “He lived very much for that cause. My thought was maybe that he was a little miserable. He was a big boy. He had to have something to spend his time on.” She said it was “horrible” to learn of Gustavson’s crimes in the UK, “because he was a nice guy”.
Gustavson graduated from a business school in 1996, and shortly afterwards studied at a language school in Hastings, East Sussex. He moved between Norway and the UK for several years and did odd jobs, including as a receptionist in Torquay.
He had brushes with the law in his native country, committing several fraud offences but was never jailed. After a 2001 conviction, he worked for Norway’s postal service for a decade. A former colleague described him as “passionate about LGBT causes” and Eurovision. Around October 2011, Gustavson moved to Bournemouth.
The prosecution admitted it was “impossible” to know the full extent of his offending between 2017 and 2021.
The court heard how Gustavson hoarded severed body parts in his freezer and auctioned them off online, with “clear evidence” of cannibalism as well as bodily mutilations. On one occasion, he grilled a pair of human testicles in a skillet as part of an “artfully arranged” lunchtime salad with potatoes, pistachios and cashew nuts.
His crimes only came to light after one victim went to the police. In a statement to the court, the man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said he was “apoplectic with rage” and wanted to kill Gustavson after realising the permanent damage done to his body.
Gustavson had inculcated a “cultlike” atmosphere that “mesmerised” his followers, who considered him their “unquestionable” leader, he said. He added: “After the barbaric encounters, if I think about them too long I can still feel the physical pain.”
Although Gustavson’s victims had given their “consent” to the procedures and he – in his lawyer’s words – simply wished to “put a smile on their faces”, this could not be accepted as a legal defence. Under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, a person cannot legally consent to being seriously harmed for sexual gratification.
Despite atempts by Gustavson’s co-defendants to argue that many of the surgeries had been performed solely for the psychological benefit of the victims, this was rejected by Judge Mark Lucraft KC, who said: “I am entirely satisfied that the motivations of all involved were a mix of sexual gratification as well as financial reward.”
Gustavson showed little reaction during the three-day sentencing hearing, spending most of his time making copious notes from HMP Wandsworth as he watched proceedings via video link yesterday morning.
His co-defendants – David Carruthers, 61, Janus Atkin, 39, Peter Wates, 67, Ion Valentin Ciucur, 30, Ashley Williams, 32 and Stefan Scharf, 61 – received jail sentences of between four and a half years and 12 years for their role in the plot.
In January, Damien Byrnes, 36, and Crimi-appleby, now 23, were jailed for amputating Gustavson’s penis and leg. Nathan Arnold, a 48-year-old nurse, was spared jail for removing Gustavson’s nipple with a scalpel.
Gustavson, Carruthers, Atkin, Wates and Ciucur pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent.
Gustavson pleaded guilty to a range of further offences, including five additional counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, making an indecent image of a child, four counts of distributing indecent images of a child, possessing extreme pornographic images and possessing criminal property.
Williams and Scharf pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent.