Cannibalism: historical practices and cultural contexts

Cannibalism

WORLD SERIAL KILLERS and THEIR TASTE

FOR HUMAN FLESH

Throughout the long history of humanity, many cultures have either sanctioned or ritualized the consumption of human flesh known as cannibalism. This grisly practice is of course banned today since it requires either homicide or the desecration of a corpse. However, as bizarre as it may seem, cannibalism is not particularly rare among serial killers, especially those driven to commit acts of cannibalism by either sexual or sadistic motives.

As Heather Rawlins points out, "No one really knows why cannibals do what they do" and people "who have never experienced a desire to be a cannibal probably never will understand" exactly what drives a human being to consume another person, much like sitting down to dinner with the main course being human liver. In the annals of world criminology, there are many examples of mass murderers and serial killers who ate the flesh of their victims. For instance, in Russia, Andrei Chikatilo was convicted of murdering fifty-two people, some of which he cooked and consumed at his dinner table. As the story goes, Chikatilo was told by his mother that "she suspected their neighbors had eaten his younger brother" which may have "triggered cannibalistic tendencies inside of Chikatilo." Albert Fish, a cannibal who allegedly murdered fifteen children and mutilated hundreds of others, "said that his actions were a result of being abused in an orphanage as a child," and Issei Sagawa of Japan "murdered and ate a fellow student" and felt that he could "show his love for a woman by eating her" ("The Life of a Cannibal," 2003, Internet). As will be shown, there are a number of famous American serial killers who resorted to cannibalism to satisfy their depraved desires for human flesh, many of whom still live among us in mental institutions and/or federal and state-run prison systems or have met their deaths through the gas chamber, electrocution or even at the hands of their fellow prisoners.

ALBERT FISH -- CANNIBAL of BROOKLYN

In the early 1930's when President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was helping to stabilize the American economy as a result of the Great Depression, Albert Hamilton Fish, a serial killer and cannibal known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria and the Brooklyn Vampire, was under arrest in New York City for the kidnapping and brutal murder of twelve-year-old Grace Budd. In 1928, Mr. Fish, who had assumed the name of Mr. Howard, became a close friend of the Budd family and was allowed to take Grace to a birthday party. Grace was never seen again, but in 1934, Mrs. Budd received a letter anonymously sent by Fish in which he described in grisly detail how he had kidnapped little Grace, strangled and dismembered her and then cooked her and consumed her body.

When Fish was arrested, he admitted to the police that he had made stew out of Grace's body and had masturbated over it. Fish also admitted that he had murdered three other children and claimed to have killed perhaps four hundred more. As an example of his depraved desire for human flesh, Fish's letter to Mrs. Budd is one of absolute disgust:

On Sunday... I had lunch with Grace. She sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her... I took her to an empty house...I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside... I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them...When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her (and) stripped her naked... I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms to cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. I did not f -- k her though I could of had I wished. She died a virgin" ("Cannibal Bios," 2007, Internet).

Albert Fish was sentenced to death and electrocuted at Sing Prison in 1936. As Cyrus Dehkan reminds us, Fish "will be remembered for living one of the most perverse lifestyles known to man" in the form of a cannibal and this "real-life Hannibal Lecter" remains "one of the most terrifying pedophiles and killers of all time" ("Serial Killer Albert Fish," 2007, Internet).

JOACHIM KROLL -- GERMAN CANNIBAL

In 1976, West German police in the city of Duisburg received a report that a four-year-old girl was missing from her home. The landlord of an apartment building then told police that one of his tenants "had warned him not to use the toilet in the shared bathroom because it was clogged with "guts." When the police investigated this claim, they found human intestines which turned out to be from the missing girl. They then went to the apartment of Joachim Kroll and in his refrigerator found "bags of human flesh" and on the stove "a child's hand inside a simmering stew." The police quickly realized that they had stumbled upon the "Ruhr Hunter" who had been actively murdering German citizens for at least twenty years (Ramsland, 2005, 190).

Much like the Brooklyn madman Albert Fish, Kroll confessed that he had "often sliced portions of flesh from his victims to cook and eat them" which he claimed helped him to save money on groceries. While in prison, Kroll assumed that a simple operation would cure him of his insatiable desire to consume human flesh and then be released, but instead, Kroll was charged in 1982 with murdering eight people and was given nine back-to-back life sentences ("Joachim Kroll, 2007, Internet).

JEFFREY DAHMER -- CANNIBAL EXTRAORDINARE

In July of 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer, dubbed as "The Real Hannibal Lecter," was arrested in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Inside of his apartment, police came upon a scene "that they'd heard about only in Psycho" (Ramsland, 2005, 252) and after looking in his refrigerator found human heads, intestines, hearts and kidneys. Around the apartment lay human skulls, bones, rotting body parts, bloodstained soup kettles and several complete human skeletons. Not surprisingly, Dahmer's case demonstrated that "some predators... consumed human flesh and eroticized the God-like hubris of absorbing another person's life" ("Jeffrey Dahmer," 2007, Internet).

As is the norm for mass murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer, cannibalism almost always occurs in some form during certain rituals. According to some accounts on his life, Dahmer claimed to have eaten the flesh of his unsuspecting victims "because he believed that the people would come alive again in him." As further proof of Dahmer's insatiable appetite for human flesh, he was known to have used "various seasonings and meat tenderizers to make the human flesh more tasty" and when he ate this flesh, it gave him an erection. The freezer inside of his apartment or his "Chamber of Horrors" also contained frozen strips of human flesh; he also tried drinking human blood, "but it did not appeal to his taste buds" ("Jeffrey Dahmer," 2007, Internet).