GERMANY: Berlin police have launched an investigation into a second case of suspected cannibalism with disturbing similarities to that of self-confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes writes Derek Scally in Berlin.
On Tuesday night, police got a call from a 41-year-old unemployed painter, known only as Ralf M. He said: "I've killed someone. The body is lying in my bedroom."
Police visited his apartment in the working-class neighbourhood of Neukölln and described the scene as a "slaughterhouse". Only a bloody torso remained of the victim Joe R., a 33-year-old music teacher and son of a vicar who lived with his boyfriend in an alternative community.
Investigators said his chest cavity was cut open and the organs removed; they were found later in the fridge.
As in the Armin Meiwes case, who was jailed in January for killing and eating a Berlin computer technician three years ago, the two men met through the internet and had already met twice for sado-masochistic sex. It was on the third date last Monday that the music teacher was butchered.
"Ralf killed his victim with a screwdriver," said one police investigator to Bild newspaper. "Then he got a saw and started to cut off the limbs. Whether he actually ate human flesh is unclear."
Neighbours described the alleged cannibal as a "quiet, simple man" who rarely left his apartment. Germany's Bild newspaper splashed the story on its front page yesterday with the headline: "The pianist's heart lay in the fridge".
Armin Meiwes said at the start of his trial last December that there were "hundreds, thousands" of people on the internet seeking to fulfil their desire to eat humans - or to be eaten.
Meiwes posted a personal ad on the web: "Seeking well-built man, 18-30 years old for slaughter." Bernd Brandes, a 42-year-old engineer with Siemens in Berlin, replied.
Meiwes killed Brandes in March 2001 and ate about 20 kg of his flesh. The case only came to the attention of police after Meiwes began bragging about the killing in internet chatrooms.
Meiwes, serving an eight-year prison sentence, recently sold the rights to his story for an undisclosed sum to a Hamburg production company. German shock director Rosa von Prauheim is preparing a film loosely based on the story. The working title is "Your Heart In My Brain".