A Berlin teacher has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering a man he met on a dating portal, with a judge ruling the killing was driven by 'cannibalism fantasies'. The 42-year-old, identified only as Stefan R under German privacy laws, was also convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead.
The Berlin state court found that Stefan R killed a 43-year-old mechanic in September 2020 'to live out his cannibalism fantasies', according to news agency dpa. 'What you did was inhuman,' presiding judge Matthias Schertz said. The men met on a dating portal and agreed to meet for sex at the teacher's apartment, where the victim was killed, his body cut up, and parts left in different city neighbourhoods. The court said the victim had not expected 'an attack on his life'.
Prosecutors said the defendant cut off the victim's genitals with the intention of eating them, a claim the judges accepted, though it could not be established whether he carried out that intention. Investigators found a bone saw and specialist knives at his apartment. The defendant had increasingly 'developed slaughter and cannibalism ideas' and visited online cannibalism forums, Schertz said.
Police spent weeks searching for the missing mechanic before walkers found bones in a Berlin forest. The court found that Stefan R bore 'particularly grave' responsibility, meaning he will not be eligible for automatic parole after 15 years, which is customary in Germany. The defendant disputed the charges, claiming he found his acquaintance dead on a couch after spending the night and did not call police or an ambulance 'because it would have come out that I am homosexual'. The defence sought his acquittal.
This is not the first case in Germany involving alleged cannibalism. In 2006, Armin Meiwes was convicted of murder and disturbing the peace of the dead for killing and eating a man he met online; he is serving a life sentence. In 2015, a German police officer was convicted of murder for killing a man he met in an internet chat forum devoted to cannibalism, though there was no evidence the killer fulfilled the victim's fantasy of being eaten.
