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. More FGAQ . VO Regulars . other reads . heh heh heh . music . news & research
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004 |
The FBI has now released a portion of the instructions that Brian Wells was following at the time of his fatal mission in August of 2003. The notes were discovered in Wells car after he was killed by the explosion of a collar bomb that had been locked around his neck. At the time, he was sitting cross-legged on the ground under police gunpoint while awaiting the arrival of the local bomb squad. The Wells murder, with it's strong undercurrent of psychological horror, is one of the most heinous crimes of manipulation ever recorded.
The note <see sample> <see sample 2> runs nine handwritten pages and is from someone adapting the pseudonym 'The Troubleshooter'. (The Troubleshooter is believed to be the creator of the bomb as well as the odd cane gun that was in Wells car). Investigators are hoping that someone will recognize the penmanship, or possibly the obsessivenes associated with the highly detailed instructions. Nine pages is a hell of a length for bank robbery instructions: this one has rules in numerical order, a map of Eerie County with a route drawn in, and even drawings of enroute landmarks (a traffic warning sign, a McDonalds sign from the location where he was supposed to make the money drop). <see drawing>
The portions of the note made public (most are blacked out) are filled with threats to Wells, telling him he will be destroyed if he fails to complete his mission. Cozy warnings like these: "If police or aircraft are involved, you will be destroyed. Alerting authorities or anyone else will prevent you from completing the mission." "Act now, think later or you will die!" There are also arrogant game-like and quasi-military qualities in the note, as well as multiple references to revenge "Revenge is a theme repeated throughout the letters, along with certain dire consequences if instructions were not strictly followed," says Rudd. He notes that this crime could have been years in the planning stages.
And yet, failure is guaranteed, "The overall bank robbery plan as outlined in the letter appears to be unrealistic. <there were four separate stops required after the bank. Wells was supposed to go on some kind of a psychotic scavenger hunt after the robbery.> Nonetheless, because of the time and effort he invested in this whole scheme - constructing the collar bomb and the shotgun and preparing the instruction letter - it is not likely he sat at home waiting to learn how events unfolded," said Rudge. The working theory is that the perpetrator was in position to watch events unfold. "It would be extremely difficult to follow this note from A to Z, extremely difficult," Rudge said.
FBI Special Agent Bob Rudge revealed the working personality profile of the writer. He was obsessive and controlling, telling Wells what to say, how to behave and even what he should feel. "Total compliance is the only option that can be safely achieved," the notes reads at one point. Rudge said that the suspect would be angry that the scheme didn't work. This points to a very conflicted individual, given that the task is pretty much impossible. "References to death, dying and destruction are a theme seen throughout these letters. This offender would have been angry that the collar-bomb did not work as he intended it," Rudge said. This is either a clue or a red herring - in what way did the bomb not work as expected? The FBI has no further comment at this time.
The FBI is cryptic and (intentionally?) confusing in regards to their profiling information, even to the point of bizarrely suggesting that Wells might have been a willing participant in the episode. "We haven't taken anything off the table," says Rudge.
previous Brian Wells postings are here |
12:57:49 PM 
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The Brian Wells Story
| On Brian Wells
I am fascinated by the Brian Wells story. Terrible, heartbreaking, macabre, it would never work as fiction. I mean, the critics laughed at 'Phone Booth', and this story is much more convoluted.
Brian Wells was a very simple man, but at this point, I am not sure whether he was simple-minded or not. He lived alone in Erie Pa., in a cottage with three cats. He was a shy, 46 year old pizza deliveryman.
Last week he committed a robbery, walking into a bank with a bomb strapped around his neck. After the heist, he walked away, and was arrested in a nearby parking lot. This was no ordinary bomb - it was a collar bomb, locked around his neck, a sophisticated device that has been associated with Latin American terrorists. When the police saw the device, they backed away, and called the bomb squad. Mister Wells blew up before they arrived.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer describes the scene.
Handcuffed and tethered to a bomb, pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells sat on one of the city's busiest streets and wailed for help. "Why isn't nobody trying to come get this thing off me?" he screamed to police. "It's going to go off. I'm not lying. Did you call my boss? I'm not doing this. This isn't me."
In no way did this seem to be a suicide. Before he died, Wells told the police that he had been nabbed by a 'dark-skinned man' who strapped the bomb around his neck and activated a timing device, telling him that it would only be diffused once he returned with the money. Strange? Damn right. It is theorized that he might have been strapped with the bomb by customers calling for pizza from a supposed construction site, which turned out to be the location of a broadcast antenna.
Wells was carrying a note with him – instructions on how to rob a bank, apparently, followed by three locations that he should go to after the robbery. The FBI has said, rather cryptically, that releasing the note is “more trouble than it is worth”, and cancelled a planned news conference.
Getting stranger… the latest news that I can find just came from the AP a short while ago. Check this:
Information about a second weapon found with Mr. Wells -- which some investigators have reportedly likened to a cane that could fire a projectile -- was another possible topic of the canceled news conference.
FGAQ brings you this information because we find the case utterly intriguing, and thinks you will too. For updates, click here.
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9/23 What has happened to the Brian Wells story? It seems to have made only a minor blip in the national media in spite of being the most bizarre story of recent memory. For those of you who have already forgotten - or never knew - Brian Wells was a mild mannered forty-two year old recluse who supported his very simple lifestyle by delivering pizza. Way back in August, he walked into an Erie, Pa. bank and committed a robbery. When the police caught up with him a few minutes later, they found that he was wearing a collar bomb. As police kept their distance, he begged for help, saying that strangers had locked the bomb to him and forced him to rob the bank before they would defuse the explosives. He had a bit of an obstacle course he was supposed to follow, four stops that would have been hard to make even without interference. He blew up before the bomb squad arrived.
The Erie Times-News has been the only media outlet to give this story full play, and today's major development involves a story that is not - I repeat not - related in any way to the Brian Wells story. I know this for a fact because Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk said it's not related, although usually when folks go out of their way to say things are not related, they are.
This is your basic body in the freezer story. This tale centers around Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the kind of girl your mama warned you against, the kind of girl that's apt to shoot her boyfriends and store them in the home freezer. Dude by the name of James Roden. Not that she's a weirdo or anything; it's not like she was going to eat him. As a matter of fact, when she was arrested, she and her buddy Billy Rothstein were making plans on buying an ice crushing machine, so as to give the body a proper disposal. I mean it had been frozen for several weeks, and what with deer hunting season approaching...
Marj was not to blame, of course, even though she does admit that "Yes, it was a crime or whatever. But it wasn't me who killed him and touched his body and put him in the freezer." Adds a new meaning to whatever, doesn't it. It was Rothstein! (her housemate) and Marj is glad to clear up this confusion. She told WSEE-TV that she was being treated for schizophrenia and manic-depression (ed note: mutually exclusive), that she would not commit crimes like 'Jack the Ripper'. Oh by the way, it was Rothstein that turned Diehl-Armstrong in, and she had been acquitted for the murder of another boyfriend back in '88.
Oops, we almost forgot the Brian Wells connection. Forgive me. I forgot to mention that that Marjorie and Rothstein's home is right splat at the start of the dirt road which Wells was on his way to when he set out to deliver those last two sausage pizzas.
No wit intended here. The pizzas were never found.
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Here is a brilliant headline from CBSNews.com
Collar Bomber Probably a Victim
Yes, Erie Pa. investigators have come to the conclusion that Brian Wells probably didn't just lock a time bomb around his own neck as a lark. He probably wasn't part of a clever heist ring. Very good police work, guys.
I finally watched the video of the final moments. I'd been avoiding it. Wells is sitting cross legged on the ground. No one, including the camera is near him. He barely moves. And then, he's gone. There is an explosion but we don't see Wells. I suppose the force of the blast slammed him flat to the ground, out of camera range. But it is more like a magicians trick than a snuff film, debris flying through the air, while the performer has gone.
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Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong and Brian Wells: A Conjuncture
We now have a link between the Erie pizza deliveryman who was blown up by a collar bomb in a sinister but still not understood bank robbery, and the Erie nut job who had her ex-boyfriend, James Roden, stashed in a freezer.
The link is William Rothstein. His relationship with Diehl-Armstrong is a little bit unclear, so lets just call them friends. Let us say that he is the kind of friend who we might all like to have if we ever wanted to dispose of someone who was not a friend. The kind of friend who would melt your shotgun for you. The kind of friend who would come over and help you clean up a big mess: you know, replace the linoleum, take your bloody mattress to the dump, paint over those messy bloodstains on the wall, and rig up a nice pulley system to help you get that incriminating body into the freezer. Now that’s a buddy.
But even the best of friends have their limits, and Diehl-Armstrong’s idea to run Roden’s body through an ice crusher was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back. (This is what I’m thinking, although Marjorie was apparently crazy enough to have been contemplating using this.)
So Rothstein did the right thing. He called the police and went off to kill himself. Even wrote a suicide note. And one thing that he wanted to make absolutely clear in his note was that he did not kill Brian Wells. I’m sure he was nervous about that since the police were scouring the area, and he was living at the end of the line where Wells made his final delivery. Rothstein didn’t end up committing suicide, but he is adamant about this. According to a police source, "He didn't want people, the police, to get hung up on the fact that the crime scene was so close to his house. It's a bizarre explanation, but it does make some sense."
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I am going to have to gather my notes together on the Brian Wells case, and the parallel Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong sideshow. The Wells story has all but disappeared from the national media, and the Diehl-Armstrong story never appeared there to begin with. For those of you who haven't seen my previous comments, Brian Wells was the pizza deliveryman who robbed a bank and was blown up by a collar bomb. Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was the nut who put down her boyfriend with a shotgun blast to the belly, and then stored him in a freezer with the help of her good friend William Rothstein. Both cases happened in Erie, Pa., and even though the FBI says there is no connection, I am convinced that there is. There are far too many coincidences.
(1) This was where the last pizzas were delivered. Yeah, there is nothing habitable past the Diehl-Armstrong/Rothstein household. (And what a household it was. Lets check in with WSEE: Police officers suited up in protective gear and formed a human chain to begin that search. Every item in the home was examined and either submitted into evidence, or thrown into a garbage. Investigators say inside the house is absolutely disgusting, not to mention the unbearable smell even outside. Captain Skindell says they've seen disgusting houses before, but he says, this one's unique.) What we are talking about here, from some reports I've read, is a woman who would go out for a drive on trash day, steal your garbage, and stack it up in her house. We're talking not one, not two, but multiple dead and decomposing animals.
(2) Rothstein was a licensed electrician. He worked with the robotics team at the local high school. He had the know-how to make items like, oh, collar bombs, and cane guns and that sort of thing. Oh, yeah: he helped another woman cover up another murder twenty years prior. (Saturday it was revealed that he and Marjorie were helping to hide the rapist of a 19 year-old retarded woman.)
(3) Rothstein wrote a suicide note, after turning Diehl Armstrong in. "It wasn't me," was what he said, in a nutshell. Kind of an odd disclaimer to make in what's intended to be your last few words. And why didn't he kill himself, anyway?
(4) The call for Brian Wells last pizza delivery was made from a pay phone that Rothstein often used when he would go to the store to buy 'soda pop'.
The story continues...
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| Brian Wells Has Left the House
Friggin pizza man -
He blowed up good.
No one give a fuck because
He wasn't pregnant
Blonde
Or rich
Or famous.
He wasn't any one you'd want to know
Creepy in reality
And one time he did dare to call the cops
with some words you wouldn't say before the kids.
Here's a better Brian Wells <skating little faggot>
Here's a better Brian Wells <you can hire him on the cheap>
Here's a better Brian Wells <he can do the hustle>
Here's a better Brian Wells <direct from San Diego>
Here's a better Brian Wells <Biology in Texas>
Here's a better Brian Wells <Football in Cincinnati... and might I say his record's swell at 10 and 1, and 7-3, Unlike the other Brian Wells - the pizza bombed, eternally >
What is death
anyway
If you're worthless to begin with?
So glad he didn't want to rob that bank.
Google count is zero. | |
7:17:10 AM
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Friday, January 30, 2004 |
Verdict The Cannibal of Rotenburg
At long last, the precedent setting Armin Meiwes case is over. The Cannibal of Rotenburg was sentenced by a German court today to eight years in prison for the crime of killing and consuming Bernd-Juergen Brandes, a socially maladjusted gent who was a willing participant in the macabre festivities. (An overview of the case is printed directly beneath this piece.)
Meiwes was not convicted of manslaughter as prosecutors had hoped, but of manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of eight and a half years, with time off for good behavior. (There is little doubt that Meiwes will be well behaved; throughout the trial he has been polite, friendly, and forthcoming, and described by witnesses and court officials alike as a gentleman. Plus, he dresses well and has what might be called a charming smile if it weren't for the fact that you realize he might eat you with those teeth.) To be fair about it, the defense didn't get what they wanted either. They were looking for a verdict of 'killing on request' - the German equivalent of euthanasia - which could have resulted in a sentence of as little as six months. The court dismissed this verdict because of the obvious sexual pleasure that Meiwes took in this act.
In the end, the six hour home video that Meiwes made of himself and Brandes played a powerful part in the verdict. Head Judge Volker Muetze admitted that the video should be "viewed with repulsion in our civilized society" (creepiest scene not previously reported by me: Meiwes talking to Brandes' severed head while disemboweling the body, which is hanging from a meat hook in the special 'slaughter lounge')... but, I continue, clearing my throat, the video shows that "Seen legally, this is manslaughter, killing a person without being a murderer." And?
And? And it was "a behavior that is condemned in our society - namely the killing and butchering of a human being"... Go on, Herr Muetze. "They were two deeply psychologically disturbed people who both wanted something from the other."
People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world.
You know, this whole case has been an amazing story, and I'm really not sure why it's received so little interest in the states. (Interesting cannibal trivia: the most extensive coverage of the Meiwes saga has come from Australia, Africa and India - a continent where they used to eat people, a continent where they still do, and a country where they're so hungry that they'll eat anything they can get their damn hands on.) I think the story may be just a little too harsh for Americans, with their tender sensibilities, to accept as news. Entertainment, now that's another story, and I expect the forthcoming movie(s) to do great box office, particularly if they avoid the pitfall of trying to be dramas. Horror, could work, but we're talking two weeks and out unless we get a name director like M Night Shamalamadingdong. Comedy is not out of the question, and I for one would suggest the Farley brothers, who are just about one film away from doing a picture about a dimwitted but lovable cannibal who is forced to look for dinner in the classifieds.
Me, I'm hoping for a musical. That last little speech that Armin gave to the court earlier this week, what a climactic ending it could frame. "You don't need to worry that I'll ever need to do this again," he said. But no, no regrets. "I took his life, and I readily admit that." His voice firm, committed. "But ... I did nothing that ran contrary to his express wishes." Face forward, eyes bright, full screen close-up. "I've had the kick of a lifetime."
I can hear Jennifer Warnes. and if he were not dead, I can hear Bill Medley, who could really use the work about now. I see the lights flash from an orbiting disco ball, and see the skirts of the twirling girls float round like hibiscus petals. And I can hear singing. "Now with passion in our eyes / There's no way we could disguise it secretly / So we take each other's hand / Cause we seem to understand / The urgency / Just remember / I've had the time of my life / I never felt this way before..." |
12:37:48 PM
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Friday, January 23, 2004 |
| Tales of Scary Karma: The Battered Professor
Probably everyone is familiar with the Stephen Hawking story by now. If not, I'll give you a brief synopsis.
Brief Synopsis
Professor Hawking was brought to the hospital a few days ago to be treated for pneumonia. Hawking is the world famous physicist that wrote the short yet impenetrable 'Brief History of Time'. Or if you don't know him from there, he's been a guest voice on the Simpsons. (Bonus link! Click here for the Simpsons Stephen Hawking action figure.)
Now the fact that the 62 year old Hawking is a paraplegic who can only speak with a computerized voice box is the main reason he's being treated in a hospital rather than at home. And once they checked him in, they started seeing a lot of extraneous injuries. And they concluded: 'Someone has been whumping on the civilized world's most beloved scientist.
End of brief synopsis. Time for the updates.
'Right!' says the family. They've known it all along that someone has been beating on Stephen. And they're pretty darn sure they know who that someone is: Elaine Hawking. Yeah, they had accused her before, four years prior, but Stephen had refused to spill the beans on Elaine. They figure that this is a classic case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. This is a behavior usually found between mothers and children wherein the mother induces injury/illness in the child in order to get attention for themselves. 'Oh, you poor thing. Look at what you have to deal with.' Because of Hawking's level of dependence upon his wife, this accusation becomes quite plausible.
Here's Christian Gysin reports from today's Daily Mail:
A nurse who cared for Professor Stephen Hawking claimed last night that she saw his wife abusing and mistreating him. Elaine Hawking called her disabled 62-year-old husband a cripple, bathed him in water that was too hot and allowed him to wet himself, it was alleged.
The nurse was reported as saying: "She gets angry and has thrown him on the bed where he kicks his limbs or hurts himself. She allowed him to slip down low in the bath so the water goes in the hole in his throat. She has left him in the garden without his computer mouse so he cannot talk and call for anyone. She gives him lots of verbal abuse and calls him a cripple and an invalid, which depresses him. She would withhold the bottle he used to go to the toilet so he wet himself, which he does not like because he is a very dignified person and a very private person. The verbal abuse is unbelievable. Her mouth is like a sewer. We (his nurses) got so used to it we forgot it was not normal behavior."
Whoah! And that's only one nurse, whereas the Hawkings employ round the clock nursing services. The police are interviewing ten more nurses. And they're taking their time with it, too. They've just about had it with this Hawking fellow. Cause like I mentioned earlier, they had dealt with this particular asshole a few years ago. He wouldn't help them then, and he's not being helpful now, claiming all allegations are false (no matter who they're directed against!) and that his privacy is being invaded.
You need to know that Hawking has been wasting away from motor neurone disease for around forty years. Forty freaking years is a hell of a long time. And I'll let you in on a little secret. Had Hawking not been blessed with a brilliant mind, which has allowed him to earn a large personal fortune (round the clock nursing ain't cheap), he would sure as shit be dead now instead of popping up in the news whenever they need a quote from a well known physicist. With Carl Sagan long gone, we're just about out of celebrity scientists.
Now when Hawking was twenty-two years old and still spry, just a few months after his unfortunate diagnosis, Stephen took himself a wife, girl by the name of Jane Wilde. And even though his health continued to slowly degenerate, they produced three healthy kids in the first dozen years of their marriage.
What sort of woman puts up with this type of shit, you wonder, taking care of an invalid day after day, year after year, and still professing her love. Let me be cruel for a moment. This man is a car wreck. Take a look at this guy! Good Lord! And a sparkling conversationalist, I'm sure. I'm thinking that this Jane Wilde is a regular Mother Theresa. She even got her ex-husband to build him his first voice synthesizer.
But it couldn't last. I know what you're thinking, she couldn't take it anymore and left him. Wrong! He left her! No, I'm not kidding. He left her in 1990 for Elaine Mason. How does a paralyzed physicist meet cute girls, anyhow? Uh, when they're emptying your bed pan, of course. He ran off with one of his nurses, leaving two kids still at home, one of them ten years old. And that's the truth. Except for the part about running off. I'm sure that's not right. I have this vision of Woody Allen making an escape from the hospital with Louise Lasser shouting "I'm wheeling as fast as I can."
Jane Wilde was reportedly broken-hearted, but she got over it eventually. She remarried in 1996, and in 1998 wrote a book, 'Music to Move the Stars', about her marriage to the Professor. How would you describe it, Jane? "A brittle, empty shell, alone and vulnerable, restrained only by the thought of my children from throwing myself into the river, drowning in a slough of despond, I prayed for help with the desperate insistency of a potential suicide." Damn, girl, why didn't you just pack it in. "I couldn't go off and leave Stephen. Coals of fire would have been heaped on my head if I had."
Ah, well, it's all over now. And is little Stephen happy at last? I mean aside from the fact that he keeps showing up at the emergency room with the occasional bruises and cuts and broken bones. Oh yes, and that incident when Elaine left him stranded in the garden on the hottest day of the year, and he suffered sever heat stroke.
A different nurse has been talking to The Mirror U.K. the past couple of days.
"I remember coming in one day and he had a cut on his throat. She must have shaved him very harshly. It wasn't a shaving nick. It was about three inches long... Another time she slammed his wrist down on his wheelchair and his wrist broke. That actual moment was seen by a nurse but she was given a very hard time. Elaine was very jealous of her, she was attractive. If you were a threat at all, that was her worry."
The source also described a special ritual that Elaine would perform for all the new nurses, calling them unexpectedly to the bedroom. "She would often be doing some strange show. She would be naked on top of him. At the time, I thought I had made some terrible mistake. It was afterwards I was told that happened to quite a few people. It was to make it clear that they had a sexual relationship. It was an initiation."
Hawking has issued a statement. "There is absolutely no substance to the reports."
And ex-wife Jane? She had a statement too. "Stephen is very vulnerable. I don't think he is in control of the situation. I trust the medical authorities will take the situation very seriously and not discharge him before the situation is resolved."
But it's really not her problem any more. |
12:47:30 PM
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Wednesday, January 21, 2004 |
Returning bite by bite.
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Armin Meiwes, The Cannibal of Rotenburg
There are stories and then there are stories. And there's more crime out there than you can shake a stick at, but Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a story. Forget about your Lacy Petersons, your Kobie Bryants, your Michael Jacksons. I present to you now - The Cannibal of Rotenburg, Armin Meiwes.
I first read about this over at Secular Blasphemy a few months ago. The charges were new, and Jan's piece could provide only the sketchiest details. For months I forgot about it, consigning it to the realm of urban legend.
The case is in court now, and the details are coming out in a trial that just might make legal history. This is a huge international story, playing big everywhere but in the States. Could it be that Americans just don’t have a taste for tales with this much bite? Perhaps…
We are so going to run with this. |
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A Gentleman of the Old School 12/6/03
The setting of the trial is the land known as Germany, in a town called Kassel.
We begin on the internet, which as Bill O’Riley has informed you, is a dark and lawless place, a zone beyond repentance where the weird at heart meet in chat rooms and forums with names like ‘Cannibal Café’ and ‘Gay Cannibals’. What are they searching for, you ask? The answer is simple – someone to eat, or someone to be eaten by. “Thousands of people” is their number according to Meiwes, and I shall give him the benefit of the doubt. Were they just playing games? Most perhaps, but not all…
Meiwes is… weird. When he was a youngster, he claims to have been under the control of a domineering mother who stoked his interest in cannibalism. (How she did this he doesn't say.) Fatherless and with no siblings, he became obsessed with the idea of having a younger brother, someone that he could make “a part of myself. But then I realized one day that was not enough." As he grew older, his fantasy fleshed out, and by the time he was twelve, he would imagine killing, butchering and devouring his school friends – just the ones he liked, of course. "Slim and blond, that would have been the type."
But Armin remained a good boy, living strictly in his fantasies until 1999, when his mother finally died. Bitch was outta there. This gave him a whole new lease on life and he ventured out onto the internet in search of a few good men.
He adopted the pseudonym Franky. Franky? He posted internet ads which read: "If you are 18-25 you are my boy, Franky from Germany". Or, sometimes taking the less subtle approach of, "Come to me, I'll eat your delicious flesh."
A lot of folks responded to these seductive words. 430 heeded his call in the first year. He met a few of these guys, but most of them didn’t really want to be butchered, truth be told. Nothing but game-players.
Then, one sweet day, he hooked up with Bernd-Juergen. And Armin ate’em. Sorry. I just like the way that sounds. But I am getting ahead of myself…
So this guy Bend-Juergen accepts an invitation to Armin’s chateau in Rotenburg. (Just between you and me, would you ever accept an invitation to Rotenburg?) BJ, as I like to call him, was a very special man. I mean, like Armin had already met several other dudes who wanted him to be killed by him. One wanted to be beheaded, but Armin turned him down cause the sucker was too fat. And BJ was ready for action, I gotta tell you – he had already settled up all his personal affairs before reporting to <snicker> Rotenburg.
Miewes had a very nice place, including a very special torture room – It’s Slaughterin Time! – complete with video cameras, meat hooks, and a cage. Gosh, I know what I would do if I walked into such a place. I’d turn on the cameras, strip off my clothes, wash down a few sleeping pills with whiskey, and get prepared for the time of my life. I guess BJ is just like me in this respect.
"Now you can see my body. I hope you'll find me tasty,'' he said, a comment upon which I refuse to expand.
Then came the ritual act of wienerschnitzel. "It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it," said Meiwes. "It gave him pleasure." Their plan was to chow down together on this particular sausage , but WTF, they found that due to its, mmm, consistency, it was inedible "even when fried". Where is Rachael Rae when you need her?
This was very demoralizing to BJ, who decided he would just as soon be stabbed to death at this rather low point in his career as victim, just as soon as he could down a bottle of cough medicine.
Alas, he had to wait for ten more hours (European reports hilariously say ‘ten hours after his dismemberment.’ I love that, and should have stolen it.), and even then, Armin found it hard to say goodbye. "I kissed him once more, prayed, and pleaded for forgiveness.''
And after the kiss, the meat hooks. And the butchering, all on videotape.
It was ten hours after the dismemberment (it's mine!), when the victim fell unconscious and Meiwes stabbed him to death with a knife. He then hung up the corpse from his hooks of mercy and cut it up, filming the process. He buried the ‘innards’, but kept the skull and flesh. Of the flesh, I understand that he ate around 45 pound over time, defrosting individual snack sized portions. (Obviously these were much tastier than the dick.)
[Let me pause here for a moment to chastise the foreign press – he didn’t keep the skull, he kept the friggin head. There is a lot of difference between the two – a skull is Halloween, a head is Hell.]
"With every piece of flesh I ate I remembered him. It was like taking communion. He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten. He was very intelligent and I didn't see any sign that he was disturbed.” No, Armin, I guess you didn’t.
Meiwes wants you to know that he did nothing wrong. "I had the fantasy, and in the end I fulfilled it," he said. “Hundreds and thousands are out there looking to be eaten." And he absolutely was not a pervert. "I didn't want to have sex with the partner I chose to slaughter. That had nothing to do with it." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Prosecutors are charging Meiwes with murder, and are seeking a life sentence. Cannibalism is not a crime under German law, so Meiwes is being charged with murder for the purposes of sexual satisfaction and "disturbing the peace of the dead".
His attorney describes Meiwes as "a gentleman of the old school."
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| Another Bite 12/7/03
I would be remiss to leave the topic of Armin without taking note of two of my favorite news sources, the Hindustan Times and The Scotsman
Of particular interests are the men who didn't stay for dinner. HT tells us about one.
‘One allowed himself to be hung on a hook in clingfilm <ed: Saran Wrap> awaiting slaughter’, but changed his mind and said it was too cold to be killed, upon which Herr Meiwes drove him back (graciously? unwillingly?) to the station. The uses of clingfilm clearly extend to more than Munna’s packed sandwiches, and the ride to the station and the time taken for the arrival of the train could not have been short enough for the victim let off the hook.
And The Scotsman shows that you just can't compete with the holidays.
Meiwes made reference to "the scene" <ed: this would be the thriving German Cannibal Scene> on the first day of his testimony when he said he was offered a young man called Luke on the internet who wanted, like Brandes, to be "killed and eaten". Meiwes said: "He then cancelled our meeting saying he had found cannibals who agreed to eat him as part of a Russian Orthodox Christmas feast. I got back to him afterwards to see if perhaps the appointment didn’t work out... but there was never a reply."
Both papers provide greater detail on the evenings main course, but the Hindustan Time does so with relish.
Meiwes’ defense is that Brandes always wanted to be killed and eaten. When he arrived at Meiwes’ house, he apparently permitted a certain vital organ to be dismembered. It was to be fried, salted, peppered and garnished with garlic and eaten with relish. Herr Meiwes was apparently well-versed in the art of carving up Brandes, and when his first attempt to sever the said organ failed on (where else?) the kitchen table, a ‘sharper knife’ eventually did the trick. Herr Meiwes explained to the court: "We had agreed to eat it half and half, but he was growing faint and couldn't wait for his half to be cooked through. So he tried to eat it more or less raw and of course it was too tough. This made him furious." Now despite his apparently gentlemanly agreement of ‘half and half’ surely it was unsporting of Herr Meiwes not to speed up the frying time, and to expect a bleeding Brandes to calmly understand the delay in the side orders as if he were in a restaurant?!
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All the Meiwes That’s Fit to Print 12/9/03
I know that everyone is waiting with Baited Breath for more details on The Cannibal of Rotenburg , and I am just the guy to give them to you.
So, yesterday they played the Meiwes murder video in court <Germany has judges and lawyers, but no jury> – a 90 minute edited version of the four and a half hour film; we’ll probably have to wait ages for the directors cut to come out. I find it interesting that they let Armin Meiwes watch it along with the judges and lawyers. This was probably quite a treat for him, as he did enjoy his videos, and this was the jewel of his collection.
They excluded the press from what they call “the worst parts”, an action that probably makes sense only in Germany. I mean, it’s like having a baby, or a dog with diarrhea, you try to watch the movie, and keep having to hit the pause button.
So, let’s talk video. The tape starts with – what do we call him? Victim? Honoree? -Bernd Juergen Brandes. Let me give you a taste, from The Scotsman, of the defense and prosecution’s take on their strategy.
“The video is exhibit A in the sensational trial and important to both defence and prosecution. Meiwes’s lawyer believes it will prove his client’s contention that nothing took place in his remote farmhouse home near the city of Kassel that Mr Brandes didn’t want to happen. The prosecution hopes it will convince the three judges trying the case that, befuddled by drink and a cocktail of sleeping tablets and cold medicine, Mr Brandes literally sleepwalked to his doom.
Okay. I’ll give you a synopsis of the plot. The film begins in Miewes kitchen, and show Brandes stripping for the camera. He’s having an okay time, and says that he hopes that he is tasty. (A sentiment, I am sure, that we all share.)
Scene 2: We see Meiwes with a knife, removing his buddy’s member. His buddy tells him “Slice the thing off now". (Scotsman: This is another indication, according to the defence, that Meiwes was no murderer but a man fulfilling both his and his victim’s wishes.)
Officials leaked details of the 90 minutes that were selected to be played before the court. It opens in Meiwes’s kitchen and shows Mr Brandes undressing before the camera. He seems unsteady on his feet at times, but there is no sign of coercion or restraint. Meiwes is seen cutting off his Mr Brandes’s penis after the victim’s request: "
Okay. Meiwes bandages things up, and the camera shows him slaving over a hot oven, trying to fry up a nice penis. Garlic, salt and pepper are the reported seasonings. They sit down to eat, and Brandes starts whining. "It is too tough". Goddamnit. I would of slapped him across his kisser after a remark like that.
Okay, if you’ve read this far, you’ll want to read this line. Miewes takes the guy upstairs to “bleed out” for a few hours, comes back, and watches a Disney film. (Which one? Damn you Scotsman, we need details!)
Well, that’s most of the new details that I haven’t reported already. You know what happened next – Meiwes take Brandes upstairs (that special room with the meathooks), finished him off and packaged him.
There is more to say, but this is the end of the film, and the end of tonight's installment.
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meiwes update 12/17/03
Let's leave the Saddam story to the provincials for a while, shall we, and turn our attention back to the other big continuing news item, the trial of Armin Meiwes, The Cannibal of Rotenburg.
Now as I've probably said in an earlier piece, Armin is kind of in a gray zone because Germany has no laws against cannibalism. And the courts can't really try him for murder, because his dinner asked to be eaten. (I know, I know, I see a nice piece of steak and it seems to say the same thing, but this was on video.) So the best law that the German courts can dig up is "killing on request", a charge akin to America's assisted suicide law, which means that Meiwes is looking at five years max. His lawyers think this is far too long, and the defense is bringing out their five star witnesses: men who Meiwes didn't eat.
I told you earlier about one of the people that Meiwes didn't eat (the fellow in clingfilm - saran wrap), but that was a prosecution witness, produced, I suppose, to prove that Meiwes had not merely suffered from one crazy night. This was a defense witness, presented to show that Meiwes would never eat someone who wasn't totally into it. Dirk Moller had changed his mind.
Moller (an internet buddy) and Meiwes had hooked up at a McDonald's (Big Mac and fries) before going back to Meiwes place where they promptly stripped, and Armin covered dirk with clingfilm. He then began sticking pins in him, to mark the organs that were supposed to be eaten. Moller decided that he needed to be a bit more formal. "He wanted to be sentenced to death," Meiwes told the court. "So I printed out a death sentence for him."
On to the pubic shaving, after which the two popped in a video tape of a previous (non)victim. This particular gent was hanging upside down from a hook in Meiwes 'slaughter parlor'. (He decided he didn't want to die, so Meiwes took him off the hook, and the two went to see 'Ocean's Eleven'.)
Dirk started getting picky. "He watched [the video], and said to me: 'You can do this but not that'." What ya gonna do? Meiwes, ever the gentleman, sighed and called it a day.
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more meiwes 12/19/03
In a piece entitled 'Willy-biter Wants Sausage', The Sun UK brings us the story of Armin Meiwes Christmas wish. The title is a single entendre, willy being an english term for penis, one of which Armin readily admits to having cooked. If only Meiwes had eaten someone named Wilheim, The Sun could have scored the prized double entendre.
So Germany is a lovely place, and hey, you Germans out there, correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess that prisoners get to request whatever they like for their Christmas dinner. And Meiwes has requested an eight inch Bockwurst cooked in garlic and white wine. This is the same recipe that he used on Bernd Juergen Brandeshis's sausage, so prison authorities are understandably disgusted.
The Sun quotes a prison official: “It’s obviously his idea of a sick joke. He can have the sausage but it won’t be done his way.”
Those Germans, they slay me (as is their wont). Yeah, you can have that sausage, but it's going to be boiled.
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Wandering off Topic 12/22/03
Bad PETA. Misanthropic PETA. Abominable PETA.
This goes into the IWU (inappropriately worked up) category, and receives an additional award from the BCM (bad choice of metaphor) category.**
The San Francisco Chronicle brings us an editorial on PETA entitled 'PETA to Cannibals: Don't Let Them Eat Steak', by Wesley J Smith, Senior Fellow (i.e. Old Man) at the Discovery Institute. Don't get me started. Don't you get me started.
So PETA sends Armin Meiwes a bunch of soy burgers and a vegetarian cookbook, I read about this a few days ago, and even I had to yawn. PETA is always doing stunts which are 'provocative' and boring at the same time... they really haven't done anything interesting since they were shooting themselves with stun guns and rolling around in bloody furs. Don't tell this to Wesley J, though, cause he is brimming with outrage.
When Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals infamously asserted in 1986, "There is no rational basis for asserting that a human being has special rights: A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy," few believed that she meant it literally. Surely, people thought, Newkirk and PETA understand that humans have far greater moral worth than animals.
Actually, they don't. In fact, it now appears that PETA's moral views have become so distorted and misanthropic that the organization sees little difference between eating a steak and cannibalizing a human being.
Here's the story: Armin Meiwes, the "German cannibal," shocked the world when he admitted to slaughtering, butchering and eating a man he met over the Internet. PETA's reaction to this sickening event?` It sent Meiwes a vegetarian cookbook and a hamper full of veggie burgers in the hope of converting him to vegetarianism.
"What this man did to a German computer expert is done to other creatures every day," a PETA spokesman explained. "The cruel scenario of slaughtering, cutting up, portioning, freezing and eating of body parts," the actions taken by Meiwes against his human victim, "is the grim reality for more than 450 million sentient individuals (animals) that are killed in (Germany) every year."
In other words, according to PETA, when you enjoy a lamb chop or eat a hamburger, you are acting no differently than the cannibal who butchered a man and ate his flesh.
Well, you know, some people really believe this, I suppose, but how many really really believe it is another question. Very few people commit their lives to righting this wrong, or put themselves in harms way because of it. (def. harm's way: incarceration of over 12 hours and/or fine greater that $100).
Hold on. As bad as these sentiments are, PETA stoops even lower.
Making odious moral equivalencies between animal husbandry and the worst crimes against humans has become a PETA trademark. Indeed, its notorious "Holocaust on Your Plate" pro-vegetarian campaign literally equates the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust with the eating of chickens...
First, there are the pictures. PETA juxtaposes pictures of emaciated concentration camp inmates in their tight-packed wooden bunks with chickens being kept in cages. In another truly despicable comparison (on several levels), a picture of piled bodies of Jewish Holocaust victims is juxtaposed with the bodies of dead pigs. (If the KKK did that, it would be called hate speech.)
Uh, Wesley, I'm thinking that if the KKK did that, their intent would be entirely different. They do teach you about intent at the Discovery Institute, don't they?
...Forget for the moment that Hitler was sometimes a vegetarian and that the Nazi government passed some of the most far-reaching animal protection laws of the era. That PETA can't distinguish between the unspeakable evil of the Shoah and animal husbandry reveals a perverted sense of moral values that is almost beyond comprehension. But this matter goes far beyond moral revulsion.
Take that, PETA! Hitler was a vegetarian! Sometimes! So does this imply, somehow, a parallel between PETA and the the perpetrators of the holocaust?
PETA's sending a vegetarian cookbook to the German cannibal as if his consuming of human flesh is no different morally than eating a pork chop and the group's odious "Holocaust on Your Plate'' campaign illustrate the twisted moral thinking that lies at the heart of the modern animal rights/liberation movement.
And voila, the moral equivalency argument has been totally pretzeled from a stupid publicity trick, to an equivocation between PETA and the Nazis.
I'm out on the front line with this issue. You want my pork chop, you gonna have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers. I'm down with Chris Rock, who said "People are starving all over the world. If you are one of the fortunate few on this planet to get your hands on a steak, bite the shit out of it!" And Wesley, quit worrying. I'll give you a bite off of mine.
** Meiwes as a BCM (Bad Choice of Metaphor) has also been chronicled by World of Crap here. |
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Wrapping up the Meiwes Defense 12/24/03
We are reaching the finale of the Armin Meiwes defense presentation now, with the testimony of witnesses whom Meiwes, for one reason or another, refused to eat. One thing that the defense seems to have proved is that Armin never did eat anyone who didn't ask for it, and that yes, he would let you change your mind at the last minute.
One of the more interesting witnesses was an old boyfriend, who had survived an eighteen month long relationship with Meiwes. The reason for his breakup with the cannibal was not an attempt by Meiwes to snack on his paramour. The man described Meiwes as cheerful and helpful, and like almost everyone that Meiwes didn't eat, he was 'very nice'. The man told the court that he had never notice the defendants proclivity for flesh eating, and was very surprised to hear about it.
Meiwes, as you know by now, is fighting a murder charge [Germany has no cannibalism law] with the perfectly logical claim that his victim asked for it. And has been seen from prior testimony, he made sure they insisted on it, often hurting would be victims feelings.
Take yesterdays disguised witness, a 25 year old student who showed up in court wearing dark glasses, a scarf wrapped around his face, a hat and a hood. (He was so bundled up that he couldn't find the courtroom and had to be led to the witness stand. He had good reason to be ashamed. Meiwes wouldn't eat him - he was too fat.
"I wanted to be decapitated," the man told the court, and Meiwes had agreed, but that was before they met. This is the danger of the internet; people describe themselves as nice and thin, you agree to eat them, and then they turn out to be all gross and fat.
"My mother always insisted on lean meat," Meiwes had told the court earlier.
Another witness admitted to disappointing Meiwes by admitting, after being locked in a cage in Meiwes torture parlor, that he was just role playing, and that licking Armin's leather boots and apron was enough excitement for one day. "I wanted to be desired in this way," he said, after wasting Meiwes precious time.
"So we drank a beer together and he left," Meiwes told the court.
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12/26/03
Quote of the day, from today's New York Times profile of Armin Meiwes, the Hannibal of Hesse:
No wonder this trial has been riveting theater for courtroom regulars like Manfred Schübel.. "He's sympathetic," Mr. Schübel said, adding with a nervous giggle, "He looks like the nicest cannibal you could ever meet." |
| All the Meiwes 12/30/03
Our first break in restricted coverage comes from the Australian press, which by and large carries more cannibal new that any other island continent I can think of. Australia is an interesting land, what with all their marsupials and their delicious Outback restaurants, and they do think a lot about cannibals. Back when they were the model for 'Escape from New York', they had a lot of cannibal trauma. Probably the guards telling the prisoners that the Aborigines were man-eaters, a fake fact that seems embedded in the national psyche.
Well Christmas got in the way. I am at this point unable to ascertain whether or not Meiwes got his eight inch Bockwurst for Christmas or not. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Pity.
And here's a little educational trivia for Americans. A lot of the testimony is 'in camera'. No, that doesn't mean it's taped. In Germany that means nobody gets to hear it except for the judges and lawyers. That means we totally miss things like the testimony regarding his experimental heterosexuality with Petra Zimhaueser, a 'bulky' (?) 41-year-old woman described as even more domineering than his mother.
We did hear from the court psychiatrist yesterday, who stated that our lad Armin was more or less normal. "Mr. Meiwes is in good psychological health," said the shrink. "We all have fantasies, live two lives, but in the case of Mr. Meiwes the double life was more pronounced."
Mmm. My alternate life involves me owning a cat named Bob.
At any rate, as Bill O'Reilly could have told you, the root of this problem would appear to be the lawless frontier known as the internet. "If there hadn't been an internet, it wouldn't have happened," explained the court psychiatrist, and he is probably correct in his assertion. "In chatrooms you lose the sense of reality, you enter the group dynamic of chatting." Well, yes. I suppose you would.
Meiwes agrees, stating in an email to his future dinner partner Herr Brandes, "I've been looking for contacts (to eat) since 1999 - without the net, it wouldn't have been possible." I happen to think this is a good thing.
The judge in this case, Volker Mutze, sounds like he's about ready to lose it. He has been described as looking queasy from the beginning of the proceedings, but today's reports, wherein he reads the court some of Armin's chatmail traffic, refer to him as the "pale, stuttering judge."
<And let this be a lesson to any of you perverts out there reading my reportage. You think that chatroom stuff is private? Sorry, bud, but this is going on your permanent record.>
Well, okay then, let's listen into some chat between Berndt Brandes and Armin Meiwes. We start with a Valentines day chat in 2001, where Meiwes tells his future entrée that he is making spaghetti carbonara, and the entree replies "You don't have to buy meat again - there will be plenty left." Shhh. Down in front.
Brandes: "What will you do with my brain?"
Meiwes: "I'll leave it, I don't want to split your skull."
Brandes: "Better bury it, preferably in a cemetery - nobody notices skulls there. Or maybe pulverize it?"
Meiwes: "We have a nice small cemetery here."
Brandes: "You could use it as an ashtray."
Now this is a good bit coming up for the defense, because Meiwes starts to worry that Brandes doesn't know shit about anatomy, and tries his best to help him out. "Believe me, I know about the anatomy of young men," he tells his new buddy. To prove his expertise, he sends Brandt a couple nude pictures of himself. Meiwes then goes on to tell Brandt to take the train from Berlin to Kassel and pay in cash so he can't be traced. And finally this little exchange
Brandes: "Are you a smoker?"
Meiwes: "Yes, but my teeth are still pretty white."
Brandes: "That's good - I smoke too. I hope you like smoked meat."
Meiwes: "Just bring yourself for breakfast."
Meiwes attorney, Harald Ermer, wrapped it up. "This testimony today shows my client definitely did not commit murder." |
| Armin Meiwes: The Early Years January 6, 2004
The Meiwes trial started back up today, but thus far all the news available to the public has been pretty dry. His porn selections, and such. The London Evening Standard has filled the void, however, providing salacious new details about the Cannibal of Rotenburg that are guaranteed to satisfy your strongest cravings.
We get a much clearer picture of what exactly made this supposedly charming man morph into such a fringe case. Somber stuff, people. Mighty creepy. And as is so often the case, it all starts out with MOTHER.
As I have surely mentioned before, Armin Meiwes did not live in a seedy piece of shit apartment where the cockroaches rustled in the hollow walls, no, Armin lived in a borderline respectable mansion, out there in the idyllic German countryside.
But he lived with MOTHER, and MOTHER wasn't exactly the warmest individual in Rotenburg. Yes, MOTHER had given all of the rooms in the mansion little brass plaques with names that glowed with sweetness and light. Names like 'Sunlight Room', and 'Morning Dew Room', and then, the dark space down at the end of a very scary hallway, 'Child's Room'.
In these 43 rooms, Armin spent his first 38 years with the woman who never gave him the respect and love he so longed for, the woman who would so poison his mind that he would one day happily chow down on Bernd-Juergen Brandes, an individual who obviously had some issues of his own. I must tell you this, he would spend many a year looking after MOTHER, a woman who's nature was foreshaddowed by her very name. Waltraud. Waltraud Meiwes! Ahrooo!
The friends and neighbors all thought Armin was normal, but as we now know, he wasn't. How could he be? Take a look around at the deteriorating mansion, forty-three rooms of gloom, and ask yourself - could love blossom here? No, it could not! Why, when Armin was just a wee lad of eight (and his mother was 48 and bitter), all of the men packed up and moved the fuck out of the house. Brother Wolfgang became a priest in Berlin, and no one seems to know where Brother Ingolbert went. Dad was Waltraud's third and last husband, and he just got up his nerve and moved away from Rotenburg.
Armin was lonely, lonely and totally dominated. He dreamed of another brother, someone who could be one with him, a fantasy that would later take on sinister dimensions. But for now, he was trapped. Listen. I must quote now directly from the Evening Standard.
In the early 1970s, when his schoolfriends were wearing jeans, she insisted that he carry on wearing traditional lederhosen shorts. When he was a young man, one of the rare guests at the old house witnessed her ordering him to bed because the clock had struck 10.
Meiwes was to recall later that he began creating his cannibal fantasies during his adolescence, when he and his mother lived alone together in the huge manor. He collected material on the crimes of Fritz Haarmann, the Vampire of Hanover, who killed at least 26 young men in the 1920s. Haarmann butchered his victims and drank their blood. He was beheaded at a public execution in 1925.
Then Meiwes bought a Barbie doll and dismembered it, keeping the parts in a locked safe so his mother would not find them. She knew nothing of his fantasies and his own increasing doubts about his sexuality. When he took a girl on a date, she accompanied them, sitting in the back seat of the car.
Goddamnit MOTHER, you've driven me insane!
She made him leave girlfriends. Did you know that Meiwes had a fiancé, a pretty little girl name o' Petra Zinnhauser, but MOTHER drove her away as well. They were far too similar. She called little Armin worthless, and hurt his feelings in numerous ways. Even after he joined the German Army. Oh...
But, like, she died. Finally. So he got to add a torture lounge to room 27.
You pretty much know the story from here on out. Still, I can't help but run through a few of the trivial details that still add so much to a tale such as this. <Look at the house, Mark, check out the mansion.> Okay.
His mother's room is a mess; he has piled her clothes high upon the bed, her dressing table is scattered with her things - mirror, brushes. He has boarded up the window with plywood. No daylight enters.
Nearby, on a bed in one of the many guest rooms, under a pink coverlet, he has placed a doll's head between two pillows. This head used to stand on his mother's dressing table; she placed her wig upon it each night before going to bed. When the police pulled back the cover, they found Meiwes had drawn a beard on the doll's head chin.
In another room, she preserved his favourite toys: a train set, a model of a German castle - but on the table where they stand he has placed the bleached skull of a cow.
There are more things to learn from the Evening Standard. If I had more time, I would write about the pork penis. Maybe I would even tell you about Meiwes sending out pictures of his teeth to Brandes with the promise to bite his tongue out. Perhaps I could give more details than I have thus far, but really...
Meiwes's own website is closed now, but others devoted to cannibalism and necrophilia thrive. He himself estimated that at least 800 individuals in Germany had, like him, killed and eaten people.
You think? Got to add a little American cynicism to this story... I keep seeing this particular stat, repeated over and over, and yeah, why would you give that number any credence? Yes MOTHER, Freddie ate Benjy, and Willheim ate Hans, do you mind terribly if I eat Bernd-Juergen?
Bragging, he was. Little bragging bastard.
Ah, Armin, if your little friends threw themselves off of a bridge, would you throw yourself off too?
Yes MOTHER.
Very well, Armin. |
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January 9, 2004
Continuing Stories: The Loneliest Little Cannibal
It has been a terrible few days covering the Cannibal of Rotenburg, when it started out with so much potential. The problem is that they keep having the best parts 'in camera', so it will be days before the stories leak out. Among the witnesses that we've missed are the father who deserted wee eight year old Armin, and the brother who never gave him a moments notice. So I have to do the best I can with rather feeble material.
It was Female Friday in Kassel, Germany, and that means it's time to present girls who like Armin. Today at the trial of the Cannibal of Rotenburg we met two unidentified women who had relationships with Meiwes. As my faithful bartender Suzette would say - Barrff.
Okayyy, these two anonymous frauleins told the court that Armin was just as nice and kind as can be. That's it. End of story
A little short, I'll confess. Hold on, I'll pad a little. Here's a quote, albeit a lame one. "He came across as very child-like, when he played with children, as if he were a child himself." This is one of the frauleins talking. "I noticed that he seemed content with us in our family." Later she said that she decided against a relationship with Meiwes when he told her "of his homosexual tendencies."
I don't know about the second witness. She was a neighbor - does that count? Because they always have a tendency to say nice things about the defendent. My theory on this is that they don't want to seem to be so totally vapid and disengaged as to not notice what should be obvious. "Johnny was always such a nice quiet boy." Anyway, she also said that Armin had tried to "start a relationship" with her, and that he said he would like to get married and have a large family.
Both women denied ever having sex with Meiwes. As if anyone would admit to that.
"He came across as being very childlike," said the neighbor.
And that is all I've got, unless you'd like to go and read a legal commentary entitled Is it Always Torture to Dismember and Eat a Conscious Human Being?
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1/12/04
Armin Meiwes: Entrée Receives Mixed Reviews
It was a decidedly mixed day for the reputation of the late Bernd-Juergen Brandes, man-snack for the cannibal of Rotenburg.
Earlier in the day, the court heard from 27-year-old Rene Jasnik, Juergen's life partner and lover, who said the two were "very happy together" and that Brandes had never ever ever expressed a desire for death or any masochistic fantasies.
It was a mystery to Jasnik just why Brandes would do something crazy like get on the web and ask for a cannibal to eat him like an afterthought. (No word yet on what Disney film Meiwes was watching while Brandes drained out, although Lady and the Tramp has been widely discussed.)
"He had no thoughts of suicide," declared Jasnik, although he did add that he had found Brandes' will in early January 01, just a few weeks before the fateful meeting. He also disclosed that Meiwes had written to him, apologizing for his rash actions and saying that he was sorry. (How would this letter go, I wonder? Dear Rene, Have you ever been consumed with desire? Imagine my surprise last Thursday when your lover dropped by...')
I guess this is as good an illustration as any of the difference between love and lust. That pleasant fellow Jasnik was described as Brandes 'life mate'. The next witness, an unnamed engineer from Berlin, was described as one of Brandes 'sexual partners'. This fellow was a little more blunt, saying that Brandes had offered him 5000 Marks (around $3K) to bite off his penis. No further questions, your honor.
Just for the fun of it, the court spent a few minutes with a former school chum of Armin's, a lad who started out by dissing the underappreciated Mum, Waltraud Meiwes! Ahrooo!
This chum said that a drunk Meiwes had once admitted contacting some pervert "who is always asking me whether he is ripe for slaughter". This was about a year following the demise of Brandes, when Meiwes was running out of table scraps. The chum said that Meiwes sobered up and asked him to forget the conversation.
And finally, a special Shoutout to Independent Online from South Africa for their success in coming up with today's best headline, which consists of a quote unreported by the rest of the semi-civilized world: "'My lover offered me money for a penis snack'".
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1/14/04
More Meiwes Mother Madness
Whoops, I'm off to lovely Norfolk Virginia in just a few moments, so please forgive me if this piece is not properly salacious. I promise to show a spectacular lack of tact upon my return. For now let's return to the Bate's Motel...
Yes, it's the Psycho meme that some of the European press is starting to play, even though Armin never really killed anyone who wasn't asking for it... You see, Armin had a MOTHER, the ghastly Waldtrud! Who he both worshipped and feared. After her death, his home became a shrine to Waldtrud. Or so the papers would have you believe, at least the ones who are trying to put Meiwes into the Anthony Perkins role.
Tell me, would mother have approved of the torture chamber? I think not! No, she would curse under her breath and then angrily yell out 'Minchen' in that rank voice of hers, the air hung heavy with the nauseating aroma of sauerkraut.
Would mother have thought it was cute had she come across little Armin's wooden human cage and shackles? Not in my lifetime! No, she would make Armin change right into his lederhosen and give her room a damn good cleaning, polish her fucking silverware, and make her hairbrushes glow like they were brand new.
In other words, the Cannibal of Rotenburg was absolutely nothing like Norman Bates, except for the part where he would dress up in her clothes after she died and imitate her voice. That's all. That, and the fact that he was a little nuts.
School chum Berhardt Sieberg testifying yesterday: "He took over the role of his mother in the house. You couldn't interfere with the world he had created for her. I once went into her room and it was a real shock to me. Her dressing gown was laid neatly out on the bed, beautifully pressed, like he expected her back any moment. His world was frozen in the time she was still alive. It was spooky. He became his mother."
Okay, maybe just a little bit like Norman Bates.
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1/16/04
And we're back now, with a fresh batch of News on Meiwes. (Perhaps I never told you how to pronounce the name of the Cannibal of Rotenburg. Like what a cat does. Mews. Rhymes with news. So let's take it from the top.) And we're back now, with a fresh batch of News on Meiwes.
Or rather, we're back with fresh news about the victim of Armin Meiwes, the very silly and very dead Bernd Brandes. Some people are obsessed with religion and some people are obsessed with love, and then there are those who are obsessed with having their penis bitten off by their sexual partners. Such people are known as 'sick puppies', and statistically are almost always men. Herr Brandes was such a puppy.
(The question has come forth: Are such people usually Germans? The answer is no, although Germany does have a higher than average per capita population of men wishing to be deboned.)
And now we gratefully hear from Victor Serano, a former sex partner of Brandes'. (Grateful because we are growing bored with all of the German names, and are frankly pleased to see someone bring a Hispanic presence to FGAQ.) "Hey there sailor, ever done the nasty with a Caribbean Boy? We love you long time." So might have read Serano's ad in a Berlin Sex magazine - we aren't sure, so we're forced to vamp. You hear about how vulgar the European press is, but I swear to God, "offered his services as a Caribbean Boy" is all the detail I can find about the Serano advertising his meat, and you know, there's much more than that. I'll stake my reputation on the probability that the ad contained at least three of the following words: 'bite', 'teeth', 'Weiner schnitzel', 'ouch', 'stump'.
At any rate, these two knuckleheads became a steady couple, having sex, or something like it, at least twice a week for three years. As individuals grow in a relationship, they begin to share more of their intimate thoughts and feelings with each other. Such was the case with Berndt, who gradually worked up the courage to tell Vic that he would really like to be mutilated.
"Bernd kept urging me to bite off his penis," said Serano. "He always achieved orgasm when I placed my teeth around it. He wanted to be bitten everywhere but the penis was his fantasy, his obsession. He offered me money, some 10,000 deutschmarks to do it." Alas, this was not in line with Senor Serano's own erotic tastes, and the relationship was tragically cut short.
And so the Serano testimony concluded. Armin Meiwes enjoyed it very much. He was dressed smartly in a pearl gray suit, and laughed and smiled during the hearing. The Serano is testimony is important because Meiwes, as I'm sure you know, claims to have killed Brandes as a special favor. Fantasy Island.
If Serano's testimony is given credence, the prosecution believes that it will show that Brandes only wanted to be mutilated, not murdered. |
9:02:35 PM
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