The story of Kobe Cannibal

The Kobe Cannibal.

Forensic photos show the butchered remains of 25-year-old Dutch woman, Renée Hartevelt, found in the apartment of 32-year-old Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, at 10 Rue Erlanger, Paris, France, on the 11th of June, 1981.

Both were students at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and were comfortable and familiar with each other. Sagawa was from a wealthy family but was small and timid. He often referred to himself as "shy and unattractive". Something that the Dutch woman, Hartevelt, was definitely not. She was tall, attractive and confident, and Sagawa was jealous of that. He wanted to absorb her and become her, literally.

He had invited her over to his apartment under the pretext that she was going to help him with poetry translations for class. She accepted. While Hartevelt was reading a book and had her back to him, Sagawa shot her in the neck with a rifle, killing her. He fainted from shock and would regain composure, telling himself "You know what must be done."

Sagawa had sex with her corpse multiple times over the next day. He then purchased a butcher's knife and began hacking off pieces of Hartevelt and eating them raw or cooked. Her breasts had been cut off and consumed as well as portions of her face and abdomen. Sagawa then began to mutilate the corpse, saving organs and parts that he wanted to eat at a later time. The rest of the pieces he placed into two suitcases. He was caught in the act of transporting them.

His wealthy father purchased a good lawyer. Sagawa was declared "legally insane" by a French judge, and condemned to spend the rest of his life in a mental asylum. Instead, a Japanese author came and interviewed Sagawa, wrote a book about the gruesome murder, and turned Sagawa into a macabre celebrity.

The French authorities had enough and deported Sagawa back to Japan, where amazingly, Japanese doctors said he was sane and perfectly fine. Since French medical records had been sealed to Japanese authorities, Sagawa literally checked himself out of hospital on the 12th of August, 1986, and remains a free man. Credit:HistoryLand