Cannibal Gets Film Offers

Dec. 12, 2003

The German who has confessed to killing a man and eating his flesh has received offers for film rights and is writing a book about his deeds, his lawyer has revealed.

"We are in initial talks" about film rights, lawyer Harald Ermel said outside the Kassel courtroom where Armin Meiwes, 42, went on trial for murder last week.

The 42-year-old victim whom Meiwes met over the Internet suffered a painful death, a doctor has testified.

Meiwes stabbed Bernd Juergen Brandes in the throat while he was still alive, despite the defendant's insistence that his victim was already dead, Dr Manfred Risse said.

In the video Meiwes made of the killing, his victim exhibited "vital signs of life" after the stabbing, rolling his head from side to side while blood streamed from his throat, Risse said. Brandes died of loss of blood, he added.

Meiwes testified in a detailed confession at the opening of his trial that his victim had wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness. He said he stabbed Brandes the next morning, believing he was already dead.

Risse said that Brandes consumed the medication, along with a half-bottle of alcohol and 20 sleeping pills, but all this "couldn't dampen the pain of his murder."

Prosecutors say the killing was sexually motivated and filed murder charges, despite concluding that the killer had the victim's consent. Meiwes faces life in prison if convicted.

The defence argues that the death was instead a form of mercy killing, which would carry a maximum five year sentence. A verdict is expected in February.

Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes last December after a student in Austria alerted them to an advertisement Meiwes had placed on the Internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten.

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