The Crimes
An odd request
In 2000 Meiwes posted a message saying, “I am looking for a young, well-built man aged 18 to 30 to slaughter”. Several men responded, one of which was a man called Borg Jose who was about to become Meiwes' first victim. While laid out on his table preparing to be butchered, Jose complained of feeling ill and asked to be released, which Meiwes obliged.The final man to reply to Meiwes' internet message was Bernd-Jürgen Brandes. Brandes was a 43-year-old bisexual engineer, who wrote to Meiwes on 14 February 2001 saying that he would agree to be eaten. They exchanged various lurid emails, discussing the best way in which he should be eaten and his body used afterwards. Brandes even suggested his skull could be used as an ashtray.On 9 March 2001, Brandes went to Meiwes' home in Amstetten and after having sex, Brandes swallowed numerous sleeping pills, a bottle of Vicks cough medicine and some schnapps before Meiwes amputated his penis for the pair to eat together. Brandes tried to eat a piece of the penis raw but it was apparently too “chewy” and so Meiwes proceeded to fry it with a little garlic and pepper but burned it, meaning that neither of them was able to consume the dismembered part.
Losing large amounts of blood from the injury, Brandes lay bleeding to death in the bath over the next three hours, while Meiwes read a Star Trek book. Ten hours later, Brandes was still alive, so Meiwes stabbed him several times in the neck to put an end to his pain, and his life. Meiwes woud later explain: “My friend enjoyed dying, death. I only waited horrified for the end after doing the deed. It took so terribly long.”Then the cannibalism began. Meiwes hung Brandes' lifeless body on a meat-hook and proceeded to cut the flesh into sizeable chunks and grind the bones into flour. He dismembered the entire body so that he could store the parts in his freezer, which he proceeded to eat over the following 10 months.The entire process of Brandes' penis amputation and subsequent death had been recorded on videotape by the pair and would later be used as evidence against Meiwes.