Cannibal mum eats her chum

A CANNIBAL mum axed a friend to death, cooked her body and ate the meat - while the killer's young son looked on.
Olesya Mostovschikova, 27, told police she rowed with Tatiana Romanchuk, 32, during a booze-up.
Officer Oleg Lobach said Olesya calmly told cops: "I took the axe and hit her a number of times on her head.
"Then I cut off her ears, gouged out one eye, cut off an arm and a hand. I then cooked the parts in the oven."
Another friend, who is being treated as a witness, claims that she was forced to eat the flesh.
Cops say Olesya's son, seven, witnessed the murder and the cooking. He is now in care.
Locals at Irkutsk, in Siberia, Russia, found Tatiana's legs in a rubbish bin.

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Germany awaits verdict in 'cannibal' trial

MAINZ, Germany — It is a story almost too gruesome to tell and a trial that has shocked a nation. After weeks of  grisly deliberations, a German court will announce its verdict Friday in the case of Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer specialist charged with cannibalism.
The judges are expected to make legal history in the case that has both enthralled and revolted a nation.
Meiwes, who has been described as a polite, helpful, but introverted man, confessed at the opening of his trial in December, to killing, slaughtering, and eating the flesh of a Berlin man, identified as Bernd Juergen Brandes, 41. According to Meiwes, the two men had met in an Internet chat forum, where the victim had advertised his desire to be eaten.
In the testimony, so explicit that it drew gasps from the public gallery, Meiwes described how Brandes wanted to be stabbed and dismembered after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness.
Both men took part in a cannibalist ritual in the so called "slaughter room" of Meiwes half-timbered house in the small rural town of Rotenburg in central Germany before Brandes died.
Meiwes later cut the body into pieces, deposited the parts in a freezer, and ate portions of the human flesh in the weeks and months after the March 2001 killing.
Psychological evaluation
During his trial, Meiwes presented a shocking account of the killing, saying that the act was "like taking communion" for him. "With every piece of flesh I ate I remembered him," Meiwes told the court. "I always wanted someone to be part of me," he added.

Even while presenting the most grisly details, Meiwes remained calm and showed no emotion. Prison psychologists had evaluated Meiwes earlier, saying that he has a personality disorder and needs psychotherapy, but is not mentally ill and has sufficient self-control.

Reuters file
File photo of Bernd Juergen Brandes, victim of cannibalism.
In sessions with police experts, Meiwes said that his desire to "slaughter and consume a human being" dates back to as early as his childhood. After his parents had separated in 1969, his two older brothers moved away from home, leaving young Armin behind with his dominant mother.
"When the family had fallen apart, I felt very lonesome," Meiwes said, adding that he always wanted to share the love that his brother Ingbert gave him with another person.
During his adolescent years, he began having cannibalistic fantasies.  Out in the countryside where he lived with his mother, Meiwes had often witnessed animal slaughtering, which became something "normal" for him and later part of his sexual fantasies.
Meiwes, who described himself as bisexual, increasingly found satisfaction in zombie movies, particularly scenes in which flesh was dismembered.

He later became interested in Internet chat rooms that dealt with "death" and "cannibalism." German police officials say that hundreds of users meet in these sadomasochistic and "torture" forums, but mostly for sexual stimulation and role play.
"I must admit that cannibalism is a new dimension. It is no longer the solemn goal to generate pain, but there is an intention to kill. But, we are regarding this as an isolated case," Frankfurt district attorney Peter Koehler, who monitors the violent pornography scene in Germany, told NBC News.
Extensive reporting
The case has received extensive play in the German media. Tabloid newspapers had given detailed accounts of the killing and indirectly analyzed the behavior of the "cannibal" by publicizing details from his past.
Even the highly respected Stern magazine made the case a front page story and dug up information that filled nearly 10 pages in the German weekly. Journalist unions and media regulatory agencies complained that the coverage was going too far.
"We have lost cultural control of what is being shown on television and written in papers," a psychiatrist from a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, who asked to remain unnamed, told NBC News. "The flood of extremes that are being presented these days addresses our basic instincts and can trigger new fantasies."
Critics are increasingly complaining that broadcasters in Germany are crossing a line with their detailed and extensive coverage of sensational stories.
"Our life is all about imitating and copying. From birth to death, everything is absorbed and it is just a question of how it is assimilated in the individual," the psychiatrist said.

Murder or euthanasia?
Meanwhile, judges in Kassel are confronted with an extreme case that poses a legal dilemma.
In closing arguments, prosecutors demanded life in prison for Meiwes on charges of intentional murder motivated by sexual urges. Prosecutor Marcus Koehler said Meiwes acted simply to “satisfy a sexual impulse” and filmed himself dismembering the victim before he ate him so he could “admire himself as a human butcher.”
Defense attorney Harald Ermel argued that the slaying was a “homicide on demand” — a form of mercy killing — because the victim gave his consent to be killed and eaten.
Under German law, this would constitute a form of illegal euthanasia, which would be punished with a sentence between six months and five years.
Legal experts say that full murder charges might not hold if evidence proves that the victim was willing. Therefore, Meiwes could also be charged with manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Police have confiscated several video films of the killing, which had already been shown as evidence in court. More than 40 witnesses will be called during the trial, including some of Meiwes’ former Internet contacts.
"I do not envy the presiding judge," said Koehler. "Evidence and laws will have to be considered carefully, but in the end — because there is no precedent — it is likely to be a matter of discretion," he said.
Police tracked down and arrested Meiwes in December 2002 after a student in Austria alerted them to a message Meiwes had posted on the Internet.
“If I hadn’t been so stupid as to keep looking on the Internet, I would have taken my secret to the grave,” Meiwes said in court on Monday.

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'A cannibal ate my baby brother - and now he's going to be freed from jail': Rhode Island woman's shocking story

A woman whose baby brother was murdered and allegedly eaten by a teenage cannibal has spoken of her family's nightmare as the killer is set to be released from jail.
Raven Aubin, 47, was just ten years old when her five-year-old brother Jason Foreman disappeared in 1975.
It would be eight years before her family discovered the truth of what happened to him - a truth that tore their family apart.
Now killer Michael Woodmansee is set to be freed from jail 12 years early, possibly walking the streets of Rhode Island before the end of the year, according to police.




The news has torn open the old wounds. Mrs Aubin's father John has already threatened to take revenge Woodmansee should they cross paths, telling a radio station in March: 'I do intend to kill this man'.
Now Mrs Aubin, too, is reliving the horror.
'Michael dismembered my brother limb by limb,' she told the MailOnline.
'Soon after, he was eating my brother’s flesh, like the animal he was,' she claimed.

'No. He was worse than an animal. Animals kill to eat, to suit a need. Michael killed for pure sport,' she claimed. 'Michael killed just because he could.'

Woodmansee was just 16 years old when he committed the horrendous child murder 36 years ago. 

He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder on February 24, 1983, in a plea deal with prosecutors to spare the Foreman family the horrific details of Jason's death.

He was jailed - but the early plea meant that the charges of cannibalism were never proven in court.

Mrs Aubin, however, remains convinced.

'This deranged killer murdered my baby brother, and as he watched him die, he scribbled notes in a journal,' she said. 'It was a how-to book on murder.'

The disturbing journal has been legally sealed and protected by the courts, because it reportedly contains sickening details about how Woodmansee ate the boy’s flesh, and shellacked his bones as souvenirs.

Mrs Aubin said the killer should remain in prison for life, because of the nature of the crimes.

According to a local newspaper, Woodmansee was a withdrawn 16-year-old boy on May 18, 1975, when he lured Jason into his home.

He stabbed the little boy in the heart and hiding his small body in a trunk.

It remained undiscovered for eight years as authorities searched for the missing boy in a huge manhunt. 

'The search went on for years,' said Mrs Aubin. 

'It was insanity. It’s hard to explain what this did to my family. We’d been torn apart.

'My father became and alcoholic and my mother became depressed and they both suffered mood swings.'

But on April 15, 1982, a bearded Woodmansee tried to strike again, luring a 14-year-old newspaper delivery boy named Dale Sherman into his house. 

After plying the boy with alcohol, Woodmansee attempted garrote the boy, police said. 

But Sherman fought back and police were called - and suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. 

When Woodmansee was interviewed by police he admitted that he fantasized about murder: 'It would be easy [to kill someone], easy to get away with it, and some form of fun,'' he said, according to a newspaper. 

Shortly thereafter, he confessed to sexually assaulting and killing Jason Foreman, police said - pleading guilty to second degree murder before the case could go to trial and the cannibal charges be proven.

But soon, details of the horrific murder began to leak out.

'Atop Michael’s dresser was a box,' Mrs Aubin, who was privy to much of the police information not released to the public, claimed. 

'Inside were my brother’s shellacked bones: his arms, legs, a small jaw, a few spine and rib bones, and his skull. The bones were washed and finished for display,' she claimed.

'Michael coveted them; he treated my brother’s bones like trophies,' she alleged. 'Next to the box was the disgusting journal.'

According to Mrs Aubin, within hours of killing Jason, Woodmansee had boiled his body parts to speed up the process of removing the flesh from the bones.

'This lunatic ate my baby brother,' she said.

'Imagine a life trying to accept that as fact? 

'To cannibalize someone for the sake of wondering what it is like, that to me is more demented than the thought of killing someone. 

'To this day, I have nightmares about this. I wake up screaming, and I know it’s not just a dream. It’s my real life.'

But prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain to spare the family more grim details of the boy's death and to avoid a grisly trial, and the journal was sealed for ever.

Thirty years later, Woodmansee, now 52, is set to be released from prison 12 years early due to good behaviour.

To Mrs Aubin, the thought is terrifying. 'How can this man be let back out on the street? What if he thinks about killing again?' she said.

'With Michael, thoughts are dangerous. He doesn’t see the world in the same colours as normal people. 

'Nobody wants him on the streets. And to be honest, he won’t be safe on them.

'My family and the whole state of Rhode Island are rallying to keep this maniac behind bars, but legally, there is little we can do.'

To her father, however, the pain of his release may be blinding.

‘I do intend, if this man is released anywhere in my vicinity, or if I can find him after the fact, I do intend to kill this man,’ he told WPRO-AM radio in March. 

Superior Court Judge Susan E. McGuirl, the former state prosecutor who agreed to the plea bargain, said that news of Woodmansee's pending release was 'shocking'.

She told a local newspaper: 'Certainly there would not have been any anticipation of him getting out in 28 years.'

The killer, who has served nearly all of his sentence at prisons in Massachusetts for his own protection, faces huge public anger if he returns to Rhode Island.

But police say they are preparing for that possibility.

‘We do not know what his plans are or if he is [planning on coming back here], but it is definitely something we plan on discussing,’ a spokesman for the South Kingstown Police Department told AOL News in March.

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