Over the next few weeks, he defrosted and cooked parts of Mr Brandes in olive oil and garlic, eventually consuming 20kg of human flesh before police finally turned up at his door.
‘With every bite, my memory of him grew stronger,’ he said. Guardian online headline 4 December 2003, ‘Victim of Cannibal Agreed to be Eaten’
9th March 2001: Armin Meiwes, a 39-year-old computer engineer who lives in Germany, takes a butcher’s knife. He cuts the penis off Bernd Brandes, a 42-year-old software designer, who has arranged to be killed and eaten. Meiwes slices it in half; they both try to eat a piece. He records the whole event on video. The Man Who Ate His Lover, BBC 2004
Over the next year he eats twenty kilograms of Brandes’ flesh before he voluntarily confesses. ibid.
His mother’s death threw him completely off balance. ibid.
Armin Meiwes seems the perfect neighbour ... Armin’s interest in Cannibalism was awakened at the age of ten ... Robinson Crusoe. Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook s3e5: The Cannibal of Rotenburg, CI 2013
He was free to indulge his fantasies on the internet and pursue his obsession with cannibalism. ibid.
It would all be recorded on video. ibid.
Is it murder or manslaughter when someone volunteers willingly? ibid.
MELGAR, SANDRA [viz Miscarriages of Justice: Melgar, Sandra]: People Magazine Investigates TV - True Crime Recaps 2022 -
It was supposed to be an anniversary celebration: 32 years together. Suddenly, an intimate moment turned to infinite terror: a husband found murdered in a closet, a wife tied up in another. Who could be behind this? Dateline: An Anniversary Murder: Unspeakable, Sky Crime 2020
Sandra [Melgar] said she simply could not remember what happened the night before. ibid.
They [rozzers] found her [Sandra] more disinterested than distraught … Sandra’s story morphed over time. ibid.
The jury sentenced Sandra to 27 years in prison. ibid.
Detectives say Sandra Melgar killed her husband then staged an elaborate home invasion to cover it up. A jury agreed but she still insists she’s innocent. True Crime Recaps: Was Sandra Melgar Wrongly Convicted? Youtube 14.50, 2022
Sandra Melgar and her husband were married for 32 years. ibid.
On the floor in the closet still wearing her black satin nightgown, her hands and feet were tied with her scarves, she’s like urinated, defecated … The knots were so tight around her wrists and ankles that they had to cut through them … 30 feet away in the second closet was Jim’s naked bloody body … Blood splattered the closet, walls with some also on a chair and a stool in the bedroom. He’d been stabbed 31 times. ibid.
2014: Sandra Melgar was convicted for the murder of her husband. ibid.
Sandra was a frail five foot four; she walked with a cane. ibid.
How would she ever be able to inflict that kind of damage on him? ibid.
How on earth could see wedge a chair under the closet door from the inside? How is she gonna tie bonds so tight she had to be cut free? ibid.
Strange DNA on the dresser and on the scarf that bound her arms and legs. ibid.
MENDENHALL, BRUCE: People Magazine Investigates TV -
On an isolated stretch of highway a young college student [Tammy Zywicki] is missing. Many witnesses report seeing a semi truck and trailer. People Magazine Investigates s5e1: Highway of Horrors, ID 2021
Witnesses report seeing Tammy on I-80 with her car and a man nearby. ibid.
Bruce Mendenhall is arrested in connection with the murder of a 25-year-old woman at a Nashville truck stop. But he’s also suspected in the murders of several other young women. ibid.
MENENDEZ BROTHERS: True Crime with Aphrodite Jones TV - Time Lists: Top 10 Crime Duos - The Menendez Murders TV - The Menendez Killings: Blood Brothers 2017 - True Crime Recaps 2023 -
A couple is brutally gunned down in their Beverly Hills mansion. Their grieving sons are charged with the murders. At first they deny guilt. But then admit their parents had it coming. True Crime with Aphrodite Jones s1e7: Menendez Brothers, ID 2010
August 20th 1989 ... The call sets off what was to become one of the most notorious murder cases Beverly Hills has ever seen. ibid.
The brothers continued to exhibit unusual behaviour. Fuelled by the father’s $650,000 personal life insurance policy, Lyle and Erik go on an extravagant shopping spree. ibid.
Dr Oziel convinces the brothers to let him tape the revealing sessions. ibid.
Judge Weisberg allows the entire trial to be broadcast on national television. ibid.
Over weeks of riveting testimony Lyle exposes the chilling details of a household rampant with devastating sexual abuse. ibid.
A retrial is scheduled and all the grisly details are set to be exposed again. ibid.
From a young age, Lyle and Erik Menendez were attached to each other in a way that seemed abnormal. Dealing with a successful business executive father who enforced rigid rules and expected nothing but the best from his sons may have made them too dependent on each other – and too willing to reinforce each other’s misbehavior. They committed home burglaries together, did poorly in school and avoided contact with others. Their mother, Kitty, reeling from her husband’s infidelity and both her sons’ diagnosed sociopathic tendencies, kept a close eye on Lyle, 21, a Princeton student, and Erik, 18, who was UCLA bound. But not the kind of watchful eye that parents usually have – this was a woman who feared for her safety.
After watching the Billionaire Boys Club – a TV mini-series about a Southern California investment and social club that turned to murder after its Ponzi scheme began to unravel – Lyle and Erik decided they would rid themselves of their abusive father and save their mother the anguish of living without him by killing her too. They shot their parents to death at their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989. For seven months after the murders they went on shopping sprees, started fake businesses and lived in hotels paid for by their father’s company. By the end of 1989, they had spent more than a million dollars. Police found the spending suspicious, but what actually led to the brothers’ arrest was Erik’s breakdown and full confession to a psychotherapist. Time Lists: Top 10 Crime Duos #8
Not many Hollywood murder mysteries ever took a more dramatic turn than police are describing in a couple of savage Beverly Hills killings. The Menendez Murders I, Dan Rather news 21st August 1989, CI 2018
My dad was not going to let me get away. And that Mum had always known. That had shattered everything. That was the moment I knew my parents were going to kill me. ibid. Erik
Someone killed my parents. ibid. Lyle’s 911 call