Remains in German murder case show signs of cannibalism

German prosecutors say there is evidence of cannibalism in the killing of a 44-year-old man whose remains were found in Berlin this month.

A 41-year-old man was arrested at his home on Thursday on suspicion of murder with sexual motives, close to the site where the victim’s bones were found.

“The suspect had an interest in cannibalism,” Berlin prosecutors’ office spokesman Martin Steltner said. “He searched online for the topic.”

Steltner said it was unclear whether the victim had also had an interest in cannibalism. The two men, both Germans, had been in touch with each other online via a chat forum called Planet Romeo, according to a report in Der Spiegel.

On 8 November a walker had chanced upon the skeletal remains of a human leg on a field on the northern outskirts of Berlin, near the border with Brandenburg state.

On the bones investigators discovered bite marks, though they said it was still unclear if they were human or from an animal.

The remains were those of a 44-year-old high-voltage technician who had gone missing from his shared apartment in Berlin’s Lichtenberg district on 5 September.

A search involving specially trained sniffer dogs eventually led police to the apartment of the 41-year-old suspect, a maths and chemistry teacher at a secondary school, where they discovered knives, a bone cutter saw used by surgeons, and an oversized cooling box.

The Bild newspaper reported that investigators had also discovered 25kg of sodium hydroxide, a reagent that can be used to dissolve bodily tissue. The suspect reportedly claimed he had wanted to make soap.

The full names of the victim and the suspect haven’t been released for privacy reasons.

Reports of the arrest have evoked parallels to the infamous case of the “Rotenburg cannibal”. In 2006, a German court convicted Armin Meiwes of murder and disturbing the peace for killing a man he had met online and eating him. Meiwes is serving a life sentence.

Unlike the suspect arrested over the Berlin murder, Meiwes had been quick to talk to prosecutors and share details of his obsession.

In 2015, a German police officer was convicted of murder for killing a man he met in an internet chat forum devoted to cannibalism. Prosecutors said the victim had fantasised about being eaten but there was no evidence the suspect actually did so.

Theguardian