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Monsters in the Flesh: Real-Life Hannibal Lecters · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Beyond Infographics. We are jumping straight into a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: challenging stack of source material today, and I think I
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: need to offer a necessary note of caution right at
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the start.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is heavy stuff, it is.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: The subject matter is extremely sensitive. We're focusing on the dark,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: extreme spectrum of human fixation and violence. Our goal here
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: is a factual, analytical exploration of the sources you shared
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: with us. We want to maintain a clear eyed distance
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: to really understand the psychological, the legal, and I guess
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the moral fault lines these cases expose.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: That's the core mission of this deep dive. We are
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: examining the absolute extreme boundaries of human behavior, specifically focusing
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: on acts involving cannibalism and the deep taboos they violate.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: What we have in our source material is a fascinating,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: if deeply disturbing, just a position of three very distinct
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: categories of transgression.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's lay at that spectrum. We're starting with
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: historical criminal profiles of just pure predatory.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Violence, exactly the kind society universally.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Condemns, exemplified by Albert Fish, who feels like this original,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: almost pre civilized monster.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Then we move to the archetype of the calculating, manipulative
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: killer Ted Bunny, whose persona and actions really provided inspiration
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: for fictional yet highly influential profiles in popular culture like
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Hannibal Lecter.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: And finally we get to the modern and I think
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: unprecedented legal and philosophical case.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Arman, me Ways and burn brandis.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: This is the one that presents the ultimate complex question
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: what happens when the transgression involves, of all things, sophisticated
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: debates about consumption by consent.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: The sources really force us to challenge our assumptions here.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, when the act is purely predatory, driven by psychosis,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: the legal response is pretty clear, it's definitive. But when
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: the act involves some degree of mutual agreement and it
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: raises questions about radical personal autonomy, well the answers become
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: profoundly murky.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Especially in legal systems that are supposed to be grounded
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: in personal freedom exactly.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Our source material is diverse, right. We have historical reporting
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: from the early twentieth century, detailed forensic profiles from the seventies,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and then this deep legal scholarship.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I saw one author describe the MUA's case as a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: law professor's dream hypothetical.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Because it pushes civil law to its absolute breaking point.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: We're here to unpack the why and the so what
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: of these cases, giving you the context to really understand
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: the depth of these psychological extremes and.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: The psychological question that unites them all.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: How do we categorize and understand behavior that exists so
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: far outside civilizational boundaries.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: That's the lens we need to maintain through this whole
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: deep dive precisely. Okay, let's unpack the first and maybe
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the darkest profile, the one that's foundational to understanding the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: scale of this transgression.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Albert Fish, the historical horror.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Albert Fish was executed in nineteen thirty six. He was
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: sixty five. He remains this figure of just pure visceral
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: horror from the nineteen twenties and thirties. Yeah, and he
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: was convicted and executed for just one murder, the murder
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: of ten year old Grace Bud.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Just the one. But his own claims, I mean, they
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: suggest a scaled predation that is simply staggering.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What did he claim?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Well, Fish boasted that he had children in every state.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: At one point, he claimed his victim count was around
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: one hundred one hundred. Now our sources are clear. It's
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: uncertain if that referred to rapes or cannibalizations, or if
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: the claims were just delusional exaggerations.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: But what is certain is that the sheer volume of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: his alleged crimes and the depth of his pathological secations
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: really established him as a psychiatric phenomenon of the era.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: So the Grace Bud case, the crime that got him caught,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It gives us this chilling snapshot of his manipulation, doesn't it?
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: It really does. Fish was fifty eight years old in
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight when he targeted the Bud family, and
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the crime started with something so mundane classified AD, a
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: classified AD in the New York world. It was placed
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: by eighteen year old Edward Budd, who was just looking
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: for a job in the country.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And Fish shows up at their home in Manhattan.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Under the alias Frank Howard. He presents himself as his friendly,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: elderly farmer looking to hire the son.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Edward, so on the surface he can integrate socially.
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  Speaker 2: Even if his internal world was completely fractured. Yes, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: while the sources suggest he initially planned to lure Edward away,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: his attention shifted almost immediately.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: To Edward's younger sister, Grace.
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  Speaker 2: He focused on ten year old Grace Bud and lured
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  Speaker 2: her away with this disarming story that he was taking
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: her to his niece's birthday party.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: And the family just they had no idea for years, nearly.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Six years of agonizing mystery, what finally led to his
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: apprehension on December thirteenth, nineteen thirty four was ironically his
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: own narcissistic need to revisit the crime letter. He sent
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: an extremely detailed and chilling letter to the Bud family
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: confessing to the murder years after.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: He did it just unbelievable. And that letter, which was
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: intended to prolong their suffering, I guess or satisfy his ego, it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Contained the one clue that was his undoing.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Police traced him back through this tiny, seemingly insignificant.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Detail on the envelop the hexagonal emblem with the letter's NYPCBA.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Which stood for the New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association right, and.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: That emblem led investigators to a rooming house where Fish
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: had left some stationary It was just painstaking detective work
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: that traced it back to him.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And when we look at the progression of his crimes,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the sources note this depravity. It wasn't spontaneous, it was
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: an escalation over time. Oh.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, around nineteen nineteen, nearly a decade before the Bud case,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: he had already stabbed an intellectually disabled boy in Georgetown.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: His victimology is particularly dark. It reveals this brutal calculation
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: about societal neglect.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: He deliberately chose victims who were marginalized, either mentally disabled
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: or African American.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: And he later explained to police that he assumed these
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: individuals would not be missed when killed.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Which is just a brutal assessment of societal vulnerability and
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: the gaps and law enforcement focus at the time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: He even paid boys to procure other children for him.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it shows this chilling level of organization within his
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: chaotic psychosis.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: And he didn't just commit violence, he had a ritual
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: for preparing for it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: He referred to his murder tools as his implements of hell,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: a meat cleaver.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: A butcher knife, and a small handsaw.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: That shows this deep pathological fixation on evisceration and dismemberment
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: long before the act of cannibalism. Itself, and all of
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: this was happening against a backdrop of increasing psychosis.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty eight, the same year he murdered Gracepud.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: He was suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations. He genuinely
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: believed God was commanding him to torture and sexually mutilate children.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: The sources recount at least two incredibly narrow escapes.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. In nineteen twenty four, when he was fifty four,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: he was chased away from an eight year old farm
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: on Staten Island after trying to lure her away, and.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Then they found him trying to sleep in their barn.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It's almost pathetic, but so dangerous.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: The second close call was right before the Bud murder.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: It involved a ten year old boy, Cyril Quinn, whom
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Fish had been molesting.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: This was the boy he planned to use his implements
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: of hell on.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, Quinn and a friend were invited to Fish's apartment
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: for sandwiches, and while they were wrestling on the bed,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: they accidentally dislodged the mattress and underneath, underneath they saw
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: the knife, the small hand saw, and the meat cleaver.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: They were terrified and they fled that chance wrestling match
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: saved their lives.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: At his trial, which began in March nineteen thirty five,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Fish pleaded insanity.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Constantly claiming voices from God commanded him. But the psychiatric
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: testimony delivered a profile that stunned even the most seasoned
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: experts in that courtroom.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It was unprecedented, they said.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Several psychiatrists testified to an absolutely vast array of sexual fetishists.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: They labeled him a psychiatric phenomenon.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The list is it's just a shocking stream of.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Jargon, sadism, masochism, pedophilia, necrophilia, cannibalism, and others many people
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: won't recognize, like pikarism, copophagia, himatalania.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Let's define one of those because it grounds the pathology.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Pickearism the sexual interest in piercing or stabbing.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Which aligns chillingly with him naming his tools his implements
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of hell exactly.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: And comprophagia, the consumption of feces and hemadalinius sexual excitement
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: from blood, were central to his extreme masochism. He would
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: subject himself to flagellation, insert needles into his own body.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: His own defense counsel said that nowhere in legal or
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: medical records. Was there another person with such a grotesque
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: number of sexual abnormalities.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: It's a profound realization that such chaos could reside within one,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: you know, seemingly frail elderly man.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And beyond grace bud, he was confirmed to have killed others.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: The sources list eight year old frien Ansis McDonald in
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four and four year old Billy Gaffney in
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Is confirmed, and he was a suspect in others.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Strongly suspected, and the murder of twelve year old Yeta
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Abramowitz and sixteen year old Mary Ellen O'Connor. But beyond
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: those specific murders, his.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Claim of sexually assaulting at least one hundred boys, specifically
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: targeting African American or developmentally disabled children.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: It paints the picture of a true apex predator who
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: exploited the invisible margins of society.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: The profile of Albert Fish is one of pure, unvarnished predation.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: He is the pre civilized monster, the evil that requires
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: no sophisticated.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Mask, and that is the perfect contrast as we transition, right.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And if you value this kind of thorough, detailed and
• 9:43
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• 9:47
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• 9:50
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• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So we move from the chaotic, repulsive figure of Fish
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: to Ted Bund right. Where Fish was grotesque and relied
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: on anonymity, Bundy was the precise opposite. He used a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: charming veneer, good looks.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: An air of squeaky clean reliability.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: To lure, rape, and kill victims across multiple states. He
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: eventually confessed to thirty six murders. He is the monster
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: who learned to wear suit.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Bundy is perhaps the definitive textbook case of the charismatic manipulator.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: The sources highlight one psychological mechanism. It was his most
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: effective weapon, the halo effect.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: This phenomenon where people judge a person's entire character based
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on a single positive trait.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: In Bundy's case, his perceived attractiveness, his intelligence, his polite demeanor.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: It allowed him to operate in plain sight.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: That's the voice you heard so often during his trial.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: He just doesn't look like the type to kill somebody.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: And this public disbelief was so intense. Our source's note
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: he received fan mail admiration during his trial. Despite the
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: horrific evidence, he turned his court proceedings into these side shows.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And his origins provide a crucial, if confusing backdrop.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: He struggled profoundly with loneliness as a child, felt insignificant.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: He was often teased because of a horrible speech impediment.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: So he coped by retreating into fantasy.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Elaborate fantasies. He would listen to the radio, studying and
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: imitating politician accents, trying to imagine himself as somewhat important.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: This effort at self creation was likely fueled by a
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: really deep identity confusion.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: The sources confirmed the complexity of his early family structure.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: His grandparents posed as his parents, his mother as.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: His sister, which creates a fundamental instability.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It may be prevented him from forming an authentic, stable self.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: A forensic psychologist noted that Bundy constantly altered his appearance,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: his hair, his clothing, and more importantly, his personality.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Becoming whatever he thought he needed to.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Be to appeal to a specific target or situation. Psychiatrist
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Dorothy Lewis, who studied him expensively, even suggested he may
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: have suffered from dissociative identity disorder or bipolar disorder.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So a fractured cell beneath that charming surface, and that.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Fracture itself found its expression in the necrophilia aspect of
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: his crimes that gives us the clearest insight into his
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: unique motive for possession.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So this wasn't just physical gratification. No.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: He told a psychologist, Al Carlisle, that he wanted to
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: possess the essence of the victim. He enjoyed watching them decompose,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: sometimes shampooing their hair or painting their nails.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: He viewed them as romantic partners who couldn't leave him.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: It's a profoundly twisted, sadistic viewpoint. By killing them, he
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: believed he made them permanently a part of him. He
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: achieved a level of control he couldn't maintain with living people.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And here's where Bundy transitions from a horrifying criminal to
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: this unlikely, deeply ironic figure in criminology.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: The consultant killer.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: This is the aspect that cemented his place in popular
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: culture and directly inspired the fictional doctor Hannibal Lecter.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: That's right, Lector's character helping detectives catch other criminals was
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: partly based on Bundy's interactions with Detective Robert Keppel.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: This was in nineteen eighty four. Bundy's on death.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Row and he reaches out from prison offering to help
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: catch the then unknown Green River killer Gary.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Ridgeway, and his theories were terrifyingly, disturbingly accurate.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Keppel was deeply conflicted, but he found Bundy's insight useful.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: He suspected Bundy's theories were largely a projection of himself.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Meaning he understood the killer's mind because it mirrored his
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: own exactly.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Bundy suggested the killer would specifically return to the body dumb.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Sites, and when Ridgeway was caught years later, that proved
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to be true.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Ridgeway admitted he would return to the dumb sites to
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: sexually violate the corpses, sometimes sometimes wiping away maggots to
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: gain entry.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: That's a sickening level of detail that only someone with
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: that specific pathology could predict. Yeah, and Bundy's motive for
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: helping was.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: What attention, attention, relevance and possibly hoping to delay his
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: execution by drip feeding information. He enjoyed this strange symmetry
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: of cea himself and Keppel as hunters of humans.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And that celebrity persists. Our sources mentioned the zac Efron.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Detractors argued that casting a conventionally attractive actor risked romanticizing
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the killer.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: It proves that the halo effect outlives the man himself.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It continues to distort our perception of him.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: It is worth noting, though Hannibal Lecter wasn't only inspired
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: by Bundy. No.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Thomas Harris, the author, met a surgeon in a Mexican prison,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: doctor Alfredo Bali Travino, who was locked up for firs
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: slitting his doctor Lever's throat, chopping him up, and burying him.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Harris met him, and this calm, insightful man revealed this deep,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: dark insight into the nature of murder.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So we've moved from the chaotic appetite of fish and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the calculating possession fantasy of Bundy.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: To a case that forces us to deal with the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: limits of law and morality when the appetite is shared.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: And the body is voluntarily offered. This is where the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: true legal and philosophical deep dive begins.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: The ultimate taboo, the conundrum of consent.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: We are now plunging into the German case of armand
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Milvis the Rotenberg Cannibal, Metzgermeister, the Master Butcher.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And his voluntary victim burn Brandis.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: This case, from the early two thousands is the law
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: professor's ultimate hypothetical because it forces us to ask, where
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: does individual autonomy end when the desire is self destruction
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and consumption.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: To grapple with this, we have to look at their backgrounds.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Their meeting was the climax of parallel fantasies cultivated over decades.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So let's start with armand milis raised in Essen.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: His mother, Waltrod, is crucial. She was described by forensic
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: psychologists as pathologically commandeering, controlling, and holding extreme misandrest views
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: a hatred of men.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: How did that control manifest?
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: She sought to make Armand entirely dependent on her. His
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: father left when he was seven, and the boy felt
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: profoundly very lonesome.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: This led him to create an imaginary little brother.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Named Frankie, and this imaginary sibling became central to his
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: developing pathology. His fantasies began to focus intensely on Frankie.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: His deepest desire was to become one with him by
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: consuming his body. This evolved into complex imagery of evisceration slaughter.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Houses, and this intensified after his mother's death in nineteen
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: ninety nine.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, that removed the only external restraint on his.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Behavior, and adding to this internal world was a strange
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: external influence.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: The occult. Absolutely As a teenager, Miwas was drawn to
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: his next door neighbor Ulavon Burness, who is known as
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: the most famous witch and Satanic priestess in Germany.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And she encouraged his dark fantasies actively.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: She introduced him to Satanism. Her house was painted black,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: had a skull a tongue for a doorbell. It was
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: an elaborate staging ground for Satanic.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Ritual It normalized extreme fantasies for him.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: It gave a ritualistic framework to his dark thoughts. He
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: was also obsessed with Hansel.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: And Gretel, specifically the witch fattening Hansel to.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Eat him, and he researched real cannibals like Frittarman and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Dat. He eventually started frequenting online cannibal fetish forums
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: using the alias Frankie.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And his search criteria were very specific.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: He needed a willing victim. He required free, informed and
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: repeated consent.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, now let's look at the victim, burn Brandis. His
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: background is equally relevant to his desire for self destruction.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Brandis grew up wealthy. He was a successful electrical engineer
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: at Siemens, a world specialist in telecommunications.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So successful by all external metrics.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: But internally he felt a profound emptiness. Psychologically, his history
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: points to trauma. His mother died when he was five
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: and what police later suspected was a suicide disguised as an.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Accident, and his undiagnosed anxiety and abnormal psychosexual development were
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: tied to this.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: It seems so. His online pseudonym was Cater, which he
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: defined as born as flesh meat. He harbored a lifelong
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: desire for castration and complete oblivion.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: So we have two individuals, both suffering from profound loneliness
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and trauma, meeting at the precise innercencection of their pathological needs.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Mew is pathologically seeking unity through consumption.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: And brandis pathologically seeking oblivion and castration. The collision was inevitable.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Once Mews placed his online.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Ad, Brandis responded, expressing a lifelong desire to be slaughtered
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: and eaten, continuously upping the ante. He encouraged Muweis to
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: rip out my vitals with your teeth.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The level of premeditation and consent before the act is
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: why this became such a legal battlefield.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Brand assigned a formal willingness agreement. He paid cash for
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: a one way train ticket. He left a note bequeathing
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: his property to his boyfriend, and when they met, his
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: greeting to MUI's was an utter surrender. I am your flesh.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I hope you'll find me tasty.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: What followed is documented in agonizing detail on a four
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: hour videotape.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Right Mus's preparation was meticulous. He had six knives, a hatchet,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: a meat grinder. He had a step by step guide
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: for butchering a human.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Mail and to ease the process, brand Is consumed cough syrup,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: sleeping pills, and schnapps.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: His blood alcohol content was one point four degrees significant impairment.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: At Branda's insistence, Mewi's attempted the castration.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: And the attempt itself was clumsy.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Hm he struggled to cut the flesh, and the gruesome
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: ironies at Brandis was dismayed. The pain was not as
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: intense as hoped.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Then they attempted to consume the penis together.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Brandis tried it raw, found it too tough. Me was
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: tried frying it with wine, salt and garlic, but by
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: then it was too burnt.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So what did he do?
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: He ended up chopping it and feeding it to his dog.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Oh god, Brandis severely weakened and bleeding, started drifting in
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: and out of consciousness before he lost it completely. He
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: suggested they could still have my balls for breakfast.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: When he tried to stand up, he collapsed from blood loss.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Mewi's tied him to a table, and after a long
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: hesitation and a prayer, killed him by scabbing him in
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the throat.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: He then dismembered the corpse, storing twenty kilograms of flesh
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: under pizza boxes in his freezer. Consuming it over ten months, he.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Claimed he had assimilated Brandis. He even said he gained
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: better English and math skills from it, which is a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: clear sign of continued delusion.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And he was caught in two thousand and two after
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: going back online looking for a new victim.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: And this is where the legal process began, highlighting the
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: core cannibal's.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Conundrum Initially, Meus was convicted of manslaughter touchlog and sentenced
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: to just eight and a half years.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: That lighter sentence was largely due to the element of consent.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: His defense argued it was a mercy killing or assisted suicide,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: which is treated lightly under German law, but the German
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: High Court ordered a retrial. They had to distinguish between
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: a crime committed to relieve suffering and one committed to
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: satisfy a deviant desire. In two thousand and six, Miwas
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: was convicted of murder mord and sentenced.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: To life, and the crucial legal distinction there is the motive.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Under German law, murder is defined by the perpetrator's motive.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: The court determined the killing was for sexual gratification, a
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: form of lust mord or lust.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Murder, and that sexual motivation negated Brandis's consent.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: It superseded the defense of assisted suicide. This determined nation
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: essentially made the act the ultimate transgression, the proof of
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: the higher crime.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: That distinction is the profound not This case ties for
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: legal theorists, and if you value this kind of clear,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: detailed analysis, please consider rating beyond infographics five stars. Right now,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the Muis and Brandis case is cited by scholars as
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: representing the outer limits of victimless crimes. Miuis himself argued
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: he was just helping Brandis achieve his lifelong ambition.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Which forces us to confront this uncomfortable philosophical territory. Does
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: consent really justify violating the deepest cultural and moral taboos.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: The debate really hinges on two core principles, right autonomy
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: versus dignity.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: If you take a pure libertarian view, the law is
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: grounded solely on autonomy and consent, so in theory, the
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: actions would be justified.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: But the body of legal scholarship pushes back hard on.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: That it does. Scholars like Vera Bergelsen argue that criminal
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: law exists to protect not just autonomy, but public order
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: and individual dignity, the idea that the human body has
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: inherent in violability.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: It fails those tests by its very.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Terms, regardless of the individual's wishes, And there's a critical
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: legal loophole regarding Brandis's capacity to consent at the moment
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: of death.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: He was heavily impaired.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Drugged with narcotics and alcohol. That severely compromises the argument
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: that he had full, free and informed consent. To be
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: stabbed in the throat while tied to a table.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's move to the philosophical core of this revulsion.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Moral philosopher Jonathan Hate provides a sophisticated justification for society's objection.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Here right his sanctity principle what saya do. Hate's work
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: suggests human autonomy has to be hedged in by social
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: restraints and taboos that must remain absolutely inviolate. Society needs
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: to establish clearly that the human body is more than
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: just a walking slab of meat.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: So cannibalism is the ultimate violation of that principle.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: It is the moral revulsion we feel is not just
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: subjective disgust. It's a necessary, culturally evolved boundary marker. Allowing
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the body to be treated as consumable meat prevents the
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: coarsening and corroding of human intimacy.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: The taboo is the battle.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Line, the line that defines the civilized self against the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: barbaric other. The Mewiz case, by violating this through consent,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: forced his society to define where autonomy must yield to
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: a broader principle of human dignity.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating to see how the taboo is violated across
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: different spectrums, fish through psychotic violence, maries, and Brandis through
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: consensual ritual Our sources provide other cases too.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Consider Is Sagawa, the Japanese student in France in nineteen
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: eighty one. He invited a Dutch student over, then shot
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: and consumed reflesh.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: His motive was pure sexualized obsession. I just wanted to
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: taste her.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: And the legal aftermath was bizarre. He was found clinically insane,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: deported to Japan, and became a free celebrity. He wrote books,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: did restaurant reviews even start in porn films.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Which highlights the cultural dissonance around mental illness and extreme crime.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Then there is Arthur Shawcross, the American serial kill. He
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: claimed to have eaten the penis and heart of an
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: eleven year old boy and the genitalia of three prostitutes.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: His justification was that he developed the taste in Vietnam.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Acclaim investigators winely dismissed as fantasy, but the pathology remains.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: When asked what human flesh tasted like, he said, nice
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: roast pork.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: The sources even connect intergenerational trauma to these acts.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Andre Chikatilo, convicted of fifty three murders in the former
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union. He was traumatized as a child by the
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: story of his elder brother being killed and eaten during
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the Russian Famine.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So all these cases, Saga's obsession, Shawcross's fantasy, Chicatilo's trauma, they.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Highlight why finding a comprehensive scientific explanation for cannibalism is
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: such a profound struggle for researchers. They thrive on large
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: sample sizes, and cannibals simply don't exist in those numbers.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: This lack of data forces them to turn to less
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: scientific concepts.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: They look to literature, Dostoevski, the Bronte's po two seek
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: insight into these paradoxes of human behavior that science can't
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: yet fully quantify.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: So sometimes the poets and philosophers get you closer than
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: the data.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So, yes, this has been a necessary, if difficult exploration
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: into this extreme territory. We've moved across the spectrum from
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the purely predatory violence of Albert.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Fish to the psychological manipulation of the Ted Bundy archetype.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: And finally we encountered the profound moral and legal tests
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: presented by Arman Nuez and burn brandis.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: The thread connecting them is the ultimate transgression of hate
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: sanctity principle, the human body being reduced to a slab
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: of meat.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: And the Miui's case in particular forces us to question
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the limits of autonomy. If society grants you the freedom
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: to choose your death, does that freedom extend to choosing
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the disposition of your body even if it violates society's
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: deepest taboos.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: That is the line the law is still grappling with.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: The German court drew that line around the motive of
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: sexual gratification. It makes clear that even consent has an
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: edge case where the law must step in to protect
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: the very concept of humanity.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I think we need to leave the listener with that
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: unsettling dynamic from the Bundy and Keppel interaction, Bundy's insight
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: into the Green River killer's behavior that the killer would
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: return to the body dump sites to sexually violate the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: corpses was profoundly accurate.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: It was the monster providing an accurate roadmap to catch
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: another monster.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Based on a projection of his own dark self.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: It speaks to a dark irony that the most insightful
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: predictor of criminal behavior is often the criminal himself.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: This raises an important ethical question for you, the listener.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: If a monster possesses this ultimate intimate knowledge of criminal behavior,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: is that knowledge inherently corrupted or is it simply a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: necessary a moral tool the state must use.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: To protect others. What stands out to you as the
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: most unsettling connection here?
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: What are the boundaries you would not cross even with
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: robust consent, Something to consider long after we fade out.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: beyond infographics