Cannibal could make a movie

2003-12-12 15:17

Kassel - A German cannibal is holding talks with several film companies on a movie deal about his grisly story, his lawyer said on Friday at his murder trial.

Armin Meiwes, 42, has already begun writing his memoirs while in jail. They will detail how he killed, carved up and ate a victim he says wanted to die, lawyer Harald Ermel said during a break in the trial.

Ermel would not comment on reports that a deal of potentially millions of dollars was on offer.

The lawyer said the dead man, a 43-year-old engineer, had a death wish and would have chosen someone else to kill and eat him if he had not found Meiwes via the Internet.

Ermel said the victim, Bernd-Juergen Brandes, had been in touch with three potential killers in the United States.

Meiwes, a computer technician, is charged with murder, which carries a life sentence, and of disturbing the peace of the dead by cutting up the corpse.

He admits killing Brandes and eating at least 20kg of his flesh, but his defence says he is guilty at worst of "killing on demand," which carries a maximum jail sentence of five years.

Cannibalism itself is not a crime in Germany.

Earlier this week the court in Kassel, central Germany, sat behind closed doors to watch three 90-minute videos which Meiwes took of his actions, again apparently with the victim's consent, during March 10, 2001.

"I felt like I was in a pathology lab," a court official said on Friday. She said everyone had been forced to look away at some point because of the grisly nature of the videos, except Meiwes who often grinned.

"For him it's normal," she added.

The trial was to continue later on Friday with evidence from a toxicologist on the mixture of anti-cold medicine, sleeping tablets and whisky which Brandes downed on the day of his death.

- AFP