Keeping with the cannibal theme, there is someone very much alive and very much famous for being a cannibal.

He has been celebrated in his country for his cannibalism.

He is also a murderer, and the country is pretty cool with that too.

Oh, did I mention the necrophilia thing he did too?

Yeah, he raped the corpse of the dead woman for a few days after he killed her.

The parts he wasn’t raping he was eating. You would think he would have spent some time in jail or an insane asylum.

Not so much.

He was detained awaiting trial, but then sent back to his home country where he became a huge celebrity.

So, he did all those crimes and was never punished.

He was rewarded and became very popular.

Now, a few decades removed from the crime, people realized they shouldn’t have made a guy like this famous or pay him to write restaurant reviews, he has essentially been forced into isolation and lives alone.

Issei Sagawa
Also known as Pang or The Kobe Cannibal, is a Japanese murderer, cannibal, and necrophile known for the killing of Renée Hartevelt in Paris in 1981. Sagawa murdered Hartevelt then mutilated, cannibalized, and raped her corpse over several days.

He was found legally insane and unfit to stand trial. Ordered to be held indefinitely in a mental institution. Extradited to Japan. Found sane but “evil”. Sagawa checked himself out of the mental institution on August 12, 1986, and has been a free man ever since. He is now an essayist, author, and food critic.

Home country: Japan

Crime happened in Paris, France

Victim: Renee Hartevelt

Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch student Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris, France. On June 11, 1981, Sagawa, a 32 year old student of French literature, invited Hartevelt to dinner at his 10 Rue Erlanger apartment under the pretense of literary conversation.

Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat with her back to him at a desk, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. Sagawa describes himself as a “weak, ugly, and small man” (he is just under 5 ft (1.52 m) tall) and claims that he wanted to “absorb her energy”.

Sagawa said he fainted after the shock of shooting her, but awoke with the realization that he had to carry out his desire to eat her. He did so, beginning with her hips and legs, after having sex with the corpse. In interviews, he noted his surprise at the “corn-colored” nature of human fat. For two days, Sagawa ate various parts of her body. He described the meat as “soft” and “odorless”, like tuna. He then attempted to dump the mutilated body in a remote lake, but was seen in the act and later arrested by the French police.

His wealthy father provided a top lawyer for his defense, and after being held for two years without trial the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguières found him “obviously” legally insane and unfit to stand trial and ordered Sagawa to be held indefinitely in a mental institution. Following a visit by the author Inuhiko Yomota, Sagawa’s account of the murder was published in Japan with the title In the Fog.

The subsequent publicity and macabre celebrity of Sagawa likely contributed to the French authorities’ decision to have him extradited to Japan. Upon arrival in Japan, he was immediately taken to Matsuzawa hospital, where examining psychologists all found him to be sane but “evil”.

However, Japanese authorities found it to be legally impossible to hold him, purportedly because they lacked certain important papers from the French court. As a result, Sagawa checked himself out of the mental institution on August 12, 1986, and has been a free man ever since.

Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator. He has also written restaurant reviews for the Japanese magazine Spa. In 1992, he appeared in Hisayasu Sato’s exploitation film Uwakizuma: Chijokuzeme (Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture) as a sadosexual voyeur.

Besides books about the murder he committed, Sagawa wrote a commentary book Shonen A in 1997 on the Kobe children’s serial killings of 1997, when a 14-year-old referred to in the media as “Boy A” (“Shōnen A”) killed and decapitated a child and attacked several others.

Sagawa’s story inspired the 1981 Stranglers song “La Folie”, and the 1983 Rolling Stones song “Too Much Blood”,and the 2004 Human Factors Lab song “Dinner with Renee”.

A 1986 short film by Olivier Smolders called Adoration is based on Sagawa’s story. In the same year, the TV channel Viasat Explorer released a 47-minute documentary film called “Cannibal Superstar”.

In 2009, Sagawa was documented in a History Channel show titled “Strange Rituals” discussing cannibalism. The show reveals Sagawa as a freelance artist of nude paintings. Source: Wikipedia

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