Episode 576: Armin Meiwes Part I - Cannibal Café
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Hello! Ed Larson and Amber Nelson from the Brighter Side here to check in with you, see how you're doing. Is your day more disappointing than a gas station sandwich? Are you trying to put one foot in front of the other in a glue factory? Did you try to throw your air fryer in the bathtub but nothing happened because you were too lazy to plug it in first? Then the Brighter Side podcast is for you! Oh yeah!

Each week we take nasty, dooky, stupid, dumb... Stinky, no good, doo-doo factory... Boo! Caw-caw-like topics and try to find the brighter side. Hey, Amber, what's the brighter side of waking up chained to a bed in Russia? Um, at least they have free health care. That's right! So start your weekend off right every Friday with The Brighter Side on The Last Podcast Network. You beautiful babies.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Yeah!

Oh, man. Now you got it. You're at Dalvin, man. Man, I just think of that music playing over a bunch of Hummel figures cutting each other's dicks off.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. We have your hee-hee, Henry Zebrowski. Hit me with the polka! Natalie just got pregnant.

Just remember, this is the soundtrack of this entire story. I maintain that the soundtrack of this entire story is I know, but we'll get to that on episode two. And of course, with us is Ed Larson. Hello, I can't wait to eat some dick. You know what's really sad? Don't worry, your time will come soon. And truly one of the worst things about all of this.

Dick isn't even that good. No. No, dick is also, is actually impossible to cook. And the reason why we're talking about cooking dicks is because today we're going to be talking about Armin Mavis der Rottenberg Kannibal. Yeah. The most charming man in Rottenberg. He is the only, all they ever said was that he was classy. Yeah.

Well, Armin Meifus, a.k.a. the Rottenberg Cannibal, was a German middle-aged loner who, in 2001, killed and ate a man that he'd met on the Internet, a guy named Bernd Brandes. The twist is that Brandes had not only volunteered to be killed and eaten, but was on the Internet specifically to find someone who would fulfill his suicidal sexual urge. The Internet's like four years old at this point, and people are already...

Finding each other and eating each other. This is back when the internet was truly nasty. Oh, it really was. These are the nasty days of the internet. What do you mean, Marcus? The fact that there was necrobabes.org that you could actively post upon. And it was just on the normal internet. It is just on the regular ass internet. But I want to remind you guys that this series, we cover true crime a lot. And this isn't true crime.

This is true romance. This is the story about the most romantic weekend that ever happened in Germany besides the time when Hitler killed himself. Well, the morals of such an arrangement were, of course, the subject of much discussion during Armin's trial. But some Germans saw the humor in the situation. You see, it's very fun.

They gave him the additional nickname of Der Metzgemeister, meaning the master butcher. He did it in a fairly efficient way. Extremely efficient way. I saw the pictures. Of the neatly wrapped piles of meat. Yeah, I mean, they have the pictures of, unfortunately, they have the pictures from the film. They have stills from the film out there, and I did look at them. Yeah. Did he have deli paper? Yes. Very much so. That's awesome. Yeah.

That's why he was damn metzkemeister. I know we'll get more into it, but did he make sausage? He made everything. He made sausage. He made bacon. We got to wait. We're blowing it. We'll see you next week.

All right, let's just stop now so we can get to the nasty shit. But as far as Armin Mivas goes, while his story is not a one-to-one comparison, it's sort of like what would have happened if a guy like Ed Gein had the internet. And yes, I know that Ed Gein is not a cannibal. We know that he's not a cannibal, but these guys are spiritual cousins. Yes. If he had the internet, he might have been a cannibal. He would have been presented as an option. I will...

Which is funny is that I feel like that weirdly, I feel like the internet would have given them a lot more pushback about looking for cadavers where there was something about this within the actual fantasy of it that they were all. I still don't know if Ed Gein was great at improv. Well, we're going to look at, we're going to definitely talk people about people later who frequent necrophile forums. So I don't think Ed Gein would have gotten any pushback. God,

God bless America and the internet. And Germany. Hey, what are you talking America? This is the world, my friend. The world wide web. You know who we can thank for all of this? Al Gore. Yeah. This is the time that he gets the credit. Yeah. Sustainable meat, non-gas. Low carbon footprint if you eat the entire thing. But there are other parallels between Gein and Mivas that are hard to ignore. But there are other parallels between Gein and Mivas that are hard to ignore.

Both had a bizarre, worshipful relationship with their domineering mothers, and the general consensus on both men was that they were oddballs who never fit in anywhere. In Germany, by the way, oddballs are often called either der Spinner

Or der komisch, which literally, der komisch literally translates to the funny one. Oh, I feel that I said both of those in a derogatory fashion when we were in Berlin. Look at der Spinner here. Yeah, and I'm like, I know what that means. Okay, buddy, I saw what's eating Gilbert Grape. I know what you're saying, buddy. All right. And yeah, I am.

Stupid. But this guy, he's very, like, again, he's a romantic. And I just love the concept of, like, even have to point out that they were oddballs. Yeah. They're like, oh, this guy's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Well, additionally, Mivas also lived alone in a gigantic, creepy farmhouse that he inherited after his mother died. Just like Gein. Yeah, it's awesome. Located in the tiny village of Wustefeld.

The 36-room farmhouse remained totally unchanged after Armin's mother died, although it did, like Gein's place, get pretty messy by the end. They were pretty dependent on mommy. Yes. Yeah. Well, that, you know, just chopping up a human being makes it pretty messy. Technically, that was when he was the most neat.

But even before Armand's crimes came to light, his home was known by the local kids as the haunted house. Yeah. Even though, as we'll get into later, an actual Satanist black magic once lived next door to Armand. This is honestly, this is one of those where we were when we do our research, you never know what comes up. Yeah. You never know. And this was a

on our list and there was something we were moving our schedule around. We're like, oh, I've always wanted to do the Armin Maida story. I've always wanted to do this. And it was like, oh, it'll be a good like one parter. We'll get into it. We'll talk about the murder. His childhood is one of the funniest single stories that is laid out. I was so just like wowed.

Yeah. How? So was I. Just write down the pipe for us. Oh, man. He's a fucking. It's crazy. It's like Rudolph Steiner's here. But the big difference between Ed Gein and Armin Mivas, besides, of course, the fact that Gein wasn't a cannibal. He's still saying that. I'm just making sure that everybody knows. Everyone's going to stick up for his boy. The big difference is that Mivas.

eventually found another person in this world who was on his exact same wavelength. Although that relationship was, by its very nature, short and sweet, if you'll excuse the expression. I think it was short and savory. Can you see? I can feel that motion now as soon as Berndt got off that train and Armin saw him for the very first time, he heard this magical sound. Rob? Rob?

Oh! It's you! Finally! I mean, my ticket, my ticket, my ticket!

Thank you, Rob. Thank you. True romance. Now, for our source today, we've got Cannibal, the story behind the man-eater of Rottenberg by Lois Jones, which is good enough, but does tend to fall into the unfortunately common true crime literature trap of having weird and outdated opinions on homosexuality. I don't know what the fuck it is with these true crime writers, but they just either willfully want to misunderstand it or they just want, I think they want to give everything like that little extra nasty edge.

Everything has got to be slightly grimy from their perspective. You kind of feel that sort of like dirty noir edge. Also, the main issue is that a full misunderstanding of what BDSM is. Yes. Immediately saying that that's all like homosexuals do is whip each other. And again, we've talked about this many times. You did this in the Andrew Cunanan series about how gay people are largely extremely boring. Well, they're just people. Yeah. I mean, it's like there's just there's no more or less BDSM in the gay community than there is in the straight community. I'm sure there's plenty of cuddling. Yeah.

There's a lot of cuddling. A lot of cuddling. A lot. But otherwise. I mean, we'll get to that later. Like, that's really all Armin wanted. Besides, you know, to eat and kill someone. He wanted to cuddle him with his duodenum. He literally wanted to cuddle him with his colon in his guts. That is his actual motive. But this story, though, has more detail about his life than any other source I found. Yeah, the facts that are presented are solid. So let's get into the story of the Rottenberg Cannibal.

Armin Mivas was born in 1961 to a domineering and difficult woman named Waltraud Mivas, who was almost 40 when she gave birth to Armin. Waltraud and Armin actually look quite a bit alike with deep-set eyes, thin lips, and long, sharp noses. It's your classic German goblin face.

You know exactly what he's saying, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Fake. You know, those people are disgusting. We love the German people. One of the most beautiful women in the world. No, but these people, they're fucking, they're Nosferatus. Well, these guys, this is a, it's a bad batch. I,

I think that a lot of Germans are extremely beautiful. Oh, yeah. They're beautiful people, but there's a reason why Werner Herzog did the best Nosferatu. Yes, he knows it. He knows a Nosferatu. He's gotten milk from a Nosferatu. These guys are, it is wild. I have never seen such a couple that if you threw a wig on the son, he would look.

just like the mother. And if you know anything about Armin Mivas, which is like the more and more stuff I watch, all they ever do is focus on the teeth. They always zoom in on the teeth. Well, of course, because he ate people. Yes. He also has a massive mouth. And so does the mother. Like,

A wolf's mouth filled with huge ass teeth. Very frightening. Very frightening people. Now, Armin was Voltraud's third child, but Armin's father, Dieter, was Voltraud's second husband, and they had custody of two boys from their first marriage. Their names were Ingbert and Wolfgang. Yes, one was a composer and the other one sold piss. LAUGHTER

And for a while, things were okay. How much is this? Honestly, super cheap. Market price. Well, for a while, things were okay for the Mivas family. They lived primarily in the West German city of Essen, but spent their summers about three hours away at the aforementioned farmhouse near the town of Rothenburg.

But when Armin was between the ages of six and eight, Dieter, Ingbert, and Wolfgang all began leaving one by one. First, Ingbert joined his father in Berlin, and Armin's father left soon after. Reportedly, Dieter left Armin with Voltraud because he believed, quote, that he would turn out okay. Yeah, he'll be fine. I gotta go. I think that he read the room. Yes. And Voltraud...

I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, big heinous bitch, right? Big fucking pain in the ass. With a name like Voltron. Yes, she does sound like she tries to kill the Smurfs each week. Voltrout. Yeah, face like a cannibal.

And so they were already having a lot of marriage difficulty. Like, it wasn't a happy home. But it was just kind of the way that he left because he just jumped ship. And he really was like, I'm going to take the good boys. You guys are going to be normal. I could tell that immediately. You're coming with me. And they were like, Daddy, Daddy, we want to go with Daddy. It wasn't even, I'm going to take the good boys. It was like, I'm out. Because the boys went to their real father. Yeah. The way they told is that, like, yeah.

He was, you know, Armin was out front like playing in the garden. He heard a door slam and that was the fucking last time he saw his dad. I mean, unfortunately, anybody who ends up as a cannibal, that is one of the last sounds you hear from your father. Literally, it's the Simpsons bit. It's the dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Cha-ching.

yeah that's what we did i'll be right back i promise yes daddy when you come back will you bring some more sausages yeah yeah son definitely see you soon well finally wolfgang joined ingbert in berlin leaving armin and waltraud all alone as a result armin decidedly did not

turn out okay. Now, with Armin being the only male in Waltraud's life, she put all her emotions and energies into bullying and controlling this little boy. She was embittered, middle-aged, and it felt like her second marriage, the one that produced Armin, had ruined her life. There's no coming back and this little boy's gonna pay for it.

As such, Armin became essentially her lifelong manservant as punishment, to the point where she would call him Minchin. Minchin! Yeah, Minchin. It's an affectionate term, yes, but it's an affectionate term for a girl. And in Old German, it also meant servant. Sorry.

But she knew how to laugh. Those two words mean the same exact thing. Yeah, but I remember my mom. She'd be like, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, come here. And I'd get there and she's like, get me a Diet Coke. You know, it's funny. I get it. You know, it's the same. Turn on the light. Yeah, but she'd call you like, come here, you fat little girl. Like if she kept calling you a fat little girl and you had to go being like, come on,

fat little girl. Go get me some juice. She definitely called me fat. My mom called me fat too. And it's like, who the fuck do you think did that? You're feeding me. You did this to me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Didn't your mother like guilt you for not finishing your plate telling you that you didn't love her because you didn't eat her food? Yeah. Yeah. Here's a dozen stuffed cabbage. Fat boy. Yeah. I can't tell. But then if you only eat four, she's like,

Oh, that's fine. I guess you don't like it as much as you used to. But just like good old Augusta Gein, Waltraud Mivas were a permanent expression of disapproval for everything. Although unlike Augusta, Waltraud had no religion whatsoever to justify her behavior. Really, she was driven by nothing but pure secular hatred, mostly stemming from the failure of her two marriages. I have a weird...

just immediate off the cuff, not an expert opinion where it's like, you can kind of see. Yeah. Go figure. Yeah.

No thinking required. Let's hear opinion from Der Spinner. Hey! Chocolate! Don't you dare keep calling me Der Spinner during this entire process. I'm going to be pissed off. Don't tell us! What are you doing? It's just the German version of my spinny character. What are you talking about, Der Spinner? Alright, so...

Did you see the essential difference between Ed Gein being raised in a religious household where there was a lot of kind of religiosity in what he was doing? Like he made crucifixes and he did all these kind of weird things. It was kind of like, oddly, in a funny way, shame-based. He hid them. He put them away. Where Armin Mivas is like the example of when Ed Gein is raised

put in a Montessori school almost in a way of like, it's almost like this is a secular way of fucking you up. This is a fun way. So that not only is it like, it's a special new batch of fucked up, but then it leads to his style of what he did, which is like technically the most responsible form of murder cannibalism we've ever seen, quote unquote. It's so extraordinarily respectful. And he's like, he's like, he's a human. What?

Literally, entirely a humanist. He's a humivore. Now, to fill her days, because Voltraud did not work, she tried writing a history of her own family line, giving accounts of her forefathers and the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War.

There was no word, however, on whether or not she included her family's military history between 1933 and 1945. If such a history existed at all. It was a short, short chapter that just said, yada, yada, yada.

Don't you worry about that one. Now, to put it mildly, Armin Mivas was not a well-liked child. He was known as a mama's boy. Der Kommisch, the oddball. This opinion was only reinforced by the fact that Armin's mother insisted that he always dress in traditional Bavarian-style lederhosen at all times. Just the idea of a little six-year-old...

pre-cannibal dressed up as lederhosen because he never was normal. Was he fat? No. No. That's too bad. Yeah, right. Yeah. We said the same. No, you're just thinking of Uter from The Simpsons once again. I know, I know. You gotta fill out those lederhosen. Don't chase me. I'm full of chocolate. I'm full of chocolate too. But that's my, honestly, like skinny guys at lederhosen.

What is this, Epcot? Yeah. I want to see a big fat guy. Like, if you're in lederhosen, you better be pushing on them buttons. You ever seen the pictures of Hitler in lederhosen? Oh, my God.

It's very, I like, I think lederhosen is fun. Yeah. You would look great in it. I'm built for it. You really would. I have a body for lederhosen. Yeah, lederhosen does, it does require a good. It does flatter the egg-shaped man. Yes, of course it does. Oh, Hitler's very stylish. I'm looking at these pictures of him in his lederhosen. Ooh, what elegant ankles. Oh yeah, suspenders would be great for you. Oh, Natalie's already said that that's probably in my future.

I mean, yeah, it has to be your pants fall down all the time. Yeah. Belts aren't going to work after a while.

Now, Lederhosen. It's all right, my baby, just finish. I'm going to kill and eat something. Now, Lederhosen might have flown at least a little during the summers when Armin and his mother would stay at their farmhouse in the country. But until he was 16, Armin and his mother lived in the city of Essen. This is like in the middle of one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Germany. And this was during the 70s.

when lederhosen in a city would have been noticeably weird. Yeah, there's probably a lot of der Spenners flying around as he's on the bus and his lederhosen in the little hat with the feathers sticking out of it just going...

Looking at everybody that's got fucking sweat coming down there like they're being steamed. Can I lick your hand, please? Now to me, the lederhosen seemed to be a tactic to keep other children away from her son. Because even when kids knocked on their door to see if Armin could come out to play, Waltraud always insisted that Armin was grounded and wasn't allowed to leave the house.

she fed him a superiority complex. So that's weirdly like, that's how I view it. It's like between, yes, it is infantilizing.

making him a child, right? Like constantly and isolating him specifically. But what also she's doing is feeding him a line of we do this because we're better than others. Yeah. We do this because we are this. We are the... She viewed in her delusional mind. Like, I think I see of her as like a Bavarian countess in her own brain where she's like...

doing her historiographies and dressing them up in traditional clothing and basically showing everyone being like, we're different. We're a step aside. We're outside of your modernity, which makes us special. And I actually weirdly think that is one of the driving forces behind Armin is a sense of superiority in a way. Sure. Where he does believe my...

Philosophical cannibalism makes me a homo sapien 2.0. And in some cases, that really was, not to get too far off topic here, but that was in many ways a symptom of post-World War II Germany. Like this idea of we're going back. 1933 to 1945, that didn't happen. Germany is a...

wonderful place full of a very wonderful culture. And so going back to pre-1933, that kind of erases the guilt when it comes to the German people. It's a fascinating subject. Oh, I imagine. But she may have been one of those people. I just can't believe all the people they put in ovens, he's the first one to eat people. Yeah.

Oh my God. I'm Jewish! Thank you. Thank you very much. EddieTunes.com.

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Well, in all aspects, Voltroud kept Armin's life strictly regimented as her personal servant, demanding that he rush home during lunch every day to spend his free time doing chores like washing windows or taking out the trash. And this was all under strict orders from his mother. But even if Armin made it past his mother to play with the other kids, it's possible that what was already going on within his inner world, it's possible that would have scared off any potential playmates because this shit was lifelong.

Armin was obsessed with Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which were German, by the way. But Armin was particularly fascinated with the story of Hansel and Gretel. Absolutely. I love the idea of being fed to death by a witch. Oh, my God. Please. I think it's currently happening. I feed me to death next to a witch.

But instead of identifying with the kids, Armin would pretend to be the witch and he would play at fattening up Hansel in particular so he could cook and eat him. No one likes this game. None of the kids like feeder gainer games.

I mean, it sounds delightful. I know. Again, we're 40 plus men. We understand good things. Yeah. But how much candy could you can't eat that much candy? Not anymore. No, no, no. Bad for the teeth. Yeah. Me too. Back in the day, I could have had so much. Yeah. I actually, I had to quit Pez because it was destroying my teeth. And I love Pez more than anything. That's as far as food goes. Huge, huge problem. The fact that he ate so many Pez, it was literally destroying his mouth. You just like eating out of Donald Duck's neck. Yeah.

You do remember my favorite dispenser was my Donald Duck dispenser. You do remember. That's really nice that you remember that. Now, it's impossible to point to the Hansel and Gretel story or some other experience and say, this is why eating people made Armin horny. But Hansel and Gretel...

I mean, we're all trying to ask the question. Yeah, we are. But Hansel and Gretel seems to be the beginning of Armin's fantasies. They're the first building blocks of an extremely abnormal psychological landscape. Because we spoke with Catherine Ramsland about BTK's childhood a little bit. A little bit. She went into it a little bit. We spoke on the update show. Yes. Last update on the left. And partly, it really indicates that

There is some connection. We're already seeing connections all over the place. Jeffrey Dahmer, right? Jeffrey Dahmer had that, what was it, Nowhere Land? Infinity Land. Infinity Land. So he'd go out and so when he was a little boy, he would start going away and playing with like dead body parts of animals that he'd find. He'd make little shrines and he did all this weird shit alone. And BTK also apparently was having some fantasies as a little kid. He was doing all this kind of shit. But it's interesting to see like that.

that this was like another example of how it was baked in. It started as a little boy. Yeah. He had these thoughts and it never stopped. Like it was, it's, this shit was rampant since he was five. Yeah. Which is fascinating. Yep. I sadly, I also want all the documentary material I watched on this. It's like, they're not my normal documentaries, actual documentaries. I, uh,

The way everybody talks about this case has all just been like, and would you believe everyone's so fat and so happy how horrible it is. Like, you know, everybody's just like, yeah, he did this other thing. So I get into that zone. No, he's a little he's an actual. Well, I'm not a literal ghoul. He's a half. He's a half ghoul because ghouls technically are creatures that eat dead bodies. Oh, yeah, sure. He did eat a dead body.

but he started when he was alive. Yeah. Yeah. But he finished a year later. I see a ghoul as someone who digs up a grave and eats the dead body. He's a ghoul. Okay. I think if there was a ghoul club and they were all talking about it, they'd let him in. I think he made one letter of recommendation from another ghoul and that's it. He definitely made human goulash. Yes, he did. Well,

Well, the other part of the equation, which is sort of a chicken-to-the-egg type of thing, is that while Armin had little independence, he would sometimes sneak away to neighboring farms during those summers in Wustefeld. It was on those farms that Armin would eagerly watch pigs, ducks, hens, geese, and deer get slaughtered on a very regular basis. Armin would later describe these slaughters as...

as his fondest childhood memories. Dude, it was like his television. Yeah, but that's all to say that it's hard to tell whether he associated happiness with slaughter and that wired up his brain incorrectly, or if the slaughter was what made him happy in the first place. Chicken or egg? I mean, I don't know. There were plenty of kids to hang out with. There was still television. They said there were very few kids in Wustafeld. He could have found one.

There was one. Every weird kid I've ever met had one separate other weirdo play spinner friend. Actually, he did have one friend. One of the documentaries that I watched, they did talk to occasionally. Mr. Stonk. Yeah, where he said like, he had a pony and Viva takes a pony and ride it into the forest. But it was also...

It was a weird game. Because he said that, like, it was weird that he'd come over in his later hose and they had an old-fashioned horse and carriage. And he would get into his horse and carriage and ride it around this little town. And he'd be like, that's as far as mother allows me to go.

Like literally have to go. And then he had to kick him out of the carriage. Like he was some horrible version of Cinderella. So, but yeah, he, it's just straight. I mean, I wonder if the guy who was killing all these pigs in front of him, like started like, you know, like playing it up a little bit, putting on a show, you know, there it comes. That big old cleaver. Going inside them guts. And he's just like,

This is the best show I have ever seen in my life. The guy who's killing these animals is not like, get out of here, kid. No. Because at the time, honestly, though, I do feel like it's a little bit of like,

This is an art form. According to, if you're a normal butcher, if you're just a butcher, it's a good job. Well, these aren't butchers. These are just people who are killing animals. And they could also see it as like, oh yeah, kids need to get used to this stuff. Yeah, it's a form. You're going to get used to it. And he probably goes, ah, get me the hook. Ah, get me the other piercer. Well,

Well, really, though, Armin said that all he wanted was to be accepted and hugged. Really could have knocked that out quick then. Yeah, yeah. Mama could have really knocked both of those things out. So he invented an imaginary friend named Frankie to help with his loneliness. Frankie was the bad guy. You didn't want to be anywhere near Frankie. Well, Armin would tell Frankie he loved him and Frankie would say he loved him back. I love you too, Armin.

So far, so good. Yeah. And tellingly, though, Frankie would be the name Armand would use years later as his handle when he was trawling various cannibalism forums for a man who was willing to be killed and eaten. His name already has Armand in it. He used to on the nose. On the nose would have been a great name. Yeah.

Now, Armin said he started fantasizing about eating little boys and girls between the ages of eight and 12. He would spend night after night lying awake in bed, going through every motion of killing, butchering and eating a child, emulating what he'd seen on the neighboring farms. During one of his interviews, and I believe this, he said, you'll be surprised how difficult it is to make friends when all you imagine is

is what your friend's nipple tastes like. Thanks, Armin. But just like Dennis Rader fantasized about torturing and killing Annette Funicello at around the same age while watching the Mickey Mouse Club, Armin Mivas' prepubescent fantasies revolved around Flipper. Let's just guide on Henry's birthday.

We know. We know. Committed dolphin suicide on my birthday. That's true. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Flipper, it was a mid-60s TV show about a boy and his dolphin. But the titular animal was not Armin's focus.

Rather, he was obsessed with the boy, child actor Luke Halpin. Yeah, if he was obsessed with Flipper, the dolphin, he might have been a scientist. Yeah. Or he might have been a marine biologist. Or he might have been a dolphin hunter. Yeah, but he would have been obsessed with fucking Flipper. And his story would have been in and out of the news real fast. You think about him. No books would be written about him. No, but if you wanted to go fuck Flipper, guess what?

Flipper fucks back. That's what you got to be careful. Arden Mivas thinks he's going to roll and easily fuck Flipper. Flipper's going to fucking just ruin your weekend. All right. That kid does look delicious, by the way.

We're going to cut this out, but I've been saying that. Looking at the old footage, I'm like, yum. Is that yum? It's tasty. And dolphins are filled with mercury anyway. You can't eat them. Well, Halpin's character, Sandy Ricks, was just the kind of perfect, popular, successful boy that Armin so desperately wanted to be. Oh, boy. And Armin...

No, hey, that's what he wished he could be. And Armin came to believe, as many cannibals do, that if he were to only consume Sandy Ricks, then he would take on all of the same characteristics and abilities of his hero while also fulfilling a sexual urge. Play their flipper. There's this man who says he wants to sexually cannibalize me. What are we going to do? You're right. I'll strangle him in his sleeve.

Excellent. I'll pretend to be into it and then I'll wait until he's most vulnerable and I'll kill him while he can't know. Flipper, stop flirting with me. Stop it, Flipper. Stop it. I told you to put it into this right now. Put it into this right now. Look...

According to Armin, he ran this idea about consuming and internalizing Sandy Ricks. He ran this past his imaginary friend Frankie. And Frankie thought that the idea of killing and eating another boy to steal his power was a pretty good idea. All Frankie gave him was thumbs up. Sounds like you are thinking what I was thinking.

Flipper, however, was just one half of Armin's media obsessions. He also loved horror movies, of course, particularly the gory ones. If I had to guess, I'd imagine Armin was a fan of movies like the 1976 German slasher Mosquito der Schande, released elsewhere as Bloodlust. Ooh, that'd show off. LAUGHTER

The plot revolves around a clerk who collects puppets, but also murders women and drinks their blood with a glass straw, then writes mosquito on the walls of the rooms where his victims are found. Kind of sounds like a Giallo movie. Yeah. Oh, no, I would imagine you probably did see some Giallo movies that came over. You might have seen Suspiria. I don't know if like Blood Feast came over.

all the way over from America. You know, Herschel Gordon Lewis. I doubt he saw Blood Feast. But, you know, there's plenty of like that weird 60s style of gory, you know, that I fucking. Yeah, the weird stuff. The fluorescent red blood. That I personally love and I think actually is actually scarier because it feels like you're watching a dream rather than, you know, some like realistic gore. I much prefer Herschel Gordon Lewis gore.

You know what really scared me the most of everything you just said was the glass straw. Yeah, right. That's something about a glass. I mean, obviously, it could just break in your mouth, but it's terrifying. But it might be good for the environment. Who knows? Who knows? Now, before puberty, the idea of cutting open chests, ripping out hearts, livers, and lungs, then eating them raw while they were still warm, this simply made Armin feel good inside. It's like how another kid might fantasize about it. It'd be awesome.

Awesome fucking fly. Yeah, he was just like, man, I'd love to flop a pancreas around. Like, literally nothing would make... Think about a little boy, and if you ask him for Santa, like if he went to Sinterklaas and got on his little knee, and he'd go like, ho, ho, ho, little almond, what would you like for Christmas? And he'd just be like...

I want a hat made out of human intestines. It's like, hmm, well, I have to. How about a football? Oh, pigskin. No. No.

But around the age of 12, Armand found that these thoughts about handling organs, eating organs, these were now extremely arousing thoughts. And as a result, he would find himself, as Henry said, gazing longingly at a male classmate's bare chest while asking himself what their nipples would taste like. And I'll tell you what they taste like.

Nipples. Yeah. Chewy. Yeah, the rest of the chest, except, yeah, chewier. Just lick a guy. Honestly, when it comes down to it, why do you got to eat him? Just lick him. Be like a sommelier, but for a guy. Yeah, but you know what it's like. I mean, that's the thing, though, is if you were to just lick a hamburger, would you really get the flavor profile? Have you ever sucked a hamburger? This is one of the dumber conversations we've ever had.

Ooh, hamburger, I just want to suck you. I'm going to suck you. Make it nice and wet. Now, once Armin turned 16, he and his mother moved from Essen to the 36-room farmhouse in Wustefeld permanently, which wasn't that much of a change because neither one of them had any friends or family in Essen anyway.

But while Voltrout had grand dreams of a majestic country home, she didn't have the money to properly maintain a 36-room farmhouse because she lived solely off the meager alimony paid by her two ex-husbands. That house is beautiful. It is gorgeous. Or it was until it was burned down by the locals. Yeah.

That's what happens when a fairytale monster lives inside a very nice piece of property. Even so, she still gave each room in the farmhouse a grand name, like Sonnenglanz, meaning sunlight, or Frutau, meaning mountain dew. Mountain dew? Yeah. Whoa, that was so long.

Excuse me. Morning Dew. That would be fucking awesome if there was a fucking X Games room in there. You would never have to be a cannibal. This is my room, Sierra Miss. Let me mutilate him in the sunny delight room. If anywhere, it would be in the surge room. Shots fired.

Tellingly, though, even though Armin was 16, Waltraud insisted that his room be called Kinderzimmer or the child's room. The child's room. He was also not unwilling. No. He was very much a willing mama's boy. Oh, he loved it. He loved this lifestyle.

Now, the small village of Wustefeld was made up of a friendly, close-knit community of residents who held regular parties and barbecues where the whole town would be invited. A bunch of happy, smiling German farmers. And what did it sound like, Rob? Come to the non-human barbecue. Why does he keep saying that? Continue right now. Well,

Well, these barbecues included Armin and Waltraud, even though everyone in town knew that these were the town spinners. The townsfolk felt we can't leave them out. We can't invite everyone except the fucking weirdos. Town spinners. I just feel like that's the new slur that we're going to have to deal with. Yeah, we got a week.

We can use spinners for a little while longer. I just think of the spinners and I feel bad. Yeah, the spinners. Der spinners. Der spinners. An all-German cover band of the spinners. We'll save that. You and I will save that for our VFW tour, Eddie. Well, inviting der spinners proved to be a bad idea because during one... Actually, the...

I got to do it. It's De Spina. That would be the plural for De Spina. Oh, okay.

Inviting Die Spinner proved to be a bad idea because during one barn party, Voltraud marched to the center of the barn at 10 p.m. and began shouting that the music was too loud. She hated loud music and the party had to stop immediately on her say-so because it was too late to be that loud. Jesus Christ, lady. Yeah. Now, one adult neighbor took a special interest in Armin because he thought Voltraud's treatment of the young boy was unfair. He thought that it might be stunting his growth a little.

The neighbor had a chat with Voltroud over a glass of wine, and he got her to agree to let Armin attend the next party on his own. Sounds like when the principal visited Forrest Gump's mom. LAUGHTER

But even without his mother, Armin, who was always more comfortable with children, just like Ed Gein. Yeah, because he's another spinner. Yeah. Armin chose to not mingle with the other teenagers and instead spent the whole party sitting at the kids table.

In 1968, however, the village of Wustefeld became infinitely more interesting when a new neighbor moved in next door to Armin and Waltraut. She was a self-avowed witch, Satanist, and published occult author named Ulla von Bernis, who publicly claimed that she could cast death spells on anyone in the world. This lady is a character and fun as hell.

fuck, what a great neighbor. Like, especially for this, because again, everybody, it is homo figurines, including the scary ones. Every character from a German thing is there. You got the cannibal, you got the weird, wistful boy cannibal, you got the domineering, big-titted evil mom, you got the fucking beautiful Bavarian forest witch, who probably at some point transforms into something else. You know, like, transforms into, like, a

near that. She transforms into a faun and scampers into the force. Yeah, I love this shit. And lead you to your death. No, it just makes me want to go to fucking Germany. Yeah. Now, as opposed to Ed Gein's highly Christian mother, Augusta, Voltron Mivas embraced the evil. Oh my God, I just looked up a picture of her. I never saw her before. She looks like Tony Clifton. I might have to take all this back. Oh,

You like my Ulla von Bernis? Oh, my God. Yeah, you like California witches. German witches. Yeah, German witches. No, I love German witches. Old world witches are an entirely different breed, my friend. Hey, man, I will fuck Baba Yaga. I have no problems with it. Well, Waltraud Maivis soon became close friends with Ulla von Bernis.

Now, even though she sounds kind of goofy, Ulla von Bernis had serious occult cred. Her godfather was Rudolf Steiner, one of the biggest names in the occult game during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was a guy who rubbed elbows with Madame Helena Blavatsky. So for Eddie, just so you know, Madame Helena Blavatsky, HPB. Yeah.

HPB that we call her. That is the way she's called. And she is a pain in the ass master occultist from back in the day that wrote this massive book called The Secret Doctrine. And what it is is an occult explanation of the history of the world. And Rudolf Steiner, we did a series on Madame Blavatsky, and she is one of the most impressive con women slash...

true occult masters of all time. Like, she's a big, big deal. She's one of the, secretly one of the biggest influences on the 20th century in many different ways. Like, I mean, the shockwaves of what this woman did, you know, still reverberate to this day. Sort of led to Nazism. And then Rudolf Steiner was a guy that was like...

Basically, he was a compatriot to her, and then he broke off and did his own thing. He created the things called the Waldorf schools. Have you ever heard of the Waldorf schools? It's like a super intense version of a Montessori school where they basically teach you about aligning your spirit and soul with your intellect. And Rudolf Steiner was all about this idea that you could apply scientific method to the psychic sciences.

And then he obviously had some issues because anybody who's a dramatic origin, there seems to be some racial implications at the very bottom of their works, no matter what they do. Alternative history. Yes. A lot of his pseudo historian is what, how Rudolf Scheiner is often referred to. But technically he was one of the first guys to be like Hitler's bad. Went during the 1910s where he's like, this guy's bad news. And he started basically doing the anti-Nazi thing at the very, very beginning. And they, they fucked them up. Yeah. Yeah. They'd fuck them up real bad. Yeah.

Ula, however, like Rudolf Steiner, serious occultist. Very, very serious. Very, very high level. One of the big names. He's one of the classy ones. Yeah. He like ran Hogwarts, but instead of wizard, it was witches. Yeah.

That's what I took from that anyway. Yeah, take that. It's fine. Eddie, your occult education has not yet begun. We haven't chosen... I'll give you the secret doctrine. We have not yet chosen what your first occult episode is going to be. Okay. Yeah, but we're going to choose wisely. Trust me. Yeah. Good. But Ula, she's more of like an Anton LaVey. You know Anton LaVey, right? Yes, yes. Not well. We've only hung out once or twice. I mean...

But Ula's someone who liked to play the part. She liked to put on a show. Yes. For example, when she moved in next door to Armin and Voltraud, she painted her house black and switched the standard doorbell mechanism, switched that with a skull that had the doorbell button affixed to its outstretched tongue. That's fucking awesome. But I hope it screamed whenever you pressed it. Yeah.

Inside, Ula decorated her walls with paintings of Lucifer and various other devilish imagery. And this is in addition to her altar fully dedicated to worshiping and communing with Satan himself. And he's busy. Yeah. Claiming herself to be a satanic prostitute,

Ula would hold black masses to contact Satan so he could give her the power she needed to kill people with black magic. This is very German version. These spells, however, were not random. Basically, killing people with black magic was Ula's job. And this service cost anywhere between 200 and 1000 marks, depending on the client and the target. I think she had a sliding scale. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Honestly, very responsible of her. It's very nice thing to do as a business owner.

I will say to you, remember, magical actions, any form of hex will come back on you. So it's never, ever really a good thing to do unless you it's very, very specific. And honestly, it needs to remain largely positive. The thing about ULA is that also when you pay to have someone do something like this outside of you, it also it's very how do you say it's easy for it to go wrong. Yeah.

Well, the process was that she would cast a spell, then soon after, the target would die in a car accident, fall down a flight of stairs, or have some other fatal accident. And from what she claimed, she had a 90% success rate. Nine out of ten. So she's a fucking assassin? She's a murderer? Like multiple times? I see. Hit Witch! Yeah. Which is another great film. Save it! And indeed, she did have plenty of customers who made the trip out to Wustafelt. But...

But they were mostly women who wanted to sentence unfaithful husbands to untimely deaths.

Now, incredibly, and this is part of the reason why I'm fascinated with Germany, Ulla von Bernis became a beloved local character who could be found gambling at the nearby casino when she wasn't casting black magic spells on wayward husbands. So fun. But as she put it, Satan never helped her gamble because he, quote, has more important things to do. That's what I said. He's very busy. Others in Germany, however, took Ulla's claims very seriously.

She was briefly involved in a murder trial in the mid 1980s in which a defendant claimed that he ordered a death curse from Ula, but carried out the murder himself when it didn't work. Yeah, he had a fuck and he's like, God damn it. Now I got to go kill her. Yeah, she can't get blamed for that. No, she didn't. She was just consulted because she was just a part of the whole thing. She's like, yeah, he asked me. Yeah, I did it.

Yeah, it didn't work. It didn't work. I told him he signed the paper. He saw the thing. It does not guarantee results. It's not guaranteed. He was in that 10%. Yep. After that, Ula earned the title of the most famous witch in Germany. And that's huge. That's like being the most famous asshole in California. Now, just a few years before that murder, both Waltraud and Armin were spending a lot of time hanging out with Ula.

For Armin, though, the Satanist stuff, he didn't really give a shit about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what he cared about was that she was like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. She was like the witch from Hansel and Gretel, though. Like, that's not an exaggeration. By 1985, however, around the time of the aforementioned murder trial, Ulla moved out of the Black House in Wustafelt and rented an apartment in nearby Bad Hamburg. Bad Hamburg. Yeah, and Armin was once again left alone with his mother.

Left to his own devices when his mother wasn't ordering him around, Armin got a hold of a slew of Barbie dolls and began acting out his violent fantasies by dismembering them and cooking their limbs on a tiny barbecue, watching with pleasure as their faces melted into a mess of black plastic. I definitely tortured the Barbies. Yeah. You know, I love torturing the Barbies, but a lot of it was sort of like,

Touch the butt and the weird like boobs in the Barbie body. Yeah. You know, and I'm sorry now. I want to say I'm sorry about those dolls. Yeah. For what I did to you. You're just trying to piss off your sister though. Yeah. I don't know. No, no. I think it's a point I was just looking at the boobies. Yeah. There was nothing there. No.

Now, I like setting toys on fire. Yeah, of course. But I just like setting anything on fire. Yeah. Yeah. For the boobies, I used to always like, if there was like a zest commercial or something, I'd always get up to the TV and kind of look and see if I could look down and see the boobies. That's adorable. They probably thought that they had a real der spinner on their hands. Completely obsessed, Armin also made dolls out of marzipan. In addition to marzipan penises, hearts, livers, and stomachs that he could pretend were the real thing. I mean, this is a,

Business. Yeah. Well, now it is. Now it is. Erotic marzipan. Yeah. Now it is. Yes. He'd also make arrangements out of pork and ketchup, trying his best to recreate a scene of torn flesh covered in blood. And I mean this. All right. I'm going to give this creepist a

some credit. He's trying. Yeah, he really is. He's trying to not be a cannibal. He's trying to not kill someone. Well, yes. He's not trying to not be a cannibal. How do you even say that? Because technically he is practicing and he got really good at it. You hosted a cannibal dinner. I did. This is very similar. There could have been a der Spinner there. Oh my God. I didn't even fucking think about it like that. You could have been creating an armament.

Uh-oh. That's called making content the locally sourced way. That's sustainable content. But after Armin graduated high school, he ended up volunteering for the West German military, where he fit in well, at least in a professional capacity, because he was already so used to obeying commands after years of acting as his mother's servant.

Armin became an administrative clerk in charge of ordering office supplies for the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion. He did this for 12 years, known only as a quiet, mannered, and calm, if extremely weird, loner. But he did like the little modicum of control of other men that he got. He enjoyed that. That helped him a little bit. Also loved showering.

with the guys. Seasoning. Marinating. Yeah, yeah. So he was very like... I'm going to replace all of my shampoo with olive oil. Yeah. We'll take some rosemary. Here's... Have a piece of lemon. He was a... But he liked just horsing around with the

boys, man. No, I mean, he didn't horse around with the boys. He liked watching the other boys horse around. Yeah. And then he'd do the thing and be like, ah, it is fun to grab ass. It's fun with some men. You know what I mean? And they're all like, yeah, Armin. Meanwhile, they're like, yeah, come here, Gunter. Let me fucking... Oh, it's so funny, Gunter. Look, it's so funny you're sucking my dick, Gunter. It's so funny you fucking were having gay sex. Gunter, look, dude. I'm fucking in your ass, Gunter. This is the craziest prank in the world, Gunter.

It's so funny because you're doing this and I'm like thinking of a legitimate question. I'm really not sure how you got to the point where you're like acting out a gay porno. I think that this is what he, in his mind, thought was happening. Oh, okay. What he wanted to happen. What he wanted to happen. Fuck yeah, Gunter. Yeah, fuck yeah, Gunter, where he's watching them all. Fuck. It's Gunter. Legitimate question? I thought they couldn't have an army.

No, they absolutely could because they were, remember the Soviets, East Berlin, West Berlin? Oh, yes, yes, yes. They absolutely, they needed an army. You're thinking of Japan. Oh, okay, okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Armin had no hobbies and rarely hung out with the other guys. You said he made marzipan bodies that he used to fuck. Okay, so I think that he had hobbies. Actually, baking is a hobby. Yeah, yeah. Very much a hobby. Well, fuck me. Fuck me.

Well, at his request, Armin was stationed at Rotenberg so he could go home to his mother every night to take care of her until she fell asleep. This, of course, earned him a considerable amount of shit from his fellow soldiers. Do you want to go out to the bar? No, I have to go home and take care of mother. And it's the way he probably does it, too, where he's like,

Unfortunately, tonight I can't join you for your reveries. I must be with my mother. They're like, yeah, cool, great then. Cool, just wanted to make sure. Sorry, I gotta go and fuck Gunter. Go fuck Gunter, this is hilarious. I'm coming on you. Gunter, this is so funny. We're having sex right now.

Now, even though Armin by this point knew that he was gay, he still tried putting on appearances to please his mother, even though Voltraud did everything she could to make sure that Armin never made it past the first date with any woman. As a result,

But I feel like Armin would not be attracted to a woman who had atrocious pronunciation. I don't think he was attracted to any woman.

I don't think the enunciation had anything to do with it. He was gay. Maybe if some of these women spoke more articulately, maybe they could have impressed him. That's the thing is that Armin couldn't understand why any of this was weird, even when others...

patiently explain to him why bringing your mother on a date was strange. How could it possibly be strange? My mother's the most exciting backseat driver that's ever been. She tells me what to do. Do you mind if we go in the back and make out? I was talking to my mom. I'm talking to my mom.

Well, the furthest Armin ever got with a girl was when he was introduced to a friend of a friend named Martina, who already had three children. Poor single moms. They're fucking hard for pickings out there. Real hard. Now, as I said, just like Gein, Armin was better with kids than adults. So he got along well with Martina's children. And that was promising for a single mother. But while the romance was essentially platonic, Armin bragged to his co-workers that they were engaged and that they had all kinds of sex.

None of which was true. What? It all... I could just hear him. It was so nice to finally see her glance. I loved how fluorescently pink her bottom is. We're slowly stretching the clitoris to make a penis. I pull and I pull and I pull and I pull. I tug and I tug and I tug and I tug. Where are the balls?

It all fell apart, however, when Martina told Armin she intended to have her tubes tied because she already had three kids and didn't want any more. Yeah, and that's got to be disappointing for him. Well, even though Armin knew that he was gay, he firmly believed that he would one day marry a woman and have children. So a woman who couldn't have children was useless to him. But,

But when they broke up, he did confess to her. All right. All right. You got me. I'm gay. The worst part, though, is that this drama, this all occurred over a period of three weeks. Yeah, he did not. Yeah, that was as close as he ever got to having anything that was remotely normal. And that woman, that is just a desperate lady. That's less than a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That lady was like because she went straight almost into marriage. She almost went straight to being man. Mrs. Mivas.

Now, Armand was forced to leave the military after 12 years in 1991, partly because he racked up two DWIs in quick succession and partly because it was obvious that this lone weirdo was never going to have the makings of a leader. Well, this is the truth. This is where we're heading into. You can see the danger points where Dennis Nilsen

Jeffrey Dahmer. Same style of avoidance of their own inner struggle. Yeah. And using alcohol to mask it. To slam it down. So he was obviously riddled with cannibalistic fantasies at work. And he was in the army. And he knew that if he said anything...

he was not going to be treated very well. Yeah. If he said anything about any of us, even just wanting to kiss Brad. Doesn't have to. Oh, being gay. Not being cannibal. That's what I'm saying. It's bad enough just being his normal self. Yeah. Never mind telling them his real self. Right? So he can't deal with it. So he was...

It was his fantasies were just supercharged and getting harder to avoid and harder to avoid. So that was why he was just drink. He was drinking himself to death. I don't know why I pictured him as sober. Yeah. No, dude. A lot of these guys, especially Dennis Nilsson and Jeffrey Dahmer are perfect examples about how in order for them to face this inner paraphilia, they have to be drunk.

That's the thing with Nilsson and Dahmer. If they're getting hammered, they would have made more mistakes and got caught earlier. They did. But they made a lot of mistakes. But it was because with Jeffrey Dahmer, it was because who he chose to kill. And with Dennis Nilsson, it was because it all happened inside of his apartment and no one saw anything. Yeah. And the only reason why he got caught is because he was getting rid of the bodies down his drain and a plumber found it. Yeah. Because his pipes got clogged. Yeah. All filled with like slurries of meat because he tried to jam the meat down there.

Good old Mario and Luigi saving the day once again. So after leaving the army, Armin took a computer technician course and got a job at a software firm in the town of Castle, about 200 miles away from the farmhouse in Wustefeld. Primarily, he serviced ATMs, which sounds like the dullest job in Germany. It seems fine. It's

Servicing ATMs. It sounds like, honestly, at some point, you're just like, it's one of those jobs you could probably rip a fucking bong and do your day. Yeah, man. I did data entry for a while. That's the fucking worst. But I still... And I showed up... When I had my data entry job, I was fucked up the whole time. It was awesome. Yeah. But you were...

living in your car and drinking, what was it, scotch every night? Yeah, to go to work. But Armin actually liked his work and hoped to one day use his income to renovate the Wustefeld farmhouse so he could turn it into a technical school where executives could stay and attend week-long computer courses.

This plan, of course, went nowhere because Arman spent all of his money on broken down cars, lawnmowers and cement mixers that he planned to refurbish and flip. He also started buying old tires, broken office chairs and various other pieces of junk that he figured he could fix up and sell. And of course, he just ended up with a yard full of shit.

His life continued this way for another eight years. I mean, think about this. This is really like, I mean, it's 20 years where this guy's just sitting there staring into the middle distance and thinking about eating people and doing nothing about it. He seems lazy to me.

Lazy? Yeah. I would say unambitious. Unambitious. Oh, he was ambitious. Because he's buying all this shit to fix up, but it's just sitting in his front yard. Is he incompetent or is he lazy? It's a hoarder mentality. I think it's something else. When it comes down to hoarding items, is that what you're doing, it's

You don't want to look in. Hoarding is a good example of an avoidant way of living where you're exteriorizing your problems. Your anxiety. You're putting them in front of you. You're doing it on purpose. You're crowding yourself in. In some ways, they believe that they're insulating themselves or they're protecting themselves. And so this is more of the shoving down. I view this as a symptom of more and more

His mom's getting older. He's getting older. He's never lived his dream. You've met a 40-plus stand-up who just started. Oh, God. You know that feeling. I mean, we just hung out with one. Yeah, imagine one that's fucking a cannibal. You know what I mean? I mean, at least he's got a new angle. Life from Northland.

Hey, Cam, mine's sending me over our new Wi-Fi password. Oh, sorry, Mitch. You can't be trusted. What? It's your phone. It's different than mine. Cam! And I thought I was a judgy one. No, it's just messages between different devices aren't encrypted. Okay. Since when do you know about encryption? I know what encryption is, and it's because I'm the last line of defense against any would-be Wi-Fi thieves. Cam, come on. Okay, fine. I'll send it somewhere more private. Thank you.

Safely send messages between different devices on WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone.

Well, in 1999, Waltraud Mivas finally died at the age of 77. Armin himself was about 37. He was almost 40 years old at this time. And after that, Armin was

Armin was all alone in the world. His two half-brothers came to the funeral and they never saw them again. Yeah. And he subsequently went half-guine for a short period of time. After making a shrine to his dead mother, Armin started dressing in her clothes, then would adopt her mannerisms and personality while performing her daily chores around the house.

Embarrassingly, an acquaintance once just popped by the farmhouse to say hi and check on Armin and open the door to find him in full Mother Mivas drag. What's some borscht? So frightening. Glad I checked on you, but not going to stay. Hey, listen. Seems like things are under control here.

All right. You need any pantyhose from the store? No. All right. See you in five or six years. But when he wasn't dressing as his mother, Armand would lay her clothes out on her bed as if he was expecting her to come home at any minute.

He's a very broken man. Yeah. Now, the villagers in Wustefeld found Armin to be just as awkward and peculiar as a grown man as they'd found him as a young boy. Although they did know him as an extremely polite, well-presented man who always wore a dis...

large smile. It's the teeth. Yeah, well, he had a big mouth. He didn't have a choice. It's all teeth, man. It's just the little eyes that are too close to each other and just a big snaggle mouth full of human chomp. I wonder if he had extra teeth. You know, some people are born with extra teeth like Freddie Mercury. Yeah, that's right. He was born. Was it extra teeth or just wrongly spaced out teeth?

I think it was extra. Yeah, I think it was extra. I think he had something that made him able to... Add an octave. It was his teeth that made him where he could sing like that. That was awesome. Yeah. Wow. That's super cool. Look at that mouth. Four extra teeth at the back of his mouth. Wow. Good work, Rob. Huh.

Thanks, Rob. I'm the one who remembered the fact. He's got a computer over there. Good work, Rob. But to try and cure his loneliness and still unwilling to accept his own sexuality, Armin joined what's known in Germany as a marriage institute. Joined that same year as his mother's death. This is a last-ditch effort to find a wife. Yeah. Now, he did...

Now, he did meet one woman who liked him. Again, it's hard to be single. It is very hard to be single. But she refused to move into the farmhouse and Armin refused to move out. So that affair ended as quickly as it began, which also ended Armin's efforts to find a wife to replace his mother.

Because that's really what he wanted. Yeah. I don't think he wants, it's not about the companionship. He wanted a new mommy. Yes. But now fully unfettered and faced with a lot more free time because he didn't have to take care of mama anymore. I'm free.

Armand retreated fully into his cannibalism fantasies by reading every true account he could find. He read a lie. I love that. I love that the inspirational story of the men who survived that crash in the end. He took the worst part of it. Literally the thing that they fought to not reveal the thing that they did not want the world to know. That was the thing that he was like,

What an opportunity. No, he's sitting there jerking as hard as he can reading those passages. Yeah, because he saw pictures of them as young soccer playing men. And then all he could think about is, oh, no, no. Read books about Jeffrey Dahmer, Fritz Harman, Albert Fish, and of course, read everything available on the Donner Party. I thought Albert Fish was a pescatarian. Just pass. Just keep going.

Just keep going. Don't acknowledge it. Don't acknowledge this. It's also around this time that Armin seems to have started developing a sort of philosophy as it applied to his own cannibalistic urges. It's something that might even be considered a moral code. This is why I view him as like he viewed himself as a step above. Yeah. For Armin, eating a woman was wrong because women were needed if the human species were

to continue. Men, however, were viewed as no different than pigs. Tell me about it. And it also didn't hurt that men were what he was attracted to. Yeah. Yeah, he wanted the man part of it. Yeah. Because he truly did. Like, the very, very bottom of him, literally, is a need for acceptance and for somebody to...

come and be there and not run away like everybody else who's ever interacted with him has and so in his mind he starts building this real concept which we've heard from jeffrey domard is not the he's not unique in this and dennis nelson and dennis nelson about how i when i want to eat somebody the reason why we eat them is that then they can be with me forever and they can never leave yeah i'd rather eat a woman but i understand where he's coming from we are the same yeah

I'd have to think about it. You actually would choose a man over a woman. I'd have to think about it. I definitely eat a woman before a man. That weird? Yeah. Oh, for sure. I would eat a woman before a man. That's strange. But you know, I would, but once you put your conscience in there.

You got to eat the dude. See, that's the thing is that I'm kind of, I'm kind of like him with like, yeah, it's like dudes are more like pigs. Yeah. It doesn't matter. That's right now. Technically that's called toxic masculinity that we have been fed that men are disposable. Yeah, that's true. Is that toxic masculinity? Yes. Because what it does then is cause us to act in bad ways. And in the end that hurts us because we believe that at the very end we live to provide for

And nothing else. And then if we don't go to war, we should just die early and get out of the way. Or go to Woodstock 99 and cause a fucking bunch of trouble.

trouble. Yes, definitely. But the most important part of Armin's philosophy was that he decided he would never eat and kill another human being unless that person absolutely wanted to be killed and eaten because he did believe that a straight up murder committed to satisfy his own urges was wrong. See, funny is that I think that he never thought it was wrong, but it was his explanation. I think that he decided at some point that if I create this rule that

it's, it's his sexual, it feeds his sexuality. He wants it to be willing because that's what makes him horny. He's begging the people begging to be eaten is what he wants the most because then it's, they want him. They need him to eat them. See, I look at it as like, I'm not going to go to prison loophole. He, he played it.

later as that. But we'll get to this. Could be. I do. But that's the thing. I do think that he did have some sort of moral code where he was like, murder is wrong. But the moral code made him horny. Yeah. That's what I'm saying is that the moral code made him horny. Yeah. I guess it does always come back. But isn't that another sort of toxic masculinity? Thinking that everything just comes back to sexuality over and over again. Interesting. That we're driven by nothing but our sexual urges and that we're no more complicated than our own cocks. Thank you. I gotta go jerk off. I'll be back.

But at the time, Armin was at a loss as to how to find such a volunteer. So he made substitutions. It's hard to bring up. Yeah. First, he started cutting pictures out of magazines of just body parts. Then he started taking photos of his own body so he could imagine butchering it to make chops and cutlets.

He then bought a video camera and filmed himself holding a knife to his own throat using ketchup and paprika as fake blood in his mock slaughter. Didn't know the red food coloring and corn syrup trick. Absolutely. A little drop of green in there to make it darker. And it's so nice to do it that way. Or you put a little bit of dish soap

in it so it's easy to clean up once you're done. Wow. I'm talking to two fake blood specialists here that ruined many, many, many a bar in Brooklyn and New York City. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just banned for many, many venues. He also, this is, this is very funny. He took photos of his own penis sandwiched between two slices of bread and put a little garnish next to it, put a little parsley and again used ketchup to serve his boy. This is the thing, man. Excuse me, I gotta go jerk off. Yeah.

He loves sandwiches. It is the problem, right? Is that the story, the more details you go into it, is that like, that would be an improv joke I'd make. Yeah. But no, he's doing it. You know what's funny? You know, when I picture him doing it,

I imagine lettuce in the sandwich. Me too. Oh, yeah. But only lettuce. Yeah. Like no tomato. I know. I definitely see the big cartoonish slices of white bread with the top of his withered gray German penis hanging out of the top of it with that little tuft of that nice glistening like it's a Carl's Jr. Yeah, the tomato's wet. I just can't believe he just like normal bread instead of like a bratwurst bun. Yeah.

That is, I am now furious. I cannot believe he put it in a bun. I'm sure he did put it in a bun. I'm sure he put it in a bun at some point. And as soon as he put it in a bun, he's like, I am not some kind of Frankfurter salesman. LAUGHTER

I am a man. I want a gland, witch. Armin also revisited his teenage hobby of making dolls and genitals out of marzipan, all while masturbating to photos of gruesome crime scenes.

All this. What did you do this weekend, Armin? It's just all the boss being like, that was your weekend. Oh, but you'd never guess. Are you a fan of marzipan by any chance? Yes, I love marzipan. How's about crime scene photos? Yeah, I like those too. I

I have a farmhouse that perhaps you would enjoy. You're fucking crazy. We had this funniest week. Me and Gunther had fucking crazy ass sex with each other. It was so hilarious when I told him I loved him and he made me cum. I was fucking dying, dude. Just fucking laughing my ass off thinking about how we're going to get married in nine months, dude. It was fucking crazy, dude. So hilarious. But all this was just peanuts compared to the world that was revealed to Armin when he finally got into

internet access in his own home in the late 90s. If the internet ruined somebody else just as bad as Anders Breivik, it's this man.

The internet was bad in Europe, dude. It's the same internet we have. It's the same one we have. That's like a different dog. Something went wrong. And by the way, there's no comparison between Anders Breivik and Armin Mivas. They both had AOL accounts. Actually, no. Armin had a Hotmail account. Yeah, and AOL is America Online. I don't know, dog. I

I, Al Gore, I brought him up before, man. This is all his fucking fault, dude. I want him in front of me. Yeah, and it wasn't, and it's not like he got radicalized, like cannibal radicalized on the internet. Whoa, you don't need to tell me. Technically, this would be sort of like cannibal radicalization because he was, he thought he was alone in this. True. I feel like that is like

That's one thing that's an interesting thing here is up to this point, besides he's reading about these famous cases, but he's still like six people. Yes. And he's like, there's nobody else like me. Yeah. And then it's not until now when he, you know, like an Epcot where it turns out now all this stuff can happen. With near unlimited access to the most gruesome images and videos available, albeit with what was probably a dial up connection, Armand downloaded hundreds of pictures and videos, torture porn and fake cannibal fetish content.

These would be stored in hard drive folders labeled Glowsham, meaning terror, or Fleisch, meaning meat. Not willing to let go of analog just yet, though, Armin also kept a tape in his VCR at all times so he could record any autopsy show that happened to be on TV. In fact,

HBO had an autopsy show you can still see on Max now that's fucking incredible. It's one of the best true crime series that are on HBO Max. I love that series. It really is. I used to do this, but with Skinamax. Yeah, of course. It was normal behavior. We had the same skill, but for different reasons. Hey, but guess what? Same result.

Well, more often, though, he was able to catch bloody accident footage that was shown on the news, which used to be a lot more common than it is now. Man, I saw some shit on the news when I was a kid. I remember when I saw that chick get murdered on the news, like the news reporter in the cemetery and the guy walks up and he just shot her a bunch. Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember that. I saw that live.

That was wild. Do you remember the guy that shot everybody on the train? He was a white man who shot people that he was afraid of guys that were robbing him on the train. Oh, Bernie Getz? Yes, I remember them showing that, like the pictures of that as a kid. Yeah, because you grew up in New York, so yeah, that would, wow. Yeah, you were there for Bernie Getz. That was a big one. I remember that.

But in searching for images of faux cannibalism on the internet, Armin soon found like minds when it came to cannibalism, even finding essays that promoted it as humane. In one essay, cannibalism was promoted as a way to fix overpopulation and paired its arguments with tips on the best slaughter methods for humans. Armin also found fantasy recipes on the internet.

Like panierte jungenleber or boys liver and breadcrumbs. All right. There was also tennismitrotwein. Oh, what does that mean? Penis and red wine. Oh, I dip my penis in red wine every Friday at Vintage Wine and Eats. Oh.

But from what I'd imagine, most of these recipes were probably just pork dishes with the word human replacing the word pork. Yes, because long pig was the term for a human. Yeah, that's the term from human meat. Long pig. And we're closest, the meat-wise, we're closest to pig, right? According to Armin Mivas, it is

They are like pork, but harsh. Yeah. Okay. But most importantly, Armin found multiple cannibalism chat rooms where he adopted the name of his childhood imaginary friend, Frankie. Also my dog's name, by the way. Yeah. Always weirds me out now when I see the Frankie in relation to fucking cannibalism. But Frankie was his online handle. Right.

Perhaps inspired by the discovery that there were so many others like him, Armin wrote a short story called Der Strickjunge. That's a hard word. That is. Strickjunge. Yeah. That means rent boy. Oh, wow. It was all about a male sex worker being willingly slaughtered for consumption, and it was not written well. Here's a bit of the dialogue. So, Henry, do you want to play the sex worker or the protagonist? I will play the protagonist because I will play Armin Mivas. Okay.

I only have you and I only want you. Let me become a part of you. Well, that isn't right. I'll eat you up then. Then slaughter me. Apart from you, nobody else is interested in me anyhow. But I love you! And that's precisely why you have to do it or otherwise I'll kill myself. I can feel an incredible feeling inside of me. It's as if our souls are connected. Yarrr!

Now, lest you think that online cannibals were a small community, it's estimated that Armin visited and participated in over 400 cannibalism websites and forums with names like TortureNet, Gourmet, and GuyCanna-Balls. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. That's a funny one. That's the humor one. Yeah, that's the funny one. What seemed to be his favorite, however, was Cannibal Cafe.

Now, we were able to access Cannibal Cafe from the Internet Way Back Machine and found that it was a forum hosted on a site called NecroBabes.com. See, I know people that did Gorno. I know Gorno. It's fake. Yeah, it's all fake shit. Snuff film porno. Yeah.

From what I can tell, aside from the primitive 3D art snuff porn section, none of it was real, of course, Cannibal Cafe was the same two dozen or so guys posting about cannibal fantasies and made-up recipes, like the guy who asked if anyone had a recipe for Italian girl meat lasagna because he, quote, loves ethnic dishes. LAUGHTER

Among the last users who posted before the site shut down were Hungry Jack, Betty Pig, Mistress Goo, and IamBeaverFart666. I love that guy. My personal favorites are either Burgerman39 or Dr. Dr. Gimme the News. Dr. Dr. Gimme the News.

I got a bad case of eating you. I was trying to think of some better names for Frankie. Here's what I came up with. I got six. Maybe you guys can help me pick the best one. Sure. Tongue eat cheek. Oh, cute, cute, cute, funny. Neil Marsala. I got cannibal runs.

Nope. Close it off. Dick and Cacciatore. Thank you. There we go. So far, so good. Billy Cheesesteak. Dick and Cacciatore is still the next one. And Brad Wurst. Definitely Dick and Cacciatore. Dick and Cacciatore, by the way. By and by. Number one. Absolutely. Dickandcacciatore.com.

But what's interesting about this forum is that despite the content, this forum worked just like any other community on the internet works to this day. Amongst the violent fantasies were posts about fucking whatever. Like this one. This is the title of one of the last posts on Cannibal Cafe. I had to watch that movie Highlander again. What sheer exhilarating and complete adrenaline rush to go into a battle on a one-on-one basis against all unbeatable odds. What an ultimate high.

And none of this is code, nor does it lead to a discussion about cannibalism. It's just a post about how awesome Highlander is. It is. Yeah. And it's really short, too. Yeah. Just the whole thing. I swear, the more and more I watch that movie, the more I love it better all the time. What a rush to be in an intensive battle scene, to be a mortal, to fight for the end prize, to fight to the very end so that there will be only one. What an intense movie that is. And some guys have been like, yeah.

Want to eat my balls? Yeah. The follow up is, that was a great movie. I saw it in Vienna years ago. As regards, Terry, sorry to tell you, old cock, but I ate her last night with fava beans and a fine Chianti. It did turn into cannibalism. That's a Hannibal Lecter reference. Yeah, and then it's your lame ass pun.

pun that's right you're that you're an idiot that I'm and I'm gonna kick your ass oh yeah yeah back to normal any other internet forum on the fucking since the beginning of the fucking internet yeah after the nerds turned it over to the rest of us that's how it went Al Gore you did this and I'm gonna terrorize your family but in the end cannibal cafe was for 99.9% of its clientele all about fantasy

For example, the site had a so-called livestock application one could fill out. That had, amongst other questions, the option to choose previous sexual training, like oral sex, anal sex, or toilet sex. What is toilet sex? Sex in a toilet. Oh, that's something like a chair, though. It's just a chair. No, but it's...

They made it sound like it was a skill. Like it was a thing that you needed Don't look it up Rob. I just see him going to Google it. As soon as you type in toilet sex everything is going to stop. No one is going to be happy. It's better than fucking on a chair because you can just flush the cum as soon as you're done.

I feel like it would be much easier for me to convince my wife to have sex with me on a chair. Yeah, well, not when you don't have a chair and you just have a toilet and a bathroom. And nothing's going right for you. And you should really think about, like, maybe I should invest in me. Yeah, that means you live at the dog park and your only inside space is the goddamn porta potty. Yeah.

Well, this application also had livestock termination preferences like live roasting, impalement, or vivisection. There was also one separate page called hashtag snuff sex that for some reason automatically downloaded a MIDI version of Stairway to Heaven to my computer that I did not open. Yeah, dude. Delete that. Yeah.

Now, looking further into Cannibal Cafe, we found that the forum was run by an extraordinarily creepy looking man with a huge walrus mustache who went by the name Pero Loco. Yes. Crazy Doug. Yes. In Spanish. Pero Loco started this forum in 1994 and called himself the one true prophet of the Holy Church of Dulcet.

Dulcet, I discovered, is an internet slang term for the fetish that involves killing, cooking, and eating other people. The closest to an origin I could find is that dulcet is an archaic word meaning sweet or pleasant, which evolved into the word dulcet, which means pleasing to the ear. In other words, I have no fucking clue why he chose this word to mean cannibalism makes me horny. I think that, I thought it meant, to be honest, because I...

I just already know. Also, he's the only one who uses that fucking word. I know. I went to go look for it and I couldn't find it. There's a little part of me that wonders if it's based off a piece of media or if it's a name of something. Could be. I feel like it might be that, but sidestorieslpotl at gmail.com. Please let us know. If you know the difference, please tell me because I did try to look into it and I'm just never going to, I'd never be able to get a real job or anything.

anything. Everything I've looked up just this week. I went further into it than I really wanted to. Yep. Still found nothing. I got a lot of stuff I should have seen. Yeah. Yeah. I really saw a lot of shit that I really didn't want to see this week. Hey, but hey. Yeah. Hey. It's all part of the job. That's how it is. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes the job chooses you. Yep.

Now, as far as what Periloko did outside of running the Cannibal Cafe forum, he was an EMT prior to his involvement with the site. Does it really surprise me? Because, you know, EMTs, a lot of our listeners are EMTs. Yeah. Jet black sense of humor. Oh, yeah. And Cannibal Cafe. I mean, the guy's not funny, but a lot of jokes are made. And like we said about the in the necrophilia episode, they have access to fresh bodies. Sure. I mean.

It's also funny because in 2016, Periloko was interviewed for this thing called Encounters with Evil. And it's just so funny because then you realize he's just a guy. Yeah. So this whole thing, it's all technically still all fantasy. And then cuts to Periloko. And this is literally what he sounds like.

No, his, uh, oh, Mavis' post, they never stood out. Yeah. He never wrote anything particularly alarming because this is what everybody writes. You know, it's just so common. I get emails from people asking to be snuffed, murdered, or cannibalized. And there's thousands, thousands of people out there. I have a mailing list. Close to 10,000 people that like this. Again, your Midwest turned into Irish. I have a mailing list.

But when Cannibal Cafe was most active, he was not an EMT. He was an employee at a fly fishing store. Okay. And that's the incredible thing about guys like Armin and guys like Paraloco. It really is just the dude that you have a 10 second interaction with. You have no idea what's going on in that guy's head. You never know what anybody does. No, you really don't.

Interestingly, Paraloko was peripherally involved in a murder that happened years before Armin Mivas made headlines, and it is very close to being the same story. The only thing missing is the cannibalism hook, which is why you've probably never heard about the murder of Sharon Lepotka.

Interesting. Interesting.

Sharon sold her dirty panties to strangers, marketed pornography that often featured unconscious women, and spent a lot of time on necrophilia and S&M discussion forums. I'll let you know something, buddy. Panties don't just get soiled at night.

Pains get soiled all day long, and that's a woman's life. All right? And don't you dare let's shut that down for them. All right? Well, eventually, Sharon LaPaka began advertising her desire to be tortured and killed by a stranger, and her posts were picked up by another computer technician. There's a lot of IT guys in this story. Oh, yeah. A lot of IT guys. This guy was named Robert Glass, and his handles were either Toyman or Slowhand. Ugh.

Slow hand. Isn't that Eric Clapton's nickname? Yeah. Oh, big surprise. And Eric Clapton fans an asshole. Well, after 900 pages of emails, 900 pages of emails going back and forth talking about glass, torturing and murdering Sharon. She finally met glass at his mobile home in North Carolina.

There, the fantasies became reality and the torture began. But according to Glass, he never intended to kill Sharon Lepaka. Until the day he died, he insisted that her death was a sex game gone wrong.

But either way, once Sharon was dead, Glass buried her three feet underground in his backyard. The only way I want a sex game to go wrong is we lose the dice inside me. I cannot imagine me playing any form of sexy game that would involve my death. Yeah, I mean, once a sex game goes wrong, you're still in trouble.

Yeah. You're still it's still a bad thing. That's not a good defense. No, no, no. He's just that's just the truth. That's what he was just trying to say was that I think it's him trying to say, like, it was all fantasy. Everything got out of control. I'm not a murderer. I just love the idea of it. Yeah, it's basically you're going to that's where you go from. Like, I am not do not charge me with first degree murder. Charge me with manslaughter, which is what he was charged and charged with and convicted of.

After Sharon's sudden disappearance, her email was thoroughly searched and her communications with Glass were found. Interestingly, this was the first ever murder case where police arrested a suspect based solely on email communication. Interesting. Yeah. How have we never heard about this? This really is like because Armin ran after these people walked.

So this is like a, it's a literal testing of what they did. I'm actually surprised the website wasn't shut down immediately. Yeah. And I'm surprised that this story isn't well known at all. I had never heard of this story, but everyone's heard about the fucking cannibal of Rottenberg, but it's cannibal. Yeah.

Yeah, it's got a hook. But soon after Glass went down, Sharon's body was found in his backyard, pled guilty to manslaughter and died in prison from a heart attack a few years later. During the lead up to the trial, though, Perro Loco, the guy who ran the Cannibal Cafe for him, he was investigated as a material witness because he knew both Sharon LaPaka and Robert Glass.

He described them both as, quote, very nice people. Very nice people. They always are. But was unable to add anything else to the prosecution's case. Now, Cannibal Cafe was but one of many sites visited by Armand Mivas. And he even had his own cannibal chat room on Yahoo, which were, if I may say, the best chat rooms to ever exist on the Internet. I loved Yahoo chat rooms. Oh, yeah. We partied on there. Yeah, they were great.

But in this room, Armin posed as a woman looking to be slaughtered. This was his bait. I am a tall, stocky, long pig looking for a big-bodied male chef who would like to have a feast of me.

Now, naturally, Irma got a lot of hits from potential candidates. I bet he was dressed like his mother when he wrote it. Oh, he's got to get in character. Oh, I can't be lady without my little shoes. Yeah, he got hits from guys with names like Hell Eater, Steve-O, Snuffy, Turkey. I like Turkey. Oh, Steve-O was on there. Yeah.

But posing as a woman wasn't Armin's real game. After reading so many posts about cannibalistic fantasy that included posts by a lot of people who had fantasies of being killed and eaten, Armin figured there had to be one special man out there who was willing to actually go through with it. Yeah. So Armin managed to snag the email anthrophagous at hotmail.com to proposition potential candidates. And this is really what it's all about, guys. Right? Patience. Openness.

Being willing to extend yourself. If you want to find love, you've got to be honest with yourself first and say, man, I just want to chew your dick off. I want to cut your face off. I want to fucking smash your bones. I want to eat your organs. And you've just got to find the right person that's like,

That's the nicest thing that anybody has ever said to me. I've been writing my whole life. I can't believe it's happening. Well, Ehrman wrote on Cannibal Cafe that he was a German named Frankie searching for a young boy between 18 and 30 years old, elaborating in broken English by saying, quote, Have you a normal build body and will you die? Then come to me, I butchering you and eat your horny flesh.

Now, Armin took the application process seriously because if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. He interviewed as many as 30 applicants, some of them in person, driving to various locations in Germany and the Netherlands. He worked for this. And this is all just building up the horny. Yeah. God, he interviewed 30 people to be slaughtered and fucked? More than I interviewed to be producer of this podcast. Yeah.

It's wild. He was more careful about his cannibalism victim. He needed to be. But that's the thing is that he, once he talked to them, like met them, talked to them, he found that none of them had any intention of actually going through with it. Yeah, pussies. Yeah. Yeah. So Armin would. Dicks. So Armin would politely say auf Wiedersehen and move on to the next man.

Other applicants were rejected even without an interview because they were either too old or too heavy for his tastes, so to speak. Oh, so you wouldn't have eaten to me? Well, you said the most delicious person would be he was really look. He said, obviously, the most delicious thing would be a child, like a child or a little boy. But he's like, that was his problem is that they can't consent.

Yeah. An adult can consent. That's why he said 18 to 30. So he wanted to be as young as possible because he was pretty certain that younger meat would taste better than older meat. Wouldn't be tough and stringy. Yeah. But in February of 2001... Just having to take it at face value. I love him just going like, good. Wow, good. Thanks. But in February of 2001, Armand saw a posting on one of his cannibal sites from a user named Ktor99 saying...

I offer myself up and I will let you dine on my life body. Not butchery. Dining. Now the thing about cater 99 loved exclamation points. Yeah. So it was like, so technically it's not butchery dining. And he's a caterer. So he loves a party. He does.

cater 99 was a man named band. Yorgen Brandes. I can't say that like that. It's gotta be burned. Yorgen Brandes. Talk about again, we're not going to malign the dead.

But he was a little weird too, huh? He was a bit strange. Yeah. Of course. I'm just saying. He seemed like he was a little weird. Yeah. We're going to get into his story completely on the next episode. But he claimed to be 36 years old, 5'9", and 160 pounds, which was nearly ideal for Armand. Unfortunately,

Under the username Frankie, Armin began exchanging naked photos and torture fantasies with Bernd. Here is an example of their back and forth after Armin sent a photo of his teeth. I will sink them into your body and bite off your tongue. That won't be hell, but heaven on earth. This will be the biggest kick for me. I get a kick out of the idea of having another person inside me.

Great. Terrific.

And so after about a month of what could be described as a whirlwind romance, had one of these men not been very specifically suicidal, Bernd agreed to travel to Armin's farmhouse on March 9th, 2001. Just before he left, Bernd told Armin...

I'm your meat. Which is also really funny because like the topic of his emails, I went to the Wayback Machine and got their correspondence back and forth. And each one of the titles are all like, please eat me! Exclamation point. Eat me! It's Thanksgiving Day. Eat me!

Now, I'm a little unclear on whether Armin began preparing for Baron's slaughter after Baron agreed to meet or if Armin had the full setup already in place. But either way, by the time Baron arrived, Armin was ready for the slaughter. They had talked about it in pre-planned. He was preparing slowly but surely as they were talking and he was showing him his updated room as they went. Nice.

I mean, not nice, but you know, like, yeah, it's nice. Cool. I mean, if you're doing this, all right, let's just say, yeah, if you're doing, if you're already in this situation, right? Yeah. We're already in here for instance. It's, it is nice. It's nice. Look at Mark Twitchell. He surprised those guys. They had no idea.

Like he's coming there. People like he, that guy knows he's going to get eaten. Yeah. No, he's excited about it. They're having a pro they're working on a project together. Yeah. They're loving it. I spent a lot of time, you know, like fixing up the guest room today. Cause I got guests coming over. It's got a lot to do with that. Of course. Yeah. You want to make sure it's nice. Make sure they're comfortable. Of course. Yeah.

Well, according to what Armin had read on his cannibal sites, one to 200 pounds of so-called long pig could be easily butchered by one person if he had the right setup. First, he would need considerable space. So Armin chose a large room on the second floor of his home that had formerly been a smokehouse. Because he had nothing but rooms. Yes, he had 36 rooms. He had a smokehouse in his house?

I think that was very common for this time period because it's a farm. And so a lot of times if you're going to keep meat for a very long specific time, you would smoke it to preserve it. It's also in Germany, which is like the sausage capital of the world. Yeah. So it's very convenient. It's extremely convenient.

Armin decorated the room with meat hooks for atmosphere, constructed a meat trough to drain the blood, and put a large bed frame and mattress in the center to serve as a sort of altar where Berend would be killed. Just in case, he also set up ropes and belts to restrain Berend if necessary, but as we'll find out, they will not be necessary at all.

The butcher's bench would be an old metal patio table, while his tools would be sharp knives and his grandmother's old axe. To give it an S&M edge, because there was definitely going to be plenty of that before the slaughter. You bet, man. You want to be soft. Yep. Oh, yeah. Armin bought a cat of nine tails, but made his own whip from an old umbrella and a TV cable. That worked. That was for him. That was for him.

A wooden cage was also constructed and placed in the corner of the room to complete the livestock fantasy, and mattresses lined the walls to soundproof the room. Once Armin was done, he took photos of his slaughter room and posted them to his cannibal sites for everyone's enjoyment. And this was all done to the soundtrack of what, Rob? Yeah! Here's a top and here's a hook. Here's a trough.

And here's a book we will read together, me and my friend. Now, I know my name is burnt, but please eat me raw. We will find out that his penis will become, in fact, burnt. God damn it.

Now, based on his cannibalism research, Armin decided that Bernd would taste best if he fasted for 48 hours before arriving in Rottenberg. This, Armin decided, would flush Bernd's system, purging stored toxins and bodily waste that would make bleeding and cleaning Bernd easier. In other words, he didn't want Bernd to shit himself after he died. Sad. It's like a colonoscopy. You want to be cleaned out. Yeah. They let him have water, though. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The only...

I guess. The only worry Armin had was that Bernd might be too old because Armin believed that the best meat would be produced by men no older than 30, lest the flesh be too tough and stringy like so much old cow. Yes. Now, Armin had actually taken lessons from the local slaughterhouse to learn the best ways to butcher Bernd that would result in the most meat. And he decided that the halal slaughter method would work best.

This method involved Bernd being stabbed in the throat. Then his body would be hauled up by its feet with loops of rope slung over the wooden beam of a cross Armin had set up. This was the so-called Gein configuration that took inspiration from how Ed Gein had butchered his last victim, Bernice Warden.

And so, on March 9th, 2001, Bernd Brandes arrived by train in the town of Kassel where Armin was waiting. They immediately recognized each other from the countless photos they'd shared, and when they finally met, Bernd said, I am your kater.

I am your flesh. I hope you'll find me tasty. Me too! Honestly! They just start furiously making out. Oh, fuck yeah! Man, it was fucking crazy when I was like, it was me and my bro, right? We were watching a baseball game and shit, right? Having some french fries, having a fucking blast, right? Moving back to his house, man. Next thing you know, dude, we're totally fucking in the bathroom together watching each other's legs. Ha!

Fucking funny as shit, dude. I love him. And it's there that we'll pick back up next week with Band and Armin's fateful meeting and how that ended. No, I mean it. This was supposed to be one.

But it's so thick. Next week is, we're going to wrap it up. We have a huge other true crime series coming after this one. But this is, next week's going to get fucking gnarly. It's going to get really gnarly. Because remember, all of this shit was videotaped. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, buddy. I'll send it to you. You watched it? I saw stills. Stills. Okay, yeah. Stills I can do. I can do some stills. Wait, now you don't want to send it to me? That's pretty gross. Ah, you know, get me ready. That's all right. Yeah.

Send him over to me. As a former chef, you've got to be able to handle it. But yeah, he's a fascinating character, and he's probably getting out of jail soon. Probably. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll get into it next episode. Yeah, because his trial was also hilarious. Yeah, no, that's the thing is that, you know, it's the lead up to it. It's the, you know, what happened that weekend itself is,

what happened in the immediate aftermath of that weekend in between the time that he killed an eight baron and the time that he was arrested. That's incredible as well. That's so fucking weird. And then it's the trial itself, which is just so strange. Like we're going to be getting into like the German legal system, which is weird and scary, which is very strange. Uh, they've got, I mean, it's, I mean, it's,

any legal system is going to be strange compared to the one that you know. Yeah. But yeah, it's yeah, it's there's a lot of ins and outs of this story and it's fascinating. I was so taken aback by how much we love this story. Yeah, we love this. So go to patreon.com slash last podcast on the left to see us flap our gums.

at you. If you want to see Henry's dance during the German Volksmusik, yeah, you can go and see that there. That's the only place in the world you can see it. That's it. And you're going to go to TikTok and LP on the left. I don't know what's on there. In the world.

over to twitch.tv and instagram don't forget about instagram lb on tv slash go to twitch.tv slash lpn tv for all of your twitch lpn needs it's all going over to our youtube channel go check out that so much we've got a lot of good new content coming out good puts coming back go to last podcast on the left.com to buy tickets to see us live we are going to be on stage in seattle tomorrow i can't

Fucking wait. We love doing it. If you're around, we only got a couple tickets left. If you want to grab some, come show up. That'd be great. I'm super excited for the show. Yeah. Seattle loves us, apparently. I was talking to my cousins from there, and she's like, everyone's talking about the show. And I was like, so I'm very excited. Yeah, so much. But we've always had such a great time in Seattle. Seattle was actually the first time we played Seattle. That was the first time a fight broke out at one of our shows. Yeah, that was one of the first times we legitimately bombed. Oh, wow.

Wow, that's amazing. But we've been making it up ever since. We really have. Yeah. So thank you, guys. If you want to fight, hit us up. Do it on stage. Do it on stage. But buy a ticket. If you want to fight us, you have to buy a VIP ticket to the Q&A.

And that's where the fight will happen. A lot of fun. I just, I can't wait. Yeah, I can't wait. And we also got shows coming up in Washington, D.C. Thanks to everybody in Chicago. We sold out Chicago. Yep. Thanks so much. And, you know, these tickets are going fast everywhere that we're playing in Brooklyn and here in Los Angeles. And we're coming to London. We're coming to Reykjavik, Iceland. And we're, of course, going to be coming to Australia in August, February.

So make sure to get your tickets for that now before they sell out. And I want to explicitly thank Joel, a researcher. We needed a fast turnaround on this fucking show, and he jumped right in. Shaw, one of our also been great work. I just want to say thank you to everybody who works here. But honestly, we turned the ship around for this episode very, very good. And I want to thank one of our other researchers, Patrick Fisher, who actually has German parents and was the one who gave me the word der Spinnung.

Because I asked him, what is the name? What is the word for oddball in German? And he's like, yeah, Deschpinne. Watch if this gets played in Germany. It has to get bleeped out each time. Oh my God, they said Zeeschwerd.

We'll find out. Yeah. Well, we'll see. But thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. And he also does a great job on No Dogs in Space researching that as well. And we recorded a couple of episodes. Speaking of Germany, like we're still deep in our Krautrock series. We record a couple of episodes of our Cannes series, and that's going to be coming up very soon. We're very excited about that. So, yeah, man, I'm fucking knee deep in Germany all the time now. I love it. It's great. All right.

What are you looking at? Let's end this. All right, fuckers. Hail Satan. Again. Hail Ula. Yeah, sure. I mean, she was a murderous witch, but a fun one. She never killed anybody. She just stole people's money who wanted to kill somebody, and that is admirable. Technically, you're right. That's good. Yeah, and then she gambled it all away. Yeah, as she should.

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