The Cannibal Cafe? Murder or Volunteer?
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- Don't ever get in front of a high definition camera and bright lights because you will see what you really look like. And it's unfortunate. I'm just kidding, I'm beautiful. Hi guys, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian and today is Monday which means it's murder, mystery and makeup Monday.

If you're new here, on Mondays I've been doing a little like series thing where I sit down, I talk about a true crime or like a murder story. I know it's weird. And then I get ready. True crime and makeup. We married them and we're here. If you like true crime stories, you like makeup, go ahead and subscribe. A little warning about today's episode.

because I'm spoiler alert, another cannibal, but it's a little bit more intense. This story today is about Armin Mives. Tell you, I watched over and over and over again, a YouTube video with an interview with Armin get into my head, like how he says his last name. I'm just gonna call him Armin 'cause that's his name. No need to use his last name. And he's German and this is based in Germany. I can barely speak English correctly, sorry.

I'm trying my best here. But something that really interests me and I'm not trying to like glorify or idolize these people whatsoever, but it definitely interests me and that is cannibalism. Not in a way where it's something I like want to partake in. I wanna like be in it. No, it's nothing like that. It's just,

I find it very interesting, I think because it's so far opposite of anything I have ever heard of or my brain truly can't comprehend. And I consider myself a very curious cat. Meow. So I get very invested in these types of things. I just want to know everything I can about these people and find a pattern in their stories or have an understanding of is it something that you're born with? Is it something that you learn?

like the nurture versus nature type of deal. Okay, so Armin, he was born on December 1st, 1961. Armin's father, he was a police officer. So he had a good job. He saved up enough money to buy his family a 36 room, 16,000 square foot mansion in Germany. So Armin's parents, they married when the mom was 40 years old and

And dad was 21 years old. So there was a big age difference. Armin would say that like his mom was extremely controlling. She was manipulative, Jesus Christ. She was manipulative. She was jealous. She was always accusing her husband of cheating and that she got pregnant with Armin pretty much as a way to keep her husband.

not because she wanted a baby, but because she just wanted to pretty much keep her husband so he wouldn't leave. His mom was extremely just possessive of him. I guess his mom and dad would always fight and then she would threaten to kill him all the time. Like this was just a normal thing that would happen in the household. And it was just a very toxic relationship. So there were a total of three kids. So Armin was the youngest and then he had two older siblings,

But when he was young, like five or six years old, his older siblings actually left the house. They just were tired of it. Since they were older, they were like older teenagers, they just decided, "Peace out, we're gone." So they left, which just left Armin at home with his mom and dad by himself. Armin would say that his mom would just not show any affection. She wasn't loving. She didn't show any type of love.

There was no relationship really at all between them. If anything, she would just yell at him. She was always asking him to do all of the household chores. Like she wouldn't really do anything. It was always up to him. And he's like six or seven years old. And then eventually Armin's father just picked up and left. And Armin was seven years old. So when he was pretty young, his dad just stormed out of the house,

got into the car and drove off. No explanation, nothing. And he never saw him again. So not only did his older siblings leave, I mean, so did his father. So I can imagine what that's gonna do to a child, but life goes on and to keep himself busy, like to pass the time he would read. So he started reading Robinson Crusoe. I guess just to keep it simple, the story,

in it there is a part about cannibalism. He found himself just being fixated on eating another person and would kind of obsess over it. He was 10 years old at the time. Yeah, that's where it started for him, the introduction.

So time goes on and then at 19 years old, Armin left home and he joined the West German army. He wanted to be a professional soldier and spent 12 years in the armed forces. He felt comfortable and normality that stopped him from pursuing his fantasies. During this period when he was in the army, he developed friendships with women, but it never went anywhere.

He started to question his sexuality and would ask his friend, like, do you think I'm gay? And his friend would say, that's something that you need to know. I can't tell you that. His friend, because there's an interview with his friend, he would say that, like, everyone kind of knew he was gay, but...

it was kind of like Armin was the last to know. Or maybe he just didn't know what it was. And then he started drinking and he started drinking pretty heavily. He ended up getting in two car accidents and both of them were because he was driving intoxicated. And then he ended up getting kicked out from the army. So then he moves back home with his mom. And at this point he's now 32. So he was in the army for a while. So Armin moves back home with his mom. At this point she's older now.

She's ill. She really can't do much for herself any longer. Not that she, from the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like she really did anything on her own anyways, but he went there to take care of her. Plus there was plenty of room because she lived in this humungo mansion. He decided to go in a different career path though. And he ended up becoming a computer engineer and he succeeded in his job doing that. He worked for, I believe a bank. So then the nineties come around and

Armin got introduced or the whole world got introduced to the World Wide Web, the good old days. Now back in like when the internet first started, first of all, websites were super janky, but also the internet really wasn't

that monitored as well. So like there wasn't anyone policing things that could be illegal. You see what I'm saying? Armen started to poke around on the internet, kind of like typing in whatever. And he came across a community of cannibals. It was like a website that was for cannibals and they would all,

It was pretty much like a forum where everyone would come together. Not everyone, the cannibals would come together and talk about how they pretty much wanted to eat each other and their fantasies of eating people. So when Armin saw this, he was like,

"Hell yeah, there's other people out there like me, "so I'm not alone in feeling like this. "There's other people out there feeling like this." And the internet really, it bridged a gap between fantasy and reality. He ended up building his own website where he can openly talk about cannibalism, and he would also create fake images. There was this website that he would visit, it was called Cannibal Cafe, and naturally when I read that, I was like, "Cannibal Cafe." And I tried to go to the website or whatever,

I was just curious to know if it was still up. It's not up anymore, but if you use Wayback Machine, it lets you browse

Past internet stuff that you really can't find nowadays and you can find it through there You can't find Armin's posts from back then a lot of them got removed once shit went down But it's such an interesting website. It's creepy and it's pretty much just a cheap looking Well, yeah, cuz the internet back then was so basic So it's like a forum like a and people just post about like their fantasies I want to eat your flesh and just

"Well, I can't wait to murder this girl and eat her." Yeah, a lot of that. So Armin, being the little crafty little bitch that he is, he would go down to like a butcher shop, he would buy some meat, he would take this meat and like,

and sculpt it and to make it look like they were body parts. He would take photos of it and then he would post it on these websites that he was visiting and make it look like he really did kill somebody and like brag about how he killed somebody and cooked them and ate them and stuff. So people have been lying on the internet since day one. So just FYI, he made it look like it was real dead bodies and he was sharing these images on the cannibal websites

and people were believing it and like idolizing him because he was actually doing it. Like all these people on there were talk and he was actually doing it. So he kind of became a little internet famous. Then the 2nd of September, 1999 rolls around. Armin comes home from work. So he's still working his computer engineering job. Comes home from work. He goes up to his mom's bedroom and he finds his mom

Dead in bed. Now, most of us would be really sad, but Armin was like, "Fuck yeah, she dead, finally." He was excited because he was free. He was finally free from his mom's control, from her abuse. And he felt like he could finally deep dive into his fantasy of eating people because his mom wasn't there any longer to judge him.

His mom didn't know what he was doing, but with her not there, he decided, I'm gonna turn one of the bedrooms into my dungeon or my cannibal room. And that's where I'm gonna take photos, all that good stuff. He was just relieved because now he could live his life in his own rules. He felt a sense of

He now has the house to himself and his dominating mother was out of the picture. He then took his fantasy to the next level. Two months after his mom was gone, he started advertising on these cannibal websites.

So Armin decided to post on the Cannibal Cafe website asking for a volunteer. He was asking for anyone willing to be eaten. So a lot of the people on this website would post like role play. They would say role play when they wanted someone to just kind of play along with the idea of being eaten. But Armin was actually looking for a volunteer, someone who wanted to die and

if he could do it. At least he asked before he did it. You know, that was nice, I guess. So he kind of hit a couple of websites because there were multiple cannibal websites and he would post in German and in English. One of them said, "I'm in search for a young boy between 18 and 30 years old. If you have a normal build body and you are willing to die, then come to me. I'm butchering you and eat your horny flesh."

I'm not sure what horny flesh is, but okay. So Armen made his way around these websites

and he was looking for somebody who was willing to die. Something that Armin stood by was that he didn't want somebody who was not willing to die. He wanted this person to willingly participate. And he made that very clear. So Armin wants horny flesh. Surprisingly, he gets a lot of responses. A lot of people are writing him back, but then last minute they would back out. But Armin had one guy come forward and say like, yeah, I'll do it. So

So this man, I didn't get his name, but this man comes forward. They start emailing back and forth and this man seems really interested. He's like, "It's my fantasy to be eaten." So Armin writes back, "Cool." I'm sure he doesn't say cool, but he says, "All right, let's meet here at my house. We'll go through with it." So this man comes over to Armin's mansion. He's in this huge ass creepy mansion by himself. The man comes over and he lays out on the table and Armin is telling him play by play what's gonna happen.

And then the man tells Armin that he's not feeling well, that he didn't really wanna do this. He didn't wanna go through with this. And Armin, he says, okay, let's not do this then. And he lets the man get up and walk out and go home. Again, Armin wanted somebody who was willing to be eaten.

He didn't want to murder somebody. Like that wasn't his fantasy. Which side note, that guy is lucky that Armin wasn't fully crazy because he could have easily just died that night. But he didn't. Armin didn't want to be a murderer. So Armin was a little bummed that it didn't work out. But little DIY Armin over here. He ended up paper mache-ing a body. He painted it and made it look like it was a person and he takes photos.

He took photos of it. He also got a mannequin from a store, one that was being thrown out. He got this mannequin, painted it again, making it look like a dead body. He would take pictures of it and post it on the cannibal website, making it look like he did kill somebody and ate them. I mean, the internet was just going crazy over him. They're like, wow, you're our hero. They were just really idolizing Armin and the fact that he was...

killing and eating people. So Armin was, you know, internet king on this cannibal website and was determined to find somebody who was willing to die, right? And he prepared one of the extra rooms in the house to be the slaughter room. And the slaughter room had rooms

no windows in there he had a cage to hold his victims or whatever and he also had meat hooks hanging from the ceiling kind of like Catherine so finally he gets a response

okay someone who was willing to be eaten the final person to respond to arman's post his name was brandes brandes was an engineer he was 34 years old he was actually married but he came out to his wife as being curious he wanted to experiment with

men. I think he knew he was gay, but maybe he was just too afraid to actually say it because he was married. So they ended up separating because it caused a lot of tension in the relationship. So Brandes was on the cannibal websites as well. He's interested in this. He writes Armin and he's like, he volunteers himself to be eaten. They email each other back and forth and Armin discusses with Brandes the best way to be consumed and what he'd

plans on doing with his body. Brandes actually throws out a lot of ideas as well. Like I want my skull to be used as an ashtray. That was his request. Brandes also expressed to Armin that he wanted his penis to be cut off and for both of them to eat it. He wanted to share the eatation of the penis. Brandes said that this was a big fantasy of his to chop off his wiener.

Dream big, they say. Dream big. I forgot to say, if you hear humming, I'm sorry, I had to turn on my fan. It gets so hot in this room with my lights that I was melting and it's got me nervous about what's to come with summertime approaching. So if you hear humming, I'm sorry, but a bitch is hot. Anyways, so Brandez was telling Armin his fantasies and Armin, as crazy as this sounds, in interviews,

He said that he didn't want to be disrespectful and not do anything that wasn't of the volunteer's wishes. So if a volunteer wanted to be eaten a certain way, he would make sure and do that for the volunteer because he didn't want to disrespect at all. So Brandez is telling Armin, I want my dick to be eaten. So March 9th, 2001, Brandez,

who has been communicating with Armin for a while now. They set a date, they set a plan, March 9th, come out here, Armin's place, and we will feast, we will eat. So once Brandes gets there, they have sexual relations, right? Armin gives Brandes a bunch of sleeping pills and he gives him some Vicks.

and he gives him some alcohol and the reason he does this is because he doesn't want Brandes to be in any pain and he thinks that this will help with the pain. Now Brandes takes the sleeping pills and the alcohol and everything willingly like he's not sneaking it into his drink or his food or anything that Armin tells Brandes that this is gonna help with the pain.

pain, this will help so you don't really feel anything. Armin tells Brandes ahead of time that he's gonna film the process so he can watch it over and over and over again and get that sick thrill that he's looking to get and like probably take his pants off to it or something. So Armin sets up the video camera. Brandes, he lays down on the table. Armin then decides we're gonna start with the penis first. We're gonna chop off your penis.

and then we're both gonna eat it together. Armin has the video recorder going, starts to cut off the penis. In an interview, Armin says Brandes screamed horribly, but it was short, maybe 20 to 30 seconds, and that blood was squirting from the open wound similar to a fountain. These are his words, but they got the penis off.

So Armin decides to then cook the penis because you know like that was the wish. He goes over into the kitchen, goes to the little, the stove top thing. He puts a little bit of garlic, some salt, some pepper, chop up the wiener, puts it in there, some oil, flipping it.

So after cooking the wiener, he serves it to Brandes and himself on a nice plate, feeds it to him. Armin says that the penis tastes disgusting. It was super chewy and it just wasn't edible. And he was pretty bummed.

He said it was really disappointing, but it just was not edible. Brandes is bleeding a lot, creating a mess. Armin decides to put Brandes into the bathtub. That way he could run the water and it wouldn't be so messy 'cause he's bleeding.

He's just gonna let him bleed out essentially. And he sits in the bathtub and he just waits it out. Every 15 minutes, Armin would go and like check on him in the bathtub. He said that it was a really slow process. Like he thought he was gonna die a lot faster, but he was just dying at a slow pace.

so he busted out his star trek book i'm not lying this is what he said in the interview his star trek book you know kill the time read this book and wait it out until brandis died he wasn't dying fast enough so about after like three hours armin just goes in there he says sorry i'm just gonna i'm just gonna slit your throat because you're taking too long to die gives brandis a

kiss, and then he slits his throat. You know, there's just a lot going on in this story to the point where like, it's really hard to believe. Okay, once Brandes has died, that's when Armin now gets to work. He takes his body out of the tub and he chops Brandes into pieces. He puts part of him in the freezer and then he buries the skull in the garden.

In an interview, Armin says that he decorated the table with nice candles. I took out my best dinner service and I fried a piece of rump steak, a piece from his back, made what I call princess potatoes and sprouts. After I prepared my meal, I ate it. These are his quotes.

He then goes on to say, "The first bite was of course very strange. It was a feeling I can't really describe. I'd spent over 40 years longing for it, dreaming about it. And now I was getting the feeling that I was actually achieving this perfect inner connection through his flesh. The flesh tastes like pork, but stronger.

He then stored a lot of the pieces of the body like in little Ziploc bags. He put them in his freezer. He hid them underneath a bunch of pizza boxes and he would spend the next six to eight months eating parts of the body. He would add it as pizza topping. He would eat some for breakfast. He was just

using this as his food supply. I don't know what to say to that. I really don't know. So I forgot to say Armin took video footage of this whole process right but then he also took photos of the process as well. Armin then went on to his cannibal websites again and he uploaded these photos of Brandes onto the website and like his body and of course once again like this website goes crazy for him. They're like oh my god you're the best and they're really idolizing him. I mean Armin

never acknowledges this, but I personally believe, which means nothing, but that he probably was getting some kind of high from this. Like what comes from a family who really didn't even acknowledge him to now like being recognized for something. And that probably really made him feel good. Late November, early December, that's when Armin decides to go back onto his cannibal websites and advertise again because he wants a new volunteer. His supply is running low. He's been eating all of this meat for the last couple of months and he needs a new volunteer.

fix. He needs some new fresh meat. He posts on a couple of different cannibal websites again. On this site there was this Austrian student who saw Armin's post and saw the pictures of the bodies and stuff and then saw that Armin was looking for a new victim so he actually tipped off police letting them know hey I think this guy actually killed somebody and on the morning of December 10th 2002 police made a visit to the mansion that

Armin lived in. Now police, they go into Armin's house and they start snooping around looking for any type of evidence and they weren't coming across anything which is odd because he had a slaughter room but maybe they just didn't make it upstairs yet. We don't know. But they get to the refrigerator and they look in the freezer and underneath pizza boxes they find 50 pounds of meat and Armin tells the police that it's wild pig meat but then another police officer looks closer and they notice there's

skin on it still. And so they take the meat out and upon further inspection, they noticed that it's human meat. So when the police ask him, is this like human meat? Armin says yes. And he admits to what he had done. And he tells them about

the photos and the VHS showing what he had done and Armin actually never once denies what he did. The only time he did deny something was when the police showed up, he didn't confess that it was human meat in the freezer, he said it was wild pig but other than that, he was very honest, told them exactly what happened

showed them where the tapes were at, gave him his computer, everything. Police arrest him, naturally, as they should. On January 30th, 2004, Armin was convicted of manslaughter and he was only sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.

Look, real talk, that made a lot of people upset, okay? So this case picked up a huge amount of media coverage and people were outraged. But Armin's defense, and I think it's actually pretty damn strong, was that Brandes was willing. He volunteered. All of the email correspondence that investigators have found, he actually drove out to Armin's house is like more proof. It also proved problematic for German lawyers who discovered that cannibalism is in fact

legal in Germany. So instead they charged Armin with murder for the purposes of sexual pleasure and with disturbing the peace of the dead. They ended up showing the court 19 minutes of the video that Armin took, which I'm sure probably ruined a lot of people's lives because I couldn't imagine what they saw on that tape. Their argument was that he should have been convicted of murder and not manslaughter, and also that he should be given a life sentence, not eight years.

So in the retrial, they thought that Brandes was not in the right mind to be able to give consent. And then finally, May 10th, 2006, Armin was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Afterwards, Armin, he's in prison now, he's still in prison. He actually became a vegetarian, so he doesn't eat meat anymore. And he...

He has done interviews, which you can find easily on YouTube. And in these interviews, he's very calm, like very well-spoken. He would not even... Hell, there's one thing I've learned about doing these murder mystery things is that nobody ever looks like a killer, but they're probably a killer. So he looks normal, normal as hell, but he's a fucking killer. And yeah, he seems...

Good, I guess, I don't know. He says what he did was wrong and he acknowledges that. So yeah, I mean, this is Germany too. Like I have no idea how their legal system works. I don't even know how our legal system works for Christ's sakes. Don't know what the hell's going on over there in Germany. So that's the story about Armin Mavis.

Let me know what you think of this story down below. I would ask the question, do you think he deserved life in prison? But I have a feeling everybody's going to say yes. A piece of advice would be anyone who looks really normal to you, they could potentially be a murderer. So don't be judgmental. But other than that, I hope you have a very good day today. You make good choices. Be safe out there. I'll be seeing you guys later.