EP03: The Kobe Cannibal
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All right, welcome back to another episode of the Psychopedia podcast with myself, Tank Sinatra, and my co-host, Investigator Slater. If you've listened to any of the episodes, you know that I'm not the biggest fan of true crime at all. I don't get it. I know it's interesting to people. It provides Investigator Slater with anxiety relief. It makes me feel much worse about the state of the world.

So what we're on a mission to do, her and I, not you and us, like we don't know you, you don't know us, but she's trying- They know us a little bit. They know us more than we know them. Yeah, okay, true. She's just trying to turn me into a true crime fan and I am willing. It's not like I'm not willing. I just- Still try anything once. I'll try anything once. I just don't get it quite yet. I do understand the fascination. I just don't feel it. I don't feel that fascination. So-

Investigator Slater, I mean, that's not just a cute nickname. She's the real deal. These cases come in well-researched. And what did you say? She's got passion and compassion. Yes, nailed it. For the victims. I do too, but I also like to make jokes. That's who you are. If you're coming here for a 60-minute style breakdown of a crime...

Please don't listen and don't tweet about us and try and get us in trouble because we're making jokes about dead people. It's just what it is. It's not about the dead people. It's about the murder. I don't know. It's about the circumstances. Yes. It's not the murder. It's not the death or the torturing or the mutilation or whatever we're going to get into tonight.

or the raping or the kidnapping. It's not about that. There's nothing funny about that. You're just a funny guy. That's not funny, obviously. Listen, this stuff makes me anxious and I cope with my anxiety by making jokes. So that's what I'm going to do. But we'll see what happens because she's right. It's really the people involved are, I don't want to say they're unfortunate players in this wild game of life, but it really is more about the story and

You know, you do a great job of telling me what happened in these cases. And you do make it kind of interesting. And you do a great job of bringing some levity to it. We'll see if you can do it again. So she also sometimes likes to keep facts vague and make me guess and...

I mean, I'm such a bad true crime fan. I never know what's going on. So that'll be fun for you. If you don't know about this case, you may learn a thing or two. If you do know about the case, then you get to feel smart while you listen to the podcast. Right on. So with that, why don't you tell me about what horrific thing happened in the world that we're making light of? Tonight's menu, we are featuring a murderer,

cannibal, and necrophile all wrapped up in a well-dressed, 4'9", 84-pound Japanese male body. No, what the fuck? Wait, hold on, hold on. Go back. I need the stats again. I need this fantasy basketball team to be put together well. Well, first of all, he's well-dressed. He's rather dapper, for what that's worth. He's 4'9". 4'9". So he's shorter than I am, and I'm pretty small. Was it the bagel boss guy?

The bagel boss guy. Do you know that guy? No. The guy who went absolutely bananas in a bagel boss because someone called him short? No. Oh, man. He's like the little person on Elf. He's like, call me Elf one more time. Yeah. He beats the crap out of Buddy. He was also on Game of Thrones. He was. He ended up being a boss. Fantastic actor, Peter Dinklage. Who knew? So 4'9", 84 pounds.

We're not calling him a child because... He's a man. In what sense? He's short, but he's a man. He's a grown-up. He's a short king. So 4'9", 84 pounds, Japanese man, well-dressed, necrophile. Murderer, cannibal. Sounds like a great guy. Yeah. This fine specimen reached celebrity status after committing an absolutely horrific crime for which he never saw the inside of a prison cell.

in spite of his well-known guilt. So everybody knew that he had a penchant for human flesh. Everybody knew that he did what he did. But due to a technicality, which we'll explore later in the episode, he was never held accountable for what he did. Who is this guy? What is his... Tonight, I am serving you a steaming hot piece of fresh human shit known as the Kobe Cannibal.

You know it? No. Okay. His real name is Issei Sagawa, but he's more famously known as the Kobe Cannibal. What are we going to call him? We're going to call him Issei, and then I get tongue-tied sometimes, admittedly. Issei Laurent. So we're going to probably end up calling him Sagawa most of the episode. Why? Issei is so much easier than Sagawa. I struggle with it for some reason. I don't know which one you're talking about. All right. So then correct me. Just call him YSL. That's fine.

So let's examine Issei's early life, beginning with his time in the womb. Okay. Super early life. Seems normal. His mother had a serious fall in their family home that almost caused her to miscarry her pregnancy with Issei. Oh, was he like a premature baby? As a result of the fall, yes. He was born four months premature on April 26, 1949, and he had some health complications off the bat.

Including enteritis, which is like a painful intestinal illness. To treat that as a preemie... He got gas. He wasn't well. Yeah. And he was so tiny, he could fit in the palm of his father's hand. Oh, my God. So they needed to give him infusions of potassium and calcium just to keep him alive.

However, despite this challenging start to life, he made a full recovery and was reportedly a healthy baby and child, in spite of the fact that he still always looked frail and sickly. I mean, how small was he as a child if he was a four-foot-nine man? I mean, not big. He was a small boy. Not big. He always lagged behind. That's, you know what? Which I empathize with. You talked about compassion. Mm-hmm.

Issei, I don't condone what you've done. I don't even know what you've done, but I do understand where it comes from. If you were a short king your entire life, people are mean to short people. They're rude. They bully them. Yes. Especially men. I will tell you that in the beginning of his life and at this point in the case, it's normal to empathize with him. Oh.

So you're doing okay. Yeah. We'll find out. We'll find out. So two years after Issei's birth, the Sagawa family welcomed a new addition, June. Issei and June had a happy and enjoyable childhood. Their father and their grandfather had great success business-wise, so they were very well off. But in spite of the fact that he was raised in a stable home environment and licking that silver spoon, he still somehow developed a proclivity for munching on human flesh. Yeah.

And it all seems to have stemmed from a silly childhood game that Issei played with his uncle, father, and brother, June. Called Eat Your Cousin? What the fuck was the game? Oh, I'm going to have you guess. Oh, okay. A. The uncle and father chasing the young boys and eventually shoving them into a sizable cast iron pie.

Okay. B, the uncle and father smearing various food seasonings on their skin and having the boys lick them off and then try to identify the seasoning. Okay. Or C, the uncle and father pretending that the young boys were delicacies being served up at a sushi restaurant.

Okay, so I don't know what's worse, the fact that one of those is true or that you made up the other two. It is not lost on me after I write the script that I am fucked up for coming up with these multiple choice questions. Okay, so just out of my own uncle-dom and experience, I would have to guess that they used to make the boys pretend they were delicacies. At the sushi restaurant? Yeah. Yeah.

False. What the? Please tell me it wasn't making them lick the seasoning off their skin. It was not. They used to push them in a pot. Yes.

So Issei's uncle would masquerade as a child-eating giant and would chase the kids all through the house as they ran and screamed. And it was fun. Issei's father would dress as a knight in shining armor and would attempt to rescue the kids from the giant's clutches. And every time the game was played, the giant would be the winner. The uncle would catch the children, scoop them up, and place them into a large cast iron pot.

Which I feel like, how big is this pot? I was just thinking, was it like a cauldron? Like a witch's? It was like industrial size. It must have been. But he was tiny. But June wasn't. But he was two years younger. But they're still human beings. They're not like fish. They're at least two feet tall. It's not like a drumstick you're popping into the pot. Holy crap. What a psycho. Yeah. I mean, I play games like this all the time. Like with my, not the pot aspect, but like with my kids and my dog. Yeah.

I'm like, you're so cute, I can eat you. And I'm like gobbling them up. And I definitely put my dog's like ears in my mouth all the time. Yeah, well, I play a game called Huggy Monster with my two sons where I chase them around. Yeah. And they get so- Amped up, right? Yeah, but like in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I chase them and they freak out as if I'm an actual monster. The whole point is that I'm going to hug them. Right. Not throw them in a cast iron pot. Right. Well, therein lies the difference between you and Isai's uncle. Isai.

Each time Issei was placed in the cast's iron pot, he would experience a mixture of terror and excitement. Yeah, he loved it. His emerging sexual feelings were beginning to manifest themselves, and while being simultaneously consumed in this imaginary way, it likely impacted his sexual urges down the line.

He also had a fondness for reading fairy tales in which children were devoured by dragons or evildoers. Hansel and Gretel? Like Hansel and Gretel. That was his favorite one, exactly. Okay. And when reading Hansel and Gretel, he would experience a rush of sexual arousal, particularly when the witch would attempt to fatten up the children for her own consumption. It just did it for him.

Don't judge him. Damn. My man was into fucking fairy tales and- Witches. And pots. What are you going to do?

Sagawa's experience of being hunted and boiled down led him to develop an intense sexual interest in cannibalism, which is actually a paraphilia known as vorapheria or vor. Which is what? Being turned on by eating people? I'm going to tell you exactly what it is. Vor is a type of paraphilia in which people become sexually aroused by thinking about being eaten, eating someone else, or watching the process happen.

And it's uncommon, but it's really not unheard of for people to have a sexual fixation on cannibalistic fantasies. Well, if there's a name for it, it exists. Yeah, but there's like a fucking condition for everything. But that's what I'm saying. Like, they wouldn't have come up with a word for it if it wasn't... Right.

If there wasn't at least dozens of these people out there. Correct. But not dozens is a joke. That's a never nude joke. Arrested development. Tobias was what's known as a never nude. And Michael found him in the shower one day and he was wearing cut off jean shorts. Like he's like the guy can literally never be nude. And they're making fun of him and asking him what it's all about. How does he go to the bathroom?

They didn't get into that. He covers everything but the area in use. But when they're giving him a hard time, he goes, there are dozens of us. As if that's like justification. It's like in the office when Michael Scott did the rabies marathon to raise money for rabies. He's like two Americans every year die from rabies. Yeah. It's a noble cause. I mean, those two people matter for sure. Right. But let's not make a huge deal out of it. But anyway, so this guy is a vore. He's a vore.

So while Issei Sagawa maintained a playful and affectionate relationship with his father and uncle, his relationship with his mother was of a different kind. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be.

Issei's mom was extremely overprotective and overbearing, likely stemming from his traumatic entrance into the world and like his precarious state of health for like the beginning months. Well, yeah, he was, you know. She's just, she was never able to see him or treat him as a competent, able-bodied individual. People do that with like regular people. I feel like moms do that with like full-blown, healthy adults. Do you know what? I have to catch myself with my boys. And Dave is always like,

giving me friendly reminders. Like these are future men or future adults. Like let's not completely coddle them to a point where they think they're incapable of doing whatever, like, you know, arduous task is in front of them. Like I'll make it, I'll soften the blow for them. And Dave's like, let them hit the ground running. Yeah. You know what I mean? We'll just let them hit the ground. Obviously not so hard that they get really hurt, but like, I let my kids play with matches. Yeah.

Do you? No. Okay. And gasoline. No, I mean, yeah, you want to protect your kids so they don't die, but like they got to figure out that floor is hard. But mothers who are overbearing or domineering with their sons, like we saw in last week's episode with father Hans Schmidt. Oh, that's right. They don't typically nurture their sons to become mentally healthy and successful adults if there is something underlying there already. So it's like that nature versus nurture combination. Yeah.

So we see this as a typical pattern that we see amongst serial killers like Ed Kemper, Peter Moore. They had overbearing, domineering mothers. Yeah. Right. But Sagawa's mom was at least coming from a place of love and concern versus like intentionally trying to belittle or smother him. Well, the woman, the mother from last week, making the boy put on a priest's frock and put on fake Catholic masses for her was like, that was for her own benefit, not for him. For sure.

Unsurprisingly, Issei lacked social skills as a child. He was completely unable to- You guys want to jump in a pot? Much on a human elbow. He was completely unable to fit in with the kids at school. He was a loner. He kept to himself. He was painfully introverted, shy, and he just overall tended to avoid his peers. He did love to learn and read, which caused him to excel academically.

At about seven years old, Issei caught a glimpse of a classmate's milky white thigh peeking out from his shorts, and he became transfixed. Oh, boy. He would daydream about taking a bite out of this child's thigh. I'm dreaming about it, too. And he even experienced, for the first time, an erection. From the boy's milky white thigh peeking out from the shorts, he experienced his first erection. How old was he at this point? Seven. Seven.

Jesus. All this happened before he was seven? Yeah. Oh, my God. Talk about laying a foundation. Wow. This boy's foundation has got some rebar in it. Right. Right.

The topic of sex was absolutely never broached in the Sagawa household. Issei and Jun were not taught anything about puberty or sex. So when Issei experienced erections and arousal, he thought something was wrong with him. He was like, I should bite it. In the Vice documentary that I watched about this case, he said, I thought I was sick. Like every time he had an erection, he thought something was wrong with him. He had no idea how to masturbate, which led him down some pretty strange paths in terms of finding relief.

To that end, when experiencing an erection, would he say... Oh, I was hoping you were going to make me guess what he would do. A, immerse his penis and testicles in a bucket of ice water. B, make his dog lick it. Make, like the dog wasn't willing. Some peanut butter on there. Or C, dry hump cookware.

Oh, dry home cookware. He did not. I made that up. You made that up? Good God. I'm not okay. It's becoming painfully evident. So he made, he put it in ice water? No, I'm afraid not. I fucking suck at this. I'm afraid not. He made his dog lick it. Wow. All right. Instead of just pulling on it? He didn't, I guess that wasn't in his-

you know, imagine later on, they're like, what are you doing? Why don't you just pull? And he's like, you know what? That did not even cross my mind. So the dog over there, he was looking at me. Yeah. Figured what's up. So in 1961, he's 12 at this point in the case.

He developed a fascination with Western literature and the way in which Western women were described. He loved hearing about their pale skin and how romantic and healthy they were. Remember, he's a tiny, frail man. So the thought of these tall and strong women turned him on.

He dreamed of nourishing himself with the flesh of Hollywood actresses. Oh, we're back to the eating thing again. Okay. And he would masturbate, I guess he learned how, regularly to this fantasy at

At this point in his life, he's 12. He masturbated whenever and wherever he could, which may not be unfamiliar to... Sounds like a 12-year-old boy. Right, right. So one day while jerking off in the school bathroom, his fantasy took a new direction. And suddenly he found himself thinking about hurting women. He dreamt about spying on well-built Western goddesses in the shower before strangling them to death with a belt. So like, he's escalating. Very quickly. Yeah.

Right. That escalated quickly. Right. To quote the great Ron Burgundy. Right. Exactly. 12 years old. 12 years old and he's fantasizing about strangling women. This guy never had a shot. No. That's the thing though. It was there. Yeah. You know? So now Sagawa, he's 15 years old and the only way for him to get sexually aroused was to fantasize about killing women and then nourishing himself with their flesh. Right.

He did try to get professional help, to his credit, to work through these fantasies. He knew, and it's a little bit sad, I will say, when you listen to documentaries where he's being interviewed. He's like, I know I'm a pervert. I know I suck. I tried to get help. And what happened was he contacted a psychiatrist at this point, and the psychiatrist said to him, you need an in-person appointment.

for us to work through these issues. And he was just too insecure and embarrassed. And he was like, I'm not coming in. So he just gave up on getting help. But at 15 years old, he did try. At 15 years old, he knew that he was... Yeah. So he self-isolates even further. And at this point, he's like, I'm just going to stop trying to fight these urges. And instead, he redirected his energy towards finding a white Western goddess. Okay. All right. Like...

In real life, obviously. In real life, IRL. Was he living in Japan at the time? He was in Japan at this point, but we're going to actually bump ahead a little bit. 1973, he's 24, he moves to Paris. We're all the Westerns. He's going through part of a PhD program, all financed by his father.

And he notices a German woman in a cafe who meets the criteria of his ideal woman. It's a milky German white lady. He follows this woman back to her apartment. And when he feels that she's fallen asleep. Oh, he didn't talk to her? No. Why would he talk to her? He's no interest in dialogue. He wants her thighs. He wants that dialogue. I thought he saw her at a shop, talked to her, and they were going to fall in love. He's not looking for a relationship. He's looking to feast. He's looking to eat. On her thighs.

Milky white thighs. So he follows her home. He follows her home. Oh, that sucks. He waits until he feels she's asleep. And this woman left her window open. He gets into the apartment through this window and he makes his way to the bedroom where he discovers a sleeping naked woman.

German woman. Fucking dream. Yeah. What a dream for this guy. However, he wasn't really that smooth and he woke her up. Hey, I'm going to eat you. So she screams bloody murder and then she tackles him to the ground because she's a big woman. Well, that's the problem. And he's a little man. These big Amazon bitches, you're going to get fucked up. She took him down.

She calls the police while keeping him like pegged on the floor. He probably got so turned on. I'm sure he was like, just keep going. Peg me. He was arrested for attempted rape, which actually that was not his plan. No, I was going to eat her. But he went with that charge because he didn't want to have to explain his real intention.

Okay. I mean, you got to do what you got to do. So naturally, his wealthy father and overprotective mother paid his bail, and Sagawa was released the next morning. His father also paid this German woman a lump sum of money to drop all the charges. Wow. Do you know how much or no? No, I don't. Undisclosed. It's undisclosed. Yeah. At this point, Sagawa returned to his studies. He earns his master's degree. I'm sorry, he wasn't there for a PhD. At this point, he was there for his master's degree in Shakespearean literature. Okay.

He spent the following three years traveling through Europe so he could creep on all the beautiful white women. During his travels, specifically on a cruise, Sagawa met a Greek butcher who taught him the tricks of the trade. They were sitting at the same table on a cruise. And have you ever been on a cruise?

Yeah. You really connect with the people at your table. Yeah, you're stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Right, exactly. You really, for better, if they could have like nothing to do with you once you step off that boat. Yeah. When you're on that ship, man, they're your homies. Yeah. You're vibing. You're planning excursions with them. You want to go to the buffet? That's it. Yeah.

So this Greek butcher teaches him how to cut meat from the bone, where the best cuts of meat are on animals. And they actually stayed in touch years later. Calls him up. He's like, hey, how do I get a hip bone out of the... More or less. Yeah. So now...

1977, Sehgal is 28. He relocates to a different area. He's in Paris and he's finishing his PhD program where he's continuing to solicit Parisian sex workers because he really wants to try to

to murder and eat a white woman so that he can get his cannibalistic urges, quote unquote, out of his system. But he could never go through with it because you have to understand, right? He's all about the product. He wants the flesh. He's not about the process of what it takes to get the flesh. Homie didn't want to put in the work. He didn't. He wasn't willing to grind. He wasn't a process killer. He's a product killer. Yeah.

That is until he met- Oh, boy. Renee Hartevelt, a fellow student attending the lecture, the same lecture that Sagawa was attending. Renee was Dutch, 5'10". Close enough. White and very attractive.

She was extremely intelligent. She spoke five languages and Sagawa became instantly enthralled and even drew a sketch of her face so that he could stare at her whenever he wanted to at home. It's like wank bank material. Oh, spank bank. Oh, wank bank? Yeah. I never heard that before. I think it's British. Yeah, I don't listen to British stuff. I'm cultured. Yeah, sorry.

It's like the sketch, though, was the funniest thing ever. You can find it online, like the sketch he drew of Rene. Do you ever see Napoleon Dynamite? Yeah. It looks like the sketch he drew of his crush. Oh, yeah. Remember, he's like, oh, I shaded the upper lip. Things were getting pretty serious. Yes. The Vice documentary shows the sketch, if anybody's interested. It's like the sketch of the leprechaun. Yes. The leprechaun. Yes.

So Sagawa struck up a conversation with Renee and he convinced her to become his linguistics tutor because she spoke five languages. And while teaching him German poetry, Sagawa could not stop fantasizing about Renee's smooth white skin. And he knew that he needed to consume her flesh to satiate this like craving that at this point, it's too much to bear. It's like, he's like a little bit of a vampire. Yeah.

Actually, funny enough, he can't stand the sight of blood. What does he think people are made of? Right. Flesh and like the meat. Dry flesh? In like a minute, I'm going to tell you. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. He does. He can't. He kind of does. All right. Let's get to the biting part. Let me go on.

So he told Renee one night that he would cook her dinner, like real food, if she agreed to come over and record herself reciting German poetry. Obviously, this is under the guise of, I want to be able to reference this recording. I want to learn the language. And she agrees with it. They're friends. Renee goes over and begins translating a German poem on tape at a desk in his apartment.

While her back is turned, Sagawa picked up a .22 caliber hunting rifle, aimed it at the back of her neck and pulled the trigger. But it didn't fire.

So she left the apartment not knowing how close she had come to death. And then he spent, Sagawa spent the rest of the evening sniffing and licking the chair that she had been sitting in. Sounds like Charlemagne from Power 105. Let me sniff your chair. The next night, he invited her over again, and again she went over.

This time, he grabbed his rifle. He crept up behind Renee. He aimed it at the back of her neck, and he pulled the trigger. And the gun worked. And a flag came out. And shut the fuck up, if only. And she died instantly. Of course. Thank God. Sagawa actually fainted after her body hit the floor. He did not like the sight of blood. He could not believe that he just killed her. Imagine he was like, I was not expecting that to happen.

What did you think was going to happen, dude? Right. It was just a necessary action to take in order to achieve his ultimate aim. He was driven to eat flesh. He was consumed by the need to consume. That sucks. I mean, listen, I'm not, it sucks for her, obviously more, but this guy was a torture. He was unwell. Yeah.

I truly, I know we're having fun. I truly empathize with people who have like mental illnesses, especially people who in the course of this mental illness, you know, disease tried to get help. Yeah. I don't think he tried hard enough, but he did try. He looked up a phone number. He Googled it. When he woke up having fainted, he placed a towel beneath Renee's head and he immediately undressed her.

First, Sagawa raped her lifeless corpse. So now we don't feel bad for him anymore. Well, now he's done it. So now he's... He's crossed the line. He's taken the first step on that journey of madness and he's in it. He's in it. Yeah. Then he decides to bite into her buttocks. Relatable. Mm-hmm.

The thing is that biologically, I heard this on a different podcast that I was listening to that I love that can I give a shout out to? Sure. Red Handed. Amazing true crime podcast. And they covered this episode.

And they covered a very interesting thing. Do you know why adults tend to nibble on little babies? You'll take their little fingers and you'll nibble or their toes or silly things. It's because you're trying to actually show that I am putting you inside of my mouth and I'm not hurting you. I'm not killing you. I'm not eating you. You can trust me. Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting, right? Yeah.

So he decides to bite into her buttocks. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't able to pierce her skin with his teeth. He said it hurt his jaw too much. And none of the knives he had in his kitchen were sharp enough to do the trick. So he ran out to purchase an electric carving knife. And when he returned, he took a slice out of her right butt cheek. Why the right butt cheek? Because she was a woman.

because he thought that it would release less blood than the left butt cheek, the left being like on the same side as the heart.

Oh, so he's a smart guy. But I'm saying earlier to what we were just talking about, he really didn't like blood. Yeah. Then he just began sawing everywhere. Then he went nuts. Finally, when he got deep enough into the flesh, he ripped a piece of the meat by the muscle with his bare hands. He chucked it into his mouth, and he said that the flesh melted in his mouth like raw tuna. Ugh.

Over the next three days, he continued to rape and eat Renee's corpse. Oh. He ate parts of her face, her nipples, buttocks, and breasts. Some part he ate raw, some parts he would cook.

When he was unable to bake one of her breasts due to it being overly greasy, his description, he instead fried it in a pan and ate it with mustard. Smart. What condiment would you choose? I don't think it would be mustard. I think honey mustard. I feel like human flesh probably needs a little sweet overtone. Maybe barbecue sauce. Yeah. Especially if you're smoking it. Yeah. You know? I mean, if you can't bake it, try it up. Smart. Yeah.

Sagawa took photographs and documented his progression as he consumed her body, all while listening to a recording of Renee reciting German poetry. All while listening to a true crime podcast. Right. So he ate her flesh while listening to the German poetry that she recorded. Beautiful. Poetic. He also packed his freezer with his favorite body parts, which of course included a thigh.

And he stuffed the remaining bits of Rene, including her head, into two large suitcases. Then he held a cab and instructed the driver to take him to the Bois de Boulogne Park with the plan of tossing the luggage into the lake. Despite not taking into account the size and weight of this luggage in comparison to his own size and weight, he still attempted a plan that was nearly impossible to execute. So he panicked.

At which point he made a very feeble attempt to hide the luggage in some bushes. And then he legged it out of the park. Like he was leaving a wrapper or something. Right. Like you're littering. Like the Starbucks garbage can is overflowing. I'm just going to leave it on the fucking curb. Like you hope nobody looks and you start to walk really fast. Oh my God. 70s were crazy.

So naturally, a couple walking by saw Sagawa's odd behavior. They approached the bush. They saw the luggage. They unzipped it. Oh, they saw him abandon the luggage? Yeah, he did this. It was 8 o'clock at night, but in Paris at 8 o'clock at night in June. Oh, yeah. It's light. Yeah. So people saw him.

And they started to scream, murderer, while pointing at him as he ran away. Took the police three days. His little legs. His little legs didn't get him very far. He has to take two steps for every normal person's one step. Yeah. The struggle is real. I know this. Yeah.

It didn't take long for the police to find him. It took three days. And when they did, he immediately confessed to killing and eating Renee. And he indicated that he did it so he could, quote, absorb her energy. So he was like a new age kind of Reiki master. Sure. Yeah. Right. Now listen to this shit.

The legal system found Sagawa legally insane and unfit to stand trial in France. We get that, right? But they didn't want to continue footing the bill for him to stay inside the hospital, the psychiatric hospital indefinitely since he wasn't a French citizen. So Sagawa's father paid to have him deported back to Japan where he was immediately admitted into a psychiatric hospital. This all sounds fine, right? Yeah.

But they found him sane and determined that his only motive was sexual perversion rather than being like a psychopath or a sociopath. And here's where it gets complex. France had already deemed Sagawa unfit to stand trial, and they sealed his records, denying Japan all of the paperwork surrounding the crime itself.

And in Japan, he hadn't actually committed any crimes. So Japanese courts were unable to press any charges at all or to keep him locked up or hospitalized. So Issei Sagawa was released and officially a free man. When? How long? It's fucked up. How long after the crime? Like trial time? Within the same year. Oh my God. I mean, now that he's done it, I'm sure he's done it again.

He had the wherewithal to admit himself into a psychiatric hospital. Oh, that's good. But 18 months later, so this is now 1985. He ate a nurse. No, he checked himself out of the psychiatric facility and he just carried on with life.

Did he, like, get it out of his system for real? I don't think that's how it works. Keep listening. Okay. Obviously, the media went apeshit. Oh, they love this kind of shit. And Sagawa loved the attention he was receiving, literally from around the globe. Police departments were consulting him on cases.

He became the official police advisor on like a pretty notorious case at the time. And in the years that followed, he'd written 20 books about his crime, gave public lectures, painted pictures of women which sold internationally, and even freelanced as a food critic in Japan. Oh my God.

Sagawa also gained additional fame. I thought you were going to say he gained like 20 pounds from eating all the people. He gained additional fame and notoriety after doing which of the following? A. Opening a restaurant that served meat and only meat in a popular part of Tokyo. B. Making a cameo in a Meryl Streep film.

Or C, directing and starring in pornographic films in which he would reenact his crime? Oh my God. Wait, so he... Did he open a restaurant where they served only meat in Tokyo? Did he make a cameo in a Meryl Streep film? Or did he star and direct in porn? Opened a restaurant? Yeah.

No, you're just not good at this. I'm not great. He opened a restaurant that served only meat? No. Did he make a cameo in a Meryl Streep movie? No. Wow. He became an actor. Listen, I want to let people know this is not fake. I know. I fucking suck. It's alarming. Yeah, it's the third choice. Always.

I'm just not good. It's given me comfort that I don't know what these people do. No, and I'm really good at coming up with the other options. Yeah. If I do say so myself. So he directed and starred in pornographic films that reenacted his crime? So listen to this. What website was that on? In the Vice documentary. I want to stay away from it. They show a video of Sagawa talking with one of the female porn actresses he had sex with and telling her who he really was and what he'd really done. Uh-huh.

So they're videotaping this female actress, and he went so far as to show her photographs from Renee's autopsy.

which very clearly depicts a completely mutilated woman, missing breasts and all. And slowly you begin to see the realization just wash over this porn star's face. And you start to see like she covers her legs with a blanket. She'd already had sex with him. She's covering herself. Her voice starts to shake.

And she just starts to cry. Wow. And Sagawa just looks at her and says, quote, I have an urge to drink your urine and swallow your saliva. As she's getting uncomfortable, he says that to her. Just to try and smooth things over. Right. And you can find pictures of the autopsy online. I don't recommend looking at it.

It kept me up and true crime cases rarely, for whatever fucking reason, keep me up at night. But I looked at the autopsy pictures and holy shit. They reassembled her body to the extent that they could. It's very painfully obvious which chunks were missing. Do you know what I mean? Damn, Issei. Why you did that? Sagawa was simply a hit. As shameful as it is. This is so strange. Yeah, he was a hit.

A famous band even wrote a song about him titled Too Much Blood. Was the band the Rolling Stones, R.E.M., or the Kinks? The Kinks? Nope. Okay.

I don't know. The Rolling Stones. Wow. The Rolling fucking Stones. I mean, they weren't like promoting what he did. But they are. I mean, everyone kind of was like. Like this guy was. He was like the original catch me outside chick. But like 10 times worse. Right.

They made him famous and rich for doing something terrible. Yeah. This guy really turned it, you know. He turned it into a very lucrative, headlining fucking circus act. Unbelievable. And here we are years later talking about it. Well, this is like the, you know, once in a, I don't want to say once in a lifetime, but like the reason that I do this,

enjoy true crime somewhat is because usually the cases are so bad that they're so unique and no two cases are ever the same. It's like, all right, it's rare that this happens. Yeah. It is very rare. Yeah, this is not something that is...

hitting the headlines every day. It wouldn't be famous if it wasn't rare. Right. It's also the fact that he was never held accountable. And it was also what he did with his life. He like made a mockery of him. Not only was he not held accountable. He became a school critic and a porn star? He turned it into a career. Yeah. This thing that he did. Yeah. Unbelievable.

Eventually, his star fell and he faded into the background. Because that's just, that's everyone. Yeah, everyone's got their time. Watch out, Kim. It's going to happen.

Through the glamorous process of aging, he became impotent and unable to masturbate, which concerned him and had him living in fear of a relapse into cannibalism. He honestly didn't know what to do because he truly didn't relish in murdering people, right? As I said earlier, he was a product killer. He did relish in eating their flesh, but he didn't relish in murdering people.

He said in the Vice documentary that he wished he had just been given the death penalty. Yeah. His last urge that he had to grapple with, which was even stronger evidently than the urge to eat human flesh, was the urge to be killed. He said, quote, I want to die suffering, slowly torn apart alive. And of course, I'd rather be killed by a beautiful woman than a man.

Obviously. Now, he didn't get his wish because on November 24th, 2022, at age 73, the Kobe cannibal died from complications relating to pneumonia. This guy was around for COVID? Yeah. Oh, my God. I know. When I read that, I'm like, complications relating to pneumonia. Why don't you just say fucking COVID? He had COVID. He died of COVID, this fucking guy? I mean, it says pneumonia, but it was COVID. The Kobe? What did we call him? The Kobe cannibal? That's like his straight name. Oh, my God.

And that's the case. What a life. I mean, you've got to give it up for him for turning that horrific experience into a cash cow. It was a cash cow until it wasn't. Well, he got bored of it. He didn't get bored of it. His star fell and he wasn't going to kill anyone else again. Well, that's good. I mean, you've got to give him respect for one and done, one hit wonder. He wasn't about to try and recreate magic. He wanted to, but he knew well enough. But that's very...

I think that people do something horrific like that because they're driven by an insane urge to do so. And then don't do it again. They just are like, all right, that was enough. I feel awful. I feel terrible. Let's talk about it, Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil comes up in another episode. Oh my God. Well, that was, that was quite. Yeah. How are you feeling?

You see why the other night when I was like, oh my God. I'm learning a lot about people. I understand why you're haunted. A, he got away with it, kind of. But like the opposite of getting away with it, he turned it into a career. B, the case itself is, I mean, pretty nasty. Brutal. Yeah. Three days he kept her in there, raping her and eating her. And he only got rid of her body because he realized that it was starting to decompose. Otherwise he would have just, he would have.

died in there with her. I do like the fact that he killed her quickly. Okay. Thanks for that. She went quick. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't know how she didn't hear the gun. You know what? That comes up in all the research. That first time. But you know what? She was recording herself reciting. Like right now, I'm very into recording this podcast. I feel like if there were a noise behind me. There was somebody that walked up behind you with a gun. I knew it. Yeah. And I just, I didn't think they were going to do anything. And then they pulled the trigger. It misfired. Yeah. Thank God. Oh, they're back. Thank God.

I'm not coming back tomorrow. I'm telling you right now. So, yeah, I mean, this is like a humane obsession, you know,

You know, compulsions. He was unwell. Very. He had a paraphilia. He tried to get treatment. And what is a paraphilia again? It's not a fetish. It's different from a fetish. And I'm not a psychologist, so I'm really not the one to be talking on this issue. But I think it's like just an unnatural urge and desire. And it's linked to some kind of sexual gratification.

But does it normally have to do with something criminal? Like a paraphilia? Yeah. No, I just think it's something. Oh, it's like, let's say somebody was like really into clouds or something. Yeah. And it's not like a foot fetish or something like that's,

And again, I really can't speak to the difference, but there is a difference between a fetish. Yeah. Like somebody who has a fetish with like women wearing heels. That's not like a paraphilia. A guy who has a fetish eating, you know, human flesh is a paraphilia. Well, it's probably someone maybe gets hurt as a result of it. Maybe. Or whatever. Maybe some kind of pain correlated with sexual gratification. We'll have to figure it out. I mean, this guy wanted to be torn apart to die. Correct. He's not well. Yeah. Yeah. God, it must have sucked to be him for fucking 73 years. Oh my God.

I mean, yes and no. He had it pretty good for a while. Yeah, but he couldn't eat women. But he couldn't do what he really, really wanted to do. Yeah. But he did have photographs. Welcome to adulthood, bud. Exactly. Buck up. Can't do everything you want. You got to fucking pay bills, you know? Can't eat all the cake. You got to, you know, you're going to get diabetes. Right. You're going to have one piece, maybe a half a piece, depending on your insulin sensitivity. So don't eat people. You can't eat people. If you want to eat people...

Get a vegan substitute of some sort. Like the rest of us who have an issue with meat. I thought you were going to say the rest of us who have an issue with eating people. Right. Well, I don't have the desire to eat people, so I don't really have the issue. Yeah. But I do sometimes have an issue most of the time with eating meat. Yeah. So I go for a substitute to the extent that I can. Yeah, to the extent you can. You make do with what you got. Right. So I did like the story. Okay. Okay.

Okay. You were in it. You are. I could tell. I was. You're right. You were in it. I don't know how long we've been recording for. You may not want to admit it, but you were in it with me. I like that story. That was an interesting story. And I like the fact that I can ask questions the entire time. Yeah. And you don't say, shut up. Let me talk. No, no. I hope that you're helping to address some of the questions that maybe our listeners have along the way. Yeah. All right. So hopefully that is what's happening for you as the listener.

I'm Tank Sinatra. I'm Investigator Slater. This has been an episode of Psychopedia, the podcast. If you're enjoying it, rate, review, subscribe, share it with a friend, share it with a weird friend who's really into true crime, share it with a weird friend who's not into true crime, who might just want to, you know, relate more to me than to Brooke. Right. We got something for everybody here. We do. Thank you so much for listening. And we will see you next episode. Bye.