Man Who Raped, Killed & Ate a Girl But Was Never Arrested

A Japanese murderer known as the "Kobe Cannibal" raped, killed and ate a Dutch student but was never jailed, has now finally died at the age of 73.

You might have heard a lot of gruesome and heinous crime stories on ISH News or any other news platform.

But this one will surely make your heart miss a beat and disgust about the ending of humanity. There was a man named Issei Sagawa in Japan. He was a Japanese murderer known as the "Kobe Cannibal" who raped, killed and ate a Dutch student but was never jailed. Now he finally died at the age of 73. Sagawa died of pneumonia on November 24 and His younger brother and a friend said in a statement that he 

was given a funeral attended only by his relatives, with no public ceremony planned. Now let us bring you back to the gruesome crime this cowardly man has committed earlier. Back in 1981, Sagawa was studying in Paris when he invited Dutch student Renee Hartevelt to his home. He raped her, shot her in the neck, and then consumed parts of her body over the course of the next several days.

Sagawa then attempted to dispose of her remains in the Bois de Boulogne park and was arrested several days later. He also confessed his crime to the police. But in 1983 he was deemed unfit for trial by French medical experts and was initially held in a psychiatric institution before being deported to Japan in 1984. Hartevelt's family pledged at the time to push for Sagawa to be prosecuted in Japan so that the murderer would never go free. But on his arrival, he was found completely normal and sane by Japanese authorities, who decided Sagawa's only problem was a "character change" which means that he did not require hospitalization. Japanese authorities were unable to get his case files from their French counterparts, who considered the case closed, leaving the murderer to walk free. However, the cowardly Sagawa was never guilty of his sins and made no secret of his crime and shamelessly started earning from it.

He even published a novel titled "In the Fog" in which he narrated about the murder, giving vivid details.

This murder was also the story of Japanese novelist Juro Kara's "Letter from Sagawa-kun", which won the country's most prestigious literary prize in 1982. Despite the heinous details of the murder, and his lack of guilt at committing the crime, Sagawa gained a level of celebrity and regularly gave interviews with domestic and international media. Apart from all this, he was featured in a magazine for his paintings of naked women, has also appeared in a pornographic movie and produced a comic book that depicted his crime in graphic and detail. Sagawa lived out his final years with his brother, reportedly in a wheelchair after a number of health problems, including a heart stroke. But he displayed no apparent sign of guilt or acceptance. The recent evidence of his shamelessness was a 2013 interview in which he looked at posters of Japanese women and said "I think they would taste delicious".

He also recounted details of the incident and his ongoing obsession with cannibalism (The people who eat human flesh) in interviews and a 2017 documentary, "Caniba". The film's directors spent months with Sagawa and his brother. When asked about the filmmakers motives, the co director of the film said that they were disgusted, fascinated, and wanted to understand his mindset of Sagawa. 

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