sociologist 44.soc.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, featured in Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, has a gruesome appetite for human flesh.  He delights in his human liver with fava beans and finds the horrified reactions of others amusing.  People are nothing to him but objects to be used to satisfy himself. He’s the “new” cannibal, the one who brings his disgusting appetites into public view and revels in them—just as Sagawa has done.

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, sociologist and author of Ordinary People and Extraordinary Evil, examines how we can start out innocently and by gradual increments get into position to enact real evil. This generally involves viewing what we’re doing through a framework that differs from that of society at large, and we may develop one out of rebellion, curiosity, exposure to new ideas, or perverse influences on the formation of our private fantasies.

Cannibalism, or the consumption of human flesh by another human, has been practiced in many cultures, generally as a ritual.  The Aztecs in Mexico sacrificed and then ate thousands of people every year to please the gods, and other cultures such as the Aborigines used the practice to “incorporate” the power of their enemies.  Natives of the Fiji Islands simply like the taste, and people such as the Donner-led settlers in 1846 dined off others to survive in the rugged conditions of the Sierra Nevadas.

There are different forms of cannibalism, or anthropophagy, and they’re practiced for different reasons.  Omophagia is a symbolic ritual meant to preserve the life force of the deceased by transforming the physical substance of the body into something spiritual.  It may be done as part of deity worship or as a way to honor dead relatives.  It may also be done to stave off widespread starvation, such as the widespread consumption of human flesh that occurred in the early part of the century in both China and Russia (mentioned by Chikatilo as influential on his own hunger).

Some killers have adopted a form of omophagia, which is called zoophagia, as a means of possessing their victims.  Zoophagia is the consumption of life forms, as seen in the character of Renfield in Dracula, who progresses from spiders to flies to birds to cats.  The idea is to ingest increasingly sophisticated life forms as a way to improve one’s own.

better 33.bet.003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Over a 21-year period from 1955 to 1976 Joachim Kroll murdered, mutilated and had sex with the corpses of at least 14 young women and children throughout Germany. After he had had his way with their bodies he would cook them up and eat them, the younger the better. When captured he told police that he loved the meat of young children as it fell off the bone and he said it was of much better quality than the meat available in the West German butcher shops.

When police searched Kroll’s foul-smelling apartment, in the refrigerator they found pieces of human flesh on a plate. Scattered around the lounge room were putrefying bags of human flesh, stripped from his victim’s bones with a butcher’s knife. On the stove was a simmering vegetable stew with a tiny human hand in it. Joachim Kroll was declared a mental defective, placed in a mental asylum never to be released.

Andrei Chikatilo

Of all of the modern day cannibal killers, 56-year-old Andrei Chikatilo, who, in a 24-year killing career in Russia that saw the horrific deaths and cannibalization of 53 victims, mainly children, was by far the most prolific. Like Kroll, Chikatilo was a necrophiliac in that his victims had to be dead before he could have sex with them.

Blaming his lust for human flesh on the fact that as a boy he witnessed his younger brother being eaten alive by villagers in a famine, Chikatilo selected his victims from the runaways and young prostitutes that hung around bus and train stations. Once he had lured his victims into the nearby woods on the promise of a meal or money, he would set upon them and hack them to death, rape the corpse and then disembowel his victim and ravage the warm internal body parts.

The fact that Chikatilo was an average-looking school teacher allowed him to blend in with the crowds at the busy venues where he selected his victims and even though he was questioned nine times about the murders, twice near the scene of a murder (once he was carrying a knife in his bag) incredibly, police let him go.

Chikatilo was eventually caught and executed with a single bullet to the back of the head in 1994. At his trial people fainted in horror as he told in graphic details how he boiled and ate the sawn-off nipples and testicles of his victims. Chikatilo is the subject of the movie Citizen X.

Jeff Dahmer

The best known real life cannibal of modern times is Jeffrey Dahmer, which isn’t surprising. Dahmer was a monster beyond the wildest imagination. A handsome young man who wouldn’t have had a problem in the world acquiring any amount of normal sexual partners, Dahmer was a necrophiliac, homosexual serial killer and cannibal whose perversions were incomprehensible.

From 1988 to 1991, Dahmer, a 28-year-old chocolate factory worker, slaughtered 17 young men, raped and mutilated their corpses and then cut them up and ate their body parts.

Dahmer admitted to having sex with the bodies of the dead men as well as their decapitated heads and mutilated torsos. He pointed out to police that he always wore a condom when having sex with his dead partners or their body parts. Better to be safe than sorry, he said.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire was sent to prison for 1,070 years and was murdered several years later by another inmate.

Aberdeen sign

Australia ‘s Katherine Mary Knight has deservedly earned her place on this depraved roll-call of humanity.

Until March 1, 2000, sleepy Aberdeen, situated on the New England Highway 266 kilometers north-northwest of Sydney, population 1,750, was best known as the birthplace of the blue heeler cattle dog, the canine icon that is as much a part of Australian folklore as the emu, koala and kangaroo.

But not any more. These days Aberdeen is known as the home of Katherine Knight, arguably the most depraved monster in Australia ‘s grizzly homicidal history. Visitors to Aberdeen are now far more interested in ogling the single-story, three-bedroom bungalow at number 84 Andrews Street, where a murder and other unspeakable acts took place, and pondering what would cause the middle-aged housewife, mother and grandmother to perpetrate such evil.

imagine 7.ima.01 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The jury at St. Albans crown court added a rider after Young was sentenced, calling for an urgent official review of the UK laws covering the sale of poisons. It was the least they could do considering the circumstances of the case, and the British newspapers wasted no time in expressing their outrage, alongside reports of the cases more salacious details. How, they asked, could a convicted poisoner be freed from a high security prison despite evidence of his continuing obsession with poison and murder, and also still easily obtain poisons, and be recommended for work within easy access of dangerous chemicals, without his employers even being informed of his criminal record and the nature of his convictions?

Within an hour of the verdict, the home secretary, Reginald Maudling, announced that two separate inquiries had been set up into the control, treatment and supervision of mentally ill prisoners. The inquiries led to tightening of the laws on monitoring mentally ill offenders after release.

Its easy to be wise in hindsight. The fact of the matter is that Graham Young was a one-off, an exceptionally rare criminal whose crimes were pretty much unprecedented, if not in terms of method, then certainly in motive, since almost uniquely among poisoners, Young appeared to be driven simply by misguided scientific obsession, married to a total absence of empathy with the rest of humanity.

“I dont think he had any ill will towards the people he killed, says Peter Goodman, he just had no morals. The reason he poisoned those closest to him was simply because he could closely observe the symptoms. He was a deranged scientist essentially.”

Winifred Young wrote that people who said Imagine if hed walked into a crowded café! missed the point about her brothers motivation.

My answer was that would be no good to Graham…cause in such circumstances Graham would never be able to observe the effect of the poison. The person or persons poisoned would simply get up from the table and walk out, and Graham would never see them again – and that would be no good to him…he wanted to study the effects; to watch how poison worked, as though he were merely carrying out a clinical experiment.

Still, at least some people were served food and drink by Young and survived without any ill effects. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire remembers one occasion when he went to see his charge in prison. “He offered me a piece of cake. I hesitated, and he said Come on, I wouldnt poison my lawyer. Thats pretty much what he said to some of his victims, but I ate it anyway…”

A brave man.

between 22.bet.001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The women came to Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.  He called them up like a butcher calls the stockyard.  It was much easier than roaming the streets looking for churches and houses, and much less riskier than the impromptu murders of the Imoon-dong woman and the fake Viagra vendor.

He called them and they came. Between early April and mid-July, Yoo murdered ten women.  In early April and late April, two women died.  In early May and mid-May, he killed two more.  He claimed three more lives in June.  On July 1, he killed a woman, and another on July 9.  He killed the last one on July 13.

Nearly each case was identical.  They all occurred at night.  He called the phone sex rooms and persuaded the woman to come to his home, or to meet at a place where he could later bring her home.  He offered her money for her time and services, although he later claimed he never had sex with any of his victims for fear of DNA tracking.  Once at his apartment, he let them go to the bathroom as he readied his hammer. Yoo hit their heads and their heads would be the first to come off and he would dismember the rest later.  He saved the victim’s cellphone so he could avoid using his own number for later calls.

Always careful, Yoo shaved off the skin of the victim’s fingertips.  In South Korea, all citizens have a national identification number (similar to a Social Security number) and are fingerprinted by the government.  As he chopped apart the bodies, he stuffed the pieces into plastic bags.  And then he cleaned manically.  A neighbor later remarked that she sometimes heard the sound of running water long into the night.

He knew of a place up by Bongwon Temple, a brushy hillside, and he headed there with a loaded backpack.  Each body required two trips.  He buried the human remains in shallow graves and later on he marked them to avoid burying bodies in the same spot.  By four o’ clock in the morning, he was finished.

He deviated from his regular routine. On July 1 at a love hotel in the Yeoksam neighborhood in the Gangnam district, he called up a woman for a massage.  When she arrived, he coerced her to his apartment using his forged police ID.  Once back at his place, she met the same demise as the others.  She was the first woman he killed that he called on the pretext of a massage; the previous victims were from the jeonhwa bhangs. The last two victims arrived from a massage parlor also, one on July 9 and the very last on July 13.

order 1.ord.002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

In order to make enough money to live on, he would cruise Seoul’s numerous red-light districts and extort cash from hookers and pimps using a police ID that he forged himself.   Yoo settled down in a studio apartment in the area where he grew up.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire put down approximately $4,000 as a “key money” deposit and paid roughly $450 in rent each month.

Apartment 203 was in a small commercial building in the Nogosan neighborhood of Mapo.  He was fifty steps away from a small police station and 200 steps away from a 24-hour convenience store where the clerks thought of him as a nice guy.  He kept his apartment in immaculate condition.  His clothes hung neatly on a freestanding rack, and his personal possessions were few.

In his apartment, he watched movie clips and porn on his personal computer. In the drawer of his computer desk, there was the Korean DVD “Public Enemy” a story about a police officer hunting a serial killer that killed his own mother and father, and the American films “Very Bad Things” and “Normal Life.”

DVD cover: Public Enemy

His bookshelf near his bed revealed more about him. Yoo kept a scrapbook and it held newspaper cut-outs of toys he wanted to buy his son, advertisements for pistols, list of pop singers and their songs, and scribbled notes about cars, computers and music equipment.  There was an art album stuffed with sketches of female nudes and portraits, and it is evident he is highly talented in the Japanese manga style of drawing.  Also on the bookshelf was his son’s notebook filled with crayon pictures.

When Yoo stepped outside of his apartment, he picked up calling cards off the ground.  They are everywhere in Seoul—stuffed under windshield wipers, tucked in mailboxes, and seemingly tossed about on any flat surface.  There are so many around that most people cast them aside as litter.  On the card is always an erotic photo of a beautiful woman promising hot sex and a number to call.