Craziest Cannibal Attacks In History

Cannibalism remains one of the strangest and most disgusting crimes a person can possibly commit, and famous cannibal serial killers possess a level of infamy unique to their crimes. While some cultures around the world cannibalize as part of their society, the lone cannibal killers in this list acted on their own selfish and twisted impulses. Childhood abuse and psychological trauma account for many of these cannibals' motives, but many simply wanted to know what human flesh tasted like, and used dirty methods to find out. In some cases, these cannibals roam free, either escaped from their holding cells or released on a technicality. 

In addition to eating victims' flesh, cannibal murderers performed all types of psychological and physical torture not only on their victims but also their relatives. Some killers even tricked people into eating human flesh. Hailing from all around the world, from urban epicenters to rural villages, cannibal killers know no restrictions when it comes to location. Read further if you dare, but be warned; this isn't a list to peruse during your lunchbreak.

Matej Curko, a resident of Slovakia, used the Internet to lure in his victims - with the promise of being eaten. In many cases, Curko lured victims into meeting with him so he could kill them; allegedly two of his female victims consented to Curko's request. When Curko began online-chatting with Markus Dubach, a suicidal man in Switzerland, Curko was honest about his intentions. Curko kept an extensive amount of murder "trophies" in his home, including the bodies of two women who had disappeared the previous year. After Curko revealed these trophies, Dubach informed authorities.

During a sting operation, an undercover agent met up with him. This turned into a gun battle, in which Curko was shot five times. He died later that day in the hospital. Despite Curko's online interactions where he claimed his victims allowed his cannibalism, the high number of missing persons surrounding him suggests otherwise.

Suspected murderer Matthew Williams, 34, had just been released from prison a few weeks, after served a five-year prison sentence for a violent attack on his partner. While at the hotel, which also served as a bail hostel, Williams lured a young woman back to his room despite the building's rules against guests. When staff came to his room to notify Williams of the policy, they found him eating the woman's face off.

According to Jill Edwards, a local resident who described Williams as "an animal," they entered his room after not getting a response from Williams. This attack would prove to be his last, as he was struck by a high voltage taser when apprehended by police. Though formally arrested following the tasing, William became "unresponsive" moments later and died.

 

On May 26th, 2012, 31 year-old Rudy Eugene told his girlfriend "I'm going to be late. I love you and I'll be back." Sometime thereafter, Eugene ripped off his clothes and attacked a homeless man in broad daylight in Miami, FL. At the time thought to be on the drug commonly known as "bath salts," Eugene began by tearing away at the homeless man's face with his teeth. This happened over the course of 18 minutes.

The victim, Ronald Poppo (age 65), was just an innocent person in the way of Eugene's bath salt-induced rage. Footage of the crime showed Eugene jumping onto the homeless man, who was sleeping at the time, stripping off the man's clothing, and then attacking Poppo with his teeth. The man survived, but lost 75% of his face. Eugene was shot to death by police at the scene; since the toxicology report ruled out the presence of bath salts, the cause of Eugene's violent episode remains unknown.

Born Hamilton Howard Fish on May 19, 1870, the man who would later be known as "The Gray Man," "The Werewolf," "The Brooklyn Vampire," and "The Boogey Man," grew up in an orphanage. Albert Fish, the name he chose to go by, horrifically spent his early years drinking urine and eating feces. By 1890, he lived in New York City and became a male prostitute. At that time, he also started raping young boys under the age of six.

A male lover once took him to a wax museum where he saw and was fascinated by a bisection of a penis (which is when a penis is split directly in half), which led to his obsession with castration. He wound up trying this on a few of his victims.

Fish boasted that he abused, tortured, or even cannibalized one child in every U.S state, but was only ever actually suspected of and convicted for about eight of them. The case that made him famous (as it led to his final arrest) was the abduction and murder of Grace Budd. He pretended to be taking her to his niece's birthday party, to which her parents consented, but Budd was never brought back.

He later sent a letter to her parents that described exactly how he coerced her into trusting him. It also contained details about how he killed her and ate some of her flesh. He was executed via the electric chair in 1936, with his "final statements" withheld by his lawyer for being "the most filthy string of obscentities." 

In 2012, Vince Weiguang Li, who recently acquired Canadian citizenship, suffered a break with reality. Eight years prior, Li claimed "the voice of God" began speaking to him, which told him he was the second coming of Jesus destined to fight against an alien invasion. While traveling on a Greyhoud bus, Li snapped and began stabbing fellow passenger, Tim McLean, believing the man to be one such alien.

Li wound up decapitating McLean while on the bus, in full view of everyone else on it, and then began eating pieces of the man's flesh and licking blood off of his hands. Needless to say, the bus stopped and everyone fled, leaving Li on the bus where he continued to slice McLean's body into small pieces until the authorities intervened. Li has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia. 
 

Issei Sagawa famously committed a brutal crime, and remains free to do it again. Sagawa became a notorious semi-celebrity in his native Japan in 1981 after killing and eating a Dutch exchange student named Renee Hartevelt. After inviting Hartevelt to his apartment in Paris to read and study poetry, he shot her in the neck, fornicated with her corpse, and then spent two days carving up and eating her body. Sagawa later said he had hoped by eating the beautiful Hartevelt to absorb her healthy energy.

Initially imprisoned in France for the crime, Sagawa was later extradited in Japan, where his crime became a subject of intense public fascination. Sagawa is currently a free man, living in Tokyo and working as a writer, restaurant reviewer, and guest speaker.

Before his current residency at a psychiatric hospital, Alexander Spesivtsev shared an apartment with his mother, where he killed up to 80 people (but was only convicted of 19) and ate a good majority of them. Unsurprisingly, he's been declared insane and is thankfully behind government-secured doors in Russia. If not for a bit of building maintenance, Spesivtsev might never have been captured. When radiators began malfunctioning in Spesivtsev's apartment complex, his neighbors called a plumber, who ended up opening the door by force when Spesivtsev failed to answer.

The plumber found a mutilated, headless body in the bathtub, bowls with pieces of human meat in them in the kitchen, and a mutilated Olga Galtseva somehow still alive on the sofa. She died shortly after, but was able to tell her story. The creepiest part is that Spesivtsev's mother lured the women into the apartment for him to rape, beat, kill, and eat.

Shortly after giving birth to her newborn son, 24-year-old Li Zhenghua clamped her jaws down on the infant's arm. When a nurse attempted to save the child, Zhenghua tightened her bite, requiring multiple workers to loosen it. Hospital staff eventually pried the woman's mouth open and rescued the little boy, but not before he sustained heavy bruising and bleeding. The hospital sedated Zhenghua. and transferred her child to a more secure room in the hospital.

Authorities never determined what went wrong, but apparently, Zhenghua lived on the streets for several weeks after her mother-in-law kicked her out of the house due to her unusual behavior. The family didn't tell anyone Zhenghua was pregnant, and she was only rushed to the hospital when strangers saw her going into labor. 

Yoo Young-chul, a South Korean resident, murdered 21 people between 2003 and 2004, and occasionally at their livers. His victims fell into two categories: prostitutes (he was apparently upset with women in general after his girlfriend broke up with him), and elderly folks. Initially, Yoo broke into elderly residences, where he would bludgeon victims with a hammer, covering his tracks by making them looking like homicide-home invasions. In one instance, Yoo burned down a building to hide his crimes. 

When police intensified their investigation, Yoo relocated to a Seoul apartment, where he made appointments with female masseuses. To dispose of their remains, Yoo cut the bodies into pieces, removing their fingerprints, and scattering the bags throughout the mountainside. Initially captured after a massage parlor relayed Yoo's requests for a masseuse to authorities, Yoo managed escape after feigning epilepsy to get his restraints removed. He was sentenced to death for his crimes, the first person sentenced since 1997.

On April 9th of 2002, rapper Big Lurch, aka Antron Singleton, and his friend, Thomas Moore, spent the night smoking PCP, which they blame for Singleton's actions during the next 24 hours.

Singleton subsequently murdered his roommate, Tynisha Ysais, and consumed parts of her body. Tooth marks were found on her face and lungs, which were completely torn from her chest cavity. When finally arrested, Singleton was naked, covered in blood, and standing in the middle of the street yelling at the sky. Serving a life-sentence in California, Singleton occasionally gives interviews detailing the dangers of drugs like PCP upon everyday citizens.