Murder.com (3 page)

He had served a dozen years in the German Army as a non-commissioned ordnance officer and was said to have been an amiable and conscientious military man. After leaving the armed forces in 1991, Meiwes retrained as a computer technician and started working for a software company in the Rhine Valley city of Karlsruhe.

Evoking vividly the shades of Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s
Psycho
, Meiwes had lived with his mother in the farmhouse and remained there for several years after her death. One neighbour had put it succinctly for reporters: ‘He was a mama’s boy.’ The young Meiwes had been totally fixated with his overbearing mother, who had never let him have a girlfriend. Meiwes, who in any case preferred boys, had meekly acquiesced. He himself later recounted how his desire to eat another man had begun during puberty and that his fantasy had become so powerful over the years that he always knew he would one day enact it.

Had Meiwes been convicted of murder he would most likely have ended up spending the rest of his life in prison. Considering the ghastly acts involved, justice would surely have demanded no less. Instead, after adhering more to Meiwes’s solicitor’s claim that his client had merely assisted in a suicide, a panel of judges decided to convict the cannibal of manslaughter: he was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail.

The sentence equates to just over two years for every ten pounds of Bernd-Jurgen Brandes that Meiwes cooked and ate.

Though the court rejected the defence solicitor’s main argument, that Meiwes should be convicted of ‘killing on request’, a form of illegal euthanasia carrying a shorter sentence of six months to five years, it was agreed that he could not be found guilty of murder.

Judge Volker Muetze, one of those presiding at the trial, said the deed was ‘viewed with revulsion in our civilised society’, but, on the basis of the very clear video evidence presented, Meiwes had not committed murder, the hushed courtroom was informed. Instead, he had displayed ‘a behaviour which is condemned in our society, namely the killing and butchering of a human being. Seen legally, this is manslaughter, killing a person without being a murderer’.

As the verdict was read, Meiwes maintained the same relaxed posture he had throughout the two-month trial, where he had earlier been given the opportunity to question witnesses against him. This he had done in a most precise and unemotional manner.

Meiwes had been waiting for many years for an opportunity to realise his gruesome fantasies. With the advent of the internet he seized his chance. Taking full advantage of the medium’s success as a huge dating agency, he was able to cast his net for prospective candidates. It transpired that Meiwes had ‘auditioned’ four other potential victims who had agreed to be examined for physical suitability by the prospective killer.

Hooked by internet ads proclaiming lurid offers like ‘I could just gobble you up’ and ‘Let me feast on you’, these four individuals – three from Germany and one from London – travelled separately to Meiwes’s house for their interview and
examination. Three of the men baulked when faced with the reality of being cannibalised, having initially assumed it was all part of some erotic role-playing game. The fourth was rejected as ‘pudgy and unsexy’ by the very particular Meiwes.

Continuing to trawl the internet in search of the perfect human meal, Meiwes eventually stumbled across his main course.

After his trial and sentencing, it was observed by many eminent authorities that on his release – possibly as early as 2008 – it is unlikely that he will become a repeat offender. One expert on cannibalism, an author named Jacques Buval, felt slightly differently about the matter: ‘Cannibalism is like paedophilia. It is in him. You can’t cure it. He will want to do it again.’

Judge Muetze made this disturbing observation: ‘We have learned through this process that there is a massive cannibal following out there [on the internet].’ So how many other ghouls like Armin Meiwes are presently at work, flourishing as a result of the ease of ensnaring their prey over the internet? Dozens, hundreds, thousands?

Research has shown that there are an estimated 10,000 cannibal websites, with millions of equally lonely people who sit for hours and hours in front of their computer screens, fantasising about eating someone – perhaps
you
!

The Meiwes case has opened the door on something far more insidious and pernicious: the secret world of the suburban cannibal, and the internet is the key.

The four men who met Meiwes before he killed Brandes were clearly prepared to indulge in a deep and dark sexual fantasy, part bondage and part flagellation. They allowed him to wrap them up in cellophane and mark out their body parts as joints of meat. When they chickened out, Meiwes let them go.

Countless websites dedicated to cannibalism and portraying horrific photographs of women apparently being prepared for eating by roasting and boiling alive are linked to hard-porn sites.

Are the Western world’s eating habits changing, or what?

T
wenty-five million Americans visit cyber sex sites for between one and ten hours a week, while another 4.7 million log on for in excess of 11 hours per week. And when Saul Dos Reis, a 24-year-old Brazilian national living in Greenwich, Connecticut, lured 13-year-old Christina Long to her death, he used the internet to help him.

On 17 May 2002, Dos Reis would meet the pretty, golden-haired schoolgirl. Before he left her that night, he had raped and strangled her.

Dos Reis looked anything but threatening. One has only to glimpse this man, who appears to be more like a boy, to form this opinion. A slender-faced, shy-looking fellow, he looks as though he would be more at home delivering the local paper, smiling meekly if ever he earned himself a tip. But Saul was a wolf in sheep’s clothing; seemingly charming, even bookish, yet simmering with anger at the all-American girls because he resented the stigma that he felt came with his Brazilian heritage here in the United States. Quite wrongly, he perceived himself to be a second-class citizen. He had low self-esteem and, although not unattractive to the opposite sex, he felt that he was unable to form a meaningful relationship with a girl in the face of the competition from his thoroughbred American peers.

As he grew older, this view of himself as someone different – someone who couldn’t even speak English when he came to America, so had no chance of chatting to the desirable girls he would see on the school bus – remained with him long enough for Saul to develop a serious grudge against young white females. And, as he would quickly discover after arriving in New England’s ‘Nutmeg State’, Connecticut was anything but the Land of the Free.

Saul had first set foot on North American soil as a ten-year-old immigrant. This thin, outwardly unassuming boy with thick, dark hair and coffee-coloured skin would learn fast that girls in the United States could be quite selective as to whom they spent their time with. This seemed to him to be a pervasive attitude and the impressionable young outcast, in his strange new land, did not care for it one bit.

He festered, withdrawing into a dark world of bitterness and
frustration, to become a brooding, sullen loner. Young Saul, with South America in his blood, had felt very much out of place when his family first came to Fairfield County. In Greenwich, with its 60,000 residents, he was not only a long way from home but also felt all the more isolated as he was part of the mere 1.4 per cent of the town’s population that was of Hispanic origin.

In conservative Connecticut, pleasant beaches and rolling hills share the land with bustling cities and seafront casinos; it seems there is something for everybody. With such scenic treasures as Litchfield Hills, Housatonic River and Connecticut River Valley, the state also boasts a variety of parks, quaint village greens and hiking and biking trails. It also has its fair share of deep ravines. If a body were tossed into one of these it could be some time before anybody would find it.

Locked away in his small bedroom, Saul Dos Reis spent hundreds of hours on his computer. Soon he had gained a lot of experience of using chatrooms to ensnare underage girls. In cyberspace he could reinvent himself. He could become anyone he so chose.

Enchanted by the masses of syrupy dialogue spewing forth from him, impressionable teenage girls were very keen to engage with the young and pleasant-looking Dos Reis, who, if they were lucky, would send a photograph of himself. Of infinitely greater importance to the man on the other end of the modem, they would send through a picture of
them
selves.

He would pore over these images, fantasising about all the things he could do to an attractive, all-American teenage girl. The pictures the girls sent in return only added more excitement to the anticipatory conversations they had shared online.

In 1998, Dos Reis had met a 15-year-old-girl from nearby
Prospect with whom he had built a shadowy relationship in a chatroom. The girl consented to intercourse with the tightly wound internet Casanova and, for reasons unknown, she was not harmed. Four years and countless obsessive chatroom babblings later, Christina Long would not be so fortunate.

Pictures of Christina show a truly lovely young girl. Facing the camera, she is not bashful but smiles happily, her pretty features framed by her flowing golden-brown hair. To Dos Reis, she was a delightful-looking creature, poised and full of life. At her Catholic school, where she was a sixth-grader, Christina was a good student. As well as heading the cheerleading squad she was an altar girl.

‘I’m so devastated,’ said Andrea Cappiello, Christina’s one-time fifth-grade English and religious education teacher, when asked to comment on the sad death of her former pupil. ‘She was a very good student and a very good cheerleader. She was very spirited, just a doll.’ But the girl also evidenced a harder side. ‘She was streetwise,’ Andrea said. ‘But you could see the other side coming up, too. It’s clear she was very torn in both directions.’

For Christina was not without her problems.

After striking up some online conversations – chats which became increasingly sexually overt – the ostensibly all-American girl began to fall for the worldly-seeming allure of Dos Reis. For example, apparently referring to a Lexus car, he used the screen name ‘Hot es300’ for the model. Obviously, his intention was to convey smoothness. And along with this came a barrage of lewd dialogue. As Danbury Police Chief Robert Paquette later revealed, ‘There was some pretty graphic stuff [in the chatroom logs].’

Indeed, Christina was no stranger to sexual encounters with
partners she had met over the internet. She had become absorbed in an ultimately destructive pattern of dating boys she had conversed with online. And sex was something she was more than prepared to engage in with her ‘boyfriends’.

She had come to the town of Danbury two years previously to live with her aunt, Shelly Riling, because her parents were heavy drug users. Riling, very concerned about her niece’s welfare, was eventually awarded custody of the girl. She apparently didn’t know anything about Christina’s online activities, although she had had to speak to her more than once about the late nights she sometimes kept.

Over the next several weeks, Dos Reis was finally able to persuade Christina to meet him. The two had several sexual encounters before their fateful rendezvous at the Danbury Fair Mall, and their final fatal date took place in the back seat of Saul’s car.

As Dos Reis is the last man to have seen Christina alive, we must rely on his word as to what occurred in the events leading to her murder. It is doubtful that the version offered by this rapist and strangler of a young girl has any real mooring in truth, but it is nonetheless instructive when exploring the mindset of a sexual criminal and his rationalisations.

Dos Reis later insisted to police that not only had Christina wanted sex but also that she had requested ‘rough sex’. Unfortunately, this had been taken a little too far and she had somehow accidentally ended up strangled and dead. If Dos Reis expects us to believe that in the throes of passion he had inadvertently choked his young partner, let us note that it takes around five minutes to strangle somebody to death.

Allegedly panicked by this sudden surge of violence, the
young man drove to a remote ravine, where he dumped Christina’s body.

Not long afterwards, when the police had linked him via an email indicating that he had agreed to meet Christina on the Friday night, Dos Reis immediately caved in and told them his story. With the FBI involved, it was at their insistence that he led them to Christina’s violated corpse. He displayed not a trace of the bravado that had been the staple of his relationships with his ‘girls’. Rather, like a naughty puppy, he hung his head in shame. It seemed that his days of surfing the net for young teens were over. As it later transpired, this wasn’t the case.

Dos Reis was later arraigned in the US District Court in Bridgeport on a charge of using an interstate device – the internet – to entice a child into sexual activity. He was ordered held without bond, with a bail hearing scheduled for later that week.

At his trial in Bridgeport, which lasted from Monday, 3 March to Monday, 7 July 2003, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and three counts of second-degree sexual assault.

Sniffling and speaking so softly that the judge had repeatedly to ask him to speak up, Dos Reis, now 25, apologised for killing Christina Long. ‘I have not had a single night of sleep when I don’t wake up drenched in sweat,’ he said.

Presiding Judge Patrick L Carroll III said the apology should have come sooner. ‘That time for mercy was the evening your victim died at your hands,’ he admonished the defendant.

During the ‘victim impact’ phase of the case, and before handing down the maximum sentence allowable for the crimes, Judge Carroll heard several tear-filled statements from members of both Dos Reis’s and Christina’s families.

Christina’s grandfather, Lawrence Long, held nothing back,
calling Dos Reis a ‘habitual predator’ who used his computer, flashy car, money and previous life experiences to lure Christina to her death. Dos Reis’s supporters presented an entirely different picture, testifying as to how he had provided free meals to the needy at his father-in-law’s restaurant. When his father-in-law’s wife had cancer, Dos Reis cared for her and even shaved his own head to make her feel more comfortable while she underwent chemotherapy.

After listening attentively to both sides, the judge handed down what he could: 30 years in a state prison on manslaughter and sexual assault charges. It was also made known that in September of the previous year Dos Reis had received a 25-year federal sentence on two charges of travelling in interstate commerce to engage in illegal sex with a minor.

Ten years of the federal sentence was to be served consecutively with the state sentence – a total of 40 years behind bars.

There was one niggling issue, however, and that was whether or not US District Court Judge Stefan Underhill was unreasonable in the matter of Dos Reis’s sentencing, when he handed down a term that did not quite adhere to the usual sentencing guidelines. Under these guidelines Dos Reis’s offences would have called for a sentence of a little more than seven years.

Later, in the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals, James Lenihan, Dos Reis’s lawyer, argued that the sentence was ‘unlawful’ and should be sent back to the District Court to be ‘substantiated’.

Lenihan also said that the District Court ‘mistakenly noted that age was a factor to be considered’ under the guidelines, but in fact the guidelines did not make reference to the victim’s age.

Although Christina’s death was not an element of the federal charge, the federal judge took the killing into consideration during the penalty phase. Kevin O’Connor, the state attorney for Connecticut, argued that Judge Underhill did not make a legal error. O’Connor said the departure was justified because the defendant ‘knowingly risked the life of his victim when he choked her’. He said the sentence was reasonable ‘in light of the horrific circumstances of the defendant’s strangulation of Christina, dumping of her dead body, and efforts to cover up his involvement’.

Christina’s death received national attention and sparked a push in Congress for a kids-only domain on the internet. On 27 May 2003, it was announced that legislation allowing Connecticut Police to more swiftly investigate internet sex crimes like the one that led to the death of Christina Long had failed because state lawmakers were concerned about violating civil liberties.

So, while officials praised the quickness of the FBI in tracking down Dos Reis, state experts and local police felt that Connecticut’s reliance on federal agencies was unwise, given the rapid spread of internet sex crime. ‘Everybody has their own job to do,’ said Danbury Detective Captain Mitchell Weston, ‘and we were lucky in this case that the FBI wasn’t in the middle of something.’

It seemed unlikely that the killing could have been prevented. FBI spokeswoman Lisa Bull said the FBI learned of previous contact between the girl and the older Dos Reis only during the investigation into her killing.

Laws proposed in the General Assembly would have helped track down the perpetrators in cases where police have
knowledge of illegal internet contact between adults and children. The bureau – comprising only state police – responsible for dealing with internet crime have written bills empowering state authorities to more easily obtain internet users’ identities and communications logs.

These bills would, in theory, have encompassed not only the use of internet messages to lure someone to a potentially indecent encounter, but also the murkier depths of the provision of indecent imagery of children. Unfortunately, they did not survive the legislative committee process.

Griswold’s Democrat representative, Steven Mikutel, a co-sponsor of one of the bills, said the Legislature did not have the political will to make it law. ‘There is a group out there that doesn’t want to put any restrictions on the internet,’ he said, adding, ‘They don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. But public safety factors have to come into consideration here.’

Danbury Police Chief Robert Paquette offered this: ‘You’re getting into civil liberties now. I don’t think either the federal government or the state can go that far.’

Later, another man who had had sex with the clearly underage Christina was put out of commission. On 15 March 2004, 24-year-old Carlos Estanqueiro, also a former resident of Danbury, was sentenced to 46 months for the offence. He had pleaded guilty the previous December to using the internet for the purposes of ‘persuading a minor to engage in sex’.

Estanqueiro, it materialised, had met Christina over the internet in February 2002. The pair had subsequently engaged in sexual activities several times.