Maneating
Horrible murders took place long before the Internet became part of First World life. Whether in fact (Jack the Ripper) or in fiction (Hannibal Lecter), killers have been disembowelling, dismembering and disposing of their victims with fiendish energy and, sometimes, ingenuity for many's the day. That's the way it is with monsters. They'll use letters, postcards, telegrams, cars and whatever other technology is at hand to snare the unwary.
Add an Internet angle to the equation, however, and jaded editors hit the public panic buttons for there's a lot to be gained by playing on ignorance and insecurity. And so it was last week when it was reported that a German cannibal had used the Net to find his victim(s). The mass-market German daily Bild reported that a computer engineer from Berlin had responded to an online advertisement that said: "Seeking young, well-built men aged 18 to 30 to slaughter." With the lurid style that it is famous for, Bild went into detail about how the victim, in his 40s, had had his penis chopped off, and how both the alleged killer and victim dined on the organ before the host cut his guest into pieces in the central German town of Rotenburg, near Kassel. The 41-year-old murderer videotaped the deed, prosecutors said.
The serious news weekly Der Spiegel took up the story in this week's edition "Verbrechen: Der Kannibale von Rotenburg", and, in the thorough style that its readers have become accustomed to, it profiled the two principals, provided background information on perversions as diverse as Newsgroups and Snuff movies, and listed some of the more disgusting aspects of the Web usage. What it also presented was the e-mail address of the victim, darmopfer@gmx.de, which may or may not have added value to the story, but it was surely not in the best of taste to follow the article with a two-page ad spread for that very same e-mail service: GMX.de.
