List of incidents of cannibalism

Cannibalism, or anthropophagy, is the consumption of human flesh or internal organs by other human beings. Accounts of cannibalism date back as far as Biblical times, and some anthropologists suggest that cannibalism was common in human societies as early as the Paleolithic Era. Historically, numerous tribal societies have engaged in cannibalism, although very few are thought to continue the practice to this day.

Occasionally, starving people have resorted to cannibalism for survival necessity. Classical antiquity recorded numerous references to cannibalism during siege starvations. More recent well-documented examples include the Donner Party in 1846, and the 1972 Andes flight disaster. Some murderers, such as Albert Fish and Boone Helm, are known to have devoured their victims after killing them. Other individuals, such as artist Rick Gibson and journalist William Seabrook, have legally consumed human flesh out of curiosity, or as an attention-grabbing stunt.

Prehistoric

• The 100,000-year-old bones of six Neanderthals found in the Moula-Guercy cave, France, had been broken by other Neanderthals in such a way as to extract marrow and brains. Finds made in the El Sidrón cave in Spain, also show endo cannibalism.^[1]
• The Cheddar Man, a human skeleton dating from around 7150 BC, may have been a victim of cannibalism.^[2]

Middle Ages

• Crusaders were rumored to have practiced cannibalism during the Siege of Ma'arra.^[3]
• For a brief time in Europe, an unusual form of cannibalism occurred when thousands of Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen were ground up and sold as medicine.^[4] The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century (as late as the early 19th century, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form.^[5]). This "fad" ended because the mummies were revealed actually to be recently killed slaves.
• The Great Famine of 1315–17 was marked with extreme levels of cannibalism.
• Several works by Michel de Montaigne and Jean de Léry among others indicated that the Tupinambá tribe practised cannibalism.^[6][7]
• The Akokisa and Atakapa people of modern-day Texas practised cannibalism.^[8][9]
• Island Caribs practised ritualistic cannibalism.^[10]
• The Wari’ people practiced endocannibalism, specifically morturary cannibalism.^[11]
• Numerous incidents of cannibalism were recorded during the (1200–1201) drought in the Nile river region.^[12]
• Cannibalism was widely practised among the Aztec.^[13]
• In 1503, a group of Qizilbash militants ate the corpses of their enemies after taking over a fort in east Iran.^[14]
• The Korowai people claimed to have continued practising cannibalism into the present day in order to encourage tourism.^[15]
• Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca along with other Spanish conquistadors committed cannibalism in the aftermath of a shipwreck.^[16]

17th–19th centuries

1600s

• In colonial Jamestown, colonists resorted to cannibalism during a period known as the Starving Time, from 1609 to 1610.^[17] After food supplies were diminished, some colonists began to dig up corpses for food. During this time period, one man was tortured until he confessed to having killed, salted, and eaten his pregnant wife; he was burned alive as punishment.^[18][19]
• In 1612, Polish troops stationed in the Moscow Kremlin resorted to cannibalism, in the aftermath of prolonged siege.^[20]
• A party of Cossacks under Vassili Poyarkov cannibalized the corpses of Siberian aborigines they had previously killed.^[21]
• On 20 August 1672, a mob lynched and ate parts of Johan de Witt.^[22]

1700s

• The accounts of the sinking of the Luxborough Galley in 1727 reported cannibalism amongst the survivors during their two weeks on a small boat in the mid-Atlantic.
• French showman and soldier Tarrare had reportedly engaged in cannibalism.
• Polish soldier Charles Domery ate pieces of a fellow crew member's severed leg.
• In 1763, North American Indians performed an act of ritual cannibalism on a British soldier during the Siege of Fort Detroit.

1800s

Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, 1819

• In an 1809 incident known as the Boyd massacre, about 66 passengers and crew of the Boyd were killed and eaten by Māori on the Whangaroa peninsula, Northland, in northern New Zealand.
• In 1816, the French frigate Méduse ran aground off Mauritania, and 147 passengers and crew took to sea on a hastily constructed raft. In the chaotic 13 days before they were rescued, the occupants of the raft were driven to suicide, murder, and cannibalism; only 15 men survived the experience.
• The Essex was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The survivors of Captain Pollard's boat spent 90 days in a small whaling boat before being rescued. All the members who died during the 90 days were eaten. When the boat was found there were two members remaining; they were found sucking on the marrow of a human bone. The tale of the Essex inspired Herman Melville to write his novel Moby-Dick.
• In 1822, Alexander Pearce, an Irish convict, led an escape from Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement in Van Diemen's Land. Pearce was captured near Hobart and confessed that he and the other escapees had successively killed and cannibalised members of their group over a period of weeks, he being the last survivor.^[23]
• The 27 May 1826 issue of Acadian Recorder, mentioned that the surviving crew of the ship "Francis Mary" resorted to cannibalism.^[24]
• John Williams of the London Missionary Society and a colleague were killed and eaten at the Dillon Bay, Erromango island in 1839.^[25][26]
• Liver-Eating Johnson have reportedly eaten the livers of Crow warriors he had previously slain.
• In the US, the group of settlers known as the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the mountains for the winter of 1846–47.
• The last survivors of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition were found to have resorted to cannibalism in their final push across King William Island, Canada, towards the Back River.^[27]
• Boone Helm, also known as "The Kentucky Cannibal", was an American mountain man, serial killer and fugitive, who ate human flesh on several occasions between 1850 and 1854, often out of necessity in extreme conditions. He made no secret of the fact, and is reported to have said: "Many's the poor devil I've killed, at one time or another ... and the time has been that I've been obliged to feed on some of 'em".
• In November 1874, three British sailors survived by committing cannibalism acts in the aftermath of the Cospatrick disaster.^[28]
• Alferd Packer was an American prospector who was accused of cannibalism during the winter of 1873-1874. First tried for murder, Packer was eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter.^[29]
• The case of R v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 (QB) is an English case which dealt with four crew members of an English yacht, the Mignonette, who were cast away in a storm some 1,600 miles (2,600 km) from the Cape of Good Hope. After several days, one of the crew, a seventeen-year-old cabin boy, fell unconscious due to a combination of the famine and drinking seawater. The others (one possibly objecting) decided then to kill him and eat him. They were picked up four days later. Two of the three survivors were found guilty of murder. A significant outcome of this case was that necessity was determined to be no defence against a charge of murder.
• A report dated to 28 July 1892, indicates that three people were convicted on charges of cannibalism in the Sahalin penal colony. Two songs referencing cannibalism were also recorded among the residents of the colony.^[30]

20th century

1900–09

• During the course of the Bailundo Revolt, a group of Ovimbundu rebels decapitated a native merchant named Antonio de Silveira, roasting and then consuming his body. The rebels forced Silveira's wife to carry his head in a basket. The killing held a ritualistic purpose aiming to produce "success magic", as the perpetrators belonged to the Kandundu Cult.^[31]

1910–19

• The crew members of the steamship Dumaru spent three weeks adrift in a lifeboat after the ship exploded and sank in the western Pacific Ocean on October 16, 1918. Quickly exhausting their supply of food and water, they resorted to cannibalism to survive.^[32]

1920–29

• Serial killer Albert Fish caused much argument over whether he was insane because he consumed his victims. He confessed to molesting more than four hundred children over twenty years and is believed to have murdered somewhere between six and fifteen children.^[33] Psychiatrist Frederick Wertham described Fish as looking like "a meek and innocuous little old man, gentle and benevolent, friendly and polite. If you wanted someone to entrust your child to, he would be the one you would choose".^[34] Fish's most infamous murder is that of Grace Budd in 1928, whose flesh he cut into strips, cooked with carrots, onions, and strips of bacon. This excited him sexually.^[35] Wertham described how Fish's account of the culinary process was "like a housewife describing her favorite methods of cooking. You had to remind yourself that this was a little girl he was talking about".^[36] When the same psychiatrist declared Fish mad, Fish disagreed and stated he was just "queer".^[37]
• On 20 December 1924, German authorities uncovered pieces of human flesh along with a list of 40 people Karl Denke had previously killed and cannibalized.

1930–39

• Several reports from the 1930s, indicate that residents of the Appalachian Mountains practised a form of ritualistic cannibalism, during which cannibals ate parts of their dead relatives in order to honour them.^[38][39]
• Prior to 1931, New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, allegedly in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed in an accident, then cooked and ate it. He reported, "It was like good, fully-developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable".^[40][41]
• Cannibalism was widespread during the famine of Ukraine in 1932-3,^[42] forcing Soviet officials to commission posters saying: "To eat your own children is a barbarian act".^[43]
• An Italian woman named Leonarda Cianciulli killed three women between 1939-1940, turning their bodies into teacakes which she fed to others as well as consuming herself.

1940–49

• Members of the Leopard Society centered in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, indulged in cannibalism.^[44]
• There are eyewitness accounts of cannibalism during the Siege of Leningrad (1941–44), including reports of people cutting off and eating their own flesh.^[45]
• Following the German surrender at the Battle of Stalingrad in January/February 1943, roughly 100,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner of war (POW). Almost all of them were sent to POW camps in Siberia or Central Asia where, due to being chronically underfed by their Soviet captors, many resorted to cannibalism. Fewer than 5,000 of the prisoners taken at Stalingrad survived captivity. The majority, however, died early in their imprisonment due to exposure or sickness brought on by conditions in the surrounded army before the surrender.^[46]
• The Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo Tribunal, led by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), collected numerous written reports and testimonies that documented Japanese soldiers' acts of cannibalism among their own troops, on enemy dead, and on Allied prisoners of war in many parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In September 1942, Japanese daily rations on New Guinea consisted of 800 grams of rice and tinned meat. However, by December, this had fallen to 50 grams.^[47]:78–80 According to historian Yuki Tanaka, "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".^[48]

In some cases, flesh was cut from living people. An Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea: "the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles (80 kilometres) away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died."^[49]

• Another well-documented case occurred in Chichijima in February 1945, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed five American airmen. This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, five (Maj. Matoba, Gen. Tachibana, Adm. Mori, Capt. Yoshii, and Dr. Teraki) were found guilty and hanged.^[50]

1950–69

• A tradition of ritualistic cannibalism among the Fore people caused a Kuru epidemic, with approximately 1000 deaths from 1957 to 1960.^[51]
• German serial killer Joachim Kroll, nicknamed "Duisburg Man-Eater", practised cannibalism.^[52]
• In October 1961, Papuan aborigines supposedly killed and ate Michael Rockefeller while he was exploring southern Netherlands New Guinea.^[53]
• In summer of 1963 Josef Kulík from Czechoslovakia (at that time serving compulsory military service) killed two young boys in a railway wagon. He cut their bodies open and roasted some of their internal organs on a fire, eating them subsequently. He used some old funeral wreaths he had found near the wagon for fuel.
• Factional violence and cannibalism occurred in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southeast China in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).^[54]

1970–79

• On 13 July 1970, police arrested Stanley Baker on charges of killing and cannibalizing a Montana, U.S. resident.
• In 1972, the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, consisting of the rugby team from Stella Maris College in Montevideo and some of their family members, resorted to cannibalism while trapped at the crash site. They had been stranded since October 13, 1972 and rescue operations at the crash site did not begin until December 22, 1972. The story of the survivors was chronicled in Piers Paul Read's 1974 book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, in a 1993 film adaptation of the book, called simply Alive, and in a 2008 documentary: Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains.
• Also in 1972, at the same time as the Andean incident, Marten Hartwell crashed his aircraft near the arctic circle in Canada's North West Territory. The three passengers died in the month it took searchers to find them but Hartwell survived by eating part of one body.
• In 1977, Briton Robert Maudsley killed a fellow inmate and consumed pieces of his brain.
• On 20 August 1979, Albert Fentress lured, killed and cannibalized an 18-year-old high school student.
• Between 1979–1980, Nikolai Dzhumagaliev killed at least seven women, cannibalizing their corpses.^[55]

1980–89

• On 11 June 1981, Issei Sagawa murdered a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt by shooting her in the neck with a rifle at his home in Paris, France. After having sex with the corpse, he began to eat her, starting with the buttocks and thighs. A few days later, he was discovered while attempting to dump the mutilated body into a lake, and subsequently arrested. He was held for two years without trial, then declared legally insane. Soon afterward, Japanese author Inuhiko Yomota published Sagawa's memoirs, including a detailed account of the murder. The book was a bestseller, and Sagawa became a minor celebrity. However, he was quickly extradited to Japan, where mental health professionals announced that he was perfectly sane. Because the French government refused to grant access to secret court documents, the Japanese authorities were unable to bring charges against him. He was released in 1986, and now lives in Tokyo, making a living as a freelance writer.^[56]
• Ladislav Hojer, a serial killer from Czechoslovakia, confessed to killing a young woman in 1981. He cut off her breasts and vagina and tried to eat the latter with mustard after boiling it in salty water. He later admitted he had thrown part of it away because of its underwhelming taste.^[57]
• Michael Woodmansee was convicted in 1983 of kidnapping and killing 5-year-old Jason Foreman in 1975 in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. There was evidence at the time that Woodmansee wrote in his journal of eating the flesh of Foreman.^[58]
• In 1986, American Hadden Clark killed and cannibalized 6-year-old Michelle Dorr.
• In November 1986, American Gary Heidnik abducted six women. After one of the women died, Heidnik fed the other victims a combination of dog food and human flesh.
• In 1988, artist Rick Gibson legally performed an act of cannibalism by eating a canapé of donated human tonsils in Walthamstow High Street, London.^[59] A year later, he publicly ate a slice of legally purchased human testicle in Lewisham High Street, London.^[60] When he tried to eat another slice of human testicle in Vancouver, Canada in 1989, he was stopped by the police.^[61] However, the charge was dropped and he finally ate a testicle hors d'œuvre in Vancouver in 1989.^[62]

1990–99

• Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, murdered at least seventeen people between 1978 and 1991. Following his arrest, he told police that he had cut up the thighs, biceps and internal organs of several of his victims and cooked them in a stovetop skillet before consuming them. He claimed that they tasted like filet mignon.^[63]
• Over Thanksgiving weekend of 1991, newlywed Omaima Aree Nelson murdered, dismembered, and cannibalized her husband, William E. "Bill" Nelson in their Costa Mesa home. Pathology reports indicate Bill was still alive when Omaima began butchering his body, in which court and media reports indicate was a ritualistic manner. She then boiled and cooked his head in the oven, ate its flesh, and stored the foil-wrapped skull in the freezer; skinned his torso; deep fried his hands in oil; and cooked and dipped his ribs in barbecue sauce and tasted them.^{[64][65][66][67]}
• Andrei Chikatilo, a serial killer born in Ukraine, experienced killing and cannibalism as paraphilia. He was convicted for murder in 1992 and subsequently executed.^[37][68]
• During the North Korean famine that occurred between 1994 and 1998, there were leaked stories of cannibalism from North Korean refugees.^[69]
• The Chijon family was a South Korean gang that engaged in cannibalism.^[70]
• Ilshat Kuzikov, of St. Petersburg, Russia, was convicted in March 1997 of eating three male acquaintances since 1992.^[71]
• A court submission at the trial of perpetrators of the Snowtown murders in South Australia revealed that two of the murderers fried and ate a part of their final victim in 1999.^[72]
• Dorángel Vargas, also known as "el comegente" (Spanish for "people-eater"), was a Venezuelan serial killer and cannibal who killed and ate at least 10 men in a period of two years preceding his arrest in 1999.
• On 13 August 1999, Kazahstani authorities arrested three male psychiatric nurses on charges of killing and eating seven prostitutes.^[73]

21st century

2000–09

• In February 2000, Katherine Knight killed her partner John Price and cooked his corpse, later preparing to serve it to his children.^[74]
• In 2000, the Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu claimed to have prepared, cooked and eaten human fetuses^[75] as an artistic performance.^[76] He was prosecuted for his actions by the Chinese government.^[77][78]
• In March 2001 in Germany, Armin Meiwes posted an Internet ad seeking a young man willing to be slaughtered and eaten. The ad was answered by Bernd Jürgen Brandes. Meiwes stabbed Brandes in the neck with a kitchen knife, kissing him first, then chopped him up into several pieces. He placed several pieces of Brandes in the freezer. Over the next few weeks, Meiwes defrosted and cooked parts of Brandes in olive oil and garlic and eventually consumed 20 kg of human flesh. Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter in 2004.^[79] A retrial in 2006 found Meiwes guilty of murder, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.^[80] The songs "Mein Teil" by Rammstein and "Eaten" by Bloodbath are based on this case.
• In July 2002, four Ukrainians were arrested in Kiev for killing and eating a teenage girl. They were suspected of killing at least 6 people. Evidence showed that the murders may have been influenced by satanism.^[71]
• In a 2003 drug-related case, the rap artist Big Lurch was convicted of the murder and partial consumption of an acquaintance while both were under the influence of PCP.^[81]
• Between 2003–2004, South Korean Yoo Young-chul, murdered a total of 21 people, eating the livers off several of his victims.
• In February 2004, a 39-year-old Briton named Peter Bryan from East London was caught after he killed his friend Brian Cherry and ate parts of his brain, fried in butter. He had been arrested for murder previously, but was released shortly before this act was committed. While on trial for the murder of Cherry, Bryan was sentenced to life imprisonment, despite his claim of diminished responsibility.^[82][83] In January 2006, his sentence was revised to a minimum of 15 years.^[84]
• A count of 25 albino Tanzanians have been murdered since March 2007 reportedly through witch doctor butchery arising from prevailing superstition.^[85][86] In 2008, Tanzania's President Kikwete publicly condemned witch doctors for killing people with albinism for their body parts, which are thought to bring good luck.
• Between 2006–2007, Indian serial killer Surender Koli killed and canniballized 19 people, the majority of which were children.
• On 5 January 2007, French authorities reported that a prison inmate committed cannibalism on a cellmate, in the city of Rouen.^[87]
• On 13 January 2007, Marco Evaristti hosted a dinner party where the main course was agnolotti pasta that was topped with a meatball made from his own fat, removed earlier in the year in a liposuction operation.^[88]
• On September 14, 2007, a man named Özgür Dengiz was captured in Ankara, the Turkish capital, after killing and eating a man. After cutting slices of flesh from his victim's body, Dengiz distributed the rest to stray dogs on the street, according to his own testimony. He ate some of the man's flesh raw on his way home. Dengiz, who lived with his parents, arrived at the family house and placed the remaining parts of the body in the refrigerator without saying a word to his parents.^[89][90]
• On 8 October 2008, Mexican authorities arrested Jose Luis Calva Zepeda, on more than three counts of murder. Numerous pieces of cooked human flesh were discovered in the suspect's house.
• In January 2008, notorious Liberian ex-rebel and reformed warlord Joshua Blahyi, 37, confessed to participating in human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." The cannibalism of many children occurred during the conflict in which Blahyi fought against Liberian president Charles Taylor's militia.^[91]

On March 13, 2008, during the same war crimes trial, Joseph Marzah, Taylor's chief of operations and head of Taylor's alleged "death squad", accused Taylor of ordering his soldiers to commit acts of cannibalism against enemies, including peacekeepers and United Nations personnel.^[92]

• The murder of Tim McLean occurred on the evening of July 30, 2008. McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. According to witnesses, McLean was sleeping with his headphones on when the man sitting next to him, Vincent Li, suddenly produced a large knife and began stabbing McLean in the neck and chest. The attacker then decapitated McLean, severed other body parts, and consumed some of McLean's flesh.
• In a documentary by Colombian journalist Hollman Morris, a demobilized paramilitary confessed that during the mass killings that took place in Colombia's rural areas, many of the paras performed cannibalism. He also confessed that they were told to drink the blood of their victims in the belief that it would make them want to kill more.^[93]
• In November 2008, a group of 33 illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic, who were en route to Puerto Rico, resorted to cannibalism after they were lost at sea for over 15 days before being rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat.^[94]
• In February 2009, it was reported that five members of the Kulina tribe in Brazil were wanted by Brazilian authorities on the charge of murdering, butchering and eating a farmer in a ritual act of cannibalism.^[95]
• In April 2009, two men from the city of Perm, Russia, killed and ate their brother.^[96]
• On 27 July 2009, an American woman, Otty Sanchez, was found in a hysterical state by police, having killed her own child and cannibalized parts of the infant's corpse.^[97]
• On November 14, 2009, three homeless men in Perm, Russia were arrested for killing and eating the parts of a 25-year-old male victim. The remaining body parts were then sold to a local pie and kebab house.^[98]
• Between 2009–2011, a Berlinskoe, Russia, resident and serial killer Alexander Bychkov engaged in numerous acts of cannibalism, targeting people he had previously lured into his house.^[99]

2010–present

• Between April – May 2010, PhD student Stephen Griffiths from Bradford, England, killed and ate three prostitutes, becoming known as the Crossbow Cannibal.^[100]
• In April 2011, in the town of Darya Khan, Punjab, Pakistan, brothers Arif Ali and Farman Ali were arrested for eating a human corpse stolen from a grave. They were cooking body parts for a meal when arrested; the police also recovered remains of human body parts from their house.^[101] The brothers were released from jail in 2013; however, in April 2014, they were once again discovered to be making curry out of a human corpse (this time, the body of a two- to three-year-old child), presumed to have been stolen from a graveyard.^[102]
• On 9 July 2011, a model in the Leningrad region of Russia drowned her colleague and consumed parts of her corpse. She was later detained, found guilty of murder, and sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.^[103]
• In August 2011, police found the body parts of various people in serial killer Matej Curko's refrigerator, including the body parts of two Slovakian women who disappeared in 2010.^[104]
• In 2011, officials in South Korea received a tip that ethnic Koreans living in China were smuggling drug capsules into the country that contained powder made from dead babies, passing them off as stamina boosters. The ethnic Korean citizens of China tried to smuggle them into South Korea and consume the capsules or distribute them to other ethnic Korean citizens of China living in South Korea. Reportedly, the capsules were made in northeastern China from dead fetuses whose bodies were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned into powder.^{[105][106][107][108]}
• Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno, the two presenters of the Dutch TV show Proefkonijnen, ate each other's flesh on air in December 2011. They were filmed having a piece of their muscle tissue surgically removed, which was then fried and eaten in front of a studio audience.^[109]
• In December 2011, a Florida man killed and ate a homeless man in the city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.A. The perpetrator of the crime was later found insane and committed to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital.^[110]
• On 21 March 2012, a Vladivostok man killed his friend, later selling his meat in a local market. Another man was convicted of willingly consuming the flesh of the victim.^[111]
• On 13 April 2012, a Japanese man named Mao Sugiyama cut off, cooked and served his genitals to five people. Each of the diners paid 250 $ per portion.^[112]
• In April 2012, a man and two women were arrested in the town of Garanhuns, Pernambuco, Brazil for murdering at least two women and eating their flesh. One of the female suspects is said to have used some of the flesh of her victims for making pasties, which she allegedly sold in the town.^[113]
• In April 2012, Jieming Liu, 79, was accused of killing his wife and eating some of her flesh in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. The couple had immigrated from China in November 2011.^[114]
• In May 2012, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, an exchange student from Ghana, was murdered by Alexander Kinyua in Maryland, United States. Kinyua had eaten Agyei-Kodies' organs in an act of cannibalism.
• On May 26, 2012, police in Miami, Florida, shot and killed Rudy Eugene, 31, after he was found on the MacArthur Causeway naked and eating the face of Ronald Poppo, 65, who was homeless at the time. Police believed that Eugene was under the influence of a synthetic drug, but the autopsy of Eugene showed only marijuana in his system.^[115] A security camera at the headquarters of The Miami Herald caught the attack live on film, which quickly began making rounds on the internet.^[116] Poppo has had facial surgery since the attack and is having treatment for his face.^[117]
• In July 2012, twenty-nine members of a cannibal cult were arrested in northeast Papua New Guinea after eating at least seven people (four men and three women) believed to be sorcerers.^[118][119]
• In October 2012, Japanese authorities convicted three men for killing and eating a common friend in 2009.^[120]
• On December 26, 2012, Mridul Kumar Bhattacharya and his wife Rita Bhattacharya who owned tea gardens in Assam, India were murdered by an angry mob of workers. Cannibalism was later reported in the incident.^[121]
• On January 10, 2013, the Chinese cannibal Zhang Yongming, aged 57, was executed for his crimes. He sold victims’ flesh as ‘ostrich meat’ and kept eyeballs in wine.^[122][123]
• In April 2013, British punk rock musician David Playpenz ate his finger after it was severed in a motorcycle accident^[124]
• On 17 March 2013, a 47-year-old man, mutilated, sexually assaulted and ate pieces of a 77-year-old woman, in Ontario, Canada. The man reportedly suffered from severe depression and the attack was perpetrated during a psychotic incident.^[125]
• On May 2013, during the Syrian civil war, a rebel named Abu Sakkar was filmed cutting open the body of a fallen enemy soldier and biting into one of his organs – it is unclear what he bit into^[126]
• In July 2013 Lino Renzi, aged 45, was found out while cooking some remains of his mother, Maria Pia Guariglia, aged 73, in his apartment by the police, called by a neighbour after smelling a disgusting odor coming from Renzi's apartment, probably caused by some intestine chunks burning on the grill. The cops discovered moreover several pieces of human body in a freezer, oven and pots, while most of the corpse, lying in the bathroom, featured severe mutilation to arms and legs, besides several intestine pieces removed. Later on, Renzi confessed his mother hadn't died of natural causes, but she'd been brutally beaten to death by himself after a quarrel, then dismembered into pieces with a saw and a butcher knife.^[127][128]
• On 13 January 2014, BBC reported that a Christian man nicknamed "Mad Dog" ate his Muslim rival's foot, during the CAR conflict.^[129]
• On 15 September 2014, a man from Jeffersonville, Indiana, USA, killed and ate parts of his girlfriend.^[130]
• On 7 October 2014, a chef from Brisbane, Australia, committed a murder–suicide, murdering, cooking and eating parts of his girlfriend before committing suicide.^[131]
• On 31 October 2014, a crowd stoned to death, burned and then ate a suspected Allied Democratic Forces insurgent in the town of Beni, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo.The incident came after a number of ADF raids, that brought the October's civilian death toll to over 100 people.^[132]
• On November 6, 2014, Matthew Williams, 34, was allegedly found eating his 22-year-old victim's face in a room of the Sirhowy Arms Hotel in the village of Argoed, near Blackwood, South Wales.^[133]
• On 6 January 2015, a Reuters report revealed that the La Familia Michoacana and the Knights Templar cartels, were forcing potential recruits to eat the hearts of their victims as part of an initiation rite.^[134]
• On 16 August 2016, Florida State University student Austin Harrouff fatally stabbed an elderly couple, Michelle Mishcon and John Stevens, in their garage and began eating their face before being shot and subdued by deputies.^[135]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cannibalism.