Cannibalism is one of the strangest and most disgusting crimes a person can possibly commit. This is a list about the craziest real-life cannibal attacks that have ever happened, either in a single incident or over a series of years (and sometimes, decades). All the famous cannibals on this list killed people with intent to eat or at least cook their victims. I've excluded people like the tribes of the West Indies and Maori tribes and other cultures were cannibalism was just a part of life. The real cannibals on this list committed these crimes while living within the rules of Western society and all of the crimes on this list were horribly violent. These are the worst, most depraved, and most well-known famous cannibals and cannibalistic serial killers in human history.
Mom Tries to Eat Newborn Baby
24-year-old Li Zhenghua was spotted chewing on her newborn son's arm just minutes after giving birth. A nurse found the new mom with her teeth locked around the baby's wrist. Hospital staff were eventually able to pry the woman's mouth open and rescue the little boy, but not before he sustained heavy bruising and bleeding.
Zhenghua is suspected to have been living on the streets for several weeks after her mother kicked her out of the house despite being pregnant.
Matthew Williams's Last Meal Is a Woman's Face
Suspected murderer Matthew Williams, 34, was caught in a hotel room in November 2014, eating parts of a 22-year-old woman's face. He had been released a few weeks prior, having served a five-year prison sentence for a violent attack on his partner, who happened to live near the hotel at which he was staying.
Security staff called the police after they discovered him allegedly eating the woman, face first. According to Jill Edwards, a local resident who described Williams as "an animal," they entered his room after not getting a response from Williams, who is also known by the nickname "Fifi."
This attack would prove to be his last, as he was struck by a high voltage taser used by the police to assist in his apprehension. He was formally arrested following the tasing, but moments later became "unresponsive" and died.
Albert Fish: One of the Worst People of All Time.
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 where he was introduced to drinking urine and eating feces. Not really a great start.
By 1890, he went to New York City and became a male prostitute, at which point he started raping young boys, mostly 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, which he tried on a few of his victims.
He had "implements of Hell" (a butcher knife, a bone saw, and a meat cleaver), which he would use to torture, mutilate, and murder young children. He boasted to have a child he's either abused or eaten in every state in the U.S., but was only ever actually suspected of and convicted for about eight of them.
The case that really made him famous (as it was what 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 was never brought back.
He was executed via electric chair.
Rapper Big Lurch Does PCP, Eats Friend
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 Big Lurch's actions during the next 24 hours.
Big Lurch had been using PCP for the pain caused by years-before car accident in which he was hit by a drunk driver. But this one night, the medication really just got away from him. According to interviews, the last thing he remembers is that he had to kill the Devil before the world ended. This is most likely what led to his episode.
Big Lurch 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 Singleton was finally arrested, he was naked, covered in blood, and standing in the middle of the street yelling at the sky.
After he was arrested and was sentenced to life in prison. he was found to have human flesh in his stomach.
Boy Skinned and Eaten by Cannibal Cult Family
The worst part is that it was his family. And they did a lot more than just go nuts on this one incident. You can pretty much say these were the worst parents of all time.
Ondrej and Jakub, ages 8 and 10, were sexually abused and forced to cut themselves by their family throughout their childhood. They were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables and were often made to stand in their own filth for days on end.
An anonymous man reported the abuse he heard after he accidentally caught the TV baby monitor feed on his identical TV baby monitor (they must've been on sale). The woman installed the monitor so that she could watch the suffering of her victims from the comfort of her very own kitchen, likely while enjoying a meal. The 10 year-old boy and a 13 year-old girl were freed after police arrived.
The youngest was skinned alive and forced to eat his own flesh.
The cult's name is the Grail Movement, which has hundreds of followers in Great Britain and tens of thousands of others worldwide.
Man Kills Classmate During Study Session, Eats Her, Goes Free
Issei 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, had sex with her corpse, and then spent two days carving up and eating her body. Sagawa later said that he had hoped that by eating the beautiful Hartevelt, he would absorb some of her healthy energy.
Man Attacked, Beheaded, Eaten on Public Bus
Vince Weiguang Li proves that not all Canadians are amazingly nice human beings who enjoy poutine and maple syrup. Some of them are complete monsters and can be found in the most unsuspecting places sometimes.
On a Greyhound bus, the new Canadian citizen, who immigrated from China, completely snapped and caused one of the most horrific scenes I've ever heard of (that actually happened) with a twist (wait for the end).
While sitting next to passenger Tim McLean (who was sleeping), Li produced a huge knife and began to stab him repeatedly in the neck and chest until McLean was completely decapitated (which just shows how badly some people hate sitting next to a snorer).
Li walked around showing the severed head to the rest of the passengers as they screamed and ran out of the bus in fear of being brutally dismembered as well. Li never left the bus, but stayed back and continued dismembering the man and consumed McLean's flesh, all while carrying around the severed head.
Out of respect for the dead, I will not mention the irony of McLean's last name or the fact that his name makes him already sound like a "nutritious" sandwich option at McDonald's.
Li ate McLean's eyes, ears, nose and tongue. He's currently at a maximum security mental facility.
But wait! There's more!
He had the knife on him for protection. "Why?" you may ask. Well the why, of course, is because he needed protection from the aliens.
He told authorities later that he believed the voice of God told him to do all this:
"The voice told me that I was the third story of the Bible, that I was like the second coming of Jesus (and that) I was to save people from a space alien attack,"
... at which point Jon Favreau started writing down ideas for a sequel to that movie nobody liked.
Li then said:"I was really scared. I remember cutting off his head. I believed he was an alien. The voices told me to kill him, that he would kill me or others. I do not believe this now,"
Jeffrey Dahmer
Dahmer's calm, controlled, and polite attitude throughout his 1994 interview with Stone Phillips shows no indication of a man capable of committing the crimes he's describing. Though evidently aware of his mistakes and regretful of his actions, he gives us and Phillips an idea as to the sort of satisfaction and sexual gratification he felt while dominating and subduing his victims.
A chilling recount of his first murder in 1978, in a hotel room involving a man he met at a bar, is vaguely described at the three-minute mark of the clip. "When I woke up in the morning, my forearms were bruised," Dahmer said. "And his chest was bruised, blood was coming out of his mouth, he was hanging over the side of the bed, and I have no memory of beating him to death, but I must have."
Dahmer admits to striving for total control over his victims, a large part of the reason why he committed the crimes, and when Phillips questions him about the pleasure he acquires from the actual act of killing his victims at the 6:06 mark, Dahmer replies, "the killing was just a means to an end, that was the least satisfactory part, I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with muriatic acid and the drill. But it never worked."
There's no telling what kind of zombie apocalypse would have occurred if Dahmer's intricate zombie scheme did work out, but let's just be glad that he wasn't as proficient in his zombie manufacturing skills as he was in manslaughter.
Husband, Father Keeps Fridge of Horrors in His Home
Matej Curko was not a good person. He had a wife and kids, sure, but he also managed to not only become a cannibal, but he used the Internet to lure in his victims. This happened in Slovakia, though, which is most likely why Chris Hansen never caught him.
Over the Internet, Curko would trick his victims into meeting with him. Then he would somehow (as some people on this list inexplicably do) convince them to a suicide and cannibalism pact - or he would just kidnap them, kill them, and then eat them.
He kept an extensive "Fridge of Horrors" that included the bodies of two women who had disappeared the previous year.
During a sting operation that was (sadly) not televised, an agent was made to meet up with him for some suicide and food. When Curko pulled out a gun and started shooting at officers, the worst snipers in the world shot him five times and he still lived.
He was apprehended, but died later that day in the hospital.
He was later linked to the disappearance of 30 Italian women.
Man Kills Prostitutes, Old Rich Guys For Food
He exclusively killed wealthy older men and young prostitutes.
Yoo Young-chul, a South Korean gentleman, had a pretty simple philosophy: "Women shouldn't be sluts, and the rich should know what they've done." These were his motives for killing and eating people.
Like a lot of people on this list, Yoo had a history of mutilating animals.
He murdered 21 people between 2003 and 2004. He burned three of them and mutilated the rest, eating some of their livers raw.
He killed most of his victims with a hammer, which seems to be a pattern in these kinds of crimes. The real reason he seemed to gravitate towards killing prostitutes, though, was that one dumped him after he tried to have a romantic relationship with her.
He pretty much stuck to them from there on out until he was finally caught in July of 2004.
Three Homeless Men Kill and Eat a Pedestrian
In Moscow, Russia, not only did three homeless guys basically reenact parts from a zombie movie, but they ended up selling the parts to a place where they sell kebabs.
What kind of place just buys random meat given to them by homeless people? Anyway, in Russia, there's a place you can sell pretty much any meat, which I guess is good to know.
So once again, If you're ever in Russia, do not try the street kebabs. They might be people.
After people found some of the parts near a bus stop east of Moscow, an investigation led back to the three homeless guys who attacked the 25 year-old victim with hammers and knives, then cut him up and ate him
