The death of the "Japanese cannibal" Issei Sagawa 40 years after his crime

He died at the age of 73, Issei Sagawa, known as the “Japanese cannibal”, more than 40 years after the crime that necessitated the naming of him, when he killed a Dutch student in Paris and then ate parts of her corpse, which are facts that terrified the souls before he turned The killer is a media phenomenon in his country.

Sagawa died on November 24 as a result of pneumonia, and a funeral was held for him in the presence of his relatives only, without organizing an official ceremony, according to his brother John in a statement.

Issei Sagawa was a student at the Sorbonne University in Paris when, on June 11, 1981, he invited his Dutch colleague, Rene Hartevelt, to dinner at his home.

There, he shot and killed her, then raped and dismembered her, before eating several parts of her body over a period of three days.

He did not hesitate to take many pictures of his horrific crime.

Sagawa tried to get rid of the remains of the young woman's body, so he put the body parts inside two bags and left them in the Bois de Boulogne park, but the police managed to find and arrest him.

Sagawa confessed to the crime, saying, "Eating this girl was an expression of love. I wanted to feel inside me that there was someone I loved."

After specialized experts confirmed that he was suffering from a mental disorder, he evaded trial and was placed in a psychiatric center in France, then another in Japan, before regaining his freedom in August 1985.

His departure from France angered the victim's family and many people.

The victim's family vowed to put pressure on the Japanese public to "never release the killer".

After becoming a "star" in the media, Sagawa used to receive many journalists in his apartment located in the suburbs of Tokyo.

He gave an interview on a Japanese channel and published several books that recorded high sales figures, including “Cannibal” and “I Want to Be Eaten”, in addition to preparing a comic in which he recounted the details of his crime.

Issei Sagawa worried that his books would be read outside Japan, telling AFP in the early 1990s, "I never imagined that the victim's family would read my books."

His crime inspired Japanese writer Goro Kara, who won the prestigious Akutagawa Literary Prize in 1982 for his crime novel "The Sagawa Letter".

British rock band The Stranglers alluded to the crime in their 1981 French song "La Folie".

In 2017, a documentary called "Kaniba" was shown, in which Sagawa asserts that he is unable to "explain" his behavior.

"It's just what I envisioned," he said in the film. "I can't add more. People will think I'm crazy."

He noted that his obsession is "impossible to control."

The documentary stated that Sagawa discovered his obsession with cannibalism when he was a teenager.

His obsession focused on blonde actresses in Western cinema in particular, while American star Grace Kelly was "one of the first women to attract him."

Documentary directors Verena Barravel and Lucien-Casting-Taylor said they experienced a range of "conflicting emotions" during the months they spent with Issei Sagawa and his brother John.

"We were disgusted and stunned, and we wanted to understand what happened," said Verena Paravel, adding that the work centered, in spite of everything, on "brotherhood and love."

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