Issei Sagawa: The Cannibal Who Got Away With Murder.

*WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS PHOTOS AND EVENTS THAT MAY BE FOUND AS DISTURBING*

On April 26th 1949, in the city of Kobe, Japan, Issei Sagawa was born prematurely. He was so small that his father could fit him in the palm of his hand. As a baby, Sagawa developed enteritis, a disease of the small intestine, which meant he had to have several injections of potassium and calcium in saline. He eventually recovered. Even though the country of Japan was feeling the after effects of World War 2, Issei had a relatively happy childhood. This was massively helped by the extreme wealth his family had accrued. His father, Akira Sagawa, was the president at Kurita Water Industries which today has reported revenue of over 200 billion yen ($1.5 billion) and his grandfather was a successful editor at Japan's largest newspaper publisher, The Asahi Shimbun.

Due to his premature birth, Issei's growth was stunted and he found himself to be very frail and weak. This meant he didn't participate in any sports or physical activities which caused him to be very introverted. Instead, he found a passion in literature which his family was accepting of. As a young man he went to Wako University before moving to Kwansei Gakuin University where he obtained a masters degree in English Literature.

Whilst at Wako University, at the age of 24, he found himself infatuated with western women and had a particular interest in a German student. One day, he followed her home and realised she lived in the same building as his Grandmother. He waited for the woman to fall asleep and broke into her apartment. He intended to kill her and slice parts of her flesh from her buttocks so he could later consume them. He felt he could get away easily due to his knowledge of not only the area but the building itself. However, the woman woke up before he could start the attack, screamed and pushed him to the ground. Police charged him with attempted rape as they didn't know what his true intentions were but they were later dropped due to his father reaching a settlement with the victim out of court. This meant his criminal record remained clean.

On April 26th 1977, Issei Sagawa left the country of Japan and moved to Paris, France to pursue a PH.D in French Literature at the Sorbonne University. When in France, his desires for consuming flesh became even more intense. He would bring home a prostitute every night with the intentions of shooting and eating them but every time he went to pull the trigger, his fingers would freeze and he couldn't go through with it.

Issei found himself becoming friends with a Dutch woman who he had met in his class. Renée Hartevelt was a 25 year old woman who was described as attractive, beautiful and kind. She was a romantic at heart which was one of the reasons she decided to study in Paris and she had a love for poetry. She was well-liked amongst the class that Issei was also a part of. During their friendship, Renée and Issei would regularly spend time at each other's homes and have dinner whilst studying for upcoming exams together.

On June 11 1981, Issei Sagawa invited Renée over for dinner to help her with an assignment she had accidentally missed which involved translating poetry. This was the second night in a row they had spent together so she thought nothing of it and accepted the offer. However, she was unaware of Issei's true intentions. Sagawa had selected Renée for her health and beauty which were two characteristics he felt he lacked. He thought that if he consumed her then he would absorb her energy. When Renée was sat at the desk in Issei's living room, Sagawa left the room under the pretext of cooking dinner but he instead grabbed his rifle. Due to the placement of the desk, Renée's back was turned away from the door so she was none the wiser when Issei quietly snuck up behind and aimed the rifle at the back of her head. After pulling the trigger, Issei immediately fainted.

Upon waking up, Issei decided to complete his plan and had sex with her corpse whilst attempting to bite chunks out of her neck, however, he quickly realised his teeth weren't sharp enough. He left his apartment and purchased a Butcher's knife from the local shop and hastily made his way back home to continue his fantasy. He consumed various parts of her body, eating most of her face and breasts while saving other parts of her in the fridge for later consumption. At each stage of eating he would take pictures of her body.

Two days after Renée's murder, he cut her into several pieces and placed the body parts into two large suitcases. He booked a taxi for 8pm so he could go the park and dump the bags in a lake. When the taxi arrived, Issei was too weak to carry the suitcases so the driver, unknowingly, helped put Renée's body into the trunk of the car. Ironically, the driver made a passing joke about the weight of the two cases and asked if there was a body in the bags. Issei claimed they were just full of books. When arriving at Bois de Boulogne, he suddenly realised his plan to dispose of Renée wouldn't be as straightforward as he thought. The park was still busy with people and it wasn't yet dark due to it being the summer time. Instead of heading back home, he paid the taxi fare and started to wonder the park with the suitcases where many people witnessed him struggling with them.

Strangely, Issei became easily distracted by the summer sunset and decided to sit on a bench to fully take it in, leaving the two bags unattended a few feet behind him. Once he turned to collect them again, a man who had become suspicious of the solitary bags were poking them as they had a weird shape. After asking Issei if they were his and Sagawa instantly denying it, the curious man opened the bags which caused a woman watching from behind to scream. With a shocked crowd starting to form around the suitcases, Issei Sagawa walked away, knowing he had failed in disposing of the body which abruptly filled his head with thoughts of being caught. Only 4 days later, the French police raided his home and charged him with the murder of Renée Hartevelt. Issei Sagawa was relieved he was caught as he could now talk to someone about his twisted desires. When police questioned him on his motives, he emotionlessly replied with:

"I killed her so I could eat her."

Issei was in custody for 2 years awaiting a trial that never came as, again, his father spent a heinous amount of money on a good lawyer for his defence. The judge found Sagawa to be legally insane and unfit to stand trial. He was instead ordered to be held indefinitely at a mental institution. Due to the nature of the case, it was a big story in French media and when the public found out their tax money was contributing to his stay in the country, they became enraged. There was a national outcry for Issei Sagawa to be deported which the French government agreed too. Unfortunately, because Issei was found legally unfit to stand trial, the charges were dropped which caused all documentation of the crime to be sealed and were not legally allowed to be released to foreign authorities. This meant that the Japanese judicial system had no case against him. Upon arriving in Japan, Issei was immediately checked in to Matsuzawa Hospital where he was diagnosed with a personality disorder and psychologists found him to be medically sane. They determined the sole motivation for the murder was sexual perversion. As there was no case to be brought towards him in Japan, on the 12th of August 1986, Issei Sagawa checked himself out of the hospital and has been a free man ever since.

When he released himself from the hospital, Issei found work hard to come by due to being known as a cannibal and a murderer. However, this changed when his public image began to shift and Japanese media took an interest in him. He was approached by a Japanese publisher who offered him the equivalent of $20,000 to write an article about his crimes. After doing so, this gave Issei the idea of using his Literature knowledge to write books about what happened. He currently has 20 books out to date which all detail his fantasies and the murder. After his article was published, he was frequently invited to be a guest speaker and commentator between 1986 and 1997. In 1992, Issei appeared in Hisayasu Sato's exploitation film Uwakizuma: Chijokuzeme (Unfaithful wife: Shameful Torture) as a Sado- Sexual Voyeur.

A Voyeur is someone who has interest in observing unsuspecting people while they undress, are naked, or engaging in sexual activities.

On top of the 20 books he has written, he also wrote and illustrated a manga with Shonen of the murder. After this he would make money by drawing and selling pictures of beautiful women. He was made a regular review writer for a Japanese magazine called Spa for meat due to his known cannibalism. When work fizzled out, he was nearly accepted into a French language school because the director was impressed with his confidence to use his real name. However, employees protested and he was rejected.

In 2005, his parents died and he was prevented from attending their funeral. Being the eldest son, he had to repay their creditors and moved into public housing where he received welfare benefits for some time. In 2011, he did an interview with Vice.

In 2013, Sagawa was hospitalised from a cerebral infarction which caused damage to his nervous system. He now lives alone and needs daily assistance which is provided by his younger brother or caregivers.

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