The Bizarre News Thread

[chefmike]

The Bizarre News Thread

Post your favorite bizarre news stories here.


German cannibal faces murder charge again at trial


Jan 11, 5:54 AM (ET)


By Philip Blenkinsop

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who killed and ate a willing victim faces the prospect of a stiffer sentence at a retrial starting on Thursday for a crime that continues to horrify and enthral.

Armin Meiwes, 44, was convicted of manslaughter and given an 8-1/2-year jail term in January 2004 for cutting up a man he met via the Internet three years before.

However, Germany's Supreme Court ruled last April that the verdict was too lenient and Meiwes should face a second trial with a renewed murder charge.

Retrial chambers do not have to follow a higher court's decision, but are normally steered by their arguments. However, as prosecutors point out, this case is anything but normal.

Meiwes, a computer repairman, admitted killing Berlin-based computer specialist Bernd-Juergen Brandes, 42, but had initially been spared a murder conviction and a possible life sentence because the victim had asked to be eaten.

Prosecutors argued that Meiwes should have been found guilty of murder as he had killed to satisfy perverted desires.

Defense counsel Harald Ermel has argued that Meiwes's sole motive was to meet the wishes of his victim and that his crime was only "killing on request," a form of illegal euthanasia that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

Ermel declined to comment on the case before Thursday's trial, although he said on Monday he would seek to block the planned March screening of "Rotenburg," a film based on Meiwes's life and named after his home town in central Germany.

At his home there, in a "slaughter room" fitted out with butcher's bench, meat hook and cage, Meiwes severed Brandt's penis and they both tried to eat it.

Later he killed Brandt, by then unconscious from blood loss, cut his body up and froze it, eating some 20 kg (44 lb) of it over the following months.

Psychiatrists found Meiwes deeply disturbed but sane.

The Frankfurt court must examine Meiwes's motives and ask if they were sufficient to constitute murder. The higher court said the original court had ignored the fact that Meiwes had filmed the slaying for sexual gratification.

But there are some questions the trial, scheduled to last until March, will never answer in this bizarre case of sexual fetishism, such as what sort of person would want to be eaten.

[Ecstatic]

This is my favorite line:

"Psychiatrists found Meiwes deeply disturbed but sane."

wtf?

[BeardedOne]

This is my favorite line:

"Psychiatrists found Meiwes deeply disturbed but sane."

wtf?

Usually used to define one's ex.

[George Costanza]

CINCINNATI - The mummified body of a woman who didn't want to be buried was found in a chair in front of her television set 2 1/2 years after her death, authorities said.

Johannas Pope had told her live-in caregiver that she didn't want to be buried and planned on returning after she died, Hamilton County Coroner O'Dell Owens said Monday.

Pope died in August 2003 at age 61. Her body was found last week in the upstairs of her home on a quiet street. Some family members continued to live downstairs, authorities said. No one answered the doorbell at Pope's home Monday afternoon.

It could take weeks to determine Pope's cause of death because little organ tissue was available for testing, Owens said.

An air conditioner had been left running upstairs, and that allowed the body to slowly mummify, he said. The machine apparently stopped working about a month ago, and the body began to smell.

"Standing outside, one could smell death," Owens said.

Police went to the house last Wednesday after receiving a call from a relative who hadn't seen Pope in years. They found a staircase behind a door blocked by a basket and climbed to the second floor, where they found the body.

It was not clear if any crimes were committed, Owens said.

Authorities did not identify the caregiver, a women in her 40s who apparently lived in the home with Pope, Pope's daughter and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

"The caregiver is not someone you'd think was from another planet or really seems off the wall — (she's) a pretty normal kind of person," he said. "But I think out of loyalty, friendship and love of her friend, (she) decided to keep the body at home."

[chefmike]

(25 March 1993)
A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man killed by his own gas. There were no marks found on his body, but an autopsy revealed the presence of large amounts of methane dissolved in his blood.

His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage, just the right combination of foods to produce a severe gas attack. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed.

Had his windows been open, the flatulence wouldn't have been fatal, but the man was shut up in a nearly airtight bedroom. He was an obese man with an unlimited capacity for creating the deadly gas. Three rescuers became sick and one was hospitalized.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carl Sagan determined that aliens could deduce the presence of carbon-based life on Earth by spectral analysis of our atmosphere. Detection of methane would prove continuous bioproduction of the molecule, since it breaks down rapidly in contact with oxygen. He further demonstrated that the largest single source of methane in our atmosphere is from bovine flatulence, with particularly large concentrations above the cattle producing states of the US and in Argentina. A single cow fart is significantly larger than a human's production all day.

An odd claim from Arthur Henry: "The reference to cow farts is incorrect. Cows, like hippos, emit methane as a result of belching from their mouths; not from farting from their other ends. This is because they hold their food in a partially digested state in their multiple stomachs until it is useable for nutrition lower down."

The whole story is disputed by Ian A. York and Kenneth T. Lim, who say: "Refer to to York's research on the volume and quantity of flatulence, and the fact that methane molecules break down very rapidly in the presence of oxygen. If you multiply the total volume of air in an average bedroom by 21% (for the percent of oxygen in air) you will arrive at a figure far greater than that needed to dissipate a mere 6 liters of pure methane, a figure way too high for flatulence, which is not 100% methane."

New alert! Iain says we left out a crucial part: "I heard that when three men entered the room to figure out just what was happening, they also inhaled a great amount of the gas, and all three were hospitalized for methane poisoning. None died."

David F. Mayer says, "Methane Gas Is NON-Toxic. It does not support respiration, but neither does ANY other gas except oxygen. Like all non-toxic gases, including nitrogen, it causes suffocation."

[chefmike]

Family: Man Died After Ducking Flying Shrimp

POSTED: 3:11 pm EST January 12, 2006

MINEOLA, N.Y. -- A shrimp a hibachi chef tossed at a man eating at a Japanese steakhouse ultimately led to the diner's death, his family claims in a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit against the restaurant chain Benihana.

Jerry Colaitis wrenched his neck when he ducked to avoid the shrimp in the chain's Munsey Park restaurant, attorney Andre Ferenzo said in opening statements Wednesday.

Months after the January 2001 incident, the 43-year-old Long Island man died from complications caused by neck surgery he required afterward, the lawyer said.

Benihana lawyer Charles Connick said it was unlikely a chef who works for tips would toss food at customers after being asked not to, as Ferenzo claimed. Even if that happened, Connick added, the cause of Colaitis' death was an infection or neck injury unrelated to the shrimp.

Benihana chefs mix dining with entertainment as they grill Japanese food in front of patrons. Ferenzo said some of them have become more daring in recent years, but Connick said customers enjoy the experience.

"Some customers, especially dads and sons, want to catch the food," Connick said. "The evidence will show that it was part of the show."

Colaitis, of Old Brookville, underwent neck surgery in June 2001, but there were complications, and he had numbness in his arm, Ferenzo said. He died that November, a day after checking into a hospital with a 105-degree fever.

[chefmike]

Mich. Man Jailed After Handshake Sickens 3
Jan 12 4:40 PM US/Eastern
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By TIM MARTIN
Associated Press Writer


LANSING, Mich.


A man has been jailed on assault charges after a prosecutor, police officer and courtroom bailiff became seriously ill after shaking hands with him.

During a Dec. 21 court appearance on a traffic charge, John Ridgeway pulled out a vial of an unknown liquid, rubbed his hands with the contents and insisted on shaking hands with the three people, authorities said.

All of them got sick within an hour, suffering from nausea, headaches, numbness and tingling that lasted about a day. Two sought treatment at a hospital.

The FBI was running tests on the substance to identify it.

Ridgeway, 41, told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from jail Thursday that the substance was olive oil. He questioned whether the three officials were sick at all, and charged that the allegations were fabricated.

"They've got a vendetta against me because I took a ticket to a jury trial," he said.

Ridgeway could get up to six years in prison if convicted.

"I have never seen the likes of this. Nobody else has, either," said prosecutor Keith Kushion. He was not the prosecutor who fell ill.