Joachim Kroll

Over a 21-year period from 1955 to 1976 Joachim Kroll  murdered, mutilated and had sex with the corpses of at least 14 young women and children throughout Germany. After he had had his way with their bodies he would cook them up and eat them, the younger the better. When captured he told police that he loved the meat of young children as it fell off the bone and he said it was of much better quality than the meat available in the West German butcher shops.

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When police searched Kroll's foul-smelling apartment, in the refrigerator they found pieces of human flesh on a plate. Scattered around the lounge room were putrefying bags of human flesh, stripped from his victim's bones with a butcher's knife. On the stove was a simmering vegetable stew with a tiny human hand in it. Joachim Kroll was declared a mental defective, placed in a mental asylum never to be released.

Andrei Chikatilo

Of all of the modern day cannibal killers, 56-year-old Andrei Chikatilo, who, in a 24-year killing career in Russia that saw the horrific deaths and cannibalization of 53 victims, mainly children, was by far the most prolific. Like Kroll, Chikatilo was a necrophiliac in that his victims had to be dead before he could have sex with them.

Blaming his lust for human flesh on the fact that as a boy he witnessed his younger brother being eaten alive by villagers in a famine, Chikatilo selected his victims from the runaways and young prostitutes that hung around bus and train stations. Once he had lured his victims into the nearby woods on the promise of a meal or money, he would set upon them and hack them to death, rape the corpse and then disembowel his victim and ravage the warm internal body parts.

The fact that Chikatilo was an average-looking school teacher allowed him to blend in with the crowds at the busy venues where he selected his victims and even though he was questioned nine times about the murders, twice near the scene of a murder (once he was carrying a knife in his bag) incredibly, police let him go.

Chikatilo was eventually caught and executed with a single bullet to the back of the head in 1994. At his trial people fainted in horror as he told in graphic details how he boiled and ate the sawn-off nipples and testicles of his victims. Chikatilo is the subject of the movie Citizen X.

Jeff Dahmer

The best known real life cannibal of modern times is Jeffrey Dahmer, which isn't surprising. Dahmer was a monster beyond the wildest imagination. A handsome young man who wouldn't have had a problem in the world acquiring any amount of normal sexual partners, Dahmer was a necrophiliac, homosexual serial killer and cannibal whose perversions were incomprehensible.

From 1988 to 1991, Dahmer, a 28-year-old chocolate factory worker, slaughtered 17 young men, raped and mutilated their corpses and then cut them up and ate their body parts.

Dahmer admitted to having sex with the bodies of the dead men as well as their decapitated heads and mutilated torsos. He pointed out to police that he always wore a condom when having sex with his dead partners or their body parts. Better to be safe than sorry, he said. Jeffrey Dahmer was sent to prison for 1,070 years and was murdered several years later by another inmate.

Aberdeen sign

Australia 's Katherine Mary Knight has deservedly earned her place on this depraved roll-call of humanity.

Until March 1, 2000, sleepy Aberdeen, situated on the New England Highway 266 kilometers north-northwest of Sydney, population 1,750, was best known as the birthplace of the blue heeler cattle dog, the canine icon that is as much a part of Australian folklore as the emu, koala and kangaroo.

But not any more. These days Aberdeen is known as the home of Katherine Knight, arguably the most depraved monster in Australia 's grizzly homicidal history. Visitors to Aberdeen are now far more interested in ogling the single-story, three-bedroom bungalow at number 84 Andrews Street, where a murder and other unspeakable acts took place, and pondering what would cause the middle-aged housewife, mother and grandmother to perpetrate such evil.

 Copyright 2003, Paul B. Kidd Publications.  All Rights Reserved

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