Serial killers and their minds.

Cannibalism, which is also called anthropophagy, is the eating of human flesh by humans. The word Cannibal came from when Christopher Colombus first met the Carib Indians from the Caribbean whom he called caribales. These people from the Caribbean were mistaken as cannibals and their name was mispronounced canibales. There are many different types of cannibalism in the world. One type of cannibalism has to do with tribal rituals and magic, such as said to be practiced in New Guinea, Fiji and other remote places. Another type is a result of starvation from an accident, such as what happened in the ordeal of the plane crash victims shown in Alive and of the survivors of the Donner Party in the Sierra snow in 1846. Also, there are psychological kinds of cannibalism because of being mentally ill, including cannibalism practiced by certain types of serial murderers who eat their victims.

English: Cemetery Hannover Stoecken, the grave for...

Murderer Fritz Haarmann (middle) with police detec...

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This paper will explore the cases of serial murderer cannibals in this century, includin!

g Fritz Haarmann ("The Vampire of Hanover"), Jeffrey Dahmer ("The Milwaukee Monster"), and Andrei Chikatilo ("The Mad Beast"). In addition to describing the crimes they committed this paper will investigate the psychological pathologies that drove them to eat their victims.

Fritz Haarmann.

Friedrick Heinrich Karl (Fritz) Haarmann was a very sick man who kidnapped boys and young men and performed sexual acts then murdered them in Hanover, Germany in the 1920s. Born in 1879 to a working-class couple, Haarmann "was a sullen and slow-witted child whose favorite pastime was dressing up like a girl." He was ignored as a child, because his parents fought constantly, and after a while he became especially attached to his mother and had learned to despise his father. Fritz also suffered from a disease in his brain called meningitis.

Haarmann told a psychologist in an interview that he realized that he was a homosexual at an early age from two encounters. The first encounter happened when Haarmann was seduced at age 7 in his school, and when he was at age 16 he was seduced and had a sexual encounter with someone he described as a "mannish woman." After these experiences Haarmann said he became a homosexual and began to kidnap small boys and to perform sexual acts. He signed up for the army at age 16 but was showing signs of mental illness and was discharged and put in a hospital. At age 17 he began to lure children into his doorway and cellar and he would molest them. He got caught and he found out from the doctors that he was suffering with what they called "congenital mental deficiency." Haarmann's excuse for his mental deficiency was that he had a blow to the head during a bar exercise in the gymnasium. He was sent to many asylums and escaped several times. Finally, he fled to Switzerland until people forgot about him. From being confined in those hospitals he became even more crazy. Haarmann said in an interview with a psychologist, Dr. Lessing, "Hang me, do whatever you like with me, but don't send me back to the loony bin."

For all the years of World War I he was in jail. When he was released in 1918 he became involved in a smuggling ring that traded in black-market beef, and he served as a police stool pigeon. After being found in bed with a young boy he was sent to jail again. When he was released he started his serial murders of boys and young men.

Haarmann fell in love with a male prostitute named Hans Grans. He met him in the train station and they began a relationship. After awhile Grans figured out what kinds of stuff Fritz would do to these children.