This week, to finish off my passion blog for this semester, we are going to talk about a killer who’s reputation I find particularly fascinating. Believe it or not, I had never heard of this man until my twelve year old sister told me about him, but his story is a rather strange one. His name is Issei Sagawa and he is essentially a celebrity for murder and cannibalism.

Issei Sagawa was born in Japan in 1981 to wealthy parents. He recalls having his first cannabalistic thought in the first grade, when admiring a boys thigh. Later in life, he stalked a German woman and followed her home to her apartment. His plan was to break in while she was sleeping and cut off part of her butt to eat (so disgusting), but she woke up and he was arrested for attempted rape, of course he did not reveal his true intentions, and got off with his father’s money. He moved to France when he was 27 to pursue his writing career. It was there that he often took home prostitutes with the intention of killing them but “froze and could never pull the trigger”. However, eventually his urges must have taken over because he killed a woman named Renée Hartevelt when he was 32.

Hartevelt was a classmate, and Sagawa invited her to his apartment for dinner. While her back was turned, Sagawa shot her in the back of the neck, killing her. He passed out from the shot, but quickly woke up, had sex with her corpse, and then proceeded to eat numerous parts of her body after cutting them with a butcher’s knife. He then tried to dispose of her body by carrying it in a suitcase to a river, but was caught and detained by french policemen.

Sagawa’s father paid for a good lawyer, and after two years he was found mentally insane and sent back to Japan. Because the records in France had to be sealed, he only spent about 12 days in a mental hospital in Japan before being released, and he now walks a free man.

As if any of that story wasn’t weird enough, it gets stranger. This man, rather than being feared or hated by people, is a celebrity in Japan society. He returned to the public eye and embraced his newfound fame by signing a documentary deal. He actually profited from his crime, and essentially got off scott-free. Although not all view him as a celebrity and he has struggled to get jobs since the incident, Sagawa not only got away with murder, but seems to actually have benefited from it, which is disgusting and makes me worried about what’s going on in Japan.