From shipwrecked sailors to serial killers: Inside the worst cases of

There are few things more terrifying than a cold-blooded, calculated murder.

But there are some individuals who plunge into a darkness so grotesque it challenges our very understanding of evil.

These are the people who not only kill, but consume their targets.

For centuries, tales of cannibalism have gripped and horrified us – from desperate sailors stranded at sea, to modern-day murderers who made meals of their victims.

Each story lays bare the human mind at its most primal, when hunger, madness, or morbid desire erase morality entirely.

Sometimes, it begins with sheer desperation – when starvation strips away the thin veneer of civilisation.

In other cases, it’s a chilling act of control, a way to dominate, defile and possess the victim even after death.

From the shipwrecked crew of the Mignonette, who murdered a cabin boy to survive, to Jeffrey Dahmer, the so-called Milwaukee Cannibal who kept human heads in his refrigerator, history offers no shortage of grim examples.

Cannibalism has always existed on the fringes of humanity – whispered in folklore, recorded in courtrooms, or captured in grotesque headlines.

Yet each case forces us to confront a haunting truth – under the right (or wrong) conditions – anyone might be capable of anything.

Whether driven by hunger, insanity, or perverse fascination, these stories reveal the darkest corners of human nature – where morality dissolves and flesh becomes food.

Albert Fish: The real-life Boogeyman

Few killers embody pure evil like Albert Fish – the frail, grey-haired man who hid monstrous appetites beneath a veneer of gentility.

Born in 1870, Fish’s life was scarred by abuse, insanity, and sadism. He preyed on children across America, torturing, murdering, and in some cases eating them.

Few killers embody pure evil like Albert Fish (pictured) – the frail, grey-haired man who hid monstrous appetites beneath a veneer of gentility

His most infamous victim was ten-year-old Grace Budd (above), whom he lured from her family under false pretences before killing and consuming her remains

Born in 1870, Fish’s life was scarred by abuse, insanity, and sadism. He preyed on children across America, torturing, murdering, and in some cases eating them. Pictured: A policeman with an electromagnetic metal detector searches for a kitchen knife as evidence against Albert Fish

His most infamous victim was ten-year-old Grace Budd, whom he lured from her family under false pretences before killing and consuming her remains.

Years later, he taunted her mother with a letter detailing every horrific act. That grotesque confession led to his capture in 1934.

An excerpt from the letter reads: ‘First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch.

‘I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it.’

At trial, doctors described Fish as deeply insane, yet the jury deemed him fit for execution.

He was electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in 1936 – taking with him the secrets of how many children he truly murdered.

When sailors ate the cabin boy: The Mignonette tragedy

In 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton, bound for Australia with four men aboard – Captain Tom Dudley, first mate Edwin Stephens, sailor Ned Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker.

But when a freak wave destroyed their vessel in the South Atlantic, the men found themselves adrift in a small dinghy with almost no supplies.

After weeks of hunger, thirst, and despair – surviving on two tins of turnips and a turtle – Parker fell dangerously ill after drinking seawater.

As he lay dying, Dudley turned to the ‘custom of the sea,’ a grim maritime tradition that sanctioned killing one to save the rest. The captain whispered to Stephens, ‘The boy is dying. Human flesh has been eaten before.’

In 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton, bound for Australia with four men aboard – Captain Tom Dudley (pictured), first mate Edwin Stephens, sailor Ned Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker

At dawn, Dudley slit Parker’s throat with a penknife. The survivors drank his blood and ate his flesh until they were rescued days later.

Back in England, Dudley and Stephens admitted everything, claiming it was a tragic necessity.

But the court ruled that necessity was no defence for murder.

Their conviction in R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) set a lasting legal precedent – a chilling reminder that even in desperation, taking an innocent life cannot be justified.

Jeffrey Dahmer: The Milwaukee Cannibal

Between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer terrorised Milwaukee with a spree of killings so depraved they shocked the world.

He lured young men – many of them gay and from marginalised backgrounds – to his apartment, where he drugged, strangled, and dismembered them.

Between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer (pictured in 1991) terrorised Milwaukee with a spree of killings so depraved they shocked the world

He lured young men – many of them gay and from marginalised backgrounds – to his apartment, where he drugged, strangled, and dismembered them

From left to right top to bottom are 16 people Jeffrey Dahmer was found guilty of murdering: Curtis Straughter, Steven Mark Hicks, Ricahrd Guerrero, Jeremy Weinberger, Jamie Doxtator, Ricky Beeks, Oliver Lacy, Errol Lindsey, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Ernest Miller, Anthony Hughes, Joseph Bradehoft, Matt Turner, Anthony Sears, David C Thomas and Edward Smith

Pictured: A photograph of the interior of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment, taken following his arrest in July 1991

Inside his small, sparsely furnished flat, police later found skulls in the refrigerator, a human torso in the freezer, and Polaroid photographs of dismembered bodies.

Dahmer confessed to murdering 17 victims and admitted to eating parts of them.

Raised in an unstable home, Dahmer showed early signs of obsession with death – collecting animal bones and dissecting roadkill.

His killings escalated from curiosity to compulsion, culminating in horrific acts of necrophilia and cannibalism.

He was finally caught in 1991 after a victim escaped and led police to his apartment. Dahmer was sentenced to multiple life terms, but in 1994, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.

Even in death, his name remains synonymous with the darkest extremes of human cruelty.

Issei Sagawa: The cannibal who walked free

In 1981, 32-year-old Japanese student Issei Sagawa invited his Dutch classmate, Renée Hartevelt, to his Paris apartment to discuss poetry. Instead, he shot her in the neck, violated her corpse, and spent the next two days eating parts of her body.

Sagawa told police he had long fantasised about consuming a ‘beautiful Western woman’ -believing it would let him absorb her energy and beauty.

He was arrested after being caught trying to dispose of Hartevelt’s remains in a park, but was declared legally insane by French doctors and confined to a psychiatric hospital.

This file photo taken on June 17, 1981 shows Japanese student Issei Sagawa (R) being escorted by French plainclothes police as he leaves the Paris Police Prefecture Headquarters after questioning

When deported to Japan, authorities found him sane – yet, due to a legal loophole, he could not be retried.

Sagawa walked free in 1986 and went on to become a media curiosity in Japan, giving interviews, writing books, and even appearing in films.

He remained disturbingly unrepentant until his death in 2022 – a killer who dined on human flesh and paid no real price for it.

Armin Meiwes: The man who ate a willing victim

When German computer technician Armin Meiwes posted an online advert seeking a ‘young, well-built man to slaughter and eat,’ few believed he was serious.

But one respondent, 43-year-old engineer Bernd Brandes, agreed to become his victim.

In March 2001, Brandes travelled to Meiwes’ farmhouse in Rotenburg, where the two filmed the gruesome act. Brandes consented to having his penis cut off, which they tried -unsuccessfully – to cook and eat together.

Undated picture shows self-declared cannibal Armin Meiwes. When Meiwes posted an online advert seeking a ‘young, well-built man to slaughter and eat,’ few believed he was serious

But one respondent, 43-year-old engineer Bernd Brandes, agreed to become his victim. In March 2001, Brandes travelled to Meiwes’ farmhouse in Rotenburg (pictured), where the two filmed the gruesome act

Hours later, Meiwes stabbed him to death, dismembered the body, and stored the flesh in a freezer, consuming it over the next ten months.

When police eventually arrested him in 2002, they found human remains and the video recording.

At first convicted of manslaughter, Meiwes’ sentence was later upgraded to life imprisonment for murder.

Behind bars, he reportedly became a vegetarian – a chilling twist for a man once known as The Rotenburg Cannibal.

The Siege of Ma’arra: Cannibalism in the Crusades

Cannibalism isn’t confined to the modern age.

During the First Crusade in 1098, starving Christian soldiers besieged the Syrian city of Ma’arra and, after capturing it, resorted to eating the dead.

During the First Crusade in 1098, starving Christian soldiers besieged the Syrian city of Ma’arra and, after capturing it, resorted to eating the dead

Chroniclers recorded that Crusaders boiled adult corpses in cauldrons and roasted children on spits.

Some accounts suggest the acts were committed in desperation; others hint it was psychological warfare meant to terrify Muslim forces.

Whether driven by hunger or horror, the episode became infamous in both Christian and Arab histories – a stark example of how even those claiming to fight in God’s name could descend into barbarity when pushed to the edge of survival.

Andes plane crash – Forced to eat the dead

After their plane crashed and they were stranded in the snowy wastes of the Andes mountains in Argentina, Roberto Canessa and the other survivors of Flight 571 were on the brink of starving to death.

Meagre items of food and drink salvaged from the wreckage – chocolate, nuts, crackers, jam, fruit and some bottles of alcohol – had run out and no vegetation or animal life could be found at the elevation of 11,710ft (3,570m).

Their hunger became so all-consuming and desperate that some attempted to chew strips of leather from luggage and eat foam from the broken aircraft’s seat cushions.

As they grew weaker, and the chances of rescue grew more distant, the survivors gradually came to realise what the next step had to be if they were to stay alive.

Victims of the air crash are rescued from the Andes in 1972

Workers helping to rescue victims of the crash in the Andes in 1972

It was something that, at first, was too terrible to contemplate.

The bodies of 18 of their friends, relatives and members of the flight’s crew were frozen in the snow and the passengers’ only chance of survival lay in the unthinkable: resorting to cannibalism and eating the bodies of the deceased.

Ten days into their ordeal, after much soul-searching and praying for guidance, some of the passengers – including Canessa – used a razor blade and shards of glass to cut strips of skin, muscle and fat off the frozen bodies, and forced themselves to swallow small mouthfuls.

‘Each of us came to the decision in our own time and consumed the food when we could bear to,’ recalls Canessa, speaking to the Mail from his home in Montevideo, Uruguay.

‘It was a process,’ he says. ‘At first, I thought that I could not take advantage of my dead friends’ bodies. Then it became something that was natural, almost an everyday routine, because the food was part of the fuel for getting out of there. I chose to live. I am proud of what I did.’

Cannibal family’s house of horror

Their gruesome acts of murder and cannibalism shocked Russia when they came to light in 2017.

Dmitry Baksheev and Natalia Baksheeva were allegedly butchering dozens of people over a period of 18 years before police finally discovered the cannibalistic lair hidden in their flat – including cut off body parts and photos of their human meat dishes.

Dmitry Baksheev (pictured) and Natalia Baksheeva were allegedly butchering dozens of people over a period of 18 years before police finally discovered the cannibalistic lair hidden in their flat – including cut off body parts and photos of their human meat dishes

Dmitry and Natalia (pictured), then aged 35 and 42 respectively, were arrested after road workers found a phone containing images of him holding a severed human hand in southern Russia

Dmitry and Natalia, then aged 35 and 42 respectively, were arrested after road workers found a phone containing images of him holding a severed human hand in southern Russia.

When police searched their flat in Krasnodar, they reportedly found several chopped off body parts, pickled human remains, a dozen slices of skin and recipes as well as ‘cannibal videos’ outlining how to cook human flesh.

Inside Russian ‘cannibal family’s house of horror’: Husband and wife ‘made human meat pies, killed and ate 30 people

Investigators alleged the couple used dating sites to recruit women to kill and eat, but Dmitry – who was nicknamed the ‘Devil’ – and his wife were only convicted of the murder of a waitress, whose partial remains were found in their fridge and freezer.

Elena Vashrusheva, 35, was reportedly killed after Natalia accused her of seducing her husband before he plunged a knife into the waitress in September 2017.

Investigators said Elena, who was living at the same military complex as the couple, had been drinking with the pair when Natalia suddenly ‘got jealous’, saying the waitress had seduced her husband and it led to an altercation.

Vadim Bugayenko, of the Russian Investigative Committee, said at the time: ‘They were drinking alcohol together and it ended with a conflict based on jealousy.

‘The wife complained and as a result her husband stabbed the woman to death.’

Natalia was ‘actively involved in the murder’ and incited her husband, the investigator alleged.

The murder was discovered after road worker Roman Khomyakov found Dmitry’s mobile in the street in Krasnodar and saw images of him posing for selfies with a woman’s body parts.

One of the pictures found in the couple’s flat was dated December 28, 1999, and showed a head – allegedly human – on a platter with tangerines. It had a lemon as a nose and olives as eyes

‘We were putting asphalt on the road, when I found the phone,’ Khomyakov said. ‘I opened the photo album and looked only at two pictures.

‘At first I did not even understand what was there, it looked like a head and a hand. I thought pictures were real.’

Dmitry even came looking for the phone. The road worker said he looked ‘homeless’ and asked for his phone, but Khomyakov said he didn’t know anything and kept the phone. He later gave it to police officers.

The phone led investigators to their flat, where some of Elena’s body parts were found in their fridge, freezer and even in the frying pan on their hob, while she was identified as the woman whose head Dmitry was posing with in the pictures.