RedHanded - Episode 216 - Issei Segawa: The Kobe Cannibal

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Over 30 years ago, Issei Sagawa murdered, raped and ate a young woman named Renée Hartevelt. Despite his guilt never having been in question, Sagawa would not stand trial or spend any significant amount of time behind bars.And today, in the sleepy Tokyo district of Yurioka, this known murderer, necrophile and cannibal walks the streets not only as a free man - but as a twisted celebrity…See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello.

Oh, that's not how we start a show. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. Saruti's forgotten how to record the podcast we've been doing for nearly five years. I'm Saruti. Saruti's forgotten how to record the podcast we've been doing for nearly five years. I'm Saruti. Hello everyone. Welcome to Red Handed, the podcast. Welcome to Red Handed and welcome my friends to the best month of the year. October is upon us and you know we love October. We love October for a lot of reasons. Firstly, it's both of our birthdays. Secondly, we usually go on tour in October and this year, for the first time in two

whole years, we are going. We are back on the road and also we find the most fucked up shit we possibly can for October for you and we have done the same this year. We have a catalogue of catastrophes for your ears and also due to popular demand and many, many, many tweets and aggressive Instagram messages. The Spooky Bitch Shop is back. You can go and get your Spooky Bitch merch. It went up on the 1st of October

so we're telling you now in our first episode of October that you should go and get it. Check out redhandedshop.com to go and get the same old Smooky Bitch merch, but also we've got t-shirts, we've got hoodies, we've got sweatshirts. The sweatshirts have not been around for very long. And we've got colors as well. And on top of that, we've got beanies, mugs, and finally phone cases and coasters. So go and get those. They make excellent Christmas presents and you know it makes sense. There's no other way of doing October than being spooky about it so

get yourself over to the shop. And just because we're so nice you can even get free international and domestic shipping when you spend over a certain amount and that will happen up until the 15th of October. Excellent. There you go, guys. If you order now, you'll get it in time for Halloween, no matter where you are in the world. So go do it, please.

And speaking of it being October and being spooky month, we also wanted to tell you guys about True Crime Week over on Stitcher and tell you to go and check that out because Stitcher are kicking off October with the creepiest of true crime podcasts. So if you head on over there now, you can listen to Us,

you can listen to Strangeville, which I'm really enjoying, and also season three of Doctor Death, which I am listening to, but it's making me very, very uncomfortable. It's body horror. I loved Doctor Death season one. I have to admit, I have not listened to 2 or 3. It's so your vibe. Really? It's so fucking graphic medically.

You know what? That is exactly my vibe. Sold. It's all there and so much more all for free right now on Stitcher. And if you go over to Stitcher, you can also check out their curated homepage to scratch your true crime itch and find your next true crime podcast obsession. You guys always ask us for recommendations and we always give them to you when we have them. So if you're on your phone, you can download Stitcher in your app store now, or you can just head on over to stitcher.com and check all that fun stuff out. And with all of that out of the way we have yet again changed the sound so we're figuring it out as we go along but thank you for your patience and with that on that bombshell we should probably give you our very first october october 2021 who thought

we'd be here and here we are here we have it for you we've got a cannibal we know you love them they're your favorites and he's probably i say, of the internet generation, the most famous one there is. Oh yes, very good at branding, very good at diversifying his revenue streams, as we'll go on to discover. He's a man with a finger or two in many a pie. Human meat pies. So let's get started. In the sleepy Tokyo district of Yuriyoka, a known murderer, necrophile and cannibal walks the streets as a free man. 36 years ago, Issei Sagawa murdered and ate a young woman. And despite his guilt never having been in question, he would not stand trial or spend any significant amount of time behind bars. Nicknamed the Kobe Cannibal, Sagawa gained twisted celebrity status in Japan for crimes he committed in Paris in 1981,

carving out a career as an author, commentator, and later, a pornographer. Always the porn man. Him, Bucking, John Bobbitt, can't get enough. They're like, how do I get more famous than this? Penis. And money. The famous duo. The classic.

Of the insecure man. Penis and money, please. Yes, please. And attention, for my penis and my money. But who is Issei Sagawa? And why does he now roam the streets of Tokyo instead of sitting behind bars in some cell somewhere? Well, my dear friends, we're about to find out together as a family.

Everyone hold hands. Issei Sagawa was born on the 26th of April 1949 in the seaside town of Kobe in Japan, and he was born into an extremely wealthy family. Sagawa's father, Akira Sagawa, was the president of Kurita Water Industries, a huge manufacturing company, and his grandfather was the chief editor of a major Japanese newspaper. His mother, Tomi, was the overbearing matriarch of the family, commanding control over most aspects of life. But despite being born into luxury, Issei Sagawa's life would be anything but smooth, and this would begin before he was even born. When his mum Tomi was

pregnant with Sagawa, she fell down a large set of stairs in their home and the fall was so bad that the doctors said Tomi only narrowly avoided a miscarriage. Perhaps as a result of this, Sagawa would be born four months premature, so just what's that? Five months gestation. He was born with multiple health complications and enteritis, a disease that attacks the intestines. To save his life, saline injections of potassium and calcium were given to Issei, and to his parents' relief, after several treatments, their baby survived. But all of this had left Sagawa frail and sickly looking, which would be the source of huge insecurities for him later in life. In fact, when Sagawa left the hospital as a baby, his parents said that he was small enough to fit in the palm of his father's hand.

Two years later, Sagawa's parents would have their second child, Jun. In their most recent interview, the brothers described their early years as the happiest and most carefree days of their lives. But it was during these years that Sagawa's appetite for human flesh would begin to form. Their uncle, Mitsuo, would play a game with the boys in which he would disguise himself as a, quote, frightening, boy-eating giant. Uh-oh. I mean, yes, it is. Uh oh. But then I feel like doesn't every culture have that thing of like, if you don't do this, gonna come eat you. Grind your bones to make my bread. Exactly. It's just classic childhood fear mongering. Yeah, that's true. Actually, there are a lot of child eating stories that have been told to billions of children around the world and not all of them turn out like him including his brother right excellent point but no i'm thinking back to like

definitely when i was growing up all of the stories that my grandmother would tell me that my mum would tell me i was a notorious non-eater when i was a child i refused why i did that i haven't got a clue because now it's like my only favorite thing to do in life but no refused and the threat would always be if you don't eat xyz monster is going to come and eat you interesting i've never been a particularly fussy eater apart from things that hurt my mouth obviously i don't know what i got told i definitely got told i had to eat the crust of the bread otherwise my hair wouldn't curl it never did like wives tales things like oh you have to eat the crust of the bread otherwise my hair wouldn't curl it never did like wives tales things of like oh you have to eat the not nice bit of the thing I remember that but other than that

no not really my brother awful notoriously fussy eater I think it's a texture thing I don't think I ever got told I would be eaten that's a relief I you know, more worried about eternal damnation. There was that too. I definitely spent at least a year of my life absolutely terrified that I was going to go to hell. But prior to that had been a deep seated fear that if I didn't eat my dinner, I was going to get eaten by a monster. That's kind of what the vibe is here. But it doesn't even seem in Issei Sagawa's case that it was like used as a threat, like it was with me. This just seems to be fun and games. Because his uncle would actually go as far as to dress himself up to look like a monster. And then he would chase Sagawa and Jun around the house, pretending that he wanted to eat them.

And it would be up to the boy's father, who would quite literally dress up in a suit of shiny armour to save them. Strangely, every time the game was played, the giant would be the winner, and the children would be snatched up, taken away, and placed in a large cast iron cooking pot in the kitchen. There is a lot of commitment in this family to game playing. Yeah I used to put my brother in the bin quite a lot. I used to dress my brother up as a little girl all the time. Oh yeah me and my sister did that to my brother too. We used to call him Princess Noonina. Got many excellent photographs and I definitely used to put him in like the big bins and then like leave him for the bin man. Probably took that one a bit far but like kids fit in bins and

they also fit in cooking pots apparently apparently so well it's just quite small small little urchin this is true but i do appreciate the fact that his uncle and his dad who sound like busy businessmen salary man yeah given you know what we just said about their uh high-flying credentials taking the time out of their busy days you know not the trope of the uh absentee farmer he's dressing up in a fucking suit of armor to play a bloody child eating game so you know top notch top credit parenting at its finest credit where credit's, in retrospect, we're going to look back on these things like the child-eating monster and be like, your son's a cannibal.

But if that didn't happen, I'd be like, excellent attention. My brother spent half his toddler years inside a bin and he's fine. Maybe he's got a thing for confined spaces now, I don't know. Yeah, so I don't know how Rory feels about his childhood spent in a bin, but Sagawa recalls his time spent in the cast iron pot with a mixture of terror and excitement. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

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So yeah, this kind of formative time of childhood and when certain experiences, they don't need to be traumatic. This was clearly not traumatic. This was a pleasurable experience for him. Getting linked up with one's budgeoning sexual development yeah it's all your sexuality develops a lot earlier than you might think oh so early and this is the thing like absolutely they don't like fetishes or interests or you know different types of interests in that space do not have to be linked to a bad thing happening. It's just something that you're like, hey, I kind of like that. I remember getting quite turned on when that monster that my uncle was dressed as chucked me in a pot. And so yeah, I think it's safe to say that while everybody else involved saw this

as nothing more than a childish game, for Sagawa it was so much more. It was an awakening. When he was old enough to read, Sagawa loved fairy tales, especially those involving children being eaten by monsters, dragons or even other people. He liked those ones the best and his absolute favourite when he was little was Hansel and Gretel. Nissei would lie awake in bed for hours replaying the story in his mind of the witch fattening up the children that she captured and it was during one of these times that Sagawa experienced early sexual arousal at the idea of something like that happening to him. Very similar to the German cannibal that we covered, Armin Mivas. So he was very obsessed with this idea of, from an early age,

consuming even like his imaginary friends to keep them with him. And I think for Mivas, and we'll go on to discuss Sagawa's motivations for this, but with Mivas it was very much this idea of like people not abandoning him because if he consumed them they were within him and they couldn't leave exactly in the same way that dennis nelson killed people so that they couldn't leave him i'm in my this eight people so that they couldn't leave him because now you are in the truest sense a part of me and we actually know that a toddler's earliest emotional attachments are formed with their caregivers through physical contact. In most cases, being held and touched allows toddlers to experience comforting, positive physical sensations associated with being loved.

But studies have shown that this physical intimacy can be the early foundation for more mature forms of physical intimacy and love, and that develops a little bit later on as a part of a mature sexuality. So for example, playing with a kid's feet could in some cases potentially lead to a child developing a more mature foot fetish later in life. For others, having a child eating giant place them in a stew pot can in some extremely rare cases be the foundation of a sexual cannibalism fetish, more commonly known as vorophilia. But we will swing back to that later on. And I was reading this morning, do you know why we want to bite babies no so when someone hands you a baby and you're like i could eat him up yeah yeah and some and you can like you bite them you want to

bite them you want to bite their little feet and beat their little hands by their faces they're so choppy exactly i read about it this morning in scientific american so blame them and apparently it's us getting our evolutionary wires crossed of like, here is this thing that I really like. I don't want to eat it. And then I was reading about this anthropologist who's working in California, so she reckons that it's actually a bonding thing of like i'm so trustworthy i can literally put you in my mouth and i won't hurt you so it's an evolutionary it's like a lizard brain thing of like i want interesting i'm fascinated by all that kind of stuff i think one thing i remember reading years ago was i had this person who we were hanging out with this baby together. Such a weird start to the story. What were you doing at the playground? With a friend's baby together, caveat. They were like,

oh, I don't think you should speak to babies with like a baby voice. I know. And Hannah just rolled her eyes and I rolled my eyes so hard. I was like, fuck, shut the fuck up, man. Shut the fuck up. There's a reason we speak to babies in cooing voices. There's a reason we speak to babies in like, because they were like, you should just speak to babies like they're humans. And I was like, no, but they're not though. I don't speak to most humans like they're humans. Is this baby going to explain the laws of thermodynamics to me? No, it's not. Is it going to shit itself? Yes. Until it learns to use the toilet, it will be spoken to like it's a baby.

And there's a reason for it. Okay, firstly, I like didn't want to get into it with this person, but I was like, fucking shut up. Basically, if you look at any person, any culture, any language, everybody always speaks to babies with almost the same series of like inflections, the same tone, the same same cooing way it is biologically hard driven into us to speak to babies like that when we were doing the research for the book this was something so interesting that actually came up this idea of if you have like a shallow affect when you're speaking to a baby so you're not exaggerated you're not overly exaggerated with your emotions and the way you speak

it can actually lead to that child developing like serious linguistic challenges because they're trying to fucking learn and you need to speak to them in that way you've got to be like hello baby how are you doing you happy are you okay hard day at the office yeah it's fucking caroline in accounts on your dick again but it's so interesting because yeah absolutely babies are trying to pick that up from you so you actually should speak to them in such an overly exaggerated way to stop their emotions in later life flatlining apparently fascinating stuff so yeah let's get back to iso sagawa well via another one because as with the early years of german serial killer fritz harman who we covered god like a couple of months

back a few weeks ago i don't know it was fucking ages ago some point this year i think it was like in the first half of this year i'm almost certain i was still living at home anyway we've covered fritz harman at some point go look it up but as we talked about in that episode sagawa was showered with love and affection by his overbearing mother just like Fritz was. The mums in both these cases, it really seemed like they felt this kind of constant need to protect their sons who they saw as sort of frail and fragile. And in Tommy's defence, so that's Sagawa's mum, Sagawa was absolutely tiny. Even as a fully grown man, he only ever reached the height of four foot nine and only ever weighed around six stone. So we can only imagine how

small he was as a young boy. But due to his mother's overbearing nature, school was the only place that Sagawa was left to fend for himself. But perhaps because he was wrapped in cotton wool and also happened to have a silver spoon hanging out of his mouth. What a combo. I know. The old woolly spoon. The old woolly silver ladle in this case because he is fucking loaded. But maybe because of all of these things it became very clear very early that Issei Sagawa definitely, completely lacked the social skills in order to be able to be successful at school with his peers. Sagawa was described as different by teachers during his first few years of school and generally speaking he was a loner, unable to express his true feelings. As we're starting to see, a lot of bad news bears leading up to the killer scenario.

I understand why Tommy, his mum, is very overprotective of him, but as we have learned through our many trips down fucking serial killer alley, overbearing mums, bad news. Yep. Only with sons. Mm-hmm.

This is true. I'm literally racking my brain to think of one female killer with an overbearing mum. It's kind of the opposite. It's like abandoned by mum. And it is, again, just frustrating, isn't it? Because I don't want to be like, it's all on mum's shoulders. Like, mum does this bad, this happens. Like, I don't want to say that. But unfortunately, we do live in a very gendered society and like mum is the primary caregiver and deviations in her ability to do what needs to be done in this scenario can create obviously not in all cases but in these cases waves totally if you have a borderline

parent you are five times more likely than a general population person to have borderline personality disorder we can't say there is no link to having a parent with struggles of their own. And there is actually an entire documentary series, I think it's called Murderers and Their Mothers. And if you do watch that, it really does do a good job of breaking down the link between this relationship. And you know, it's something we're seeing very clearly here. So anyway, Sagawa, although he was often alone and basically friendless, he does seem to have actually enjoyed school. He loved learning and excelled academically from a very young age. Maybe it felt to him possibly like throwing

himself into his studies allowed him to sort of escape his feelings of loneliness. I think that is something that does make sense. Definitely when I first came to this country. And like literally couldn't speak English. And had no friends. Well I could. But I didn't have the confidence to. I just sit around and read.

At lunch times on my own. And that's why I was a free reader. And everyone else was reading fucking C Spot Run. Or whatever. Biffenship. I never read Biffenship. Well some of us aren't as linguistically gifted as you no but it's because i had no friends so i was reading treasure island

while everyone else was reading biff and chip and i was sat on my own she's still got no friends guys i actually found a copy of treasure island in her desk yesterday it's like a safety blanket it is it really is maybe i'll read it again but regardless of the reason why and whether it was a you know whether it's just me projecting myself onto this fucking cannibal sagawa did find refuge in the classroom break times as you can imagine when you don't have any friends were a particular struggle for him because he was extremely shy and awkward around the other students so again he would escape from them by finding a quiet place where he could sit and daydream and read Treasure Island.

No, I'm just, I don't know about that last bit, but definitely the first two. Thank you for making that joke for me. I could see you leaning towards the mic. I was like, I'm going to fucking take this. Starting a dino blog. Treasure Island. Never watching the Muppets Treasure Island. Casting a glare upon anyone who suggests

that Muppets Treasure Island is worth your time. In first grade, which in Japan is about six or seven years old, Sagawa remembers seeing the thigh of a boy in his class peeking out from beneath his shorts. Isn't it funny how we've decided as a society that shorts are for boys and old men and if you wear them in between you're a pervert? Tell me it's not true.

Do you think men our age wearing shorts are perverts? Unless you're at the beach, yes. Oh. Yeah, pervert. That's a bold statement here. Apart from our tour manager Ben O'Grady he can wear what he wants also i think mike from audio boom was wearing shorts when we were shit mike fuck i didn't see he was sat down the whole time he even pointed them out he was like sorry i'm wearing shorts shows what a pension i was paying i was far too concerned so we went to

the smoking goat right on um fucking shoreditch High Street. And, oh my god, what was it called? It was... A Death in the Family. Yeah, something like that. They've got a rum cocktail, which is like a slushie. And the next day we specifically went back just to have them. So if you can manage a table at the Smoking Goat, not sponsored,

but highly recommend. Yeah. If you can, sit outside and drink a couple of uh death in the families it's well worth it and actually we were sat there when somebody walked past and was like hey and then held up our phone and was like i'm listening to you guys and i was like georgie georgia george georgina hi georgia hi she sent us a message on patreon as well yeah so patron we love you george right back to this boy's thigh. This hypnotic thigh. Sagawa said that he became transfixed by this milky thigh and he couldn't look away.

He would later go on to say that all he could think about was just how much I wanted to take a bite out of him. Although very quickly adding that he was in no way homosexual. After school, when Issei Sagawa went home, he couldn't seem to erase this image of the boy's thigh, and admitted that this led to his first ever boner, his first ever erection. Very similar to my Pretty Patel jingle, don't worry about it, I'm figuring out my repertoire and working on it. Sex was a very taboo topic in the sagawa household with the boy's mother desperately wanting to protect her children's innocence

another big old red flag like that's why in horror films there are always a lot of children involved and like the concept of the evil children like we're obsessed with the corruption of innocence and so was iso sagawa's mom so sex conversations were a big no-go you may have thought that Japan has quite a repressed sexual side to it but it's not actually that true and we actually spoke to a number of Japanese listeners about this topic we have learned Japanese sexuality has many unusual representations in western media stretching from the extremes of tentacle porn to that of completely sexless conservatism. No other country it seems, well in our opinion anyway, has been painted in quite

such a definitive black and white binary in terms of sexuality like Japan has. So tentacleacle porn, I showed you that tattoo, didn't I? Yes, you did. I might have spoken about this on Under the Jube before. I went to, my friend Kelly had a birthday party, and there was a really eclectic mix of people there. And there was this lady there who had, what's the name of the artist, the Great Wave guy? Anyway, the guy who did the Great Wave.

I'd also done, there's tentacle porn, it's a very famous image, you can look it up. This girl had it tattooed on her back, like shoulder to shoulder octopus squid porn. The artist is Hokusai. That's like hundreds of years old, that image, right? It's not this like newfangled,

like suddenly Japanese are into tentacles now. So I do think in the West, we have this conception of like Japan being incredibly conservative in a lot of ways but then also being this like repressed sexuality where you can buy used knickers in vending machines and like everyone dressing like little girls. So I think it's fair to say that like it has been painted in this like binary fashion at least in the Western media. It's very confusing because you're right I also thought of it as being a very sexually repressed country but then you also have that element of it where

you're like oh but all the Japanese porn like maybe it isn't I don't know and actually I watched an interesting documentary this isn't about Japan it's about India and sexuality and it was actually with Rupert Everett oh what a man I know do you know why because Rupert Everett did um so in like Oscar Wilde times affluent men used to do something called the grand tour and Rupert Everett made a because he's played Oscar Wilde a few times I think he made a documentary series where he did a grand tour of this like travel so he wanted a travel show basically and then off the back of that because it's Rupert Everett and everyone will watch it he got an Indian one I would venture that would make sense I cannot remember what the documentary is called and I've just tried to google Rupert Everett sex in India I can't see it in the first

fold of google but what the documentary was about and I thought it was so interesting was how he was talking about how back in the day India was was actually like a very, well, it wasn't a country, but you know, the States were a very sexually liberated place. Like it's where the Kama Sutra came from. If you look at the paintings on the walls of like old temples or things like that, or like old books, it's filled with like just hardcore erotica. And then it was when the British took over, they were like, oh, no, no, no, no, we're going to get rid of all of this. We're going to get rid of all. And it was like, you know, just progressive eras of like different British rulers and just the way in which England at the time or Britain at the time was so repressed, like under the Victorians, it was so like sexually repressed, all of that. They really exported that culture of sexual repression

into the states of India. And then when they left, they came here and then, you know, we had the sexual sort of liberation of the 70s in the West. And then we've really gone the other direction in this side of the world. But India has stayed with that cultural export of sexual repression,

which isn't originally how it had been, which I thought was very interesting. We really do fucking ruin everything, don't don't we chalk another one up to colonialism so the vast majorities of articles that we and you can find on the subject of sex in Japan well love and sex in Japan I should say are from this sort of singular honestly reductionist perspective and they focus on the symptoms of Japan's attitudes towards sex rather than the root of them but one of the things that we've come across while having a look into this is that in Japan romantic love for a partner is viewed by many as separate from sex and this is just what we've read and the people we've spoken to can we pretend that we know everything about every person's experience in the entirety of Japan? No, we can't, because we are, but women.

So, as a result of this separation of romantic love and sex, sex itself is often more experimental, and when it's happening, it's used to fulfil sexual curiosities and fantasies, and, according to some of our sources, discussions of threesomes and foursomes, as well as non-monogamy are far less taboo in japan than they are in the west additionally there are tens of thousands of legally registered sex industry shops in japan that doesn't surprise me at all and according to one japanese listener we spoke with sex in japan is more often seen as a form of entertainment than an expression of deep emotional love which is so interesting because it is how

your society defines sex that you put those qualities or those values upon that act and it's interesting that Japan a nation that was in isolation for so long because you're right we can't link this one to colonialism how it's almost completely formed in a completely different way to how we think about sex in the west I'm always fascinated by the phenomenon of girl bars in japan and how you can literally because it's entertainment and i'd never thought of it like that before i'd also i just looked at it as something like i didn't really understand but it's just an entertaining thing to do and if you separate sex and love then i was going to say it makes sense it doesn't make sense but i can follow the logical path of sex being an experimental entertainment part of your life and then how girl bars work.

Absolutely and we also know that married couples in Japan essentially apparently this is according to the research that we've done and the statistics that we found stop having sex after they have kids with 47.2% of married men and women in Japan reporting not having had sex with each other at all. So almost 50% of married men and women in Japan haven't had sex with their significant other. In another 2017 article that we also found in the Japan Times, Kuroji Shoji summarized this cultural phenomenon by saying the following, quote, Deep in the core of this stubborn patriarchal society, meaning Japan in this case,

is the belief that love, when mixed with sex, will lead to great stress and hassle, and thus we should cease such nonsense immediately. I mean, he is right. Sex and love, when they come together, could be great, could be a massive pain in the arse. Could absolutely ruin your life. Exactly.

No fuck boys. Yes, and that, I'm just going to chuck a little segue in here. If you are a patron, and if you're not, maybe think about becoming one. We have started a brand new segment on Under the Duvet where you guys send us your tragic relationship situations in the form of no more than a three minute long voice note. We then play it on Under the Duvet and give you our expert slash non-expert no fuck boys agony aunt advice for this empty handed segment. So if you want to check that out come listen to Under the Duvet immediately after this. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. But let's get back to the case at hand. While we are not experts in Japanese attitudes towards sex by any means, I would never claim to be, we can conclude that sex is maybe not as taboo a topic as we first

thought. Regardless though of Japan's attitudes towards sex in general, the topic of sex was completely out of the question for the Sagawa family. So that's the important thing, like whether Japan is repressed or not sexually speaking, it, you know, it doesn't look like it is, but absolutely in the Sagawa household, that's the way it is. Tommy, Sagawa's mum, never spoke to either of her boys about sex or puberty. And as a result of this, when Sagawa had his first erection, he actually thought that something was wrong with him. He felt incredibly embarrassed, and he didn't know how to masturbate, which he said led him to do some quote-unquote weird things, such as letting the dog lick it off. No.

Yeah, no. Talk to your kids about sex. Even just buy some books, like Let's Talk About Sex, and just leave them around the house. They're curious, they'll find it. Because they're going to find out anyway. They are. And it's better they find out from you in a mature conversation, maybe accompanied by an age-appropriate book that has been written and published and is out there in the world, rather than letting their dog... I don't want to hear it again. Okay. Right, let's never ever think about that ever again. In 1961, a 12-year-old Issei Sagawa started secondary

school. By this time, he'd moved on from cannibalistic fairy tales and instead developed a fascination with Western literature. Not because he loved the stories themselves, he loved the descriptions of Western women. That is what really gripped him. He said he thought of these women with their pale flesh and romantic dispositions as angels. This was the beginning of Sagawa's infatuation with women from the West and their bodies. He saw them as strong, tall, healthy, all of the characteristics that he himself thought that he lacked. He would sit and daydream for hours about nourishing himself on their perfect bodies, presumably when he'd had time to put down Treasure Island. To the vast majority of people, the idea

of consuming human flesh is pretty abhorrent, extremely off-putting. However, it's actually been practiced by humans for millions of years, with archaeologists and anthropologists finding evidence that cannibalism was at times commonplace one of my lecturers at university ate human flesh i loved her she's dead now she was extremely old her name was audrey and she was almost 90 when she was teaching us and not entirely with it to be honest but after she died i met a like family friend of hers and she said that like Audrey fully went and stayed with cannibal tribes and she ate humans like in the days where like anthropologists would just go and fuck shit up all over the world and she also smoked all the time

and apparently she would like go to this like family friend's house and insisted on smoking in the kitchen while she was cooking and she would then forget that she had a cigarette in her hand and then the ash would just get longer and longer and longer and longer and then fall into the food she was hilarious like the first thing she said she did um psychoanalysis in anthropology that was her module and she was like no one has ever failed my course so she was like do what you fucking want i'm not gonna fail you amazing i don't know i am very off put put off by the idea of eating human meat what caused mad cow disease was that because they were feeding cows other cows and then they got that brain infection and is that i think that's also what happens to humans if you eat too much eat too much eat too much human flesh

i don't know i'd never heard that mad cow disease theory before i think it's true i'm trying to like google it now i'm pretty sure i watched like a mini youtube documentary about this and i think it was because they and i might be completely wrong i think it was maybe this is maybe this is like a storyline from the simpsons but like i think there was an element of them feeding dead cow meat to cows. Does that sound crazy? I don't know. These days, I have no way of telling anymore. Storyline from the Simpsons news.

It's the same. It's all the same. Oh, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. A cow gets BSE, which is the more PC name for mad cow disease, by eating feed contaminated with parts that came from another cow that was sick with bse okay so it's not the like origin of the pathogen but it's how it's passed on but why are there parts of cows that had bse in the cow feed pass it's really awful

i'm gonna actually find the documentary that i did watch about it it's with my old favorite simon whistler i'll leave it in the episode description. You guys can check it out. I obviously clearly need a refresher in watching it. But the thing that really stands out for me from that whole BSE moment that we had in this country was the politician. I think he was like the minister for fucking beef and dairy or whatever, and maybe agriculture. I don't know. And he tried, he basically, people in this country stopped eating beef when mad cow disease happened. And to convince everybody that british beef was best and it's safe and you can eat it again he fed a beef burger to his child on tv do you remember that no yeah it was like a whole thing why don't i remember that i'm from a pretty rural part of

the country we were very young and I like don't think I actually remember it happening but I have it's like very right quote-unquote iconic now in British life the iconic burger eating I remember foot and mouth like it was yesterday but I was a bit older then probably mad cow disease was uh before time. Enough of cows. Back onto some human on human action. So we know as anthropologists and Audrey is looking down upon us from wherever she is, solidly approving of our research into this. Actually, at the University of Bristol, they found some evidence of Iron Age cannibalism, suggesting that it wasn't unusual for humans to chow down on each other as recently as 2,000 years ago in

Britain and if you're ordering much much more recent than that and even today there are claims that some tribes still actively practice cannibalism in a ritualistic aspect to respect their dead elders one of these tribes is the Curraway I feel like we've spoken about before I feel like it must have come up probably they are a tribe from southeastern Papua and although it's widely thought that since having increasing contact with disapproving western tourists, I think we might mean missionaries, that tribe no longer engage in these ceremonies or at least they don't do it where we can see them. So we've talked here about just like eating other people maybe for ritualistic purposes or survival maybe.

But the idea of consuming another person for sexual gratification, which is known as human sexual cannibalism, is an entirely different beast. There seem to be two main types of sexually driven cannibals. One type seemingly stems from a dominance and submission perspective. For some cannibals devouring someone could be viewed as the ultimate act of dominance by a predator and the ultimate act of submission by the prey. The other type is all about absorbing another human being and their aura and the belief that doing so causes you to gain the qualities that the dead person possessed. As we mentioned earlier, Sir Gawab was very small and extremely insecure about this. He dreamed of nourishing himself with the flesh from the

bodies of Hollywood actresses. As he got older, his fantasies intensified and he took pleasure in masturbating over these ideas at any given opportunity. And I really do mean at any given opportunity. He was at it in school bathrooms, in bushes on the way home, before family dinners. Insatiable is the word. His appetite. I don't think that's that out of the ordinary for a teenage boy i really really don't oh my god in the bushes they are at it all the time they are if you know any teenage boys my friends they be wanking all the time all the time 24 hours a day look at any any man tell me that's not true because it fucking is. Well, there you go. Maybe he's not an outlier in this case, but absolutely what we can say about Sagawa

is that any opportunity to masturbate, he was all over it. And it was during one of these masturbation sessions in the school bathrooms that another element was introduced to Sagawa's fantasy. Everybody's favourite! Overt violence towards women. One morbid fantasy involved Sagawa spying on a quote, well-built western goddess, such as Hannah here.

You'd have been so as tight, mate. Would I? Tall, of probably German stock, long hair, very like milky skin. Whenever I'm in Europe, people do speak to me in German. Why can't I be a waif? He'd have loved to nourish himself on you, is all I'm gonna say. And it's this kind of well-built Western goddess that Sagawa would fantasize about spying on while he masturbated. And this fantasy would go a stage further. So he would fantasize about looking in on this woman in a very voyeuristic way while she's showering. And then he would creep up on her

and viciously strangle her from behind with a belt. And this idea of strangling a naked woman to death became a vital part of Sagawa's fantasies and also his plan. Realizing that he had difficulty becoming aroused by anything that did not involve killing and eating somebody, Sagawa finally sought professional intervention. This is quite interesting because statistics tend to show that men who go on to sexually offend and kill other people don't make any real effort to get help when they begin to fantasise about things like that. Of course, it's not really a hard and fast rule, but it is a general trend. Most men who have these thoughts choose to mask them,

never talking to anyone about their psychological issues, which, as we know, are only exacerbated the longer they're suppressed. Sagawa, not following the trend, contacted his first psychiatrist at the age of just 15, some years after his sexual fantasies had started. But according to him, he didn't make this call that long after his fantasies had begun to incorporate murder. The psychiatrist he spoke with told him that in order to help him, Sagawa would need to come to his office and talk to him there,

rather than hiding behind the phone. Far too embarrassed to sit and face someone and discuss his twisted fantasies, Sagawa refused and gave up on trying to find any professional help at all. He did eventually share his secret with his brother, but the younger boy thought Sagawa was just messing around with him and dismissed the disturbing confession entirely. This caused the teenage Sagawa to retreat even further into his isolated and increasingly violent inner realm.

It was at this time that Sagawa said he resigned himself to the belief that what will be, will be. And he stopped trying to fight his sick urges. Now he was determined to capture one of his white goddesses, who haunted his mind and subject her to his darkest desires. Sagawa graduated from secondary school with exceptionally high grades, and went on to study Shakespearean literature at Tokyo's Waco University, where again he continued to excel academically. But of course, Sagawa's academic pursuits would not distract him from his desire to consume human flesh. In 1973, a now 24-year-old Sagawa spotted a young German woman sat alone at

a coffee shop in central Tokyo. He sat across the road from her and waited to follow her home. When the woman got up and walked back to her apartment, Sagawa stalked her every step of the way. And we've talked about this before, you guys know the drill. This kind of stalking behaviour is absolutely a typical precursor to a violent attack, as it allows the would-be killer to initially start crossing those boundaries, building up their confidence and sort of developing that fantasy up until the point that they're ready to attack. But as we'll see here, Sagawa again bucks the trend and he doesn't start off slow like most killers. That day he followed the German lady

home, it had been a warm evening and the woman had left her window slightly open. Sagawa couldn't believe his luck. Creeping towards the window he peered inside, and after some time had passed without any movement, he concluded that the woman had probably gone to sleep, meaning that the coast was clear. Sagawa climbed up through the open window, placing both feet gently on the living room floor. He had made it inside. The four foot nine man then crept through the apartment, careful not to make a sound, until he eventually found the door to the bedroom. I know he was very upset about his slight stature, but very good for sneaking. I mean, yeah, the idea

that that's like, that's very, very small. Like, I'm five foot, almost five foot three. I literally don't think I've ever weighed six stone in my life. That's why he's able to just like fucking creep through a window that's just been left open because it's a warm evening. So when he finds this bedroom door, Sagawa gently pushed it open. He then leaned in and saw the woman fast asleep and completely naked, laid out on top of the covers. Sagawa said all he could think about

was how amazing the flesh beneath her skin would taste. It was at this point that Sagawa realised he didn't have a plan of how to eat the woman at all. Even he didn't seem to think that he would have gotten this far. Spotting an umbrella by his unsuspecting victim's bedside. Sagawa thought he could use it to knock her out before, quote, taking a small bite out of her buttocks and then leaving before she woke up. Sagawa inched silently closer towards the woman until he reached the bedside table.

Reaching for the umbrella, Sagawa accidentally brushed the arm of the sleeping woman with his side just enough to wake her up. The young German woman jerked bolt upright and upon seeing Sugawa screamed at the top of her lungs. Sugawa tried to turn and run from the scene but the woman managed to grab his pencil-like arm her words not ours and then she threw him to the ground. She kept Sugawa pinned to the floor before making a call to Tokyo police who wasted no time in making their way to the woman's apartment. The authorities arrested Sagawa and charged him with attempted rape and Sagawa was far too embarrassed to disclose his actual intentions so he just went along with the

accusation. He spent that night in a prison cell and then he was released the following morning when his dad Akira posted a hefty bond for his release. Two days later, all charges were dropped against Sagawa after his father paid the woman a large settlement fee. This is something that happens in Japanese justice quite a lot of the time. So Lucy Blackman, famously, her parents obviously English, and Yoji Obara, the accused, offered a lump sum. It's not even really seen as hush money or blood money or whatever but it is seen as if you accept it you are kind of accepting that they didn't do it. It's not as

formal as settling out of court but like in the Lucy Blackman case her dad was like fine with taking the money and her mum was like I can't believe you would do that and he was like well what difference does it make she's dead. The settlement fee did get sagawa out of it in this instance and it's also widely speculated that his father paid off the authorities to avoid the public shame being brought upon his family so sagawa was free but his first real attempt at eating the flesh of another human had failed dramatically a day after his release he was back on the phone with another psychiatrist, telling him that he needed help and that he needed it badly. This time he was persuaded by the psychiatrist to visit his office. Sagawa recounted his actions the night that he broke into the German woman's apartment, even disclosing his true intention to knock her out before taking a bite out of her flesh. The psychiatrist was unsympathetic, telling Sagawa that he was a danger to the public,

before making it clear that he would not treat him, because he had crossed clear ethical boundaries. Initially put off by this, Sagawa kept his head down for a while, turning his attention back to his studies. He continued to achieve academically. That year he earned his master's degree in Shakespearean literature. But, as is often the way, it would not take very long for his twisted desires

to build to dangerous levels once again. It's really unusual with Sagawa, actually, how highly academically he achieves. Because usually with killers like this, who are especially absorbed by a sexual motivation or sexual violence, they can't think about anything else they can't sit in a room and in a library and you know read Shakespeare and pass exams it is very unusual with Sagawa is it because he's Asian maybe I'm gonna say we are a studious bunch that whole region

I'm keeping my mouth firmly shut on that possibly or maybe it's all that reading yeah no friends lots of reading equals masters in economics I'm keeping my mouth firmly shut on that. Possibly, or maybe it's all that reading. Yeah. No friends, lots of reading equals masters in economics. So after graduating, Sagawa moved back into his parents' house in Kobe. But his father quickly grew tired of seeing his jobless son mooching around the house. Akira decided that Sagawa needed to see more of the world to broaden his horizons. And so he sent him on numerous cruises and lavish holidays. Not, I'm gonna say, the best way to motivate your layabout

son but you know maybe I'll save that for the parenting podcast. Don't. Sagawa goes on these holidays and he insists because remember he's looking for those white goddesses he insists on most of these trips being to europe and sagawa spent the next three years hopping from country to country across the continent all the while managing to keep his cannibalistic fantasies under wraps again very unusual the level of self-control he has for so long especially the gap between the first attempt he makes although it's unsuccessful and the calling off period before he tries again. Absolutely, he's very calm and considered. But this self-control wouldn't last long. During a cruise around the Greek islands, Sagawa befriended a butcher, inviting him for dinner one evening, and telling him that he'd

like to hear more about his job, as he too would like to be a butcher one day. Random chat I'm gonna say, that would be a weird conversation. And this butcher, clearly thrilled that someone had taken interest in his work, sat and spoke for hours about how to cut meat from the bone in the best possible way and also where the choicest cuts of meat tended to come from on an animal sagawa thanked the man for explaining to him in such detail the best way to dissect meat and they parted ways but not before sagawa got the address of the butcher so he could quote write to him if he had any more questions about butchery that is a weird thing to say it's a strange thing it is and i'm like obviously i think we have to remember this is happening in like the late 70s in the 80s because now you'd just be like what

the fuck so okay maybe we can give a pass on this and also this butcher's just like pumped who's not excited when somebody takes an interest in their job i guess so the pair went their separate ways and occasionally they did actually go on to exchange letters for the next few years. If you're interested to know what was going down during that time you'll have to wait but we will come back to it. So this Greek butcher conversation as you can probably guess does play quite a big part later on actually, so do all of Sagawa's trips to Europe. They had a huge effect on him, to the point that he decided that Europe was where he needed to be. So, in 1977, Sagawa, now aged 28, moved to Paris to complete his PhD in Comparative Literature

at the Sorbonne University. He lived in the incredibly vibrant Latin quarter of the city, financed again by, you guessed it, his dad. But when Sissagawa had been living in the city for almost two years, tragedy struck. In 1979, American actress Jean Seberg committed suicide in her car. Issei Sissagawa was amazed that her body was found not only in Paris, but also a short distance from where he lived. Seberg had been one of his favourite Hollywood stars and Sagawa decided it must have been fate that she died so near to him. The papers reported that she had been found naked and this sent Sagawa's imagination running wild. He dreamt of getting to the actress's corpse before the police and taking her back to his flat to eat her. Sagawa said that he thought that if he ate just one woman, it would be enough

to get it out of his system. When has that ever worked? No. Once you pop, you can't stop. Sexual proclivities, in my experience, are like Pringles. So that's what we're going to go with. I can't think of a better jingle for cannibalism. Once you pop, you just can't stop. He thought, though, that, you know, the fact that it might be over, that maybe he could get it out of his system. I'll try anything once.

Yeah, like heroin. I really need to just get it out of my system. I've been thinking about it for a long time. Let's just give it a shot and see what happens. And he still claims, actually, that he did not actually want to go through a life killing people. And I can believe that with Sagawa because he does try to get... I mean, our opinions of this might change

when we get to the later portion of this episode. But up until now he has tried to get help on two occasions and he's been turned away and I don't think he is like this kind of person who was like I need to kill somebody I'm going to do this I don't care I think he just has this uncontrollable fantasy that he cannot wrap his hands around. So he decides he's going to do it once and once only, and his initial plan involved luring the easiest target he could think of, a sex worker. And he wanted to lure a sex worker back to his studio flat in Paris

and then stab her to death before butchering the body and then eating it. Eventually, he did manage to solicit a sex worker, but he couldn't go through with it, even after creeping up on her in the shower didn't manage it sagawa actually made multiple attempts to kill parisian sex workers in the lead-up to 1980 but he backed out every time he tried and it was after his fifth attempt at murdering one of these women that he met renee hartevelt at a university lecture. Renée was a 25-year-old Dutch woman.

She met Sagawa at Sorbonne, where she was studying French literature. When Sagawa first laid eyes on her, all of his twisted desires came to her head. Renée was 5'10", white, and very attractive. Later, he told authorities it was, quote, love at first sight. At least he didn't try to make a joke of it and be like, love at first bite. I'm glad he didn't do that.

Don't do that. Well, you have now. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't get it out of my head. I'm sorry. So Renee was incredibly bright and she could even speak five languages fluently.

And so Sagawa formed a close relationship with her and using her linguistic skills, he gained René's trust by convincing her to become his German tutor. Using this ruse, he would lure René to his apartment on multiple occasions and Sagawa would even take René to fancy art exhibits and dinners. Of course, all of these expenses were funded by his father. And it seems that Renee genuinely enjoyed her friendship with Sagawa until this point. She even mentioned him in letters that she wrote to her parents back home, where she described him as a

friendly and highly intelligent man. However, Renee was not naive. She knew that Sagawa had a crush on her, but she assumed it was harmless and that it would eventually go away if she didn't reciprocate. In reality though, Sagawa didn't just have a crush on Renee. By this point, he was completely fixated on her. Images of her smooth white skin replayed over and over in Sagawa's mind. And he decided that he had to have her. Or at least part of her inside of him. And so on the 9th of June 1981, Sagawa asked Renée to come over and translate a German poem for him for an assignment.

And in exchange he offered to cook her dinner. Renée happily agreed. Unfortunately, her friend's true intentions had nothing to do with poetry. Because they never fucking do. Never, never, ever has a man invited a woman over for dinner with the promise of poetry, and it been really what he was after. In the history of the world, actually in all of the times, all of the moons. And we're not experts on many things,

but I would happily state my reputation on the fact that that is true. It's never a poem, ladies. It's always a penis. So Renee, still thinking it's about the poem, set up a tape recorder on Sagawa's desk and began translating said German poem, which Sagawa said that he was recording for later use. While her back was turned, Sagawa picked up a.22 caliber hunting rifle that he had bought from a farmer on a trip to the south of France.

He aimed it at the back of René's neck and pulled the trigger. To his absolute surprise and horror, the gun did not fire. But rather than having a change of heart, Sagawa's failed attempt made him even more determined. He decided he would kill René, no matter what it took. When René left that night, Sagawa stayed up for hours, smelling and licking the seat where Rene had spent the evening sat. This guy's just, he's fucking gross. He's fucking gross.

And like, I am shocked that he gets so close to Rene with a.22 caliber gun and pulls the trigger and it doesn't go off. And like, he just hides it behind his back. Like, how was that not... I don't know. How did he get away with that? I don't know.

But he does. And two days later, Sagawa invited Renee back to his house, telling her that he needed another recording of the same German poem, because the first one hadn't worked properly. He can't even be bothered to find a new poem. I know, he's like, he's fucking pranging out because the gun's not working. He's like, I haven't got time to come up with more lies. Can you just come back over and read that poem

out loud again? Renee was more than happy to help her friend, so she went over on the 11th of June 1981. The pair chatted for a while at Sagawa's apartment about their future dreams and aspirations. And Sagawa later enlightened us that he had an erection the whole time. Never a poem. After some time had passed, Sagawa said that he professed his love to Renee. But no surprises in that the 25-year-old did not feel quite the same way. She told Sagawa how much she appreciated his friendship and that she hoped that he could understand. Sagawa went quiet for a short time before asking Renee if they could just get on with recording the poem, please. Oh god. Renee once again took a seat at Sagawa's desk, pressed record and began

to read. Just as before, Sagawa walked into the kitchen and picked up his rifle. He crept up directly behind her, waited for Renee to get three quarters of the way through the poem before pulling the trigger. This time, there would be no misfire. The gun went off, killing Rene instantly. Sagawa fainted from the shock of what he'd just done. And this would suggest that Sagawa falls under the category of a product killer, as his intention was to kill Rene as fast as possible. It's not the act of a product killer as his intention was to kill Renee as fast as possible. It's not the act of killing that he was bothered about. It's not the thrill of the murder. It's all about what he could do with the body afterwards. Like Dennis Nelson, who wasn't

interested in the struggle, he just wanted immediate control of the situation so he could reach the ultimate goal of eating Renee's corpse. And when you consider that he was short, thin, and not very strong, murder to Sagawa was just a means to an end. Yeah, I mean, he's had the experience in the past of trying to attack a woman and her just being able to apprehend him and pin him to the floor and then call the police. Totally. He's not taking that risk again. Nobody nope. I mean, we say that, but then he did pass out himself of his own accord after he had done it. And when he finally came to, he briefly considered actually phoning for an ambulance, not that it would have made much difference after you shoot someone in the neck. But he quickly

decided against it. He was closer now than he'd ever been to tasting human flesh, and he wasn't going to stop now. And obviously the consumption of human flesh and the arousal that he got from it would have made it sexual cannibalism anyway. But there is an added nightmarish twist to this particular story because Sagawa raped Renee's lifeless corpse multiple times and then he decided to get on with the cannibalism. Sagawa thought long and hard about which body part he wanted to eat first before finally settling on her buttocks. But when he tried to bite into Renee he realized that his teeth were not sharp enough to pierce her skin and neither were any of the knives in his apartment what the fuck you've been thinking

about this for years and you do not have a knife in your flat that is sharp enough to do after all those fucking letters with a butcher as well and you're japanese yes japanese have got the best knives in the world what are you playing at i haven't got a clue so sagawa popped out to a nearby shop and purchased an electric carving knife and then he returned and sliced into renee's right buttock this is all just about to get really really grisly so absolutely don't yeah don't eat stop eating to be, if you needed a no eating warning on this, you probably don't have the internet, so... Yeah. You've been warned.

So Sagawa specifically chose the right buttock, as he said he was afraid of blood, and thought that the left buttock would bleed more, seeing as it's closer to the heart. Does that make sense? I don't know. I can see why he probably thinks that because your aorta which is obviously more highly pressured is on the left yeah and then your vena cava which is less is technically on the

right but like i again why are we trying to make sense of this i think if anything this just shows sagawa's sort of like his deep desire to this, but his like severe anxiety and control problems. Yeah, totally. And I don't, you know, any doctors in the house, I don't know how likely it is you're going to hit some arterial spray in a butt cheek. Yeah, especially after you've already killed the person. Another excellent point. So he goes with his plan and he begins sawing ferociously at Renee's corpse.

But Sagawa was disappointed to see only fat beneath her skin, which he described as having a corn-like consistency. Which, if you've seen the Vice documentary on this gentleman, that particular phrase will be burned into your brain for the rest of your life. And again, it just shows how, like, I know the first time a killer kills and does these kind of things it's not going to live up to the fantasy and i think that's what he's finding so once sagawa finally got deep enough that he could see muscle he ripped a piece of renee's flesh off using only his fingers and threw it into his mouth

later recounting that quote it melted in my mouth like raw tuna in a sushi restaurant. I fucking hate this guy. Just so despicable. So, so disgusting. Yeah, it's, uh, he's like a specter. Over the next three days, it's not over, my friends. Isisagawa continued to eat Renee and also rape her corpse. He ate her nose, her nipples, her breasts and several other body parts.

Some of these body parts he ate raw, some of them he cooked. He tried to bake one of her breasts in the oven, but later stated that it was far too greasy, so he fried it in a pan and ate it with mustard instead. After each part of Renée's body he consumed, he took a photograph of the remaining corpse, and while he ate her body, After each part of Renée's body he consumed, he took a photograph of the remaining corpse, and while he ate her body, he listened to the audio recording of Renée reciting the German poem.

Segawa filled his freezer with as many cuts of meat from Renée's body, which if it's a studio apartment in Paris, that freezer is going to be small as fucking jam-packed. So he fit as much of it as he possibly could, but alas, there was not room, and he stuffed Renée's torso, head, and her legs, and her arms inside two suitcases. And let's not forget, my friends, this is July in Paris. It's hot shit, and no air conditioning in the 70s. Barely air conditioning now, to be honest. Sagawa was no idiot. He knew that this corpse was going to rot very quickly, so he called a taxi to dispose of the remains.

When the taxi driver helped Sagawa put the luggage in the trunk, he mentioned how heavy they were, and even jokingly asked him if there was a dead body inside. Sagawa laughed this off and asked the driver to take him to the Bois de Boulogne, the second largest park in Paris. And when he got there, Sagawa struggled with the two extremely heavy suitcases. A passing couple even slowed their pace slightly at the sight of this 4'9", 6 stone man dragging two enormous suitcases along the ground. They watched

as he turned sharply across a grass verge and headed towards the edge of the lake, intending, of course, to dump Renee's remains into the water. He's doing this in the fucking day, when people can see him. That's privilege for you. If nothing has ever gone wrong in your whole life. It's his panicked privilege. So despite the panicked privilege, though, Sagawa did notice the couple staring in his direction, and it seems that their presence distracted him from his disposal mission. Worried, he hastily slid both cases under a nearby bush,

and then turned and ran into the park. Intrigued by the small man's odd behavior, the couple approached the bushes where he had left the suitcases, curious to see what he had been about to throw into the lake. See guys, I know, but like don't fucking be unzipping suitcases like this just willy-nilly in the park for god's sake you know what's going to be in there it's going to be a body and so yeah they unzip the first case and peer inside and the woman screamed murderer in horror before calling the police wonder what murderer is in french welcome to brexit britain so upon their police's arrival officers had been told by the shaken couple what to expect in the first case it was the torso of a young woman in the second case

were the limbs and head that went with it taken to the mortuary renee's bloody remains were removed from their tight confines and laid out on an autopsy table. Immediately, pathologists noted the gunshot wound in the nape of the victim's neck, which would have been the cause of her death. Using the couple's description of the man with the suitcases and a tip-off from the taxi driver, it didn't take long for the police to identify Sagawa as the culprit. After all, there weren't a lot of people matching his quite unusual description in the Latin Quarter in Paris. When authorities knocked down his door, four days later, Sagawa immediately confessed to murdering, dismembering and eating Renée, telling them that he killed her

so he could eat her flesh and absorb her energy. He was arrested on the spot and charged with her murder before being held in prison for 24 months awaiting trial. Sagawa's father Akira paid for the most expensive defence lawyer he could find. Issei Sagawa was ultimately found unfit to stand trial and sent to Porguad Asylum. After his father intervened yet again, Sagawa was deported back to Japan and admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo.

It was here that Sagawa wrote a sick letter to the Greek butcher we mentioned earlier, telling him, I couldn't have done any of it without you. So, we've got a real sadist on our hands, we think. Sadist, maybe, but doctors at the psychiatric hospital where Sagawa was sent weren't actually convinced of his mental illness and ended up declaring him sane and fit to stand trial in Japan. at the psychiatric hospital where Sagawa was sent, weren't actually convinced of his mental illness, and ended up declaring him sane and fit to stand trial in Japan. Despite fully and freely admitting

to killing Renee with the intention of eating her flesh to absorb her energy and become tall and beautiful like her, they claimed that his only motive was sexual perversion. But, since the French courts had already deemed him unfit to stand trial, they refused to provide Japanese officials with the paperwork on Sagawa's criminal case. And so, Japanese courts were unable to press any charges at all. So, with no criminal case against him, in August 1985, Sagawa checked himself out of the psychiatric hospital and became a free man. That is an unbelievable little loophole that has occurred here, that has led a man who murdered somebody, raped her corpse over a period of weeks, and ate her to just be free.

Yeah, I mean, and it literally is all that it is i mean i'm sure there's like various socio-political economic reasons why france can't just declare him insane or sane again because you know the most obvious thing to say is like well why can't they just like make an exception there must be a bajillion reasons why they can't do that but it is truly shocking and it's also what has led to us knowing so much about him because he's literally untouchable you can do what you want yeah and he does so after his release obviously this case made news headlines across both paris and japan and frankly around the world and he was dubbed the japanese cannibal killer and instead of fading off into obscurity and keeping a low public profile, Sagawa soaked up all of the attention he received from the media at the time.

And obviously, the sheer-like brutality of his crime made the public incredibly eager to learn more about Sagawa's psyche. Everyone wanted to hear about the man who shot, raped and ate a young woman, only to walk free. In fact, Sagawa became so notorious that in 1989, when Japanese authorities arrested child killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, they consulted with Sagawa as though he were some sort of real-life Hannibal Lecter. Which is literally his wet dream, by the way. Yeah, his academics and his intelligence and his fucking fantasies of being a

killer all coming home in one little package absolutely this is the best day of his life sagawa played ball he gave the police insight into the crimes and even became an official police advisor on the case this ultimately kept sagawa again in the public eye, and his career only took off from there. In the years that followed, Sagawa was employed as a public speaker, wrote 20 detailed books about his crimes and fantasies, two of which were Japanese bestsellers. And this is just, this really is the fucking icing on the terrible, terrible, fucking human flesh, mad cow disease cake.

Sagawa freelanced as a food critic. For who? Why? What's happening? I don't know. They love a gimmick in Japan. They do. They truly, truly do.

And I hate myself for saying this, but I would read it. Like, it's sick. It's sick. And human beings the world over love sick shit. That's why you're all listening to this. Oh, yeah. And it didn't stop there. Because like we said at the start, he had his finger in many a pie. And Sagawa even went on to feature in pornographic films.

In one of these pornos, Sagawa even takes a young Dutch woman to a theme park named Little Holland in Nagasaki, where the pair walk through an area built to look like Amsterdam, before having sex in front of the cameras. I mean, just to remind you all that Renee was Dutch. It's fucking sick's fucking sick but yeah you're right it's just a gimmick and everybody's just writing off being like well it's up to the courts and the justice system to put him away and they didn't so what's the harm in doing this what's the harm in giving him a book deal what's the harm in making him a food critic or a fucking porno actor fuck's sake when money is involved ethics very quickly go out the window yeah and if you watch the vice

documentary about this case they'd show clips from this particular film it's so fucking disgusting he's gross and he's also become so well known because at the time of his crime, the Rolling Stones, of all people, wrote a song just about him entitled Too Much Blood. And apparently Mick Jagger wrote the song in a response to the media hype that surrounded Sagawa's case. And wanted to promote a discussion about anti-violence. But actually, it only gave Sagawa something to use to his advantage. He actually attempted to make a comic book version of the song following its release, and I'm not surprised he didn't get very far with that because the Stones are notoriously onerous about their rights. So I doubt he got any royalties out of

that at all. But he did manage to continue publishing other stuff, writings, essays, delivering all of his darkest fantasies right to his readers. And quite a lot of these, if not all of these writings, were trying to sensationalise his crimes and or making a mockery of what he'd done. But what's worse is that all of these collected works deliver the message that murder kind of isn't a big deal and that you can literally murder someone and still be a star. Sagawa had become an infamous figure in Japanese society and all over the world. By comparison, Renee's name vanished from the public consciousness and she and her family have never received justice for her brutal murder.

That's the real fucking kicker in this case, isn't it? It's not only is Renee murdered not only does he not serve any time in prison for what he did to her which is like absolutely fucking diabolical crime then she's also just forgotten and he's turned into like this fucking sideshow character of pop culture. It's just completely disgusting. But despite being free from prison and seemingly living the high life, Sagawa said that this time of his life was incredibly hard. And, quote, he also said, I hadn't learned my lesson. I just couldn't stop chasing Western women. Once you pop, you just can't stop. And you may be thinking that it's a good thing Sagawa

wouldn't be able to leave Japan, because that was one of the stipulations of this loophole that got him out. Meaning that at least a number of western women that he had access to would be greatly limited, because he can't go off on another fucking grand tour of Europe, hunting his white goddesses. But you would be wrong. Shockingly, Sagawa had his passport returned to him almost immediately after checking out of the mental institution in Tokyo, and was only banned from visiting France. Which, you know, notoriously, and very famously, is not the only place where white women live. And so, again, Sagawa could take as many lavish trips around the world as he wanted. He went to Canada, India, Mexico, Germany, again, Sagawa could take as many lavish trips around the world as he wanted.

He went to Canada, India, Mexico, Germany, Iceland, to name just a few. And on one of these trips in 1998, Sagawa met two young German women, and the trio went on multiple holidays together. The women claim to have no idea about Sagawa's crimes while they travelled with him. It was 12 months before a boyfriend of the pair saw an idea about Sagawa's crimes while they traveled with him. It was 12 months before a boyfriend of the pair saw an article about Sagawa and told her about it. They were understandably horrified by what they'd heard and ended their friendship with him altogether. Sagawa claims that during these trips he never had sex with or tried to eat either of the women, but he said he

did fantasize about it every day. Well, that's day well that's polite i mean it's the bare minimum you would ask for from a travel buddy don't try to fucking have sex with me against my wishes or try to eat me thanks very much so again this just makes in my opinion at least sagawa even more despicable because it shows if he was able to spend this long a year with these two young german women and fantasize about what he wanted to do but never action it to me it shows he has this incredible ability to really control himself and not act upon his urges but he chose not to have that same kind of restraint when he was murdering, raping and eating Renée. And you, if you know the name of Isagawa, you will almost certainly have seen what we're about to talk about now, which is of course the Vice documentary that profiled the killer in 2008.

I think it's probably, it must be their most watched. It must be. And in this, you can find it very easily, Isagawa explained that his desire was purely sexual, and he insisted that he never wanted to kill anybody. He said if he could, he would have eaten Renee while she was alive, even saying that just a small amount of her urine or pubic hair would have satisfied him. And this is a quote, like I felt like eating someone every time I was hungry. But you know how you tend to feel a stronger sexual desire when you've eaten a full meal? That's when I would start feeling the urge to eat a girl. If I am full, sex is the last thing I'm thinking about. Stay away from me. I need to lie down on my own. Yeah. He goes on to say, frankly, I can't fathom why everyone doesn't feel this urge to eat to consume other people. Don't you ever feel like this?

After killing and eating Rene and getting away with it, he admits that his cannibalistic desires haven't gone anywhere. As we stand here in 2021, Sagawa has never been punished for murdering Rene. He's actually only benefited from it. It's kind of almost like He's Japan's Charles Manson. Firstly, Manson, not a killer. How many times? Secondly, I do kind of buy into it, though, because it is this, like, pop culture phenomenon

that I can't really place on any other killer or cult leader, brainwasher. But the final kicker, he does claim to be remorseful for what he did and actually he welcomes death preferably at the hands of a woman because when you've been given everything you've ever wanted in your entire life why would death not be completely in your control we're going to leave you with um one more stomach churning quote from him wouldn't it be wonderful to be covered all over with women's spit if i could die drowning in it that would be my ultimate dream come true i'm a cowardly man who killed another person yet i can't face killing myself so i guess dying would be my only way to redemption. So all I can say to that is I hope he lives forever. Yeah, it's very like Albert Fish. And when they strapped him up to the electric

chair, and he was obviously heavily into like masochism. I think he said his final words were something like, to die this way will be like the greatest thrill of my life. And I think that was Peter Curtin. Oh, was it Peter Curtin? Who was also the same. So yeah, I fucking, fucking hate these guys. So yeah, that is it guys. That is the case of Issei Sagawa. Welcome to fucking horror week. Horror week?

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Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada,

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