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Issei Sagawa: Japanese cannibal who escaped being jailed after he killed, raped and ate Dutch woman dies at 73

Issei Sagawa, who was 'obsessed with cannibalism,' died of pneumonia and is known to have been remorseless even in his last years

TOKYO, JAPAN: Notorious murderer Issei Sagawa, popularly known as the 'Kobe Cannibal' who killed and ate a Dutch student, has reportedly died at age 73. Sagawa is said to have died of pneumonia on November 24 and his funeral was attended only by relatives with no public ceremony arranged, his younger brother and friend revealed in a statement.

In 1981, while studying in Paris, Sagawa invited Dutch student Renee Hartevelt to his apartment. He reportedly shot her in the neck and raped her bloody corpse before consuming parts of her body over the course of several days. According to the Daily Mail, Sagawa tried to dispose of Hartevelt's remains in the Bois de Boulogne park but was arrested several days later and confessed his crime to the authorities.

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In 1983, however, French medical experts deemed him mentally unfit for trial and he was held in a psychiatric institution before being deported to Japan the following year. Hartevelt's devastated family relentlessly pushed for Sagawa to be prosecuted in Japan so that "the murderer would never go free." However, Japanese authorities ruled he was sane when he arrived and that his only problem was a "character anomaly" that did not require hospitalization. Furthermore, Japanese authorities were reportedly unable to get his case files from their French counterparts as the latter considered the case closed, meaning the murderer would walk free.

It's worth noting that Sagawa did not try to hide his crime and capitalized on his newfound notoriety instead. He wrote a novel-like memoir titled 'In the Fog' in which he recounted the murder in disturbing detail. The gruesome homicide was also the subject of Japanese novelist Juro Kara's 'Letter from Sagawa-kun', which in 1982 won the country's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa award. 

Sagawa, who gained infamy due to the chilling details of the murder and his lack of remorse, regularly gave interviews to domestic and international media in the years after his return to Japan. The killer was featured in a magazine for his paintings of naked women, starred in a pornographic film and he even produced a manga comic book depicting his crime in graphic detail. The murder made waves across the globe and was even referenced by rock bands, 'The Rolling Stones' and 'The Stranglers', in songs.

In his final years, however, Sagawa lived with his brother as he was confined to a wheelchair following a series of health maladies including a stroke. Nonetheless, he did not show any apparent sign of remorse or reform. In a 2013 interview with Vice, the killer looked at posters of Japanese women and remarked, "I think they would taste delicious." He also told the outlet that he had been "obsessed with cannibalism," adding, “My desire to eat a woman had changed into an obligation.”

Sagawa also rehashed the grisly details of his crime and his obsession with cannibalism in other interviews and a 2017 documentary titled 'Caniba'. The film's directors apparently spent months with Sagawa and his brother, and later said they were "conflicted" about the experience. "We were disgusted, fascinated, we wanted to understand," co-director Verena Paravel explained.