Japanese man freed after killing, raping, eating Dutch woman, dies aged 73

Tokyo:

Issey Sagawa, a Japanese murderer known as the “Kobe cannibal” who killed and ate a Dutch student but was never jailed, has died at the age of 73.

Sagawa died of pneumonia on November 24 and his funeral was attended only by relatives, with no public ceremony planned, his younger brother and a friend said in a statement.

In 1981, Sagawa was studying in Paris when he invited Dutch student Renée Harteveldt to his home.

He shot her in the neck, raped her, and then spent several days eating parts of her body.

Sagawa attempted to dispose of his remains in the Bois de Boulogne park and was arrested several days later, confessing his crime to the police.

But in 1983 he was deemed unfit for trial by French medical experts and initially placed in a psychiatric institution before being sent to Japan in 1984.

Harteveldt’s family vowed at the time to prosecute Sagawa in Japan so that “the killer would never go free”.

But upon his arrival, he was deemed sane by Japanese officials, who decided that Sagawa’s only problem was a “character anomaly” and that he did not require hospitalization.

Japanese officials were unable to obtain his case files from their French counterparts, who closed the case, leaving the killer to walk free.

Sagawa made no secret of his crime and capitalized on his notoriety, including a novel-like memoir titled “In the Fog” in which he reminisces about the murder in detail.

The murder was also the subject of Japanese novelist Jūrō Kara’s “Letter from Sagawa-kun”, which won the country’s most prestigious literary award in 1982.

Despite the gruesome details of the murder and his lack of remorse, Sagawa attained a celebrity status and regularly gave interviews to domestic and international media in the years following his return.

He was featured in a magazine for pictures of naked women, appeared in a pornographic film and produced a manga comic book depicting his crime in graphic and incredible detail.

The morbid fascination with murder has also led to references to it in songs by The Rolling Stones and The Stranglers.

Sagawa lived with his brother in his last years, reportedly in a wheelchair after a series of health problems including a stroke.

But he showed no visible signs of remorse or reform, saying in a 2013 interview to Vice when looking at posters of Japanese women: “I think they’ll taste delicious”.

He also recounted details of the incident and the ongoing obsession with cannibalism in interviews and a 2017 documentary, “Caniba”.

The film’s directors spent months with Sagawa and his brother, and described themselves as “conflicted” about the experience.

“We were disappointed, we were fascinated, we wanted to understand,” said co-director Veerena Parvel.

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