Armin Miewes is a man who you would pass on the street and not even give him a second look.  He is not strange looking and he is not necessarily a handsome man either.  He is average.  He is normal looking. He is  your proverbial next door neighbor, who keeps to himself, but is friendly when you do see each other.

Armin Miewes

Miewes had fantasies involving cannibalism that were brewing in his mind as far back as his childhood.  He had an odd relationship with his family, especially with his mother.  His father left the family suddenly and as if in a haze of denial, the mother and the rest of the family kept silent about the father’s disappearance, leaving Armin feeling as if he were the strange one, wondering where his father was.

His father did make an appearance at one of Armin’s trials and testified that his son, as he remembered, was obsessed with the fairy tale of Hänsel and Gretel.  In particular Armin was unusually interested in the part of the story where the witch plans to fatten up Hänsel and then eat him.  The original, German fairy tale, with which Armin would have been familiar, goes further to hint that the witch had designs on consuming Gretel as well.

Raised by his domineering and overly protective mother, Armin was hardly allowed to leave his own home without having the accompaniment of his mother.

The Miewes Home

His mother died in 1999.  Armin was devastated by her death.  He constructed a shrine to her directly after her funeral.  The shrine included a plastic effigy of his mother.  Armin told the court in his trial that after her death he often slept with this likeness of his dear mother.

Also after the death of his mother Armin became quickly obsessed with the underground internet world of bondage and sadomasochism.  Over the next two years he would rapidly be drawn more deeply and darkly towards the sites that catered to his earliest childhood sexual fantasies; cannibalism.  The sites where he spent sometimes twelve hours a day catered to those who enjoyed this particular fetish, technically known as vorarephilia or “vore” as it is known in the underground online communities.