Prison cannibal attack chills France
self-confessed cannibal is in custody after apparently eating bits of a
fellow prison inmate in a gory case raising questions about psychiatric care
in French detention centres.
It also brings back memories of Japanese Issey Sagawa, who 25 years ago
killed his Dutch girlfriend in Paris, ate much of her body over three days
and went on to become a celebrity at home.
Reminiscent of psychopath Hannibal Lecter in the film The Silence of the
Lambs - who was "having an old friend for dinner" - the 35-year-old prisoner
may have fried parts of a cellmate's lungs and chest with onions before
devouring them, investigators believe.
The prisoner - named by the French daily Le Parisien as Nicolas Cocaigne -
has confessed to the attack and been charged with premeditated murder and
"violating the integrity of a corpse".
The body of 31-year-old Thierry Baudry was found early on Thursday when
guards opened the cells in the prison of Rouen in north-west France.
According to the prosecutor, he had been beaten, cut with scissors and a
razor, strangled and finally asphyxiated with a plastic bag.
A third detainee in the cell was charged with being an accessory to murder.
Cocaigne's initial claim that he had eaten his victim's heart was disproved
when the heart was found intact during an autopsy.
But investigators do believe that he devoured parts of his lungs and chest,
possibly after preparing them in a cooker.
Detectives were running tests on samples of fat and onion taken from a
saucepan in the cell, Le Parisien reported on Saturday.
Samuel Lepastier, a psychiatrist at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris,
said Cocaigne, who was awaiting trial on charges of armed rape, probably
suffered from major schizophrenia. He would have regressed to a state of
early-childhood anguish and rage, exacerbated by prison conditions.
This tallies with a report in Le Monde daily that Cocaigne explained the
attack by saying he was overcome with a sudden violent urge.
He reportedly got angry because his cellmate failed to respect prison cell
rules.
"You can't always detect the mentally ill among the prison population,"
Lepastier told Le Parisien.
But Cocaigne's lawyer, Fabien Picchiotino, said the prison authorities had
ignored early warnings.
"This drama could have been avoided if my client had been placed in
psychiatric care, or if the recommendation of the investigating judge to
place him in solitary confinement had been followed," he said.
Prison director Yves Bidet refused to say whether he had been warned that
Cocaigne was dangerous.
France and the world have had their share of bone-chilling cannibal cases in
recent years.
In July 2004, also in a French prison, a 36-year-old convicted murderer
cracked open the skull of an inmate and was found by wardens eating his
brains with his hands.
In Germany in 2001, Armin Meiwes found a willing cannibalism victim on the
internet. He cut off and ate his penis sauteed in salt, pepper and garlic,
before a rolling camera, and froze other body parts for later consumption.
In Britain, in 1998, 23-year-old David Harker strangled his girlfriend and
ate bits of her thigh, cooked with pasta and cheese.
But the case of Issey Sagawa stands out for sheer callousness.
A student at the Sorbonne university in Paris in 1981, Sagawa invited a
Dutch girl home for dinner. He shot her, had sex with the corpse and ate her
bit by bit.
Declared unfit for trial in France, he was deported to Japan, where he was
freed after just 15 months in a hospital, and went on to write novels,
becoming something of a celebrity.
"Finally I was eating a beautiful white woman, and thought nothing was so
delicious," he wrote in one of the novels, apparently showing no remorse
whatsoever.
The flesh "melted in my mouth like raw tuna", although it needed salt and
mustard, he said
self-confessed cannibal is in custody after apparently eating bits of a
fellow prison inmate in a gory case raising questions about psychiatric care
in French detention centres.
It also brings back memories of Japanese Issey Sagawa, who 25 years ago
killed his Dutch girlfriend in Paris, ate much of her body over three days
and went on to become a celebrity at home.
Reminiscent of psychopath Hannibal Lecter in the film The Silence of the
Lambs - who was "having an old friend for dinner" - the 35-year-old prisoner
may have fried parts of a cellmate's lungs and chest with onions before
devouring them, investigators believe.
The prisoner - named by the French daily Le Parisien as Nicolas Cocaigne -
has confessed to the attack and been charged with premeditated murder and
"violating the integrity of a corpse".
The body of 31-year-old Thierry Baudry was found early on Thursday when
guards opened the cells in the prison of Rouen in north-west France.
According to the prosecutor, he had been beaten, cut with scissors and a
razor, strangled and finally asphyxiated with a plastic bag.
A third detainee in the cell was charged with being an accessory to murder.
Cocaigne's initial claim that he had eaten his victim's heart was disproved
when the heart was found intact during an autopsy.
But investigators do believe that he devoured parts of his lungs and chest,
possibly after preparing them in a cooker.
Detectives were running tests on samples of fat and onion taken from a
saucepan in the cell, Le Parisien reported on Saturday.
Samuel Lepastier, a psychiatrist at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris,
said Cocaigne, who was awaiting trial on charges of armed rape, probably
suffered from major schizophrenia. He would have regressed to a state of
early-childhood anguish and rage, exacerbated by prison conditions.
This tallies with a report in Le Monde daily that Cocaigne explained the
attack by saying he was overcome with a sudden violent urge.
He reportedly got angry because his cellmate failed to respect prison cell
rules.
"You can't always detect the mentally ill among the prison population,"
Lepastier told Le Parisien.
But Cocaigne's lawyer, Fabien Picchiotino, said the prison authorities had
ignored early warnings.
"This drama could have been avoided if my client had been placed in
psychiatric care, or if the recommendation of the investigating judge to
place him in solitary confinement had been followed," he said.
Prison director Yves Bidet refused to say whether he had been warned that
Cocaigne was dangerous.
France and the world have had their share of bone-chilling cannibal cases in
recent years.
In July 2004, also in a French prison, a 36-year-old convicted murderer
cracked open the skull of an inmate and was found by wardens eating his
brains with his hands.
In Germany in 2001, Armin Meiwes found a willing cannibalism victim on the
internet. He cut off and ate his penis sauteed in salt, pepper and garlic,
before a rolling camera, and froze other body parts for later consumption.
In Britain, in 1998, 23-year-old David Harker strangled his girlfriend and
ate bits of her thigh, cooked with pasta and cheese.
But the case of Issey Sagawa stands out for sheer callousness.
A student at the Sorbonne university in Paris in 1981, Sagawa invited a
Dutch girl home for dinner. He shot her, had sex with the corpse and ate her
bit by bit.
Declared unfit for trial in France, he was deported to Japan, where he was
freed after just 15 months in a hospital, and went on to write novels,
becoming something of a celebrity.
"Finally I was eating a beautiful white woman, and thought nothing was so
delicious," he wrote in one of the novels, apparently showing no remorse
whatsoever.
The flesh "melted in my mouth like raw tuna", although it needed salt and
mustard, he said
