It was a quiet night in 1981 when the Dutch student Renée Hartevelt I was reading poetry in the apartment of the young Japanese Issei Sagawa. With a good intonation and her eyes absorbed in her reading, the last thing the young woman managed to do was read some of her final verses, before Sagawa shot her in the back with his 22-caliber rifle.
It was the second time the young woman had seen him, but the first time she had rejected his feelings. Some time later, the remains of his dismembered body were found in the Bois de Boulogne lake in sunset hours. According to what the police reports and witnesses say, the young man, who was 32 years old at the time, dragged two suitcases with the body to the place, while they were dripping with blood from the sides.
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Four days later, the police arrested him at his home on Erlanger Street, believing that he had only committed murder.
However, both they and the whole world were surprised to find out everything that the wealthy young man had committed. This is the story of a criminal who murdered, raped and ate a Dutch woman, and in the end, he ended up being almost a horrible pop culture star.
The favorite son of ‘daddy and mommy’
In the city of Kobe, Hyōgo was born on April 26, 1949, a premature baby son of Akira Sagawa, a very successful businessman who at that time worked as a President of Kurita Water Industriesand his beloved wife, who always kept her identity hidden from the media.
From the beginning, the doctors informed the couple that their son was probably not going to grow very big and even was at risk of dying at a young age, because the development inside the womb had not been enough. However, the first son of the Sagawa managed to get ahead and grow up as an -almost- normal child.
In fact, the only health complication she ever had in the hospital after her birth was an episode of enteritis, a disease that causes inflammation of the small intestine. Even so, he healed quickly and was able to get home, a place where he was always the darling of the family.
The murderer’s life was portrayed in the film ‘Caniba’, released in 2017.
Taken from Grasshopper Film.
For this very reason, he grew up as a prodigy boy who never lacked for anything. Primary and secondary school was done in Kamakura, in Kanagawa Prefecture. It was at this time when he closed himself in literature and in himself; however, it was in elementary school that he began to develop his cannibalistic desires.
In an interview conducted by the American and Canadian media ‘Vice’, Issei Sagawa reported that The first time he wanted to taste human flesh was when he saw a man’s thigh at his school.
(Keep reading: He Fooled Them All: The Fake 19-Year-Old Doctor Who Went From Hero To Murder Man.)
Also, by then, he had begun to have sexual desires that he himself had not been able to understand. So much so, that he maintained relations with his dog.
TONIGHT at 6 PM!! Come to the Chauncey for Forum’s presentation of CANIBA! Free for students! Stay after the film for a panel discussion!
*content consideration: this film deals with sexual assault and cannibalism* pic.twitter.com/6avlw9uqSU
— Bijou Film Board (@BijouFilm) October 1, 2019
But ignoring all that, and according to the Japanese media ‘Japan Today’, his childhood was very happy and far from any abnormal desire. The years passed and he grew up as an intelligent and talented boy for writing.
That was how he studied literature at the Wako University, where he was first captured.
First attempt at cannibalism
In the interview conducted by ‘Vice’, Sagawa confessed that in Japan he had already been arrested for attempted rape. According to what he recounted, the events took place while he was studying to obtain the title of writer.
Although it is true that there was repressed his cannibalistic desiresThey never disappeared. On the contrary, it became an obsession for him. Because of this, at the age of 24 he made the decision to follow a German woman to whom he felt attracted.
![](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
The institution where I studied undergraduate was founded in 1966.
Wako University official page.
In later interviews, he confessed that he liked tall, muscular women, but had a preference for Asian girls. This was largely due to the inferiority complex that she developed, since she never grew more than one meter and fifty centimeters or weighed more than fifty kilograms.
(Also read: The wicked nurse who murdered dozens of patients for 16 years).
His plan initially was to eat her in the strict sense of the word, since what he wanted was to taste her meat while she slept in her room, which is why he had followed her and slipped into her bedroom. Even so, her plans were thwarted when he got up from her sensing that there was someone close to her.
He immediately threw him to the ground and called the authorities, who they caught him for attempted rape. The literature student was surprised by the charges, but decided to keep quiet in order to hide his true intentions.
Finally, thanks to the economic power of his family, He was released after paying an agreement with the victim.
The death of Renée Hartevelt
After the incident in Wako, Issei finished his undergraduate degree and did a master’s degree in English Literature at Kwansei Gakuin University. There everything went normally, but his inferiority complex and aberrant obsession with meat gradually increased.
It was in 1981 when the literary intellectual hit rock bottom. As it turns out, four years earlier, he had moved to Paris, France, in order to pursue a Ph.D. famous Sorbonne University, institution that is recognized for its excellent education and above all for having graduates such as journalist William Irigoyen or the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.
(Also: The crime against a family that led to two children being Kung-Fu stars).
However, at that time they did not know that they were also going to have another world-renowned student, but this time not for an intellectual achievement, but because he would commit one of the most controversial crimes of the decade.
On June 11 of that year, Sagawa invited the young Dutch woman Renée Hartevelt to her apartment in Erlanger, near the university. Pretending that he needed help to learn German and after several invitations to his home, the man finally achieved his goal.
While the 25-year-old girl read some verses in German, the killer readied his rifle, stealthily aimed at the back of her neck and fired.
According to what he recounted in a documentary that was made of him a few years later, seeing so much blood the man fainted. But, when he woke up, he felt all kinds of emotions.
Seeing the woman lying on the floor, he decided to have sex with the corpse. Her main goal was to eat her while this was happening, but seeing that her teeth weren’t strong enough to tear her skin, she decided to dismember her after raping her.
According to reports from the authorities, he tore it into pieces and ate it for three days until the smell made him carry the remains out of his apartment.
‘Caniba’: the documentary that brought him to fame
Sagawa’s wealthy family spent a fortune on his lawyer’s fees. After the young man dumped the suitcases with the body in the Bois de Boulogne lake and was captured four days later, the French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière detained him for two years on a preventive basis and later declared Issei legally insane and incapable of standing trial. With this argument, he was judged as such and in the end fI was transferred to a psychiatric hospital for two yearswhile they prepared the paperwork for their deportation.
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In 1986 he arrived in his country of origin, a place where surprisingly he was not tried. It is not clear why, but it is believed that it was because they were never able to recover the paperwork from the French courts.
Renee Hartevelt was a Dutch student studying with Sagawa at the Sorbonne.
Over time, they became friends, occasionally inviting her to his home for dinner. At some point, he gained her trust from her.
He attempted to kill her once, unsuccessfully, before actually murdering her. pic.twitter.com/F2Duq2YFGl
— Chima (@chimaihueze) October 2, 2020
Surprised but motivated Issei took this as an opportunity and began to profit from the gruesome crime.which was apparently managing to attract the attention of hundreds of people in Japan.
Enjoying his freedom, he became quite the celebrity. He participated in different programs telling what happened and as a commentator, and likewise he was the protagonist of multiple documentaries and films, just as he was ‘Caniba’, the film directed by the British Lucien Castaing-Taylor and the French anthropologist Verena Paravel that gave the character a leap to worldwide fame.
“He killed her, raped her and started eating her. But he had problems with the meat and cooked it. She made a teriyaki, ”Verena Paravelnal told the American outlet ‘The New York Post’.
![](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
The film was widely distributed in Europe and Asia.
Taken from: Grasshopper Film.
This story was also materialized in a manga written and illustrated by himself, in which he shows his insecurities and explains how they led him to develop a fondness for human flesh.
The death of a criminal without sentence
Having lived in freedom for more than three decades, Sagawa died on November 24 at the age of 73 from pneumonia.
His last days were lived with his younger brother Jun, who took care of him because most of his relatives turned their backs on him after the crime he had committed became known and for a few years, due to his old age, he was bedridden. in a wheelchair.
Furthermore, it is known that since before 2015, the man had already been diagnosed with diabetes and he had heart problems because he suffered two heart attacks after arriving in the Asian country.
(It may be of interest to you: The 14-year-old boy who killed his grandmother to rob her but only found coins).
![](https://www.eltiempo.com/images/1x1.png)
Issei Sagawa passed away at the age of 73.
Even in 2013, he was admitted to a Tokyo hospital for a stroke that almost cost him his life.
According to the ‘AFP’ news agency, the news was released thanks to an official statement issued by the publisher for which his brother worked in 2019.
Likewise, it was also reported that only his close family nucleus had attended the funeral.
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LAURA NATALIA BOHORQUEZ RONCANCIO
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