14 Creepy Cases Of American Cannibals Who Ate Their Victims
Jamestown, VA
Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainDuring a period known as "The Starving Time" in the winter of 1609, all but 60 of Virginia's 214 colonists died from starvation. The people of the village resorted to digging up the frozen dead and eating them. The cannibalism wasn't limited to such scavenging, either. After the winter, one man was tortured into confessing that he had killed, and eaten his wife.
The Crew Of The Whale Ship Essex
Photo: Kevin J. Avery / Creative Commons / Public DomainHerman Melville's Moby-Dick was inspired by the sinking of a real ship called the Essex, the story of which is even more gruesome than that of Captain Ahab. The Essex was a Massachusetts whaling ship that sank after an attack by a sperm whale. The surviving crew members took to two small whaling boats, and remained there for about three months before rescue. The survivors on at least one of the boats turned to cannibalism, and when they were rescued, it was said that the last two survivors had sucked the marrow out of a dead crewmate's bones.
The Donner Party
Photo: Daniel A. Jenks / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainProbably the best-known American cannibals of all time, the Donner Party set out for California in 1846. They ended up trapped in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during a particularly harsh winter. More than half of the roughly 90 people in the party died, and there have been conflicting (but reliable) reports of cannibalism among some of those who made it through.
Boone Helm
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images / Flickr / Public Domain"The Kentucky Cannibal" was a mountain man and gunslinger who lived in Old West Montana, and he died at 35 years old during the Civil War. Characterized as a serial killer by many, Helm made no secret of his fondness for human flesh. Living in the wilds of Montana, he killed and ate at least 11 people in survival situations, but after getting a taste for humans, he'd kill for food before entering a survival situation. "Many's the poor devil I've killed, at one time or another," he said. "And the time has been that I've been obliged to feed on some of 'em."
The Crew Of The SS Dumaru
Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainThe Dumaru was a wooden steamship launched on its maiden voyage in 1918, during WWI. Lightning struck the ship off the coast of Guam, igniting its ammunition and causing the ship to explode. The survivors on their two life rafts resorted to cannibalism to survive the three weeks they spent adrift.
- Photo: Mugshot 1903 / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Albert Fish was one of the most prolific and notorious serial killers of all time - a man so utterly evil, it's hard to believe he even existed. That Fish confessed to the murders of more than 100 children is only the beginning of the story - the fact that he was known to cut them up and cook them with onions, carrots, and strips of bacon is but the second chapter. It gets worse. Look up Albert Fish at your own risk.
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William Buehler Seabrook
Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainHave you ever wanted to know what people taste like? Apparently, so did New York Times reporter William Seabrook. In the 1930s, after a cannibal tribe in West Africa piqued his curiosity, Seabrook obtained a bit of fresh human from a hospital intern and cooked it up. And what do people taste like? Like tender beef, according to the journalist.
"It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted," Seabrook reported. "It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."
Alferd 'The Republican Cannibal' Packer
Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainWith a name like "Alferd," and a beard like that, you just knew this guy was to be a gold prospector from 1849. He left Utah for Colorado with a party of five other men. Months later, he arrived in snow-bound Denver alone. He claimed the party had run out of food, and they had turned to cannibalism for survival.
The judge who sentenced Packer didn't have much sympathy, saying, "Stand up yah voracious man-eatin' sonofab*tch and receive yir sintince. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of 'em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t' be hanged by th' neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin' ag'in reducin' th' Dimmycratic populayshun of this county. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sintince ya ta hell but the statutes forbid it."
- Photo: Philadelphia Police Department / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Heidnik was a serial killer and rapist who abducted at least six women, then held them captive in his basement dungeon before killing them. During that time, he would repeatedly rape and torture them both physically and psychologically. One method of which involved feeding his victims a mixture of dog food and the ground-up remains of the last woman he killed. Heidnik himself consumed some of his victims. Of the eight he captured, two survived when they were rescued by police.
Probably the most notorious American serial killer of the 20th century, Jeffrey Dahmer perpetrated all manner of graphic horrors on his victims, including gruesome medical experimentation and necrophilia. In addition to other body parts he kept as trophies, Dahmer ate pieces of at least one victim, keeping the remainder in his refrigerator for regular snacks. He may have even tricked an unknowing neighbor into consuming human flesh, freely giving her a sandwich of unknown composition.
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Omaima Aree Nelson
Photo: California State Prison / Public DomainOriginally from Egypt, Omaima was a model who ritualistically murdered her husband on Thanksgiving Day 1991 with a pair of scissors, then proceeded to eat him for dinner. First, she cut him into pieces with an electric carving knife, then she boiled his hands to remove his fingerprints. She then deep-fried them, cooked his head in the oven and grilled his rib cage with some barbecue sauce.
But why? As it turns out, her history included no small amount of sexual abuse. As a child living in Cairo, Omaima had been the victim of genital mutilation. As an adult, she was raped by her husband on the day of his murder. In mental and physical agony, she responded murderously.
Stanley Dean Baker
Baker was a Satanic cultist of the "Four Pi" movement who admitted to police in 1970 that he performed several human sacrifices, which apparently included some degree of cannibalism. He told the officer "I have a problem," while holding human fingers "I'm a cannibal." Baker went to prison, where it is reported he continued proselytizing on behalf of his Dark Lord.
Michael Woodmansee
In 1975 Rhode Island, then 16-year-old Woodmansee abducted and murdered a 5-year-old boy who lived down the street. He ate pieces of the boy and kept some of his bones (including the skull) on his dresser. He was convicted in 1983 after confessing to police, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was released in 2011. The boy's father - now in his 70s - has vowed to kill Woodmansee before he dies.
Antron 'Big Lurch' Singleton
Rapper "Big Lurch" is currently serving life in prison for murdering and partially consuming his live-in girlfriend, Tynisha Ysais. The Texas native had been hooked on PCP for years; early in his career he'd gotten into a car accident and broken his neck, and he began using the drug to ease his pain. After using particularly heavily one day, he murdered his girlfriend with a knife and then began taking bites out of her.
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