The Daily Bubble

It's been over three months since our last cannibal story, a Bubble record. Today, we're ending our streak with the first known case of internet cannibalism. The AP reports:

A man who admitted killing and eating an acquaintance he met on the Internet was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.... Armin Meiwes, a 44-year-old computer technician, also was convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead. His lawyers had argued that the Frankfurt state court should instead convict him of the lesser offense of “killing on demand,” on the grounds that he was only following his victim’s wishes....

At the retrial, Meiwes renewed a detailed confession, telling the court his version of the grisly details of the March 2001 killing of Bernd Juergen Brandes at Meiwes’ home in the central town of Rotenburg. Meiwes said Brandes — who had traveled from Berlin after answering his Internet posting under the pseudonym “Franky” seeking a young man for “slaughter and consumption” — wanted to be stabbed to death after drinking a bottle of cold medicine to lose consciousness. He testified that Brandes, 43, had wanted to “be eaten alive.” “Otherwise, I would never have done it,” Meiwes, who captured the killing on video, told the court during the trial.

Still, the defendant claimed he had hesitated before going through with the act. “I wanted to eat him — I didn’t want to kill him,” he told the court.

It's coffee and donuts time. Enjoy your morning!