Cannibalism

If rooting out corrupt politicians is "mindless cannibalism," let's embrace it as a wonderfully healthful political diet. I suggest the "Mindless Cannibals" Society be formed to feed on the rich spread of entrenched corruption that appears to exist in national and state governments, and to perhaps ultimately help to lower, through change, the level of mindless self-interest that now passes itself off as public service. WILLIAM N. McNAIRN Palos Verdes Estates

NEW YORK (AP) - A New York City police officer was convicted Tuesday of charges he plotted to kidnap and cook women to dine on their "girl meat" - a macabre case that subjected jurors to often gory evidence and asked them to separate fantasy from reality. The jury reached the verdict in federal court at the kidnapping conspiracy trial of Officer Gilberto Valle, a 28-year-old father with an admitted fetish for talking on the Internet about cannibalism. Valle's lawyers at what the tabloids dubbed the "Cannibal Cop" trial chose not to hide what they called his "weird proclivities.

A Mexican writer who practiced witchcraft and was working on a book called "Cannibal Instincts" fried and ate parts of his ex-girlfriend after strangling her, government prosecutors said. Police who burst into Jose Luis Calva's apartment last week found a plate of fried human flesh on a dining table set with cutlery. They found more flesh in the refrigerator. Prosecutors suspect he strangled and mutilated two other women in the last two years.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The fate of a suspended New York City police officer accused of plotting to kill and cannibalize women he knew was in the hands of jurors, who resumed deliberations Friday after doing so for a little more than an hour a night earlier. The jury got the case late Thursday after Gilberto Valle's defense lawyer told them in closing arguments that the 28-year-old officer's elaborate plans were fantasy role-play and a prosecutor said they were "no joke. " In addition to kidnapping and conspiracy charges, Valle is accused of using a national database to learn personal information about potential targets.

"I'm 0 for 2 now." Frank Marshall can't help but laugh a little about his inability to make movies that can be shown on commercial airplanes. After producing some of the biggest blockbusters of the '80s for Amblin Entertainment, Marshall made his directorial debut in 1990 with "Arachnophobia," a horror movie about killer spiders as big as a can of Spam. Forget it, the airlines said unanimously. "When you're watching a movie on a plane," explains Marshall, 46, "you're a captive audience.

Tooth marks in bones from a dinosaur that roamed Madagascar more than 65 million years ago are clear evidence it was a cannibal, researchers reported in Thursday's issue of Nature. Minnesota paleontologists said fossil bones from the flesh-eating Majungatholus remove any doubt that it had a taste for members of its own species.

As an eye-catching theme for an exhibition, cannibalism surely ranks right up there. At East Los Angeles College's Vincent Price Art Museum, cannibalism is the motif driving the third MexiCali Biennial, a show that packs the work of 26 artists and collectives from the U.S. and Mexico into relatively small quarters. Given the venue, which is named for an erudite actor who was both Yale-trained in art history and popular for ghoulish turns in horror movies, the cannibalism theme also exudes a wry, site-specific cheekiness.

Victims of a nightmarish shipwreck stayed alive by eating the bodies of fellow voyagers who died during a three-week ordeal, a Dominican migrant said. Two people survived the illegal attempt to migrate from the Dominican Republic to neighboring Puerto Rico. About 60 Dominicans are believed to have crowded onto the boat, which suffered engine problems and drifted for weeks without power before it hit a coral reef off Haiti and sank last week.

A man who admitted killing and eating an acquaintance he met on the Internet was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison after a retrial. Armin Meiwes' lawyers had argued for conviction of the lesser offense of "killing on demand," on the grounds that he was following his victim's wishes. He was retried after a federal appeals court in Germany overturned his manslaughter conviction to allow prosecutors to seek a tougher sentence.

A German court ordered a retrial for a man convicted last year of killing and eating another man, giving prosecutors a chance to get a tougher sentence than the one imposed last year by a lower court. Armin Meiwes was sentenced in the city of Kassel to 8 1/2 years for manslaughter in the 2001 death of Bernd Brandes, 42. Meiwes confessed but claimed that the victim had agreed to be killed. Prosecutors appealing that sentence said he should be given a life sentence for murder.

NEW YORK (AP) - The FBI had to grab a New York City police officer last year before he could go forward with a macabre scheme to abduct and cannibalize women that was “no joke,” a prosecutor said Thursday in closing arguments at the officer's kidnapping conspiracy trial. Gilberto Valle was in the midst of a plot to “kidnap, torture, rape and commit other horrific acts” on at least six women he knew, including his wife, Assistant U.S. Atty. Hadassa Waxman told a Manhattan jury.

Former female classmates of the man accused of wanting to kidnap and then eat women testified on Tuesday that they never felt threatened by the one-time New York City police officer. The trial of Gilberto Valle, 28, dubbed by the New York media as the "Cannibal Cop," moved into its second day, with prosecutors seeking to put human faces on potential victims. But some of the women who took the stand minimized the threat. Valle is accused of conspiring to kidnap women and of using information from a law enforcement database to build a list of 100 women who the prosecution says were potential targets.

A federal jury in Manhattan will be asked to decide whether a New York policeman's desire to kidnap, cook and eat women was part of a sick homicidal plan or just another bizarre fantasy. The trial of the officer, dubbed the “cannibal cop,” begins Monday afternoon with opening statements before a jury of six men and six women, many of whom are college-educated and have lived in the metropolitan New York area most of their lives. New Yorkers have been living with the case, which has sparked the expected frantic tabloid headlines including "Cook 'em Danno.

Testimony began Monday in Manhattan federal court, where a jury was being asked to determine when role playing crosses virtual reality into criminal action. The prosecution and defense kicked off the ”Cannibal Cop” trial, sparring over how seriously to take the actions of Gilberto Valle, 28, a New York City policeman accused of conspiring to kidnap and eventually eat women. He is also accused of using information from a law enforcement database to build a list of 100 women who the prosecution says were potential targets.

As an eye-catching theme for an exhibition, cannibalism surely ranks right up there. At East Los Angeles College's Vincent Price Art Museum, cannibalism is the motif driving the third MexiCali Biennial, a show that packs the work of 26 artists and collectives from the U.S. and Mexico into relatively small quarters. Given the venue, which is named for an erudite actor who was both Yale-trained in art history and popular for ghoulish turns in horror movies, the cannibalism theme also exudes a wry, site-specific cheekiness.

The indie-rap label Def Jux is having a bit of a revivalist moment since its lamented 2010 hiatus, with label boss El-P's crossover success in mainstream and hipster circles. So now's an excellent time to get thee to a reunion of Cannibal Ox, another stalwart of the label known for its noisy sonics and blistering mike work. The Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thu. $15. theroxyonsunset.com .

A Berlin man confessed to killing a music teacher he met via the Internet to fulfill cannibalistic fantasies. Prosecutors said he did not eat the victim. Lawyer Detlev Binder said the case of cannibal Armin Meiwes had ignited the fantasies of Ralf M., 41. The victim, Joe R., 33, was stabbed and his body parts cut in October 2004.

Gene mutations that protect some people from the brain-wasting illnesses kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may be evidence of ancient cannibalism, British researchers say. They suggest that cannibalism may have caused early epidemics of the two diseases, prompting the natural selection of people with protective mutations. The team studied 30 women from the Fore people of Papua New Guinea who survived an epidemic of kuru between 1920 and 1950 and found that 23 had the protective mutation.

A New York City policeman dubbed the “cannibal cop” by local media planned to abduct, cook and eat a woman for Thanksgiving dinner, according to prosecutors who successfully moved to keep him behind bars without bail at a court hearing. The defense attorney for Gilberto Valle, Julia Gatto, said Tuesday that  Valle's musings were “disturbing” and “sick” but were merely fantasies and that he never intended to carry them out. Valle, 28, was arrested in October after a two-month investigation by the FBI and the Police Department's internal affairs division.  Prosecutors said phone and computer records showed he had been building a database of women -- complete with personal information and physical descriptions -- as part of a plot to kidnap, torture, cook and eat them.

A police officer dreamed up plots to kidnap, torture, cook and eat at least 100 women whose photos, names and addresses he pulled from a confidential law enforcement database, authorities said Thursday. Gilbert Valle's alleged fantasies about cannibalizing women -- one expressing the desire to "cook her over low heat, keep her alive as long as possible" -- were described in online fetish chat rooms and emails. Authorities said he was arrested because he was taking steps to carry the fantasies out. None of the women were harmed, although a prosecutor said that some of the women said they knew Valle and that the six-year NYPD veteran had stalked at least two of them, including once in a police car. Valle's estranged wife tipped off authorities to the online activity, leading to his arrest, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing case.