Cannibalism

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.

A murder suspect dubbed "The Cannibal" was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Mexico City prison cell, two months after police found cooked and seasoned bits of his ex-girlfriend's corpse in his apartment. Jose Luis Calva, a self-proclaimed poet and dramatist suspected in at least three murders, was found hanging from his belt, the city corrections department said in a statement.

Nudging the history books, archeologists studying one of two campsites used by the ill-fated Donner Party during a snowbound Sierra winter 160 years ago announced Thursday that a study had unearthed no physical evidence of cannibalism. The stranded emigrants settled into two camps during the harsh winter of 1846 and '47, and previous scientific studies confirmed cannibalism at the principal encampment, on the east shore of what is now Donner Lake.

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.

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer ice-free seasons are making it more difficult to hunt the ringed seals that are its principal food source. A study published in the online version of the journal Polar Biology reviewed three examples of predation from January to April 2004 by polar bears, including the first-ever reported killing of a female in a den shortly after giving birth. Polar bears do kill each other for dominance and breeding rights.

A man who told a 911 operator he killed his girlfriend and cooked her body later described his actions as being compelled by God, police said in Tyler. Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, was arrested after police said they found an ear boiling in a pot on a stove top. He was being held on $2-million bond.

The clues are covered by snow now, 158 winters removed from events that haunt these hills and the history books. Back before railroads and interstates and ski towns, the families of George and Jacob Donner hunkered down here during the terrible winter of 1846-47, snowbound in a pine-ringed meadow a couple miles north of the old pioneer trail now flanked by vacation homes. We all know the Donner Party story -- or at least think we do. A wagon train of 81 emigrants is trapped in the Sierra.

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.

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.