These acts of cannibalism include suspected attacks by South Pacific tribes, desperate attempts to avoid starvation, and deranged murders.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
When people hear the word “cannibal,” they often picture the ritual human sacrifices of a long-gone civilization or an isolated tribe in a distant land. But sometimes, cannibal attacks hit much closer to home.
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Eugene is pictured here in a 2009 mugshot.Public Domain
Michael Rockefeller is pictured here with the Dani people, another Indigenous tribe of New Guinea, in 1961.Jan Broekhuijse/Harvard University Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
The taste for human flesh persists to the modern day, and it's not confined to far-off nations. Serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer have admitted to eating pieces of their victims, and drug-fueled rampages have resulted in grisly cannibalistic acts.
Sometimes, survivors of disasters are forced to resort to cannibalism if they want to live another day. Plane crashes, shipwrecks, and blizzards have all left people desperate enough to dine on their companions who have already perished.
Then, there are the curious people who simply want to know what humans taste like — and find voluntary victims willing to fulfill their desires.
Above, look through the disturbing stories of 17 cannibal attacks. And below, learn the chilling details of some of the more unbelievable cases.
The Mysterious Disappearance And Alleged Disappearance Of Michael Rockefeller
In November 1961, 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller vanished off the coast of Dutch New Guinea. The great-grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller had joined an expedition to the territory to collect Indigenous art for his family's collection and study the culture of the region's tribes. But the trip soon took a tragic turn.
Rockefeller was traveling on the Arafura Sea with anthropologist René Wassing when their boat overturned. The outboard motor flooded, and they were stranded at sea for a full day. Although they were nearly 14 miles from shore, Rockefeller decided to swim for help — but he was never seen again.
Jan Broekhuijse/Harvard University Peabody Museum of Archaeology & EthnologyMichael Rockefeller during his expedition to Dutch New Guinea in 1961.
Investigators initially assumed that he'd drowned, but as more people started asking questions, a terrifying story emerged.
Journalist Carl Hoffman interviewed several people involved in the investigation for a 2014 article published in Smithsonian magazine, including a Dutch missionary named Hubertus von Peij who traveled to the village of Omadesep the month after Rockefeller vanished.
According to von Peij, he spoke with two men from nearby Otsjanep who claimed that Michael Rockefeller had indeed made it to shore — where he'd been murdered and eaten by members of the Asmat tribe. They'd turned his bones into fishing spears and hung his head in a tribesman's house.
The men stated that Rockefeller had been killed to avenge the deaths of five Otsjanep residents at the hands of Dutch soldiers several years earlier.
The true fate of Michael Rockefeller remains unknown, but if von Peij and the men he spoke with were telling the truth, he didn't drown at all — he died in a cannibal attack.
Armin Meiwes And His Cannibal Attack On A Willing Victim
While Michael Rockefeller surely tried to fight off his attackers — if he was indeed killed and eaten by Asmat tribesmen — there's at least one cannibalism victim who died willingly. His name was Bernd Brandes, and he responded to a bizarre online ad written by German computer repair technician Armin Meiwes in 2001.
Meiwes had posted in a cannibalism fetish forum seeking a voluntary victim to kill, butcher, and eat. Brandes had his own fetish — castration — and he agreed to fulfill Meiwes' desires if Meiwes would castrate him first.
The two men met at Meiwes' house in March 2001, and Meiwes led Brandes to the attic. He had transformed the room into a slaughterhouse, complete with six knives, a hatchet, a meat grinder, and a manual for butchering a human body.
Public DomainBernd Brandes, the man who agreed to be killed and eaten by Armin Meiwes.
After feeding Brandes sleeping pills and cough syrup, Meiwes cut off his genitals. The men tried to eat Brandes' penis together, but they found it too "chewy," so Meiwes instead fried it up with salt, pepper, garlic, and wine.
At some point during the night, Brandes became unconscious from blood loss, and Meiwes proceeded with his macabre plan. He hung Brandes' corpse on a meat hook and started cutting off slices of his flesh, which he stored in a freezer and feasted on over the next 10 months.
It wasn't until October 2002 that someone reported one of Meiwes' ads and the police uncovered the truth of his cannibal attack. They didn't have to search hard for evidence, as Meiwes had filmed the entire crime. He was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Not all cannibal attacks stem from murder, though. Some are simply a last resort in a desperate situation of life or death.
The Tragic Story Of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
On Oct. 13, 1972, 45 passengers boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to fly to Santiago, Chile, for a rugby match. Due to poor visibility, the plane crashed as it was flying through the Andes Mountains. Thirty-three people survived the accident — but the worst was yet to come.
The rugby players and their friends and family members were stranded in the Andes for 10 weeks in frigid temperatures and with little to eat but candy bars. Within a week, their food supplies were depleted, and more people started dying from injuries and exposure. When an avalanche claimed eight more victims, the 16 survivors who were left made a deal.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesA frozen body lies outside the wreckage of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.
"We shook our hands and we say, 'If I die, please use my body. So at least you can get out of here,'" Nando Parrado, one of the passengers, told ABC News in 2023.
"It's a very, very humiliating thing to eat a dead body," said Roberto Canessa, another survivor.
However, the desperate act of cannibalism proved to be their saving grace. It gave Parrado and Canessa enough energy to walk down the mountain until they found help. Eight days later, they met some rural farmers who traveled 10 hours on horseback to deliver a note to the authorities.
After 72 days in the Andes, the remaining 14 passengers were rescued by helicopter. If the survivors hadn't cannibalized the bodies of their companions, it's likely that none of them would have lived.
After reading about 17 horrific cannibal attacks, go inside the most infamous act of cannibalism in American history: the Donner Party. Then, read about the cannibalism that took place during the siege of Leningrad.
