The Paris Cannibal Case refers to a gruesome murder that occurred on June 11, 1981, in France. The perpetrator was Issei Sagawa, a 32-year-old Japanese exchange student who killed, sexually violated, and cannibalized a 25-year-old Dutch female student who was his friend.
On that day, Sagawa invited the Dutch woman to his apartment in Paris where he shot her from behind with a carbine rifle. After her death, he removed her clothing and engaged in necrophilia. He then partially consumed her flesh raw, dismembered her body, photographed it, and cooked portions of her remains in a frying pan before eating them.
Two days later, on June 13, Sagawa attempted to dispose of the remaining body parts by placing them in a suitcase and trying to dump them in a pond in the Boulogne Forest. Witnesses observed this suspicious activity, causing him to flee. These witnesses discovered human remains in the suitcase and contacted police, leading to Sagawa's arrest two days after his attempted disposal.
Prior to this incident, Sagawa had attacked a German woman in Japan with cannibalistic intent and was arrested. However, the charges were dropped after his father paid a settlement to the victim. Sagawa himself claimed that his cannibalistic urges began in childhood.
In the French legal proceedings, Sagawa confessed to the crime but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was deemed to have been in a state of diminished mental capacity during the murder and was committed to a psychiatric institution in France rather than being prosecuted. The following year, he returned to Japan and spent one year at Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital.
Interestingly, the Japanese medical assessment contradicted the French diagnosis. Japanese doctors concluded that Sagawa did not actually have cannibalistic tendencies and had deceived French authorities. Dr. Kaneko, then vice-director of the hospital, determined that Sagawa suffered from a personality disorder rather than a mental illness and should have been held criminally responsible. He suggested that French medical professionals might have misdiagnosed an intestinal inflammation that Sagawa had at age one as encephalitis, leading to their incorrect assessment.
Japanese police shared this view and planned to arrest Sagawa for a new trial. However, these efforts were thwarted when French authorities refused to share their investigation materials related to a case that had been dismissed.
This case highlights significant differences between French and Japanese approaches to criminal psychology and legal proceedings, raising important questions about cross-border justice and the assessment of mental illness in criminal cases.
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