I can't believe this guy is still alive

Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch student Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris, France. On June 11, 1981, Sagawa, a 32 year old student of French literature, invited Hartevelt to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat with her back to him at a desk, then began to carry out his plan of eating her.[1] She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. Sagawa describes himself as a "weak, ugly, and small man" (he is just under 5 ft (1.52 m) tall[2]) and claims that he wanted to "absorb her energy".[3]

Sagawa said he fainted after the shock of shooting her, but awoke with the realization that he had to carry out his desire to eat her.[1] He did so, beginning with her hips and legs, after having sex with the corpse. In interviews, he noted his surprise at the "corn-colored" nature of human fat.[2] For two days, Sagawa ate various parts of her body. He described the meat as "soft" and "odorless", like tuna. He then attempted to dump the mutilated body in a remote lake, but was seen in the act and later arrested by the French police.[1]

His wealthy father provided a top lawyer for defense, and after two years without a trial the French judge Louis Bruguiéres found him "obviously" legally insane and unfit to stand trial and ordered Sagawa to be held indefinitely in a mental institution.[1] Through a visit of the author Inuhiko Yomota his memoirs on the murder were published in Japan with the title In the Fog.[1] The constant publicity and macabre celebrity of Sagawa led the French authorities to extradite him to Japan. Not to cause outrage, he was first taken to Matsuzawa hospital, where upon examination psychologists all found him sane but '"evil".[1] Japanese authorities found it impossible to pursue him, purportedly by lacking some pertinent papers from Louis Bruguiéres. As a result, Sagawa checked himself out on August 12, 1986, and has been a free man ever since.[1]
[edit] Post-release

Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator.[4] He has also written restaurant reviews for the Japanese magazine Spa.[5] In 1992, he appeared in Hisayasu Sato's exploitation film Uwakizuma: Chijokuzeme (Unfaithful Wife: Shameful Torture) as a sadosexual voyeur.[6]

Besides books about the murder he committed, Sagawa wrote a commentary book Shonen A in 1997 on the Kobe children's serial murder of 1997, when a 14-year-old called "Boy A" ("Shonen A") killed and decapitated a child.[7]

Sagawa's story inspired the 1981 Stranglers song "La Folie"[citation needed] and the 1983 Rolling Stones song "Too Much Blood".[2] In 2007, the avant-garde noise-metal band Gnaw their Tongues released an EP titled "Issei Sagawa," the cover of which depicts Sagawa posed with a fork and knife over what appears to be a pair of human legs.[8]

A short film by Olivier Smolders called Adoration is based on Sagawa's story.[9]