The “Kobe Cannibal,” a Japanese murderer who slaughtered and devoured a Dutch student but was never put behind bars, passed away at the age of 73.

Issei Sagawa passed away on November 24 from pneumonia, and his funeral was held privately with no public ceremony, according to a statement from his younger brother and a friend.

Sagawa hosted Renee Hartevelt in his home in 1981 while he was a student in Paris. He raped her, shot her in the neck, and over several days, ate various pieces of her body.

Sagawa then made an attempt to scatter her remains in the Bois de Boulogne park before being caught a few days later and confessing to the police.

In 1983, he was deemed unfit for trial by French medical experts and was initially held in a psychiatric institution before being deported to Japan in 1984.

Hartevelt’s family pledged at the time to push for Sagawa to be prosecuted in Japan so that ‘the murderer would never go free’. But on his arrival, he was ruled sane by Japanese authorities, who decided Sagawa’s only problem was a ‘character anomaly’ and that he did not require hospitalisation.

Japanese authorities were unable to get his case files from their French counterparts, who considered the case closed, leaving the murderer to walk free.

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