He shot her in the neck, raped her, and then ate chunks of her body over several days.
Digital Desk: Issei Sagawa, the "Kobe Cannibal" who murdered and ate a Dutch student but was never imprisoned, has died at the age of 73.
Sagawa died of pneumonia on November 24, and his funeral was attended only by relatives, with no public ceremony planned, according to a statement from his younger brother and a friend.
Sagawa was studying in Paris in 1981 when he welcomed Renee Hartevelt, a Dutch student, to his home.
He shot her in the neck, raped her, and then ate chunks of her body over several days.
Sagawa then attempted to dispose of her remains in the Bois de Boulogne park before being apprehended and confessing to police some days later.
However, he was declared incompetent for trial by French medical professionals in 1983 and was originally held in a psychiatric facility before being repatriated to Japan in 1984.
At the time, Hartevelt's family vowed to press for Sagawa's prosecution in Japan so that "the murderer would never go free."
However, upon his arrival, Japanese officials determined that Sagawa was sane and that his sole problem was a "character oddity," and that he did not require hospitalization.
Japanese officials were unable to obtain his case papers from their French counterparts, who believed the case had been concluded, allowing the murderer to go free.
Sagawa made no secret of his crime and reaped the benefits of his celebrity, including a novel-like memoir titled "In the Fog" in which he reminisced about the murder in vivid detail.
The murder was also the topic of Juro Kara's 1982 novel "Letter from Sagawa-kun," which earned the country's most prestigious literary prize.
Despite the horrible nature of the murder and his lack of remorse, Sagawa became a celebrity and gave interviews to domestic and foreign media in the years following his release.
He was featured in a magazine for his naked woman paintings, appeared in a pornographic film, and created a manga comic book that described his crime in gory and merciless detail.
The dark fascination with the murder was even mentioned in songs by the Rolling Stones and The Stranglers.
Sagawa spent his final years with his brother, apparently in a wheelchair due to a series of health issues that included a stroke.
But he showed no remorse or change, telling Vice in 2013 as he looked at posters of Japanese women, "I think they would taste wonderful."
In interviews in a 2017 documentary, "Caniba," he detailed the experience and his persistent preoccupation with cannibalism.
The film's directors spent months with Sagawa and his brother and described the encounter as "conflicting."
"We were disgusted, fascinated, we wanted to understand," said co-director Verena Paravel.
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