Issei Sagawa, the Japanese cannibal who still walks free.

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The famous Japanese cannibal is notorious in his country. He grew up in a wealthy family but always had the urge for human flesh. At 23, Sagawa was arrested for attempted rape, according to Culture Crossfire. 

He entered the apartment of a tall German woman living in Tokyo and attacked her. Police didn't realize he was actually attempting to eat her, even though he bit off a piece of her flesh. Sagawa, who is 5-feet-tall, later told Vice he was obsessed with taller "Western" women.

At 32, Sagawa went to study literature in France, even receiving his Ph.D. It was there that he befriended a classmate, a 25-year-old Dutch woman named Renee Hartevelt.

The friendship proved deadly for Hartevelt as one night in 1981, Sagawa invited her over under the guise of working on a poetry assignment but ended up shooting her in the neck and eating various parts of her body over a two-day span.

He attempted to dump the leftovers of her body in a lake nearby but was caught in the act. He was held in police custody for two years before being deemed legally insane and deported back to Japan. Once in Japan, he was declared sane by psychologists and signed himself out of the mental institution where he was being held. He currently lives as a free man in Japan.

EDIT: Thank you to the comment that said that he died on the 24th november last year.

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