Waltraud held misandrist views due to her failed romantic relationships and sought to make her youngest son fully dependent on her.
A number of journals written by Waltraud contained comprehensive 19th-century genealogies and an autobiography, which notably skipped any mention of her marriages or upbringing of her children.
[4] Between 1981 and 1993, Meiwes served as a contractual soldier in the German Army, largely spent stationed at the Alheimer barracks [de] outside of Rotenburg, and became a non-commissioned officer of the 52nd Panzergrenadier Brigade.
Meiwes claimed to have met his ex-fiancée, as well as other women, through a matchmaker and that after the break-up, he focused more on his career, finishing administrative training in Sonthofen and Unna in 1986.
He named the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel and a film adaptation of the novel Robinson Crusoe as early influences, with the latter standing out to him for featuring a scene where the character Friday voiced interest in "showing his reverence" for a fellow tribesman by consuming his remains.
[5] Meiwes had also described himself feeling "very lonesome" after "the family had fallen apart", referring primarily to the abandonment by his father, but also the poor relationship to his older brothers, as well as the deaths of his grandmother and first pet cat by the time he was eight years old.
In Meiwes' iimagination, "Franky" resembled the character Sandy Ricks (portrayed by Luke Halpin) from the American TV show Flipper.
Meiwes only attempted to live this fantasy out once before, having wanted to ask a male classmate who bore a close resemblance to "Franky" to "cut off a piece of him", but decided against it for fear of being denied and ostracised.
[5] Meiwes stated that as he grew older, his fantasies would "fade into the background" whenever he was in a relationship, but the death of his mother on 2 September 1999 caused him to focus more intensely on it.
[15] As an adult, Meiwes kept recordings of TV documentaries about the Vietnam War and read literature about cannibalistic serial killers such as Fritz Haarmann and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Meiwes also filmed amateur fetish videos for personal usage, wherein he would cover himself in ketchup while pretending to cut himself, hang himself up by his feet via pulley to resemble a slaughtered animal carcass, or eat marzipan and minced meat he had formed into human or phallic shapes.
He kept collages of cut-out body parts from pornographic magazines on a grill and copies of the videos locked in a safe, after he stopped producing additional footage when his mother questioned an uncleaned kitchen Meiwes left behind after one nightly filming.
With the advent of the internet in the 1990s, Meiwes began frequenting online forums centered around cannibal fetishism since at least 1998, using the alias "Franky" with the username "Antrophagus [sic]" and styling himself as a butcher.
They agreed to meet in real life in the following autumn and after two regular meet-ups in Kassel during October, Meiwes convinced Buse to two "slaughter" sessions.
The first time on 12 November, at a hotel in Kassel, Meiwes engaged in foreplay by slathering Buse with olive oil and drawing circles on the man's naked body, telling him that he would cut meat from these sections.
During the second meeting on 19 November at Meiwes' house, Buse left early after seeing the "slaughter room" made in preparation in the attic, which formerly held a smoke chamber.
"Matteo", a middle-aged Italian man, originally agreed to be "whipped to death" and "burned with a flamethrower", but reconsidered due to the cannibal aspect.
From 1995 to 2000, Brandes lived in Berlin-Tempelhof, engaging in casual sex with dates from gay bars, as well as maintaining romantic relationships with several women from Germany, the United States and at least one from Nigeria.
Meiwes asked to use a knife instead and had Brandes drink a bottle of alcoholic Vicks cough syrup to induce slowed breathing and extreme tiredness to ease the process.
After long hesitation and prayer, Meiwes killed Brandes by stabbing him in the throat, after which he finished the dismemberment and hung the body on a meat hook.
[22][23] Meiwes dismembered and ate the corpse over the next ten months, storing body parts in his freezer under pizza boxes and consuming up to 20 kilograms (44 lb) of the flesh.
The majority backed out from more drastic practices suggested by Meiwes, being only interested in role-playing scenarios, but some participants with BDSM or submission fetishes allowed themselves to be tied up and strung up on the block and tackle.
"Andreas" from Regensburg was hung upside down, stabbed with pin needles signed "filet" and "ham", covered in plastric film and lunch meat, but decided to break off the "slaughter" since he didn't want to actually die, instead eating pizza and drinking beer with Meiwes during the evening.
This time, Buse voiced a particular dislike for one of the men for being named sous-chef as a new hire in place of him and had also somehow obtained nude photos of the man's stomach.
[27] 400 internet users were found on Meiwes' contact list on the cannibal forum with those living in Germany being questioned while those residing abroad were left alone.
Jörg Buse faced legal action for representation of suspicion as an accomplice/conspiracy of murder for offering to provide victims to Meiwes, but the case was suspended, with a monetary fine and compulsory psychiatric counselling imposed.
Eugen A., listed as a "slaughter colleague" in Meiwes' contacts, was tried for representation of violence (Gewaltdarstellung [de]) because he received four photos of Brandes' dead body via e-mail, two on 21 February 2002 and another two on 5 December upon request.
[31] On 22 April 2005, the German Federal Court ordered a retrial after prosecutors appealed Meiwes's sentence, arguing that he should have been convicted of murder[32] because he killed for sexual gratification, a motive proved by his having videotaped the crime.
A complaint filed against the higher regional court of Frankfurt for the former appeal denial was dismissed with the specific reason that Meiwes was deemed likely for recidivism.
[43] Other films based on the case include: Rosa von Praunheim's Dein Herz in meinem Hirn (English title: Your Heart in My Head) and Ulli Lommel's Diary of a Cannibal.