The offerings were to take place every one, seven or nine years and lasted until Theseus volunteered to join the third group of the would-be victims, killed the monster, and led his companions safely out of the Labyrinth.
[1][2][3][4] Plutarch in his Life of Theseus cites a rationalized version of this myth, referring to Philochorus who in his turn claimed to be following a local Cretan tradition.
The winner who received them as a prize was Taurus, the most powerful general of Minos; he mistreated the young people, thus gaining the reputation of a monster.
Plutarch further cites Aristotle's non-extant The Constitution of the Bottiaeans, in which the young Athenians were reportedly said to not have been killed in Crete, but enslaved for the rest of their lives.
All of the recoverable information is collected in W. H. Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, which provides four alternate lists of names.