Rouen (France): A prisoner told a French
court on Wednesday that a sexual urge drove him to kill his cellmate
-- and that "curiosity" about the taste of human flesh led him
to cook and eat the lung he ripped out of the corpse.
Nicolas Cocaign, dubbed the "French Hannibal Lecter" by
international media covering his murder trial in the northern
city of Rouen, gave the court a blow by blow account of how
and why he killed Thierry Baudry.
He said he flew into an "uncontrollable" rage after his
victim gave him a "dirty look" on January 2, 2007 after he
ordered him to wash his hands after going to the toilet in the
cell they shared with a third inmate in Rouen.
"I had a sexual urge, an adrenaline rush," Cocaign, whose
face is tattooed with bloody tears and a skull, told the court
on the third day of a trial whose verdict was due tomorrow.
He said that after pummelling his victim, he took a pair
of scissors and plunged it into his back, neck and chest a
dozen times before holding a plastic bag over his head "for
five minutes" to make sure he was dead.
Then, in an act that has sparked the comparisons with the
fictional cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, he
decided to eat Baudry`s heart for his evening meal.
"I take a razor blade and I open his chest. I plunge my
hand in and I take out what I think is the heart but which in
fact is a piece of lung, which I put into a Tupperware
container," he told a transfixed courtroom.
Cocaign, who was in jail for armed robbery and was
awaiting trial for attempted rape at the time, said he
proceeded to eat part of the lung raw before frying the rest
with onions on a camping stove and dining on the dish.
PTI
