Modern Cannibalism: Six Killers With a Taste for Human Flesh

Nikolai Dzhumagaliev

Nikolai Dzhumagaliev, personal photo.

Dinner parties can be awkward affairs and can take forever to clean up after, particularly when your drunken guests search the refrigerator for the Sauvignon Blanc and instead find a human head and a platter of intestines. It’s a unique problem, yes, but one that Nikolai Dzhumagaliev – aka “Metal Fang,” because of his peculiar false teeth, forged from white metal – was forced to confront in 1980 when some guests found the leftovers from the dish Dzhumagaliev had just served them.

Dzhumagaliev, a Kazakhstani man widely believed to be hopelessly schizophrenic, decided in 1979 that he needed to do his part to annihilate the world’s prostitutes. Over the next year he slaughtered up to 100 women, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in history. After expressing interest in engaging with a lady’s service, Dzhumagaliev would escort her to a darkened, secluded area, then viciously rape and beat her. He typically finished his victims off with a series of blows from an axe. He’d then butcher the women and serve them as finger food at his many parties.
Dzhumagaliev was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1980 following the botched dinner party. Rather than jail, Dzhumagaliev was institutionalized in a mental hospital. During a routine transfer in 1989, he escaped and was on the lam for two years before being recaptured.  After serving just over ten years, he was released.  Though his exact whereabouts are unknown, Dzhumagaliev is thought to be living with relatives in Eastern Europe.

Sergey Zhnaryev

Sergey Zhnarev. Police photo.

Two years ago, Ukrainian Sergey Zhnaryev, 26, attacked his grandmother, 60-year-old Lidia, with a piece of broken mirror. After rendering the old woman unable to defend herself, Zhnaryev, a computer programmer nicknamed “Rodent,” extracted the woman’s eyes and fed on pieces of her body that he sliced off. Lidia was alive as Zhnaryev ate her. At some point during his insane feast, he silenced her words of agony by cutting her tongue out and eating it. The woman bled to death as Zhnaryev, covered in nothing but blood and dirty underwear, conducted a mourning service.  Zhnaryev was sent to a mental hospital, where Russian press reported, he said he missed his grandmother’s pies.

Sergey Gavrilov

Gavrilov reportedly cooked his mother's legs into soup and pasta.

Russia’s Sergey Gavrilov acted similar to the Ukranian cannibal who shares his first name.  Gavrilov hit his mother with a brick then strangled her to death when she wouldn’t hand over her pension money. After killing his mom, Gavrilov put her body on the balcony, where it froze, and then went on a two day bender. Upon running out of money, Gavrilov returned home hung-over, broke, and hungry. Since he’d spent his mother’s money on vodka and gambling, he couldn’t afford food, so he ate from the frozen corpse of his mother for the next month.  Gavrilov told police that he’d cut off pieces of her legs and cooked them into soups and pasta, but that he didn’t like the meat because it was “too fatty.” Gavrilov’s judge found some sympathy for the drunken cannibal and delivered a sentence reduced slightly from the standard of 15 years because, “he needed to eat.”

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