On the phone, he speaks slowly and with confidence. He described himself as an “average looking guy” who is “well spoken and fairly well educated.” Now semi-retired, he worked for many years as an EMT before going to work at a fly-fishing store.
I spoke to him over the phone last week from his home in California. “Perro Loco” is a pseudonym, of course, one Loco uses for all of his online activity. Perro Loco started the Cannibal Café in 1994 - and when, in 2002, one of its posters, that same “Franky from Germany,” was arrested for killing and eating another man, the Cannibal Café was shut down. The creatively titled “your next meal” wrote, “if anyone wants to eat an 18 yr old gorgeous male by any means you wish, then just tell me how you would feel whilst devouring my horny flesh into ur belly and i will reply to you so we can discuss real arrangements, please eat me!” A few hours later, a response: “Hi, i am Franky from Germany, i will eat you,” followed by an e-mail address. Here is how one notable, but still typical, conversation at the Café ran. Entire threads were devoted to “human meat for sale fresh frozen.” Email addresses were freely exchanged, with posters using handles like “Pigslut” and “Masochist Mr. Waye.” “I am ready!” announced that the poster was prepared for slaughter. There were stories, artwork and users seeking advice on the best to way to cook someone. There were people who wanted to be eaten and people who wanted to do the eating. On the Café’s forums were men looking for men, men looking for women (the ideal: short, buxom, thin redheads) and women looking for men - very few posts, if any, were for women looking for women. Its forum messages also carry the whiff of a different era written at a time when people, unaware and unafraid of consequences, were more open with their identities online. Nine years is an eternity when it comes to the Internet and, suspended there in history, the website is a time capsule of early website-design features and flourishes, down to a .gif of dripping blood and the flashing “WARNING” sign. While it was shut down with a Denial of Service attack by the German authorities in late 2002, the website for the Cannibal Café can still be viewed online thanks to the Wayback Machine.