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A warm and caring Dutch exchange student one day offered to help a Japanese friend transcribe some poetry at a Parisian university, little knowing that she would never be seen alive again.

In a truly disturbing case, Issei Sagawa confessed to French Police in 1981 that he slaughtered classmate Renee Hartevelt, saying: "I killed her to eat her flesh." What's more, the sick killer has never been jailed for his disgusting crime.

Born in 1949, Sagawa claims his cannibalistic fantasies began when he was only six-years-old. He said his beloved childhood tale was Hansel and Gretel, and he remembers gazing at other pupils' thighs during primary school while thinking: "Mmm, that looks delicious."

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As he matured, his cannibalistic urges took on a sexual dimension as he began dreaming about consuming women's flesh, particularly Western stars like actress Grace Kelly.

When he was 23, he broke into the Tokyo flat of a young German woman while wearing a Frankenstein's monster mask.

She awoke before the four-foot nine-inch Sagawa could launch his attack and overpower her. He admitted to police he had planned to sexually assault her, and his wealthy father compensated the young woman to withdraw the charges, leaving Sagawa free to go.

Then in 1977, the he travelled to Paris to pursue languages and literature at the Sorbonne University. Sagawa, 28 at the time, befriended Renee, who would frequently pop round to his flat to tutor him in German.

On 11 June 1981, while she was at his apartment for dinner and to help him out with coursework, Sagawa shot her in the neck.

He remembered: "I thought about calling an ambulance, but then I thought, 'Hang on, don't be stupid'. You've been dreaming about this for 32 years and now it's actually happening!'"

He proceeded to rape Renee's lifeless body before eating parts of her. Some of the flesh he consumed raw, while other parts he cooked before eating. Over a two-day period, the monstrous cannibal devoured sections of Renee's breasts, calves, lips and thighs.

When he decided it was time to dispose of the body, he used two large suitcases, cramming the remainder of her body into them before hailing a taxi.

The taxi driver took him to a nearby park where Sagawa attempted to discard the suitcases in Bois de Boulogne Park.

However, two joggers, horrified by the sight of blood seeping from the suitcases, alerted the authorities. Police were quickly able to link the suitcases to Sagawa with the help of the taxi driver.

At his home they stumbled upon the horrifying remnants of a meal consisting of cooked human flesh, as well as Renee's photo ID card. He was apprehended and detained in France, during which time psychologists assessed him.

Sagawa's father intervened once more, hiring a top lawyer who succeeded in having him declared legally insane and unfit to stand trial. For the following four years, Sagawa lived in a French maximum-security psychiatric unit, where he wrote and illustrated a novel, 'In The Fog'.

The book narrated the chilling tale of a man who murders a woman, violates her corpse, and consumes pieces of her flesh. Many speculated this was a recounting of his own heinous acts.

Horrific crime scene photographs from Renee's murder were leaked and splashed across a popular French magazine in 1985. The scandal resulted in one journalist being arrested and 200,000 copies of the publication being confiscated by authorities.

Sagawa was deported back to Japan, where he was dispatched to a Tokyo hospital for psychiatric assessment. Medics back home concluded he had a personality disorder - but wasn't legally insane, meaning he could face criminal charges for his heinous acts.

However, French authorities refused to assist with the prosecution and, shockingly, Sagawa was released in 1986 as a free man. He subsequently became a celebrity and even featured in a pornographic film in 1992 where he simulated cannibalising a woman.

Sagawa wrote nearly 20 books and maintained a weekly column in a Japanese publication. He also featured on cookery programmes, penned restaurant critiques and flogged paintings.

In November 2022, the depraved killer died at the age of 73 from complications following pneumonia.

Sagawa always maintained that being a cannibal was "simply a fetish, and that, "If a normal man fancied a girl, he'd naturally feel a desire to see her as often as possible, to be close to her, to smell her and kiss her, right?

""To me, eating is just an extension of that. Frankly, I can't fathom why everyone doesn't feel this urge to eat, to consume other people."