It's not a comforting thought, but there have been cannibals in America. Cannibalism is often associated with far-flung places. As in most developed cultures, eating the flesh of our own species is seen as the ultimate taboo. Yet American killers who ate people have come and gone, while ordinary citizens in extraordinary situations have eaten the remains of other humans.
America, even in its relatively short history, has seen more than its fair share of man-eaters. Many were acts of desperation in survival situations, as acts of cannibalism usually are. People lost at sea, adrift on life boats for weeks or people trapped in snow-choked mountain passes, or in villages short of food in winter. Just as many others have been acts of madness perpetrated by killers who when even further than murder. There's even one case of simple curiosity.
So read on, and get your fill of American cannibals, if you dare.
http://www.ranker.com/list/american-cannibals/ranker-crime,
Albert Fish
Albert Fish was one of the most prolific and notorious serial killers of all time - a man so utterly evil, it's hard to believe he even existed. That Fish confessed to the murders of over 100 children is only the beginning of the story - the fact that he was known to cut them up and cook them with onions, carrots, and strips of bacon is but the second chapter. It gets worse. Look up Albert Fish at your own risk.
Boone Helm
"The Kentucky Cannibal" was a mountain man and gunslinger who lived in Old West Montana, and died at 35 years old during the Civil War. Characterized as a serial killer by many, Helm made no secret of his fondness for human flesh. Living in the wilds of Montana, he killed and ate at least 11 people in survival situations, but after getting a taste for humans, he'd kill for food before entering a survival situation. "Many's the poor devil I've killed, at one time or another," he said. "And the time has been that I've been obliged to feed on some of 'em."
Stanley Dean Baker
Baker was a Satanic cultist of the "Four Pi" movement who admitted to police in 1970 that he performed several human sacrifices, which apparently included some degree of cannibalism. To prove it, he produced a severed finger which matched that of a person who had gone missing in the Santa Ana Mountains. Baker went to prison, where it is reported he continued proselytizing on behalf of his Dark Lord.
The Crew of the Whale Ship Essex
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was inspired by the sinking of a real ship called the Essex, the story of which is even more gruesome than that of Captain Ahab. The Essex was a Massachusetts whaling ship that sank after an attack by a sperm whale. The surviving crew members took to two small whaling boats, and remained there for about three months before rescue. The survivors on at least one of the boats turned to cannibalism, and when they were rescued, it was said that the last two survivors had sucked the marrow out of a dead crewmate's bones.
The Donner Party
Probably the best-known American cannibals of all time, the 50-wagon Donner Party set out for California in 1846. They ended up trapped in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during a particularly harsh winter, however. More than half of the roughly 90 people in the party died, and there have been conflicting (but reliable) reports of cannibalism among some of those who made it through. The surviving children are said to have been fed cooked human flesh as a last resort, while, according to legend, Donner himself is said to have eaten a baby raw. That's almost certainly an exaggeration... but it's very unlikely that the surviving party could have endured without some kind of "unconventional" nourishment.
Michael Woodmansee
In 1975 Rhode Island, then 16-year-old Woodmansee abducted and murdered a five-year-old boy who lived down the street. He ate pieces of the boy and kept some of his bones (including the skull) on his dresser. He was convicted in 1983 after confessing to police, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was released in 2011. The boy's father - now in his 70s - has vowed to kill Woodmansee before he dies.
Jamestown, Virginia
During a period known as "The Starving Time" in the winter of 1609, all but 60 of Virginia's 214 colonists died from starvation. The people of the village resorted to digging up the frozen dead and eating them. The cannibalism wasn't limited to such scavenging, either. After the winter, one man was tortured into confessing that he had killed, salted, and eaten his pregnant wife.
The Crew of the SS Dumaru
The Dumaru was a wooden steamship launched on its maiden voyage in 1918, during the first World War. Lightning struck the ship off the coast of Guam, igniting its ammunition and causing the ship to explode. The survivors on their two life rafts resorted to cannibalism to survive the three weeks they spent adrift.
William Buehler Seabrook
Have you ever wanted to know what people taste like? Apparently, so did New York Times reporter William Seabrook. In 1931, after a cannibal tribe in West Africa piqued his curiosity, Seabrook obtained a bit of fresh human from a hospital intern and cooked it up. And what do people taste like? Like tender beef, according to the journalist.
"It was like good, fully-developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted," Seabrook reported. "It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable."
Alferd "The Republican Cannibal" Packard
With a name like "Alferd," and a beard like that, you just knew this guy was to be a gold prospector from 1849. He left Utah for Colorado with a party of five other men. Two months later, he arrived in snow-bound Denver alone. He claimed the party had run out of food, and had turned to cannibalism for survival.
The judge who sentenced Packard didn't have much sympathy, saying, "Stand up yah voracious man-eatin' sonofabitch and receive yir sintince. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of 'em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t' be hanged by th' neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin' ag'in reducin' th' Dimmycratic populayshun of this county. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sintince ya ta hell but the statutes forbid it."