"To SERVE and protect"

*Warning: PIRATE RADIO presentation*

A German former police officer who dismembered a willing victim he met on a website for cannibal fetishists was today sentenced to eight years and six months in prison.

Detlef Guenzel chopped Polish-born Wojciech Stempniewicz into small pieces while listening to pop music before burying them in the garden of his home in Hartmannsdorf-Reichenau in 2013.

'He was found guilty of murder and disturbing the peace of the dead,' said presiding judge Birgit Wiegand at the regional court in the eastern city of Dresden.  

State attorneys had sought 10 and a half years in prison for the defendant, a trim, soft-spoken father of three whom neighbours described as friendly, generous and unfailingly polite.

Lawyers representing the family of Stempniewicz, 59, had requested a 15-year sentence, usually the maximum in a murder case.

But prosecutors said they stopped short of this demand because Stempniewicz said he wanted to die. 

Macabre: Former German police officer Detlev Guenzel smirks in court before being sentenced to eight years and six months in jail for killing a willing victim he met on a website for cannibalism fetishists

Deranged: Guenzel, 57, went on trial in August over the killing of Polish-born business consultant Wojciech Stempniewicz whose body he had cut into small pieces and buried them in his garden

The defendant sat impassively with arms folded as the verdict was read out. 

The men came across each other in October 2013 on a website for slaughter and cannibalism fantasies billed as the '#1 site for exotic meat' and boasting more than 3,000 registered members. 

The two kept in contact via email, text message and telephone before finally arranging the fatal date for November 4 that year.

Gunezel picked Stempniewicz up at Dresden's main railway station and drove him back to his house in Hartmannsdorf-Reichenau which he ran as a bed and breakfast with his male partner.  

Prosecutors said Gunezel then took his victim to the basement where he strangled him using a rope tied to a pulley before chopping the corpse up into small pieces.

A video reportedly shows Guenzel in his underwear slicing the naked body of his victim into pieces while it hangs from a hook.

The back garden of Guenzel's home in Hartmannsdorf-Reichenau where the body parts were buried in 2013

Described as 'absolutely horrific' and 'beyond belief' by lawyers, the 50-minute tape features Guenzel dismembering the corpse while pop music plays.  

At one point he stops to listen for a heartbeat before continuing. 

However the defence team argue that the video shows Stempniewicz had his feet in constant contact with the ground, meaning he could have stopped the strangulation if he had wanted to. 

They claimed the video, which was shown to judges behind closed doors, proves the victim hanged himself. 

Gunezel then spent a total of four hours cutting the body up with a knife and saw, before burying it in shallow holes the garden.

Policemen search for evidences in the area where body parts were found in Reichenau near Dresden in 2013

Officers traced him via computer messages and telephone calls and he was arrested at the police HQ where he worked as a handwriting specialist.

When police arrived at the property he showed them where the pieces were buried, but officers say the victim's penis has never been found.

The case mirrors that of Armin Meiwes, a man found guilty of killing, dismembering and eating computer technician Bernd Brandes at his remote farmhouse home near Kassel.

Meiwes, now serving life imprisonment, packaged the flesh of his 16-stone victim into neat parcels which he froze and ate portions of over a ten month period.

When police finally arrived to arrest him there was less than 40lbs of Brandes remaining.