Hartevelt returned to his apartment the next evening. In the interim, Sagawa had prepared a tape recorder to capture her words as she read the poetry and a rifle with which to kill Hartevelt. As Hartevelt began to read from the book once again, Sagawa shot her in the back of the neck with the rifle from across the room, killing her instantly. It is here that Sagawa's descent into cannibalism began.

Not entirely sure how to proceed with eating a person, Sagawa decided to start with the rear-end. (Why is it that cannibalism always starts with the ass? The Peruvian footballers who crashed in the Andes did the same thing...just curious.) He grabbed a sturdy knife from the kitchen and proceeded to cut into the dead girl's flesh." Suddenly a lot of sallow fat oozes from the wound. It reminds me of Indian corn. It continues to ooze. It is strange. Finally I find the red meat under the sallow fat. I scoop it out and put it in my mouth. I chew. It has no smell and no taste. It melts in my mouth like a perfect piece of tuna. I look in her eyes and say: 'You are delicious.' "

Sagawa spent the remainder of the evening cutting off portions of Hartvelt's body and cooking them, trying various parts of the body to see how they tasted. He roasted her hip and ate it at his dinner table with salt and mustard, using her underwear for a napkin, declaring it "...a very high quality meat.". He baked one of her breasts in the oven, but wasn't too thrilled, saying it was too greasy. He proceeded to photograph her remains and have sexual intercourse with the body, eventually falling asleep. The next day, he continued his feast, trying out various other parts of her anatomy, eventually saving the parts he liked and putting them in the fridge. After rendering Renee Hartevelt into a butcher shop's window display, he placed her various body parts in a series of suitcases. Two days later, witnesses saw an asian man dumping two large suitcases in a Paris park. The police were called, and upon opening the suitcases, they found the decaying remains of Renee Hartevelt. The suitcases were eventually traced to Sagawa, and the authorities obtained a search warrant for his apartment. Upon entering his flat, the police found Hartevelt's lips, her left breast, and both buttocks in the refrigerator. Sagawa was promptly arrested for the murder of Renee Hartevelt.

Renee Hartevelt