Judge: Cannibal who ate mother was starving and 'needed to eat'

A Russian judge has reduced the sentence of a man who confessed that he had killed and cannibalized his mother. The judge said, "he needed to eat."

Sergey Gavrilov, 27, had his sentence reduced when he told the judge, "I did not like the meat very much. It was too fatty. But I was so hungry, I had to eat it," reports the Daily Mail. The judge felt leniency was in order, as Gavrilov had spent all of his money on vodka and gambling and was now hungry. The Russian man was arguing with his mother when she refused to give him some of her pension money to enable him to buy liquor. Gavrilov told the court he used a brick to hit his 55-year-old mother Lyubov over the head before strangling her to death with an electric cord. Mr. Gavrilov then placed her body on the balcony of their apartment in Samara, located in southern Russia, robbed her of her money and reportedly went on a drinking binge lasting for two days. As he began to run short of food he decided to take slices of flesh from his mother's body. He told police, "It was frozen, like meat in the freezer." For more than a month he ate soup and pasta with meat cut from his mother's body. Police found her body on the balcony with her legs missing. Gavrilov was sentenced to 14 years and 3 months even though the Russian criminal code dictates a term of 15 years for this type of crime. The judge said, "He was not keen to eat the meat, he just was hungry," and gave him a reduced sentence. This isn't the first time Gavrilov has been in jail, as he was previously incarcerated for robbery. Psychiatrists deemed Gavrilov as mentally "normal."