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Police started looking into the case when the victim was reported missing Nov. 11 by a colleague. Two days later, witnesses told officers that “the missing man had fantasized since his youth about being killed and eaten by another person,” Kroll said.

There is no indication at this point that the suspect ate body parts, and the suspect denied having done so, prosecutor Lorenz Haase said.

He said that the suspect didn’t mention whether the two had any sexual relations before the killing.

“That’s under investigation,” Haase said in a telephone interview. “He said that his victim wanted to be killed and he fulfilled this wish.”

Investigator Maik Mainda said the victim and the suspected killer maintained “very intense contact by chat, by mail, by SMS but also by telephone” after first becoming acquainted in early October. The website they used says it deals with “exotic meat.”

The men agreed to meet up in Dresden on Nov. 4, and agreed that the killing should take place shortly afterward, Mainda added.

Police are only just beginning their investigation, he said.

“I can’t give any conclusive information yet about the actual motivation of the suspect for killing his victim. We are investigating in all directions.”

The case appears to have at least some parallels with a saga that both fascinated and appalled Germany a decade ago, when confessed cannibal Armin Meiwes was arrested for the killing of an Internet acquaintance. Meiwes, who captured the killing on video, said his victim answered an Internet posting seeking a young man for “slaughter and consumption.”

Meiwes was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He argued unsuccessfully to Germany’s highest court that the killing should be classified as a mercy killing and maintained that his sentence was disproportionate.

The Dresden case “will show how easily people can come together with the most gruesome fantasies on the Internet and exchange their perversions in increasingly crass manner,” police chief Kroll said. “In 99 per cent of cases, they get their kick out of the exchange.”