Wanted: Guide Henri Haiti is still missing and soldiers are helping police hunt for him
Stefan Ramin |
Stefan Ramin with his girlfriend Heike Dorsch |
Stefan Ramin set off in 2008 and traversed the globe looking for paradise. |
Remains found in the embers of a camp fire were today confirmed to be those of 40-year-old business adviser Stefan Ramin after tests were carried out on his teeth.
He apparently arranged to go on a traditional goat hunt in the forest after dropping anchor at Nuku Hiva in French Polynesia.
His girlfriend , 37, says she saw him depart with a local guide, named as Henri Haiti. Only the guide returned, she says, and he told her: ‘There’s been an accident. He needs help.’
Before she could rush into the forest, however, she claims Haiti chained her to a tree and sexually abused her.
She managed to escape hours later to alert authorities and they began a seven-day search for Mr Ramin. Last week, the ashes were found in a valley by a squad of 22 police officers. Among the embers were bones including a jaw bone, teeth and melted metal – believed to be fillings.
Haiti is missing and soldiers from the French overseas territory have joined police in the hunt for him.
It was in 2008 that Mr Ramin, from Haselau in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, set out to sail the world in a catamaran with Miss Dorsch.
On Facebook he listed his interests as ‘travelling, blue water sailing, kiting, kitesurfing, windsurfing, surfing, diving… actually everything which one can do on and under the water’.
Last month they dropped anchor in Nuku Hiva, largest of the Marquesas islands which over the centuries have featured in many reports of cannibalism.
The German newspaper Bild said that Haiti was a ‘suspected cannibal’.
Reporting from the island, it added: ‘Ashes from the fire are distributed over several square metres. In it bones, dentures and an artificial denture with charred metal lay. It smells of burned meat. Around the fireplace clothes were scattered.
A prosecutor said that the probability is that he was murdered by a cannibal and parts of him were eaten.’
Outside of horror films, cannibalism is virtually unheard of in the modern world. The Korowai of Papua New Guinea are one of the last surviving tribes to eat humans as a cultural practice.
Numbering about 3,000, they live in an area so remote they were unaware of the existence of anyone besides themselves until 1970.
Although the claims have not been verified, the Korowai reportedly eat the brain immediately, while it is still warm.
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