Markus Dubach had been having suicidal thoughts but he had not been serious when he posted an advert about being eaten alive, what followed shocked him even more.
Upon posting the advert, he got a reply from a man, who professed to being a ‘cannibal’ and said he wanted to eat him.
Without intending to, Markus found himself in conversation with Slovakian Matej Curko, who he thought was making a ‘morbid joke’.
But things began to escalate and Curko’s messages were becoming increasingly intense.
In one he sent pictures of female body parts with the comment ‘this was my work’.
It was at this point that Markus, who is to write a book on his experiences, decided to contact the police.
He arranged to meet Curko in the woods near the town of Kysak in 2011 but instead, armed police officers moved to arrest him.
However, the supposed cannibal had turned up armed and was fatally wounded in a shootout.
Local media reported that he had turned up for the meeting with razor-sharp knives, a meat cleaver, saw and body bag.
Although police were unable to interview Curko before his death he has since been linked to several dozen missing person cases.
Slovak police had been alerted to the incident by Interpol, which passed on a message from the Swiss.
It had been police that had kept the conversation going, pretending to be the prospective victim.
When they later looked in Curko’s fridge they found human remains later identified as belonging to Lucia Uchnarova, 20, and Elena Gudjakova, 30.
