He castrated his victims: life imprisonment for a “maker of eunuchs”

A “human butchery”: a Norwegian living in London was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for having been the mastermind of a group which carried out mutilations, including castrations, filmed and broadcast on a paid website.

Marius Gustavson, 46, was prosecuted for a series of offenses linked to “extreme body modifications” on 13 victims – including himself -, as well as the removal and commercialization of certain parts of the victims’ bodies and the video line.

His conviction was accompanied by a security period of 22 years.

He had created a paid website to disseminate these body modifications and claimed “the making of eunuchs”, a reference to the “nullo” movement describing people who have undergone body modification such as the removal of their genitals.

With 22,000 subscribers, his site brought in nearly 350,000 francs between 2017 and 2021.

Some of the facts that occurred amounted to “almost human butchery,” said Judge Mark Lucraft, handing down the sentence.

According to him, Marius Gustavson, who admitted the facts, was the mastermind of this “large-scale” enterprise, having even on one occasion cooked “human testicles, which were put on a plate to be eaten”.

This man, originally from Norway and living in north London, had cut off his own penis – found at home by the police in a drawer – as well as his leg after asking an accomplice to freeze it.

According to the prosecution, he was personally involved in at least 29 mutilation procedures on himself or other people.

Already convicted twice for fraud in Norway, he had also put several amputated limbs up for sale on the internet.

Marius Gustavson was arrested after branding a man’s calf with the letters “EM” (for “Eunuch maker”). This man complained to the police, who made several arrests in London, Scotland and Wales.

Six other men, prosecuted at the Old Bailey in London for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm, were sentenced on Thursday to between four and a half and twelve years in prison.

“The motivation of everyone involved was a mixture of sexual gratification and financial reward,” the judge said.

“Even though the victims in this case all appear to have consented to these operations and amputations (…) Marius Gustavson ignored the risks by performing these unnecessary operations on vulnerable men,” noted Kate Mulholland of the prosecutor’s office (CPS ).

During the trial, Marius Gustavson’s lawyer, Rashvinderjeet Panesar, claimed that his client was driven by the need to be “the architect of his own body”, after the breakdown of his marriage in 2016.

“When this marriage broke up, it sent him into a spiral” and the mutilations became like “an addiction,” he added.

According to him, his client, who suffers from a bodily identity integrity disorder pushing him to mutilate himself, would like to return to Norway where he believes he would be better accepted.