‘Dark web cannibal’ planning to eat teenage girl met undercover cop instead, feds say

A man who said he wanted to “try necrophilia and cannibalism” thought he was meeting a Florida man and his 13-year-old daughter in Texas, federal prosecutors say.

But 23-year-old Alexander Nathan Barter, in possession of a knife and trash bag, encountered an undercover officer at a designated meeting spot in Joaquin, Texas, on Oct. 19, 2018, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Texas.

After pleading guilty in December to attempted coercion and enticement of a minor and distribution of child pornography, Barter was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison, U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Cox announced.

Barter had expressed “repeated interest in raping, killing, and eating the 13-year old child” in messages exchanged with the undercover officer in October 2018, prosecutors said. He offered travel instructions from Florida to Texas, gave advice on how to convince the daughter to take the trip and detailed how they would hide the crime.

The U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Texas referred to Barter as the “dark web cannibal” in a news release Thursday.

“I’d like to try necrophilia and cannibalism, and see how it feels to take a life,” Barter wrote in an online ad, prosecutors said. “If you’d be willing to let me kill you, are in the US (preferably in the south) and can travel by car, contact me.”

“In my 23-year-career in law enforcement, this is among the most morally depraved and appalling criminal conspiracies that I have come across,” said Mark Dawson, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Houston, according to the prosecutor’s office. “Without the quick and decisive actions of special agents,” Dawson said, “this disturbed predator would still be out there looking for potential victims to carry out his sick and demented fantasies.”

At the end of his sentence, Barter will be under supervised release for the rest of his life.

This story was originally published September 18, 2020 at 11:44 AM with the headline "‘Dark web cannibal’ planning to eat teenage girl met undercover cop instead, feds say."