Austin Harrouff, the teenage cannibal

Austin Harrouff is the name of the 19-year-old who on 15 August 2016, in Martin County, Florida, was accused of killing a couple and cannibalising one of the two victims.

Austin Harrouff

Austin was a university student, played American football and had a passion for bodybuilding. His parents described him as a good person and a golden boy.

So what drove him, in August 2016, to attack two people with a knife and eat the face of one of them?

At first people thought of hallucinogenic drugs, like the infamous flakka or “bath salts”, but after the toxicology tests other options had to be considered. The tests showed no hallucinogenic substances, only small traces of marijuana.

But what exactly happened that August?

On the day of the attack Austin was behaving strangely. He was restless, saying things that made no sense, and his mother found him eating cooking oil mixed with cheese. After this odd meal he left the house, and his worried mother called the police. This is what she told the 911 operator:

My son has left the house and I’m worried about his safety. He is acting strange. He seems a bit delusional. We have noticed a change in him lately. Today he was out to dinner with his father and he ran off. He says he feels immortal, like a superhero. I don’t know what is happening to him. He only has a pocket knife with him.

The terrifying attack

And it was with that very knife that shortly afterwards Austin killed a couple who were sitting in their garage watching TV, as they often did. The victims were John Stevens, 59, and his wife Michelle Mishcon Stevens, 53. A neighbour who rushed over to help them was seriously injured.

When police arrived they found the young man, without trousers, bent over John, already dead, eating his face. Officers ordered him to move away and tasered him several times. Still he would not let go of the body, from which he had meanwhile started tearing pieces of skin off the belly.

Only after a police dog started biting Austin did four officers manage to drag him away. Once restrained, the young man said:

Help me, I ate something bad

Then he admitted it was human flesh and spat out a piece of John’s skin.

He had burns to his oesophagus, perhaps caused by drinking chemicals found in the couple’s garage, and was hospitalised for two months. He lost a lot of weight and was still on medication, so it was not yet possible to hear his version of events.

Could the attack have been prevented?

The family admitted that Austin’s behaviour had changed in the two weeks before the attack. For example, he had moved his bed into the garage because he said the house was full of demons.

His sister gave investigators an audio file in which her brother says:

All this pain and sadness because I solve all the problems people have

She also said she had found him one night wandering around the house, claiming he had the power to open locked doors. A friend said that a few days before the attack Austin had told him he was half human and half animal.

Perhaps the tragedy could have been avoided if Austin Harrouff’s parents and friends had alerted the authorities earlier or taken him to hospital. The family said they were deeply sorry for what happened and insisted that the “real” Austin would never have done such a thing.

Given the absence of hallucinogens in Austin’s blood, the only other plausible explanation was mental illness.

Update: not guilty by reason of insanity

For years Austin’s defence argued that, that evening, he was in the grip of an acute psychotic episode. Experts concluded that he was unable to distinguish right from wrong, and therefore met Florida’s legal criteria for insanity.

On 28 November 2022, just as the trial was about to begin, prosecution and defence reached an agreement, and Judge Sherwood Bauer found Austin Harrouff, then 25, not guilty by reason of insanity. He will not go to prison, but has been committed to a secure psychiatric hospital, which he can only leave if a judge rules he is no longer dangerous.

The victims’ families reacted with anger: Michelle’s sister spoke of “white rich boy justice”, and the prosecutor announced he wanted to look at changing the law to introduce, as in some other states, a “guilty but insane” verdict.

Sources

• Austin Harrouff found not guilty by reason of insanity, WPTV
• Florida man accused of killing random couple found not guilty by reason of insanity, Fox News
• Prosecutor seeks to change laws after Austin Harrouff found not guilty by reason of insanity, WPTV