Cannibalism suspected in Austrian homeless murder

VIENNA, Aug 28 (Reuters) Austrian police arrested a 19-year-old homeless German today on suspicion of murdering a flatmate in a homeless shelter and eating parts of his body.

A cleaning woman found the naked, sliced-open corpse of a 49-year-old Austrian today morning in the flat he had shared with the German, a Vienna police spokesman said.

The victim's skull had been crushed with a bar bell, and his chest and stomach cut open with a large knife, spokesman Gerald Hoebarth said.

Hoebarth said some brain tissue was found arranged on a plate -- ''whether the suspect ate from that, we don't know yet'' -- with other body parts in an adjoining room.

Court psychiatrist Reinhard Haller told Austrian ORF television that the perpetrator was ''deeply abnormal'' and added: ''The cause could have been a psychotic reaction or a sadistic compulsion.'' In neighbouring Germany last year, a computer technician was sentenced to life in prison for slicing off the penis of a man he had met via the Internet -- with the man's approval -- then killing him and eating part of his corpse.

Earlier this year, a schizophrenic prison inmate in France killed a fellow prisoner and ate part of his heart.

REUTERS LPB BST1954