A Chinese man convicted of murdering 11 people was executed on Thursday.
Zhang Yongming is said to have chopped up his victims and sold the flesh at a market near his home in southwest China, where he came to be dubbed "the cannibal killer", The South China Morning Press reported.
It is believed he duped unsuspected customers into thinking they were buying ostrich meat. Yongmin also reportedly ate his victims - mainly young boys - and fed scraps to his dogs.
Zhang Yongming was executed in Yunnan province (file picture)
Human eyeballs preserved in wine bottles and pieces of human flesh hanging up to dry were found by police when they entered his home, The Hong Kong Standard said.
The paper points out:
Cannibalism is a particularly sensitive subject in the mainland. It was practiced as a survival tactic during periods of mass starvation, including in the wake of the Great Leap Forward, a failed industrialization drive launched by Mao Zedong in the late 1950s
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Yongming was executed in Yunnan province, according to Kunming City Intermediate People's Court. He had been convicted in July of intentional homicide and sentenced to death for the murder of 11 people between March 2008 and April 2012.
China.org printed a statement released by the court which said: "He used cruel means to kill the victims, and the circumstances and consequences were especially serious."
The 57-year-old was "escorted to an execution site and executed yesterday," Xinhua News Agency said on Friday.