SAMEN still cannot understand how her son could become a cannibal. While he was still in the womb, she says, Sumanto never gave her any strange cravings. “I only ever craved kedondong fruit,” said the simple woman, now 46. In her eyes, even when he was at State Primary School I Kemangkon, Purbalingga, the little boy developed just like his classmates: playing on the riverbank, fighting, and joining them in cutting grass.

But Sumanto&