Daniel Rakowitz is an American murderer and cannibal. He was born in 1960 in Rockport, Texas, where his father was a policeman. He moved to New York around 1985.
In 1989 he walked in Manhattan's East Village around Tompkins Square Park bragging that he had killed his roommate, Monica Beerle, a Swiss student at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, and a dancer at Billy's Topless. He said that he had boiled her head and made soup from her brain. He had tasted it and liked it, and thereafter he referred to himself as a cannibal.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity on February 22, 1991, and was moved to a state hospital for the criminally insane.
In 2004, a Manhattan jury determined that Rakowitz was no longer dangerous, but was still mentally ill enough to require inpatient care.