New York City's cannibal killer is back in the news -- but not back on the streets.
Daniel Rakowitz, the East village madman who murdered his girlfriend then made soup out of her body parts and served it to homeless people, will stay locked up in a psychiatric ward, officials announced Friday.
The wild-haired marijuana guru has been off the streets since 1989, when he killed and dismembered 26-year-old dancer Monika Beerle, brewed her chopped-up remains into a soup, tasted it and then ladled the concoction out to the homeless in Tompkins Square Park.
The former Texan, 49, will remain at the maximum security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward's Island, where he's been committed since a jury found him criminally insane in 1991.
He periodically has the right to petition for transfer to a less secure facility which prosecutors have successfully opposed through the years, their latest objection just upheld by the state Supreme Court.
"This decision continues to protect the residents of New York," said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
Rakowitz's next review comes up in January 2012.
