It reads like something from a novel, but it is, depressingly, true: a man from Norway who made a living castrating and removing body parts from people, who were very much alive, in Finsbury Park.
Marius Gustavson lived a quiet life in a Victorian terraced house, but unknown to his neighbours, the room under his stairs had been turned into a butcher’s shop, where he sawed off body parts and livestreamed the whole thing to 20,000 paying subscribers.
He was arrested in November 2022, after branding a man’s calf with the letters EM, or Eunuch Maker. But when police investigated, they found much worse: body parts stashed in freezers,
Now, a new documentary about the Eunuch Maker will be airing on Crime + Investigation and exploring the sordid saga. Hosted by Marcel Theroux – the brother of Louis – it’s a deep dive into the world of body modification and amputation.
The beginnings
Gustavson’s journey began in Norway. He came from a small town, Drammen, to the south-west of Oslo, where he was a postal worker. He was also the chair of the local LGBT community, and organized Pride weekends and school leaving celebrations.
Theroux interviewed old friends and acquaintances from his days in Norway, and the picture that emerged was of a complex character.
“He really cared for the adopted daughter of his teacher,” he told the Mirror. “And he had a loving streak. But he was also picked on in the playground.” Another old friend called Gustavson a “misfit”, and yet he was also elected school president.
By 1999 things had gone downhill for Gustavson. he had received a suspended prison sentence for fraud, and in 2001 he served eight months in jail for internet fraud. During his trail, his defence barrister, Rashvinderjeet Panesar, said that when he married his husband, in 2005, it helped keep him “stable”.
“He is far from a monster,” Gustavson’s ex-husband told The Telegraph. “I do want people to understand his background and who he is.”
After years of bouncing between the UK and Norway, Gustavson and his partner moved to the UK in 2012; four years later, they broke up. He was living in London, and became interested in modification after this: in 2017 he had his penis removed by Damien Byrnes, who ended up being one of his co-defendants into the 2024 trial on their unauthorised surgeries.
Two years later, he had part of his leg frozen and a nipple removed.
The eunuch maker
(Crime + Investigation)
From there, things spiralled. According to Panesar, having these operations led to “feelings of empowerment and greater acceptance of himself and feelings of contentment with his own body.”
“From there the Eunuchmaker website began. He does say he wished to put a smile on other people’s faces – he wanted to help. He was stuck in a body he wanted to make changes to, and understood there were more people out there who wished to do the same.” However, this quickly spiralled into an “addiction” where he was unable to stop operating on both himself and others.
Without any medical skills or qualifications, Gustavson set up the Eunuchmaker website: a site where people could pay to watch surgeries being carried out on others, via livestream. The site also offered services including male castration, and different levels of membership, from free to VIP (which cost £100).
Gustavson was part of the ‘nullo’ community: people who wish to have any identifying sexual characteristics, mostly including genitalia, surgically removed, and look, in Gustavson’s words, “like a Ken doll, with nothing down there.”
He advertised the site on obscure forums and encrypted platforms on the dark web, where anonymity was prized – and clients rarely spoke out about complications. And though he presented himself as a professional within the body modification community, he was anything but.
He and his team used kitchen knives and tools used for “animal castration” to carry out their surgeries and put body parts up for auction afterwards with a ‘buy it now’ button. There was also evidence of cannibalism, practiced by Gustavson on body parts that he had removed.
Some were as young as 16, and sometimes the operations went badly wrong. In the trial, the court heard recordings of 999 calls, in which Gustavson lied to the operators about how his victims had injured themselves.
Over the years, the livestreams (which were filmed with “increasing professionalism”) managed to accumulate 22,841 registered users and earned almost £300,000 before it was shut down. Gustavson himself was involved in at least 29 procedures on 13 victims between 2017 and 2021, but recruited others to help him carry out more operations. The judge later described the atmosphere he fostered among his followers as “cult-like”.
“All of these individuals were active in the extreme body modification or mutilation scene and the consensual or mutilation of male genitalia,” Caroline Carberry KC told the jury at the trial.
“It is a remarkable feature of this case that the website was operating in plain sight – not on the dark web – accessible to anyone who stumbled upon it and had the inclination and means to pay to view the gruesome footage.”
The downfall
(Crime + Investigation)
While most people were unwilling to speak out, one person came forward in 2020 and told Devon and Cornwall Police about the procedures that had been carried out on him. He also provided a USB stick with 5,000 WhatsApp messages, as well as images and videos of the surgery.
The man went onto tell police that he had been “high on drugs” when the surgery had been carried out. He was strapped to a bed, electrocuted and had his testicles clamped – before which Gustavson branded him with a red-hot iron.
In a victim impact statement, the man had he had been “mesmerised’ by Gustavson, but recognized that he had needed to see a psychiatrist, “not a back-street surgeon”.
“I realise I have trusted a wrong person and Gustavson is in fact a lunatic,” he said.
Following this, police conducted a series of raids across the country, arresting Gustavson’s network and Gustavson himself.
Gustavson pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit grievous bodily harm, five counts of grievous bodily harm with intent, one count of making an indecent photograph of a child, one count of distributing an indecent photograph of a child and possession of criminal property.
When police raided his house, they found his freezer filled with body parts, as well as his own penis, stored in a drawer, four years after it had been amputated – while his testicles had been framed and were hanging above his bed.
In May 2024, Gustavson was sentenced to 22 years in jail, alongside six of his accomplices. He has never expressed remorse for his actions – or for the harm done to his victims. Also sentenced alongside him were his accomplices: Ion Ciucur, Peter Wates, Janus Atkin, David Carruthers, Ashley Williams and Stefan Scharf, who received sentences between four and 12 years.
The documentary
(Crime + Investigation)
The story of Gustavson’s ring and eventual downfall are now being made into a documentary – and yes, Theroux did talk to Gustavson, who is now in jail.
“By then it was clear that the things he’d done were unspeakable and horrific. When I went to see him I was expecting a monster, but he came across as rather charming and quiet,” Theroux told the Mirror.
“When you meet him, he presents as thoughtful and engaging. It’s part of the power that he had over people. He’s able to talk about really outlandish things in a way that, for a moment, seems to normalise them.”
“That’s a very seductive and dangerous power to have with vulnerable people. A lot of them were struggling and were quite ashamed, and if you meet someone who says, ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, I can fix this’, that was his power. In the hour I spent with him, I found him affable.”
The Eunuch Maker will be available to stream on Crime+Investigation Play from January 13. For more information, visit crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/shows/eunuch-maker