00:00:01 - 00:01:09
Okay, I need to give you a warning. I’ve done a lot of dark cases and you know that if you’ve been here before, but this one is different. This one messed me up in ways I wasn’t expecting. It took a genuine toll on my mental health and I’m still processing it.
take a heavy ˈtoll (on sb/sth)take its ˈtoll (on sb/sth)
to have a bad effect on sb/sth; to cause a lot of damage, deaths, suffering, etc.
Illness had taken a heavy toll on her.The recession is taking its toll on the housing markets.
So, if you’re already struggling, if you’re not in a good place right now, please just pass on this one. That’s really all I can say. Don’t push through it. It’s not worth it. And this one is really bad.
00:00:34 - 00:02:08
Okay, so here we go. A man lies naked on a tiled floor pleasuring himself. As he climaxes, a masked figure steps into frame holding a meat cleaver. The man is decapitated and the entire scene is captured from multiple angles, edited and packaged for sale. This wasn’t horror fiction. This is the story of Muen Swanat and Dwan Vunang, the case known online [music] as the Vietnamese butcher. >> [music] >> On January 25th, 2025, in the town of Hulong in Langernern Province, northern Vietnam, a man was killed in an old
00:01:32 - 00:02:43
government building. A crime that wouldn’t come to light for months. It was just days before a tet, the Lunar New Year, and staff at the building had recently held a year- end party. The building had housed market management team number four, a government unit responsible for monitoring trade and preventing smuggling along Vietnam’s border with China. By early 2025, they had relocated to newer facilities, but the old headquarters remained accessible to anyone who still had the keys. According to police statements released
00:02:06 - 00:03:22
in December 2025, Muen Swan Dat traveled from his home in Hungan Province to Langernern on that day in January. He arrived at the building after receiving a phone call arranging a meeting. He wouldn’t leave alive. What happened inside wasn’t discovered that day. There were no emergency calls, no reports of screams or disturbances. The building sat in relative isolation about 100 mters from Met Market. It was a deteriorating 500 meter compound, six offices, a kitchen, a warehouse, and two
00:02:45 - 00:03:59
restrooms. Neighbors would later tell reporters they noticed nothing unusual on January 25th. But in the weeks that followed, something changed. Starting in February, several households near the building started to report a strange foul odor. Swarms of flies appeared. Some residents saw neighborhood dogs dragging some small bone fragments. At the time, no one understood what they were seeing. That knowledge would come later. The case came to official attention not through traditional police work, but
00:03:22 - 00:04:38
through the monitoring of online activity. According to Lieutenant Colonel Vu Tanung, director of Langern Provincial Police, investigators discovered images and videos circulating on social media that appeared to show a murder. The earliest confirmed trace of the video appeared on July 2nd, 2025 in a small Vietnamese Telegram group called Preview containing just 11 users. But screenshots from a separate 41 member Chinese language group called Private Group show discussions of the video as early as June 24th, [music]
00:04:00 - 00:05:16
suggesting it was already circulating in closed channels. By late July, images and short clips had begun leaking publicly. The material had spread through encrypted channels and onto shock sites. The footage known as the Vietnamese butcher isn’t a single recording. It’s a collection of clips and photographs. Roughly 6 and 1/2 minutes of footage total that viewed in sequence document everything from the rehearsal to the murder and the aftermath. The content was deliberately produced and edited for commercial
00:04:38 - 00:05:52
distribution. The rehearsal video takes place in the same tiled room, but the lighting is less polished. The victim, Muen Swan Dot, kneels on the floor and places his head on a round chopping board. The perpetrator, wearing an anonymous mask and Adidas tracksuit, stands over him, holding the cleaver. But instead of striking, the masked man runs the flat of the blade along the victim’s neck and shoulders, going through the motions of what’s to come. Then the two men embrace. There’s also footage of both men calmly
00:05:15 - 00:06:32
discussing how to carry out the process. They appear to have established pre-arranged body signals. The victim raising his chin to expose his neck would serve as the signal to begin. This established something important for investigators. premeditation and a level of cooperation from the victim before the final act. The main video is shot with multiple cameras, at least four angles, wide shots, close-ups, high angles. The victim lies naked on the tiled floor, his head resting on the chopping board. A shower curtain had
00:05:54 - 00:07:09
been laid out to catch the blood, though it would prove inadequate for the spray. He masturbates. The footage follows this until the moment of climax. At that exact moment, the masked perpetrator enters the frame and stands over him. The decapitation isn’t a single frantic blow. It’s a series of methodical, deliberate strokes. The camera work captures everything. The cross-section of the neck’s airway and esophagus visible. blood pooling on the floor. After the head is fully severed,
00:06:32 - 00:07:46
the perpetrator drags it away from the body by the hair. But the footage continues. Subsequent clips show systematic dismemberment. The perpetrator using the cleaver and other tools to sever limbs and carve up the torso. All filmed with the same multi- camera setup. The killer moves with calm expertise like someone who has experience with butchering animals. The final sequence is the most disturbing. The dismembered body parts, including the head [music] and limbs, are arranged in a large pot alongside what appears to
00:07:09 - 00:08:27
be ingredients for a traditional [music] stew. Vegetables, broth, Chinese medicinal herbs for seasoning. The presentation resembles a Vietnamese dish called humptuk back. The head was placed on a serving plate [music] before being added to the boiling pot, hair still intact. The multiple cameras, clean editing, and consistent lighting [music] make it clear just how much consideration went into the production. And all of these videos and photographs were organized into packages for sale. According to multiple sources, 11 video
00:07:47 - 00:09:11
clips and 98 photographs were being sold on dark web marketplaces through Telegram channels and on BU TBA, a Chinese online community platform with forums catering to niche interests. Prices range from 89 yen, about 28 for premium membership with additional content. Some listings indicated the material had been available since at least February 2025. Vice magazine, which was the first established media outlet to report on the case in August 2025,
00:08:30 - 00:09:44
described it as potentially the first authentic snuff film ever documented. The article drew comparisons to other notorious cases. Armen May in Germany who killed and consumed a willing victim in 2001. Adetliff Gwinsel, a former police officer who found his victim on a website called Zambian Meat in 2013, and Luca Magna, who sparked a global manhunt in 2012 after uploading footage of a murder he committed. But none of those qualified as true snuff films, the article noted, because they weren’t
00:09:07 - 00:10:13
produced for commercial gain. The Vietnamese butcher was different. The footage was made to be sold. Vietnamese police working with digital crime specialists from the Ministry of Public Security began tracing the footage back to its source. But they weren’t the only ones searching. Online investigators, amateur detectives on Reddit, Facebook groups, gore sites had already been working on the case for months. They analyzed the regional Vietnamese accent in the audio. They identified the specific shop that sold
00:09:39 - 00:10:56
the floor tiles visible in the footage. They traced the brand of the meat cleaver and the chopsticks laid out next to the dish of meat. They noted a 13-9 tattoo on the perpetrator’s arm, which led to one of the cas’s nicknames, 13K, a hashtag that somehow related to the prices of butchered pigs on Vietnamese social media. A Vietnamese YouTuber named Kettow Mao, meaning a curious person, launched a video series in early September 2025 investigating the case. His video combined 3D models with modern
00:10:18 - 00:11:29
graphics to recreate the crime scene. One episode reached nearly half a million views. The first video was later made private and subsequent episodes were put behind a payw wall. On Facebook, a group called the investigation group of Swan.case, later renamed OSENT and Cyber Investigation Vietnam, also joined the hunt. OSENT, short for open-source intelligence, involves gathering and analyzing information from publicly available sources to support investigations. And of course, not all the online
00:10:54 - 00:12:09
theories were accurate. A Buddhist man was incorrectly identified early on through facial recognition software that didn’t actually work and he faced harassment before the error was corrected. But other leads prove more reliable. A Facebook account running under the username file posted about the killing claiming to know both victim and perpetrator, though only identifying the killer by the name Chung. FEL ran an online BDSM community with links to esphyxiation and cannibalism forums. The account featured a stream of AI
00:11:31 - 00:12:51
generated clips depicting hooded figures stroking knives across bound women’s necks. The online investigators eventually came up with one name and one alias. The victim they believed was Nuen Swanat from Hung Province. The perpetrator, they theorized, was someone who had worked at market management team number four, someone with access to the building, keys to the doors, and knowledge of when it would be empty, someone who operated online under the alias Kamanch. By mid November, an 88page document
00:12:12 - 00:13:33
compiling all the information these amateur investigators had uncovered had begun circulating online. It detailed the evidence, laid out the timeline, and pointed squarely at a single suspect. As more details emerged, it grew to 110 pages. The spread of the document reignited public outrage and pressured authorities to act. On November 28th, 2025, Langernern Provincial Police formally opened a murder investigation. The next day, they issued an arrest warrant and detained 57-year-old Dwan Vunang at his home. He was the former
00:12:52 - 00:14:01
deputy head of market management team number four, the very unit whose old building had been used for the crime. That evening, dozens of officers cordoned off the deteriorating headquarters. Forensic teams moved in. They even deployed a septic tank vacuum truck to search for evidence. Neighbors watched as investigators entered to comb through every room of the compound where the team had operated for more than 15 years. What they found matched the footage that had been circulating online for months. But to
00:13:26 - 00:14:39
truly understand what happened in that building, investigators had to piece together how these two men crossed paths in the first place. Wen Swan Dat was born on March 10th, 1989 in Hao Chungu village, originally part of Dong Hong district in Taibin province, later reszoned to Tienhung Commune in Hungian Province. His father had died years before his murder. His mother suffered from mental illness. The family lived in poverty on government subsidies and Dot had been living with his parents well into adulthood.
00:14:02 - 00:15:17
According to local residents, he largely disappeared from his hometown more than a decade before his death. In November 2024, just 2 months before he died, he’d been seen working at [music] Fun Kuang Market in Hanoi selling seafood. To those who knew him casually, he seemed like someone struggling to get by, but not someone in immediate danger. Online though, Ingumen Swan lived a different life. According to investigative reports, that had been active for years on extreme fetish forums. He used aliases like that
00:14:40 - 00:15:56
beheading on platforms including motherless and watch people die. His Facebook biography allegedly read likes to be decapitated. In messages to other users, he wrote, “I’m looking for my executioner.” Screenshots recovered after his death showed conversations where he discussed his desire to be beheaded in explicit detail. These weren’t just recent conversations or sudden impulses. These interests documented online went back for years. He’d asked other users for translations of Japanese aerog
00:15:18 - 00:16:30
content which combines the erotic with grotesque. One translation he requested was a manga titled Applicant for Death, which depicted a person’s willing participation in their own execution. But his private messages also revealed something else. In one exchange, later translated and published, he wrote, “Not only am I ugly, but I’m also full of diseases. I can’t afford to live freely like normal folks. I have to depend on my parents my whole life. What else could I do? I truly am a prisoner of my
00:15:54 - 00:17:07
very own fate. If it wasn’t because of God, I would have ended my life already. Another message was more direct. I wish to meet someone that once we’ve become close enough could kill me because I really wanted to make friends with such people. But I know that once I’ve done that, I won’t be normal again. I want to die. These were clearly the words of someone in profound psychological distress. Someone who felt trapped by poverty, illness, and dependency. Someone whose engagement with extreme
00:16:31 - 00:17:49
content intersected with severe depression and a mental health crisis. But his desire to die doesn’t erase his victimhood. Being vulnerable doesn’t justify violence. And none of this changes the fact that what happened to Muan Swanat was murder. The man accused of that murder was Dwan Vanang, born in 1968. He was 57 at the time of his arrest, more than two decades older than his alleged victim. S had worked as deputy head of market management team number four, a position of authority in local government,
00:17:10 - 00:18:24
responsible for cracking down on contraband and counterfeit products. Langun province sits on the border with southern China, which explains why Sang was reportedly fluent in Chinese. To neighbors and colleagues, he appeared unremarkable. No prior criminal charges, no documented history of violence, but he had an unusual hobby, butchering. He was reportedly very skilled at it. He lived on Wenfan Street in Langern City, and after the market management team moved to new facilities in mid 2025, he
00:17:47 - 00:19:03
continued visiting the old headquarters regularly. Besides his main Facebook account, he operated online under the alias Kamanchung, his son’s name. His son was also a civil servant, and online investigators were able to identify information about Sang, partly because of a date of birth visible on a civil servant card that Sang himself had posted to social media. According to police, S and Dot first connected through social media around 2020. About 5 years before the killing, investigators described their online
00:18:24 - 00:19:39
interactions as containing distorted, deviant conversations involving sexually morbid topics. The exact content hasn’t been fully disclosed. What’s known is that on January 25th, 2025, Sang allegedly called Dat and arranged for him to come to the old building in Hulong. According to police, that’s where he killed him. After the murder, son cleaned the crime scene. He tried to conceal what had happened. And then he went back to work as if nothing had occurred. He stayed active on Facebook.
00:19:02 - 00:20:12
He continued chatting in online groups. He did something else, too. According to reports, someone believed to be the perpetrator took control of Muen Swanat’s Facebook account after the killing, preventing anyone else from accessing it. For months, while footage of the killing circulated in dark corners of the internet, Sang maintained his normal life. This wasn’t someone overcome with panic or remorse. This was a calculated concealment. When police finally moved on the case in late November, they weren’t starting
00:19:37 - 00:20:49
from scratch. Online sleuths had already done a significant amount of work, creating the detailed document that identified regional accents, traced the floor tiles, noted the tattoo, and pointed to Sang as the prime suspect. The authorities later warned that while these groups uncovered important details, downloading and sharing the 88page document violated information security laws. The police stressed that citizens should not assume the role of investigators or circulate unconfirmed reports and that public speculation
00:20:14 - 00:21:27
could result in serious legal consequences. S was subsequently dismissed from his position. When the police searched Sang’s home on November 28th, they found what they needed. [music] On November 29th, the Investigation Police Department issued formal charges. Dwan Vansang was accused of murder under clause 1, article 123 of Vietnamese 2015 Penal Code. On December 3rd, police held an official press conference confirming both identities. On December 9th, Deputy Minister of Public Security Nuen Vanl
00:20:50 - 00:21:56
Long commended the investigation. Authorities also issued warnings to the public. Colonel Haman Ha urged residents to immediately delete any graphic content related to the case and warned that the circulation of such materials was a violation of Vietnamese law. In the months that followed, other disturbing cases surfaced on BU Tabam. Footage featuring Asian men being graphically murdered. Whether these were connected or simply emerged in the wake of the Vietnamese butcher’s notoriety remains unclear.
00:21:23 - 00:22:44
As of the time of this recording, Dwan Vansang remains in detention without bail awaiting trial. But his detention doesn’t tackle the larger problems brought to light by this case. This case exposes the uncomfortable reality of the kind of content that exists in the digital world and the people who are interested in it. Unregulated online spaces can become gathering places where extreme content normalizes horrific violence and vulnerable people can connect with those willing to exploit them. And the case also reveals gaps in
00:22:03 - 00:23:15
mental health infrastructure. When Swan Dot’s messages show someone crying out for help in the only way he knew how, through extreme online communities, he needed psychiatric intervention, support services, or even just someone to recognize the crisis he was going through. Instead, he found forums that treated his death wish as something to be fulfilled rather than an emergency to be addressed. And then there’s the commercial aspect. The footage was meticulously planned, edited, and put up
00:22:39 - 00:23:53
for sale. This wasn’t just a homicide. It was using murder as an element of content creation, violence as commerce. And what makes it all the more concerning is that while we can identify the killers, we don’t know who exactly is searching for and enjoying this kind of content. Vietnamese law doesn’t recognize consent as a defense to homicide, and for good reason. People experiencing severe depression or untreated mental illness can’t make truly informed decisions about ending their lives.
00:23:16 - 00:24:26
Once one dad was 35 years old, living in poverty, struggling with illness, feeling trapped, his online activity revealed someone in psychological crisis, not someone thinking clearly. Whatever he said he wanted, whatever he participated in willingly, he was still a victim. [music] Instead, he found someone willing to act on his darkest thoughts, someone willing to film it, someone willing to sell it. The footage can’t be unseen by those who sought it out. The transactions can’t be reversed.
00:23:51 - 00:25:16
But what can change is how we respond. We can acknowledge that some curiosity is harmful, that some content should remain unwatched, that some lines should not be crossed. Wandot deserved a society that recognized his suffering and offered compassion. Before he was case, before he was a hashtag, before he was 11 video clips and 98 photographs sold for $28. He was a person, a person who needed help. He left a trail. Years of messages, cries for help, dressed up as fantasies. I want to die. I’m looking
00:24:34 - 00:25:55
for my executioner. And the internet answered, not with resources, not with intervention, but with someone willing to do it. That’s the failure. Not just one man with a cleaver. A whole ecosystem that took a person in crisis and funneled him toward the worst possible outcome. Forums that normalized his darkest thoughts. algorithms that connected him to someone eager to act on them. A marketplace ready to profit from his death. Dwan Wanang will face justice, but he operated within a system that remains
00:25:14 - 00:26:30
intact. The question isn’t just how do we catch the next killer. It’s how do we reach the next Gwen Swanat before he becomes a victim. That’s the harder problem and it’s the one we haven’t solved. Dwan Vansang didn’t kill in a frenzy. He set up cameras. He adjusted lighting. He edited footage. He uploaded it for sale. Then he went home and logged onto Facebook like it was any other day. What kind of mind does that? And somewhere out there, people paid money, real money, to watch a stranger
00:25:52 - 00:27:10
die. Not by accident, not out of morbid curiosity that stumbled onto something horrible. They sought it out. They clicked purchase. They watched maybe more than once. We like to believe these people are rare aberrations. Monsters who exist at the far edges of humanity. But the forums exist, the marketplaces exist, the demand exists. Enough demand to make murder profitable. That’s the uncomfortable truth. Somewhere in the architecture of our minds, there is a room where cruelty and curiosity meet,
00:26:32 - 00:27:43
where the suffering of others becomes entertainment. Most of us never open that door. But some do, and the internet has made it easier than ever for them to find each other. I don’t know how to end this. This case really took a toll on my mental health. reading his messages, looking at the screenshots, piecing together the timeline of how a man went from selling seafood at a market in [music] Hanoi to being dismembered in an abandoned building. I am devastated. I’m confused. I don’t
00:27:07 - 00:28:28
understand how this happens. How someone sets up cameras and lighting to film a murder. How someone else pays $12 to watch it. how there’s a marketplace for this. How the demand is high enough that people keep making it. My mind cannot comprehend it. I’ve tried. I’ve sat with it and I still cannot make it make sense. I think that’s the honest answer. No lesson that wraps this up. Just the reality that we live in a world where some people enjoy watching other people suffer and die. And [music]
00:27:48 - 00:28:29
I don’t know what to do with that. It disturbs me. It aches. And I don’t think it’s supposed to feel any other way. When one dot was a human being, he definitely didn’t deserve this. That is all I know for sure. That’s all for today. Thank you for watching.