Peru: Gang murdered people for body fat

A band of murderers who killed people to extract and sell their body fat to the cosmetic industry have been arrested in Peru.

Police said the three people held in remote Huanuco province confessed to five killings and said they could sell one litre of human fat for €11,000.

The men told police the fat was sold to intermediaries in Lima, who police suspect sold it to cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies in Europe.

Police have found the head of one of a victims and several bottles of fat.

Colonel Jorge Mejia head of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police said one suspect claimed the gang was not alone.

Two of the suspects were arrested carrying bottles of liquid human fat

Police in Peru at a news conference displayed two bottles of fat taken from the suspects and a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim. Suspect Elmer Segundo Castillejos, 29, led police to the head, recovered in a coca-growing valley last month, Col. Mejia said.

He said Castillejos told how the gang cut off its victims’ heads, arms and legs, removed the organs, then suspended the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as fat dripped into tubs below.

Six members of the gang remain at large, Col. Mejia said. Among them was the band’s leader, Hilario Cudena, 56, who Castillejos told police has been killing people to extract human fat for more than 30 years.

This year alone, at least 60 people are listed as missing in Huanuco province, where the gang allegedly operated, though the province is also home to drug-trafficking leftist rebels.

Col. Mejia said police received a tip four months ago that human fat from the jungle was being sold in Lima. In August police infiltrated the band and later obtained some of the amber fluid, which a police lab confirmed as human fat.

On November 3, police arrested Serapio Marcos Veramendi and Enedina Estela in a Lima bus station with a litre of human fat in a pop bottle. Their evidence led to the arrest of Castillejos three days later at the same bus station.

The three are charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking.

Police dubbed the gang the “Pishtacos” after a Peruvian myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract human fat, quartering their victims with machetes.

Some medical experts expressed doubt about an international black market for human fat, although it does have cosmetic applications.

Yale University dermatologist Dr Lisa Donofrio, speculated that a small market may exist for “human fat extracts” to keep skin supple, but she said that scientifically such treatments are “pure baloney.”

Medical authorities said human fat is used in anti-wrinkle treatments – but is always extracted from the patient who is being treated, usually from the stomach or buttocks.

“There would be a risk of immunological reaction that could lead to life-threatening consequences” if fat from someone else were used, said Dr. Neil Sadick, a professor of dermatology at Cornell Weill Medical College in New York.