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Peruvians sold body fat from murder victims
Ed Harris20 Nov 2009
A gang suspected of killing dozens of people to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe have been arrested in Peru.
They allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before extracting their fat to sell it for $15,000 a litre.
Two gang members were carrying bottles of liquid fat when they were arrested and told police it was worth $60,000 a gallon.
Other gang members, including two Italian nationals, remain at large. Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in the region.
Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police, said the suspects told them that the fat was sold to intermediaries in Lima, Peru's capital.
He said Elmer Castillejos, 29, confessed that the gang would cut off its victims' heads, arms and legs, remove the organs, then suspend the torsos from hooks above candles that warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below.
The first suspect was arrested this month in a bus station in Lima, carrying a shipment of the fat.
The gang's leader, Hilario Cudena, had been carrying out such murders for decades, it was reported.
The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.
Human fat is used in anti-wrinkle treatments but is always extracted from the patient being treated, usually from the stomach or buttocks.
Dr Neil Sadick, professor of dermatology at Cornell Weill Medical College in New York, said there would be a "risk of immunological reaction that could lead to life-threatening consequences" if fat from someone else was used.
