LIMA - A PERUVIAN 'brotherhood,' accused of murdering at least
60 people and selling victims' fat to foreign cosmetics traders,
carried out its grisly work undetected for 30 years, Peruvian
police said on Friday.
The gang used abandoned buildings in the Amazon jungle and high
Andes to clandestinely butcher victims and 'formed a network, or
brotherhood that carried out criminal activities', police general
Eusebio Felix said.
Peruvian authorities have taken three men and a woman into custody
and are hunting two unnamed Italians suspected of buying human fat
for as much as US$15,000 (S$21,000) a litre - to be used in
European cosmetics.
'Those detained have confessed that after assassinating their
victims, they slit their throats, hung the torsos and limbs on 'S'
shaped hooks,' said Gen Felix. 'Later, to extract the fat, they lit
candles to heat the room.' The fat would seep out of the thorax of
the decapitated bodies and 'fell into receptacles for three days
and was later decanted'.
Jorge Sanz Quiroz, a prosecutor in the case, told AFP 'two Italians
were implicated. They have been identified but their names cannot
be released until they have been captured. 'These people apparently
bought the fat from the detainees to sell in European
laboratories.'
One of the Italians is said to have left for Europe.
