Top Peru policeman 'covered up unlawful killings by inventing human fat murders' A top Peruvian investigator has been sacked amid growing evidence that he invented a story about a gang of serial killers who sold human fat.
Eusebio Felix is one of several senior policemen accused of deliberately making up the elaborate hoax to cover up evidence of policemen being involved in dozens of unlawful killings.
He told Peruvians that four suspected murderers apprehended by police were 'Pishtacos' - the legendary killers who roam the Andes mountains extracting fat from travellers.
In the legend, the Pishtacos strung-up the torsos of their victims above candles and heated them to collect fat.
Police initially said the gang murdered up to 60 victims and exported their fat for thousands of pounds a litre to Italian cosmetics makers.
In the end, there may have been only one victim.
Opposition politicians believe Felix's version of events was made up to divert attention away from allegations officers had killed 46 suspects in 2007 and 2008 in the coastal town Trujillo.
Former deputy interior minister Carlos Basombrio wrote on his blog yesterday: 'My hypothesis is that they were mainly trying to cover up the tremendous revelation of extrajudicial killings of criminals in Trujillo made by [investigative journalist] Ricardo Uceda.'
When they announced their big find last month, police held a news conference and displayed what they said was human fat stored in an empty bottle of Inca Kola, the electric-yellow soft drink popular in the Andes.
They also showed a video of police pulling body parts from a shallow grave at a house in the mountainous region of Huanuco.
But now, after weeks of doubts about the case, police in Lima have said the investigation had been botched.
General Miguel Hidalgo, the head of Peru's police, said he was embarrassed.
'This affects the image and respectability of the police,' he said.
Police in Huanuco, who complain they were excluded from the inquiry, said there was only one murder victim and that he was linked to the cocaine trade.
They believe the four alleged killers, who are still in custody, may have bottled his fat to intimidate their rivals in an area rife with drug trafficking and violence.
Police have been harshly criticised.
Anthropologists said investigators foolishly believed the Pishtacos legend when searching for a motive for the murder, and then played on people's fears by turning the legend into reality.
'It seems a myth that has been in Peruvian culture for a long time was used to explain a very strange crime,' said Juan Rivera of the Catholic University in Lima.
Politicians blamed the police for scaring away tourists.
'This has been a ruse of bad taste,' said Jorge Espinoza, president of the region of Huanuco.
Doctors said it would be pointless to kill people to harvest their fat when it could be easily collected from plastic surgery clinics that perform tummy tucks.
'We wouldn't throw out hundreds of litres of human fat if it were worth $15,000 a litre,' said Julio Castro of Peru's board of medicine.
Others said fat spoils too quickly to be useful.
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