| When police in the Crimean city of Sebastopol were called to investigate a
murder in March, 1996, nothing had prepared them for the grisly scene that unfolded
during a routine search of a block of flats.
Entering the home of a former convict, the officers found the mutilated remains
of human bodies being prepared for eating. The flat's owner, her mother and her
boyfriend, had been stabbed to death by the 33-year-old suspect and their bodies
neatly butchered. In the kitchen investigators found the internal organs of two
victims in saucepans, and nearby on a plate a freshly roasted piece of human
flesh.
Although the gruesome details of the killings have stunned Sebastopol, more
shocking perhaps is the growing evidence suggesting that cannibalism is not an
isolated problem, but is rife in the former Soviet Union.
In the past 12 months ten people, from Siberia to St. Petersburg, have been
charged with killing and eating their victims. The authorities are at a loss to
explain the phenomenon. Last month there were two cases of cannibalism. One man
in the Siberian coalmining town of Kemerovo was arrested after he admitted
killing and cutting up a friend, and using his flesh as the filling for
pelmeni, a Russian version of ravioli.
Twice last year convicts in overcrowded prisons killed and ate their cellmates
because they claimed they were hungry and wanted to relieve overcrowding.
Criminal experts said that most cases of cannibalism were part of the general
rise of serial killings, which have increased because police resources are so
stretched by rising crime and because of Russia's mounting economic and social
problems. |
