Killer gang sold victims' body fat

Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru's anti-kidnapping police, but the number of victims was believed to be much higher and to date back decades.

Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat.

At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human.

"The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs," said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district.

Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a cocoa-growing valley.

Medical experts said human fat had cosmetic applications to keep skin supple but were sceptical about an international black market.

"It doesn't make any sense at all because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate," Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, said.

Police named the band the ‘Pishtacos' after a myth dating to pre-Columbian times of killers who slaughtered victims with machetes to extract fat. The gang allegedly operated in Huanuco, a rural province dotted with Inca temples between the jungle and Andean peaks. Six members remained at large including the alleged leader, Hilario Cudena.