Legacy MattersGrotesque beyond belief.
Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat'
Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment.
The jailed men have confessed to killing five people, but police suspect the number of victims is far higher, with 60 people reported missing in Huánuco this year alone. Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.
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 coca-growing valley.
Police said they received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat, which exported the amber liquid to Europe as anti-wrinkle cream.
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The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest.
The suspects allegedly would sever victims' heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles, which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below. Members claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.
A cannibal who killed and ate parts of his mother had his sentence reduced by a judge who said 'he needed to eat'.
Sergey Gavrilov secured reduced time in jail after confessing: 'I did not like the meat very much. It was too fatty. But I was so hungry, I had to eat it.'
The 27-year-old was given a lenient prison sentence because the judge said he was starving and needed to eat after spending all his money on vodka and gambling machines.
There are no words.
If you ever had any thoughts about getting cryogenically frozen after death, you never will again after reading
Staff at Arizona cryogenics lab Alcor used Ted Williams' frozen head for batting practice.
Workers at an Arizona cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams - even using it for a bizarre batting practice, a new tell-all book claims.
In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., graphically describes how The Splendid Splinter" was beheaded, his head frozen and repeatedly abused.
The book, out Tuesday from Vanguard Press, tells how Williams' corpse became "Alcorian A-1949" at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.
Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors' last .400 hitter.
Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
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Johnson writes that holes were drilled in Williams' severed head for the insertion of microphones, then frozen in liquid nitrogen while Alcor employees recorded the sounds of Williams' brain cracking 16 times as temperatures dropped to -321 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Johnson accuses the company of joking morbidly about mailing Williams' thawing remains back to his family if his son didn't pay his outstanding debt to the company.
Reprints of invoices show that Alcor president John Lemler charged $120,000 for the honor of "suspending" Teddy Ballgame's body.
There are no words sufficient to describe the depravity of this show.
Body Worlds plans cadaver show dedicated to sex
German anatomists plan a new show dedicated solely to dead bodies having sex as part of the Body Worlds exhibitions.
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Von Hagens has already triggered uproar with a new exhibit which shows just two copulating corpses.
German politicians called the current "Cycle of Life" show charting conception to old age "revolting" and "unacceptable" when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.
When I turned 50 and my mother 80, I decided it was time to fetch Grandma Leah’s ashes from the garage. She had been stored in a rusted Maxwell House can for 37 years, an unworthy purgatory that I felt called for resolution. My mother was perfectly happy to let Grandma’s remains stay there, but hitting the half-century mark made me think about my roots and my own mortality. I knew that I wouldn’t want to end up in the garage, and so I resolved to return my grandmother to her native Ukraine.
Stirring Up the Past
The woman suggested that I visit one last place for a trace of my putative past — the old Jewish burial ground. When she explained to the driver how to get there, he glanced nervously in my direction. We drove up to a housing project with a dirty courtyard that seemed to be a favored spot to walk dogs and drink alcohol.
“Ask someone for directions,” I suggested, thinking we were lost. “It’s here,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “The Soviets built apartments on top of the Jews.”
Right then a babushka approached and pointed to the ground. “The dead are coming up,” she said. “I was walking here a few months ago when it rained, and my foot got stuck. The police came and dug up the bones.”
The on-line Farsi-language newspaper, Nooroz, reports that hundreds of unidentified dead bodies are being held in Tehran's morgues. One of the few official organs providing information on the detainees is the office of unidentified dead persons, which has summoned some families to various morgues around the city to determine whether their loved ones are among the dead. Nooroz newspaper reports that those families, who find their sons or daughters among the countless corpses, are threatened and pressured into signing statements attesting that their family members died in car crashes or as a result of other ordinary, run of the mill accidents. Unless the families sign these statements, the cherished bodies of their loved ones are withheld from them.
One person who reportedly visited the morgue in south-west Tehran [which in the past had been used only for the storage of fruits and dairy products]reports to Nooroz that she was presented with an album containing hundreds of pictures of the dead and was told to try and find her child among these images. This woman reports that, as she was leaving the morgue, she saw hundreds of dead bodies piled on top of one another.
Employees at prominent African-American cemetery in Chicago are now being charged with stripping graves to resell plots and dumping disinterred coffins in a mass site at the back of the cemetery.
Every family's nightmare: Burr Oak Cemetery graves allegedly stripped for profit
R.I.P SHATTERED | Gross neglect that allowed grave desecrations is astounding
At one time, Burr Oak Cemetery was the only place black Chicagoans were sure they could bury their dead.
But on Wednesday, the historic African-American cemetery became the site of a horror story.
As many as 100 human bodies — someone’s grandfather, grandmother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew cousin or friend — were removed from their graves and the plots resold.
“All of us who were working on this for the last week were pretty distraught,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told me.
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Officers raided the cemetery, at 4400 W. 127th St, in Alsip, Wednesday morning. Five people were taken into custody.
Dart’s office was notified by the cemetery’s owners of “impropriety” about three weeks ago.
“We thought it would be straightforward financial theft. We found out that graves were being opened and remains were disinterred and removed,” he said.
Dart believes the scheme has been going on for about four years.
Michael Leeden reprints an email from a medical student in Iran.
I am a medical student. There was chaos last night at the trauma section in one of our main hospitals. Although by decree, all riot-related injuries were supposed to be sent to military hospitals, all other hospitals were filled to the rim. Last night, nine people died at our hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. They (government) removed the dead bodies on back of trucks, before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don’t even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded or get any information from them. This morning the faculty and the students protested by gathering at the lobby of the hospital where they were confronted by plain cloths anti-riot militia, who in turn closed off the hospital and imprisoned the staff. The extent of injuries are so grave, that despite being one of the most staffed emergency rooms, they’ve asked everyone to stay and help—I’m sure it will even be worst tonight.
What can anyone say in face of all these atrocities? What can you say to the family of the 13 year old boy who died from gunshots and whose dead body then disappeared?
This issue is not about cheating(election) anymore. This is not about stealing votes anymore. The issue is about a vast injustice inflicted on the people.
"There are no words"
Swastikas painted on Joseph's Tomb
JERUSALEM – Jews who arrived last night to pray at Joseph's Tomb – Judaism's third holiest site – were stunned to learn the structure had been vandalized, with the headstone smashed in and swastikas painted on the walls.
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Joseph's Tomb is the believed burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became viceroy of Egypt. Following repeated Palestinian attacks, Israel in October 2000 unilaterally retreated from Joseph's Tomb and, with very few exceptions, banned Jews from returning to the site purportedly for security reasons. The tomb area is now controlled entirely by the Palestinians.
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Last night, a group of 500 Jews arrived to pray at the site under heavy protection of the IDF. But they were stunned to see the tomb had been defaced. The headstone was smashed and swastikas were painted on the walls, as was graffiti of a blood-dripping sword over a Star of David.
Michael Jackson plans to have his body 'plastinized' by Dr. Death
MICHAEL Jackson will achieve his dream of immortality by being stuffed with plastic by Dr Death.
The King Of Pop, who calls himself Peter Pan, has had a string of cosmetic surgery ops to try to defy the ageing process.
But he is now preparing to strike the ultimate blow against death and decay by having his whole body “plastinated” by controversial doctor Gunther von Hagens.
Jacko, who is a fan of the German anatomist, was said to be thrilled his Body Worlds exhibition would be on at the O2 Arena during his This Is It concerts, which start in July.
The exhibition showcases Von Hagens’ groundbreaking corpse preservation technique which earned him the nickname Dr Death.
Creepy as this is at least Jackson is giving his consent unlike the Chinese prisoners who were used for the first Body Worlds exhibition
On many nights over 16 years, Kenneth Douglas engaged in his own personal macabre workplace party.
He often brought drugs or alcohol to work and sometimes had sex with women.
At least three of those women were dead, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said Thursday.
But if Douglas is to be believed, he could have had sex with as many as "over a hundred" bodies in the 16 years he worked as night attendant at the Hamilton County morgue.
"I am sure there are more (victims). I'm certain of it," Deters said Thursday in announcing new indictments against Douglas.
"This guy's just a pig. I can't explain why someone would do something like this. ... This is off-the-charts weird."
A funeral director accused of leaving a woman's body to decay in a parked hearse after her relatives failed to pay the bill was arrested on a felony charge of abusing a corpse, police said Wednesday.
Watson and Sons Funeral Home embalmed the remains of Edna Kathleen Woods, 52, after she died of natural causes in November 2007, said Gadsden police Sgt. Jeff Wright. Relatives wanted the body cremated but failed to sign the necessary paperwork or pay owner Harold Watson Sr., he said.
After storing the corpse at his funeral home for more than a year, Wright said, the 76-year-old Watson decided to move it because he couldn't reach the woman's family.
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Funeral directors with unclaimed bodies can file a petition to have counties dispose of remains.
"He knows better. The family wouldn't pay him, so he just got rid of it," Wright said
Kaylnn Moore was pregnant and 26 when she went to the hospital. The doctors said her baby's heart rate was dangerously low and and emergency Caesarian was begun. Sadly, the baby was stillborn. Still, they wrapped little Bashere Davon Moyd Jr in a blanket and put a little hat on his little head and passed him to his mother to hold for half an hour until they took his body away to the hospital morgue.
Then they threw his body in the trash.
IN VENEZUELA, thugs are worshipped as saints: but instead of lighting votive candles, followers light cigarettes and place them in the mouths of statues.
Karina Perdomo, a lively 22-year-old woman dressed in a tight black shirt, stares blankly at the figure of a saint in the General Cemetery in southern Caracas, puffing on a cigar absent-mindedly.
This saint's name is Ismael. He wears a baseball cap and dark glasses, smokes a cigarette and carries a gun.
He is the king of the santos malandros or holy thugs, a group of popular saints who were petty criminals in life and were gunned down by the police in the 1960s and 1970s.
Growing numbers of Venezuelans revere them, despite the fact they are not recognised by the church. It is an increasingly typical feature of Catholicism in Latin America, where religion is mixed with non-Christian figures and beliefs.
The popularity of the dead hoodlums has soared since the rise in crime during the last decade and has become almost a trend in the past few years.
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a teenager arrives, and bends down to tap the stone grave to salute the saint, carefully lighting a cigarette in the statue's mouth. The youngster's name is Johnny, and he has come here to ask Ismael to ensure he's not to be captured by the police. "He's my only hope, I'm alive thanks to him, I was shot 22 times," he says, lifting his T-shirt to show his scars.
Patron saints of Venezula gangland crime
In 1239, Gilbert de Moravia, Bishop of Caithness, invoked a solemn curse “upon those who destroy and injure" the fabric of Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. When he died he was interred beneath the floor of the Cathedral.
In 1570, the Cathedral was burnt down during local feuding.
St Gilbert’s curse was said to have struck down landowner William Sutherland, of Evelix, near Dornoch. During the sacking of the cathedral by the Mackays of Strathnaver and retainers of the Earl of Caithness, Sutherland had joined in and kicked over St Gilbert's bones. According to local tradition, the very foot that perpetrated the deed rotted away, creating such a stench that no one would go near Sutherland as he died a slow, agonising death
In October, 2008, a 19-year-old was arrested for vandalizing and stealing money from the ancient building. Put in a jail cell over the weekend before he appeared in court, young Daryl Shearer died mysteriously. A post-mortem investigation is underway.
Bishop's Hex to Anyone Who Damaged Cathedral.
How did gravestones become a walkway at an Ann Arbor home?
Workers were uncovering a sewer line when they discover that the nine granite paving stones were gravestones.
"I've never seen anything like it," Knight said. "Ever. In 25 years in business." But where could they possibly have come from, and how did they wind up reincarnated as a walkway at a Westfield Avenue colonial?
The brand-new homeowners were dismayed.
But a little publicity solved the mystery. The former homeowners had a relative in the monument business. Every one of the 1x 2 foot granite slabs had typos, misspellings or miscuts. Everyone was a cast off; they were never used as gravestones.
Cash-for-corpses murders probed
Chinese police have arrested members of a gang suspected of murdering more than 100 disabled or elderly people and selling their corpses in a bizarre scheme to avoid cremations, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
Burials have traditionally been seen as the most respectful way to handle the dead in China, but were discouraged after the Communists came to power in 1949 to conserve farmland and eradicate superstition.
The bodies were bought by wealthy families and sent for cremation in lieu of deceased relatives who were then secretly buried, the South China Morning Post reported.
The killers would trail their victims, usually mentally disabled or elderly people, "drag them into vehicles in remote areas and either strangle or poison them", the newspaper said.
Michael Totten visits Macedonia and is shocked to see
A huge number of people in Tetovo, though, looked like they had been airlifted in from the Middle East,
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It seems the Wahhabis have successfully transformed this portion of Macedonia into what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls a fear society.
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“How long have you had problems with the Wahhabis here?” I said.
“Serious trouble started three years ago when they broke gravestones,” he said. “They didn’t respect our saints. They also broke pictures of Imam Ali on the walls, and of the world head of the Bektashis. They cut the pictures with knives. They think we are too close to Christianity, in part because of the pictures and candles.” The Wahhabis hate candles. “Then the Sunnis came in and occupied the tekke. They said This is Muslim territory.”
All Bektashis believe in the same graves. We keep them and pray to them. We believe that if we damage a grave God will punish us, so we are very afraid to do this, we would never do this. We keep the saint graves. The Muslims know this, they are trying to provoke us and claim that we have done it to ourselves. But no, really they did it. Plus, I see these Wahhabis around. Usually at night the Wahhabis are coming, sometimes in trousers, sometimes in their clothes, sometimes with the things on their heads and with beards.”
Fury as museum bosses cover up naked Egyptian mummies to protect 'sensitivities' of visitors
The last time they had the chance to offend anyone was 2,700 years ago when they were wandering around ancient Egypt.
Since then the mummies have led a blameless existence, spending the last 120 years in a museum where countless thousands of visitors have managed to see them without anyone becoming in the least bit upset.
So museum officials in Manchester covered them with shrouds to protect their modesty and, following government policy, began a process of public consultation.
Josh Lennon, a museum visitor, said: "This is preposterous. Surely people realise that if they go to see Egyptian remains some of them may not be dressed in their best bib and tucker.
"The museum response to complaints is pure Monty Python - they have now covered them from head to foot rendering the exhibition a non-exhibition. It is hilarious."
The Kingwood teenager's story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.
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Not until police went to the home of another Kingwood 17-year-old, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, did the officer believe the tale.
"He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it," Adkins said. "So I knew there was some truth to the story."
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Houston police believe the teens disturbed the grave of an 11-year-old boy who died in 1921.
The child was buried at an unmarked cemetery believed to be reserved for black veterans and their families, Adkins said.
Under the law, a person can be charged with abuse of a corpse simply by vandalizing, damaging or treating a gravesite offensively — even if the human remains buried there are not touched, Adkins said.
3 accused of using corpse head to smoke marijuana
Carla Del Ponte who was the chief prosecutor at the tribunal in the Hague for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s said Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs' which were sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war.
According to the sources, senior figures in the Kosovo Liberation Army were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were allegedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania where their organs were removed. Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the alleged organ harvesting, and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed.
"The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately," Miss Del Ponte writes.