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From: Rev. Hythian
Date: 01 Dec 1997
Time: 16:49:07
Remote Name: 208.215.20.129
Cannibals Return to Russia Human Flesh being sold on the Streets Latest Russia News, Russian News, Russia News, Russian News
Russia: Incidence of Cannibalism Up; Reason Sought Moscow MOSKOVSKIYE NOVOSTI in Russian, 25 Aug-1 Sep 96 No 34, p 28
[Article by Yelena Rykovtseva, under the "Phenomenon" heading: "Will Cannibalism Become an Epidemic? Criminologists Have Encountered a Phenomenon New for Our Days--in Many Russian Cities, Cases of Cannibalism Have Been Established"]
[FBIS Translated Text] The story of the solution of a terrible murder in the small town of Berezniki, in Perm Oblast, began when Citizen K. brought to the police station a package of human flesh. He had bought it on the street. And his wife, having studied the piece, discovered skin on it. The criminals, by the way, had sold meat to two more passersby, but these did not show up at the police station. Specialists say that the taste of "people meat" is, of course, a specific one, and its smell during cooking as well, but on the other hand, the flesh of any animal is also entirely specific, and therefore, to realize that you are eating precisely a human being is almost impossible, especially since the people being sampled themselves are very different. "The taste of a victim," it is asserted, in full seriousness, at the Main Criminal Investigations Administration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, "depends on the victim himself: if he drank or smoked a lot, whether he liked sweets or salt..." Colonel Belonozhko related how two winos had fed a buddy of theirs human flesh; the friend ate with great appetite, but when he learned the recipe of the "dish," he hanged himself.
But let us return to Berezniki. Fortunately, it is not a large town, and therefore the police easily established the identities of the traders: They turned out to be F.A. Boldyshev, who had at one time already been in prison, and his friend N.V. Ostanin. The traders, holding more than one office, turned out to be the murderers as well: When splitting a bottle of spirits, they did away with the third drinking partner, A.P. Vavilin, and dismembered his corpse. The best pieces were cooked by the mother (!) of one of the murderers for supper, upon which the trio gladly gorged themselves. The remains were packed up in packages and sold, in order to make some money for the next bottle. Vavilin's head, hands, and feet were thrown into the attic, where the police discovered these "fragments."
...When a person is mentally ill, such a situation may indeed seem terrible, but at least explainable--as in Moscow, where citizen Kolpakov from Nizhnyy Novgorod was recently killed. The son of the woman who owned the apartment where Kolpakov rented one room killed the lodger, and then cut a piece of soft tissue from the forearm, fried it in a frying pan, and ate it. But here a panel of experts found him to be of diminished responsibility. Whereas in Berezniki the trio of cannibals turned out to be sane. Preparing their horrible supper, they had, in completely rational and reasoned fashion, decided to save money on the purchase of normal food.
If one is to systematize the cases of cannibalism over recent years, several regularities become evident. First of all, in all of the instances when a criminal has taken the flesh of his victim "to the bazaar," he himself has first tasted it. Second, cannibals who have formally turned out to be sane have nonetheless led far from a righteous lifestyle: Either they committed their deeds after having drunk a very great deal, as it was in the Udmurtian settlement of Novyy, where a certain Rasskazov and Bobylev killed and ate their bottle partner Alekhin, or the cannibals had had a prior conviction, which, of course, also leaves a certain imprint on the psyche. When officers of the Main Criminal Investigations Administration of the Internal Affairs Ministry of Russia gathered "cannibal" information across their country, they decided to interest themselves in how matters stand with this same phenomenon in the former Union republics. However, only one response came, from Kazakhstan, to the inquiry that the Internal Affairs Ministry of Russia directed to Interpol on this subject. In the Semipalatinsk prison, four convicts, each of whom was sentenced to death, had, after having read, as they maintained, many newspaper articles about instances of cannibalism in prison, decided to arrange for something of the kind and to eat the very first "new guy" placed in their cell. Such turned out to be the convict Volchenkov, whom they killed; they cut meat from his arms and back, some of which they fried on a hot plate and some of which they boiled in an electric kettle and ate. Incidentally, in another Altay prison the convict Maslich was not able to cook soup from the liver of his murdered cellmate only because the hose from the water faucet, to which the prisoner had set fire in order to build a campfire, burned poorly.
In all of these situations, the ones committing the actions were people who had nothing to lose in any case-- they were getting ready for death. But in any case, people are not tried for cannibalism here. To be sure, they are tried for murder, where the dismemberment of the corpse is considered an aggravating circumstance. But the devouring of that corpse is not even mentioned in the Criminal Code. And if we again turn to Berezniki, the murderer's mother, who cooked and ate a human being, cannot be tried for that specific action.
For criminologists, a precise symptom that someone is planning to sell or eat human flesh is such a formulation in the intelligence reports: "A corpse has been discovered. Soft tissues have been cut off." And, on the other hand, the appearance on the food market of human flesh is a substantive sign of a crime, which, sad though it may be, is far from always solved. In Chita, the citizen Gladkikh found four polyethylene packages of meat in some trash containers. One of them he sold, and the meat turned out to be "not animal"; the police investigated the contents of the remaining packages, but all they have been able to establish are the method of processing (thermal) and, if one may express it thus, the gender of the meat (it belongs to a man and a woman).
Unfortunately, the "cannibal" situation in the country is being investigated by specialists rather at the level of statistics, the collection of information on deeds of this sort--for elucidation, as they say, of "serialism." And although at the Scientific Research Institute of the Internal Affairs Ministry of Russia there is a department for the solution of nontraditional crimes, it does not work on cannibalistic problems specifically. Not because the topic is not an important one, but simply that the money is not there, especially for such a "narrow" trend. Here is a last and most vivid example of the investigative poverty: In a stream outside Novokuznetsk, 43 fragments were found of six bodies--four boys, one girl, and one man. The criminologists have a theory: A whole family was done away with. But in order to "establish genetic identity," it was necessary to conduct a special analysis of the bones. And the Internal Affairs Ministry official in charge of the case says, "These preserved bones have lain in my refrigerator for a month already, waiting for the chemicals. Special preparations are very expensive..."
If there were money, cannibalism would be dealt with much more seriously, especially since the leaders of the Internal Affairs Ministry are starting to become really concerned about this problem: Now they have, for a start, ordered and are studying reports across the whole country on this subject. Mainly for preventive purposes: in order that access be easier to criminals if, as they say at the ministry, "a cannibalism epidemic flares up." And such, in our not entirely sane time, is not to be ruled out.