This comes from the Internet Crime Archives (www.mayhem.net), on page two in their section on cannibalism:
PERESTROIKA: Alarmingly, cannibalism is becoming way of life in the former Soviet Union. In the 1996 ten people were charged with killing and eating other people. Police estimate that at least 30 people were eaten that year.
Newspaper reports across the former Soviet Union speak of cases of vagrants being eaten, or their bodies being cut up and sold to unsuspecting passers-by. “We have information about cases where human flesh is sold in street markets; also when homeless people kill each other and sell the flesh. Every month we find corpses with missing body parts.”
An apocryphal story – which may or may not be true – relates how two winos fed a buddy human flesh. The man ate with great appetite, but when he learned the true source of the meal, he hanged himself.
Now, while mayhem.net is not exactly the best resource for stuff concerning murdur (using terms like ‘sick f-cker’ and ‘degenerate’ in their articles, and concentrating more on the site’s appearence than content), the fact that homeless Russians are killing each other so they can sell the meat has fascinated me for some reason.
So, is mayhem.net just passing off another rumor as fact, or did things like this really happen?
I remember reading a book (might have been called “The Best of the Worst”) a few years ago that was a collection of actual factual horror stories all illustrated by various comic book artists. One of them was about a poor Russian who sold clothing and meat on the street. Turns out he would offer shelter to vagrant young men, then kill them in the night and sell their clothes and flesh when ready. It was an old (confirmed) story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing still goes on.
I have heard that in Moldova (not Russia) there were rumors of human flesh being sold as meat.
But I don’t think anything was proven. Still it is a sad commentary on what people there will now believe, as human trafficking of women and even the selling of “spare” organs is rampant.
I can’t get to that site at work, but the way I see the story presented here, it looks like it was written in a city named PERESTROIKA. Of course that was one of the terms used at the begining of Soviet reforms.
There have been reports of people selling human flesh in North Korea (where, you may recall, there is still a serious famine). News from that region being what it is, I can’t tell if the stories are true, but according to Western journalists the reports do come from North Korea itself.
(Don’t ask me for a cite; this is vaguely remembered from a TV news program of some months ago. Take with as many grains of salt as you like.)
While I don’t know about any of the other people that are mentioned here, Jame Gumb is not based, even partially, on
Jeffery Dahmer. This site indicates that the Dahmer situation came to a head in July of 1991. The movie Silence of the Lambs was relased in February of 1991. The book was written in the 1980’s. So, unless Thomas Harris is prescient or was somehow involved, the character of Jame Gumb has nothing to do with Jeffrey Dahmer.
Now, there is a guy who was arrested within the last few years in Idaho or Montana who canibilzed little kids and used the human meat in stews and sauces that he gave to people. Once I find the cite I’ll post it.