Peru's Murderous Fat-Stealing Gang: Crime or Cover-Up?

[Judi Lynn]

Peru's Murderous Fat-Stealing Gang: Crime or Cover-Up?
By Lucien Chauvin / Lima Tuesday, Dec. 01, 2009

http://img.timeinc.net.nyud.net:8090/time/daily/2009/0911/peru_fat_1130.jpg

A police officer displays two bottles containing
human fat while another arranges seized sticks
of dynamite at a press conference in Lima,
Nov.19 Karel Navarro / AP

Much of the world was shocked and titillated by news of alleged fat-stealing murderers in the Peruvian jungle. But the story may have a much more sinister underbelly. Could the allegation of homicidal liposuction possibly be a smokescreen to distract attention from other crimes, including, some local journalists say, the existence of a death squad that may be operating within the country's national police?

The existence of marauding fat stealers was made public mid-November by General Felix Murga, head of the national police's criminal-investigation division, and Colonel Jorge Mejia, who leads the antikidnapping unit. The Murga-Mejia team said the gang may have killed dozens of people over the past three decades and showed off two dirty bottles containing a yellowish goop they said was human fat that had been harvested for sale to European buyers in the cosmetics business. Three people have been arrested and the search continues for at least six other fat removers.

~snip~
The possibility of some kind of cover-up became part of the public debate because of the fate of an article by the investigative journalist Ricardo Uceda, published in the monthly magazine Poder. Uceda's story detailed the supposed operation of a death squad within the police unit in the northern city of Trujillo. He documented 46 criminals shot to death by police officers in 2007 and 2008 in the city, which has a population hovering around 800,000. But the allegations of the pishtaco gang surfaced at about the time Uceda's article was going to press. For several days, the murderous fat stealers hogged the headlines.

On Nov. 29, Peru's media had caught up to Uceda's explosive allegations and news magazines were filled with speculation of a cover-up, focusing primarily on Interior Minister Octavio Salazar, whose office oversees the police. Salazar is a retired police general who used to head the force's Trujillo detachment. TV news shows, dailies and blogs were abuzz not with news of fat-stealing but of a "grease-screen," which is how Patricia del Rio of the daily Peru 21 described what many now say is a bizarre cover-up. Both liberal and conservative media have followed del Rio's lead, debating out loud why the national police would time the allegations of fat-stealing just as Uceda's report was coming out.

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