Cannibalism - #19: The Stomach

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part nineteen – the stomach”. (burp)

The stomach is a masterpiece of biology, it digests meat, bone, fat and fibre, and its walls regenerate every 3-4 days so we don’t ingest ourselves, But could a cannibal digest another person’s stomach?

1972, when Flight AF571 crashed in the Andes, Eduardo Strauch recalled of the moment they first ate human flesh; “my mind was okay, but my body rejected it”. Being frozen, it had no smell to repel them, but initially they vomited it back up, as they had broken a sacred taboo. As Catholics, they only way they could accept this sin to save their lives was (as in the Eucharist) to see these as the body of Christ.

As discussed in the last part, although the stomach is a biological marvel, its waste contents aren’t for consumption. So, any undesirable offal would safely (and happily) be eaten by foxes, urine and faeces is good for the soil, and as anyone who lives in a city knows, pigeons will happily eat last night’s vomit.

So, why are serial-killers willing to commit the worst taboos (dismemberment, necrophilia and even cannibalism), and although they often compete to be gross-out each other, they draw the line at what body parts they will eat? But is it a lack of education, an odd moral code, cowardice, or is it queasiness?

In Robert Ressler's book, Whoever Fights Monsters, 40% of serial killers interviewed said they’d been physically abused as a child, with 70% sexually abused. Manifesting in adulthood as rage, isolation, cruelty and a lack of empathy, many suffered from stomach problems; like Dennis Nilsen, John Wayne Gacy, Carroll Cole & Aileen Wuornos to name but as few. And especially cannibals like Albert Fish (who was sadistically beaten as an orphan), Armin Meiwes (who was abandoned by his abusive dad), Jeffrey Dahmer (whose personality changed after a bungled double hernia operation), and Issei Sagawa (whose premature birth plagued him with pain, illness and being unusually short for an adult male).

We’re affected by trauma in different ways, and although our brains may blank it out to protect us, our stomach remembers. The stomach is our second brain, it’s also a vital part of our emotions, and although vomiting is a natural reaction to poison, it is also to trauma, as according to a study by UCLA, “the composition of your gut’s microbiome can be indefinitely impacted by intense trauma”.

Stomach lining needn’t be a traumatic meal for a cannibal, as being 3-4 days old, it’s reliably fresh and although its walls of muscle and mucosa are 2 to 5mm thick, at 1300 calories, that’s half a day’s energy.

In cow’s, stomachs can be prepared by washing, soaking, cutting off any unwanted yellowy brown fat, rubbing it with rock salt and rinsing it with vinegar (a process repeated until the lining is a nice pinkish hue), then scraped with a sharp knife to rid it of any final impurities and par-boil for 10 minutes.

Stomachs are badly maligned by us all. During conflicts, like World War Two, combatants witnessed soldiers on both sides mutilating the bodies of their enemies, with the abdomen ripped open and the stomach filled with discarded rubbish, like chewing gum and cigarette butts, as if it was a waste bin.

A cannibal could eat a whole stomach, and if they bothered to read a cookery book, they’d realise that it could made into a variety of world dishes; in Mexico stomach is thinly sliced, pan fried and served in tacos, in Scotland it’s a vital component of haggis, in Louisiana it’s stuffed with pork, veg, spices and rice and is called ‘Ponce’, and in many countries its rolled up, smoked and is sliced like a fine pepperoni.

But that’s the problem with serial killers and cannibals alike, as although their ‘fans’ love to bore the tits off everyone about ‘how high their IQ is’, they often lack commonsense, patience, a strong enough constitution to do the ‘dirty deed’ in full, and when it comes to preparing and cooking a corpse, they lack the education and courage to turn a dead body into a banquet of delights. But what do you expect from a bunch of maladjusted misfits who live on a diet of burgers, hotdogs and microwave meals.

But as much as stomachs can be made into a meal, it can also be used for cruelty.

2007, Czech Republic, sisters Klara & Katerina Mauerova had a mission from God, or so they believed. Having joined a cult which practiced incest, they confined her sons aged just 14 and 10 to dog cages, left them to sleep in their own filth, starved, beat and burned them, and with the boys screaming, she cut the flesh from their buttocks, and fed it to them. And even though they were often sick from the fear and revulsion, when they threw up, she forced them to eat that too.
Sentenced to between five and ten years, both women are now free, having been paroled.

Join me tomorrow for possibly the most personal pieces of a human to eat… the senses.