Cannibalism - #2: Disposal

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

So many serial killers have tried and failed to dispose of a body.

In 1949, John George Haigh disposed of his sixth victim in a 40-gallon vat of sulphuric acid. With her body boiling at 337 degrees Celsius, within 48 hours he had dissolved almost all of Olive Durand-Deacon, except for a foot, 18 small bones, three gallstones and 28 pounds (or two stone) of body fat.

He failed, as it takes an acid stronger than sulphuric to dissolve a body. If he were to try it today in the UK, he’d be stumped as it’s illegal to buy anything stronger than a 15% solution without an EPP licence.

And yet, the human body has its own vat of acid capable of disposing of human remains.

The stomach is a work of biological wonder. At 12 inches long, 6 inches wide, 160 grams in weight and encased in just a 5mm wall of muscle and mucosa, it secretes 1 ½ litres of gastric juice a day; made of Lipase and Pepsin, two enzymes which break down fats and proteins, and a lethal mix of hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride and sodium chloride. It’s so powerful, stomach acid can dissolve meat, bone, fat and sinew, it can destroy all but three types of bacteria, and it can permanently erase tattoos, birth marks and scars. Although, oddly, it can’t digest the skin of peas – which is why when you vomit, they come out whole.

With a PH level of 1.5, it can dissolve most metals like zinc, magnesium and copper (I know this as I once swallowed 48p), it can digest a bag of iron nails, and some crazy loons have tested it by eating 5000 light bulbs, 18 bicycles, and a Cessna airplane made of 2 ½ tonnes of metal, wood and rubber. Basically, your stomach is so powerful, if you wanted to, you could eat Robocop and poop him out.

Albert Fish claimed he ate Grace Budd’s whole body in nine days, and although he was prone to lying to torment his victim’s families, is that possible? If you can eat a plane, surely you can eat a human?

In 1897, Adolph Luetgert, The Sausage King of Chicago tried to dispose of his wife Louisa in a makeshift stomach by dissolving her body in a vat of boiling lye and burned her fizzing remains in an oven. But again, it failed, as several bones remained, as well as a rib, part of her skull, and a quantity of body fat.

The strength of the stomach isn’t down to just acids and enzymes, but heat, movement and digestion.

Evolved over 300,000 years, the stomach of modern Homo Sapiens has adapted to our changing diets as nomads, grazers and apex predators. The stomach may look like a single bag, but it has five sections; the Cardia which stops food going back up the oesophagus, the Fundus which collects the digestive gases, the Corpus where food is mixed with gastric acid, the Antrum which holds the partially digested food before sending it to the small intestine, and the Pylorus which controls the stomach’s evacuation.

But digestion isn’t all about the stomach. It begins as you masticate the food in your mouth, making it easier to swallow. In the oesophagus, this muscular tube acts like a giant wave, pulling the food down with muscles so powerful you can swallow it standing on your head (which is why astronauts are still able to eat in zero gravity). Like a blender, the stomach churns the food with a mix of enzymes and acids at the right temperature and pH level, before its nutrients are absorbed in 28 feet of intestines.

Able to digest 1 to 1 ½ kilos of food at a time, food takes between 10 and 72 hours to pass from mouth to anus, with vegetables passing in 4 to 6 hours, red meat after a day, and fat requiring the full transit.

It’s a process Santiago Meza Lopez, the ‘Pozole Maker’ mimicked. Working for a Tijuana drug cartel, he used the stomach’s anatomy to work out how to dissolve a whole human being, and by filling a drum with 200 litres of water, adding two sacks of lye, heating it until it boiled, adding the bodies and stirring the bubbling and churning stew over eight hours, more than 300 bodies vanished forever. And like stomach, as what remained was a waste product, he burned the remaining evidence with gasoline.

So, if our stomach is so dangerous that it can dissolve a human being, why doesn’t it kill us?

Simple, each day we produce 2 pints of saliva to protect our teeth from acid, 1.5 litres of mucus to line the digestive system, and although the stomach is covered in a thick layer of mucusa, every three to four days our stomach lining is completely replaced. It’s the youngest and freshest part of our bodies.

So, given what we know about the stomach, could we digest a human? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef (all unnamed for obvious reasons), we set out to find a suitable victim, someone of the right height, weight and body mass, to get the calculations right, and to work out, if you tried to eat a whole human, what parts could you eat, what bits are toxic, and how long would it take?

Join me tomorrow as I introduce you to our voluntary victim… Steve. (screams)