Cannibalism - #28: The Final Course

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

Albert Fish claimed of Grace Budd, “it took me 9 days to eat her entire body”. But was that possible?

2018, Russia, Eduard Seleznev, later nicknamed The Arkhangelsk Cannibal was a mid-fifties ex-convict who was living homeless on the streets of Oblast. Starving and sleeping in derelict basements, he ate by killing cats, dogs and birds, slicing them up on the dirty floor and roasting them on a makeshift fire.

With no home, no tools and no experience, it is said, he ate three men, even though he had no teeth.

So, how feasible is it that a cannibal could eat a whole human being?

Well, if Eduard’s willing volunteer was Steve, our average UK male, being hungry, it’s unlikely that he’d stick to the NHS’s recommended intake, so instead of taking 480 days to safely digest Steve’s meat, as most UK meat-eaters consume 80kgs of red meat a year, Eduard could eat the lot in just five months.

As we know, the skin and fat could last him 193 days, but as a homeless man with no fridge (or as with most cannibals, one too small for the job), given that it takes 1900f to destroy fat, as a bonfire can get as hot as 2000f, it may be best for his health to dispose of the remains, just as Dennis Nilsen did.

The brain could last 13 days and the marrowbone 11 ½, but neither would hurt him if he scoffed it, as the stomach is a digestion machine, and the waste system can expel any excess nutrients or toxins. As for the best bits like the psoas, it’s unlikely he (or us for that matter) would know how to find it, some cannibals even confused simple things like a heart for a liver (as have qualified doctors), and as it takes skill and experience to determine diseased, it makes sense why a cannibal would choose to eat a thigh.

They’re psychopaths, but they’re not idiots, and even a cannibal draws the line at certain meals.
Convicted of a double murder in 2002, Eduard Seleznev was released in 2015. Having to scavenge for food in the bitterly cold Russian winters, his natural desire for meat consumed him, and with cats, dogs and birds being too scrawny to sustain a fully grown man, he said “I began to crave human flesh”.

Meat is the most logical choice of food for those cannibals who aren’t consumed by a sexual paraphilia or driven by a trauma stemming from a troubled past. As with animals, we eat what’s nice, not nasty.

So, with at least 60% of Steve and ourselves either too toxic, inedible or only edible in small doses over at least 2 years – rather than risk their own health – it makes sense (as many cannibals do) to burn the bones, skin and hair and therefore destroying the DNA and disposing of the blood down the sink.

You see, as chaotic as cannibal’s minds are, we all share a logic derived from the bitter experiences of our ancestors of what foods to eat and what to avoid. Even those palaeolithic cannibals we descend from didn’t eat humans daily or by choice, with more meat and nutrients on a horse of buffalo, they only ate their own species as we do, due to religious beliefs (as with the Aghori tribe) or during times of hardship and desperation, as in the Kazakh famine or for the survivors of Flight AF571 in the Andes.

And had our ancestors continued to eat humans, scientists believe our bodies may have evolved to be meatier and less chewy, in the same way that we’ve bred animals with more meat, and for taste.

So, did Albert Fish eat the body of Grace Budd in 9 days? No, but also (technically) yes, as in the same way we “eat” a Christmas Turkey, we consume the meat, the fat, the skin, the oyster, the pope’s nose and the gizzards, but we’re not stupid enough to eat the feathers, and what’s thrown out is the carcass.

March 2016, Eduard stabbed his friend, a fellow homeless man to death in a shelter, and dismembered him with an axe. With no teeth, he could only eat the fragments of flesh his pocketknife could cut, so with the rest beginning to rot, he wrapped them in weighted refuse sacks, and threw them in the river.

No cannibal has ever eaten a whole human being in the true sense of the word, it’s almost impossible, and although many may claim to have feasted on flesh, too often it’s to elevate their status as a serial-killer, knowing that - unless their stomach is autopsied immediately - all we have to go on is their word.

Two years later, Eduard killed another man and moved into his flat. With access to knives, a fridge and an oven, he could prepare, cook and even freeze the meat with impunity, and having begun a job at a meat processing plant, where it is said that some of the less edible body parts were disposed of.

But when his victim’s family grew suspicious about their missing relative, the stranger in the flat, and an “odd looking package of meat in the fridge”, they called the police, and he confessed to his crimes.

Declared sane, Eduard Seleznev was sentenced to life without parole, and like most countries as Russia has no laws against cannibalism, so he was found guilty of murder and the misuse of body parts.

But one question puzzled the detectives, as human meat is tough and chewy, and Eduard had no teeth, how did he eat his last victim? Simple, as the flat had a blender, he liquified the meat, and drank him.

It is technically impossible to eat a whole human being without time and effort, but there are ways.

* * * * *

Before we end, I just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who have bravely made it to the end. Creating a 28-part series, which went out daily was a real labour-of-love which almost broke me, so if you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends, and if you leave a nice review, that would be very much appreciated. A special thank you also goes out to my unnamed sources - the doctor, the scientist and the chef – who helped me with the research. Murder Mile returns at the end of August.

Until then, if you’re a meat eater, good luck. (burp).