Lost Siberian Fishermen May Have Resorted to Cannibalism to Survive

   12.06.12

Lost Siberian Fishermen May Have Resorted to Cannibalism to Survive

Two fishermen were recently found alive after going in missing in Siberia for over three months. With temperatures dropping below -20 degrees Fahrenheit and scant supplies, they stood almost no chance of surviving in the coldest inhabited area on earth for an extended period of time.

What they may have done to make it out alive could be worse than death.

Alexander Abdullaev, 37, Alexei Gradulenko, 35, Viktor Komarov, 47, and Andrei Kurochkin, 44, left together for a fishing trip three months ago. Only Abdullaev and Gradulenko have been located.

When rescuers found Abdullaev and Gradulenko both men were barely alive. The same could not be said for one of their comrades.

Near the survivors, police found the remains of man who was “so hacked to pieces” that he could not be identified. According to some reports a wooden stake was found near the victim and a bloodstained jacket, others say an axe was used to kill and dismember him.

“We suspect, the two survivors could have killed and eaten their friend just because of hunger,” a source told The Siberian Times. “Both deny they have anything to do with his death. Looking at the body parts found at the spot, we clearly saw cuts. It means the body was hacked to pieces. Now the body parts–some human meat and part of the skull–are [being] taken to the morgue.”

Cuts on bones found by the police have suggested the victim was eaten. While the fourth man has not been found, police fear that he too was killed and eaten.

As if this story wasn’t bizarre enough, both Abdullaev and Gradulenko, who were taken to a hospital to be treated for hunger and frostbite, have fled the hospital they were being treated in after being interrogated by a police officer.

As of the time this report was published they have not been found.

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I'm a poet and and author. I received my BA in Creative Writing from Central Michigan University and I am pursuing my MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. My work has appeared in The Greatest Lakes Review, The North Central Review, Dexter magazine, Open Palm Print, newspapers, magazines, bathroom stalls, the backs of highway billboards, under bridges and other, stranger, places.

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