September 29, 2021 • 46 mins
People be eating people! And now the Cadaver Gals are all vegetarians!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Oh, it's another episode of cadaver Gals,
and this is the show where we talk about all
the ways people have died throughout history to cope with
our own mortality, and we don't cope well and we're broken.
I'm Gabby along with Nika. I couldn't sleep last night
because of the research that I was doing for this project. Hi,
(00:28):
I'm Nika, and time you know I already said who
I am? And your Taylor? Hi. Yeah, I slept well
last night thinking about it. No, I'm just kidding. I
did not sleep thinking about I just remember when we
did flush eating bacteria one time, So I think I
have a fungus on my nail and I think bacteria.
Oh No, that stresses me out. Today is a special
(00:52):
episode because we're just going to be talking about cannibalism
the whole time, because it was just you know, it's fall,
and you know what fall makes me think about pumpkin
spice and what does pumpkin spices made me think about
people ingesting pumping spice? And then I don't eat pumpkin spice,
so then I have to eat people because they're filled
with it. It's like a preseasoning. The only way you'll
(01:15):
have pumpkin spice. Cannibalism is my second favorite sword after couter. No,
I hate that word. Oh Catholic, no cat, Get your
mind out of the gutter, Gabby. Do you know that
I'm working on a short film called Night of the Couters?
(01:39):
I vaguely remember that, but that is very Night of
the Couter. That's every night for me. I don't know, well,
I as a bisexual, it's only half of my nights maybe, okay,
maybe only thirty three percent of okay, okay. Anyway, we
have a bunch of fun trigger warnings for today. Cannibalism
(02:00):
obviously also wore starvation, murder, prejudice against Irish people, just
membering corpses, scalping um. And I think that's that's it.
What Mark did you ask for? Honestly, it's gonna be
so fun to hear. And yeah, also, if you're eating
during this, I would suggest I did throughout all of
(02:20):
my presciuto yesterday because I was like, I can't eat this.
I think you think it looks like muscles. It looks
like the muscles that people have. Anyway, cue the music,
(02:44):
So Nika is gonna start off our fun episode about cannibalism,
and you know, she's taken us back back in time.
We're always going back in time, right, We're not talking
about future things. Hey, when we did cryotherapy or cryogenics, Sorry,
when we did cryogenics, we were talking about the futures.
(03:05):
Why don't you shut your mouth? Taylor? Taylor, whoa shut
your mouth? Except if you have a good comment and
Riff is talking, that will be compelling for the episode. Okay,
So we are in fact going back in time this time.
I was high on drugs when I wrote this outline,
(03:25):
so we will see how it goes. So we are
going to the fifteen nineties in France, a super fun
time for humanity in general, unless, um, you were in France.
That's a terrible opening, are you okay? Yeah? Fine? And fighting.
I mean it was probably terrible in other places. Or
(03:47):
maybe they had a better perspective, you know, yeah, maybe
people's attitudes were more positive back in good Okay. So
basically what was happening over there in the French towns
is their king had recently died and the heir of
the throne was a Protestant. That was bad. Yes, So
his name was Henry, the third of Navare. And this
(04:07):
sucked because France was in the middle of the Wars
of Religion, which was a long term conflict between Protestants
and Catholics. So here we are, the heir is Protestant
and he won't convert. He's like, no, I believe in
my Protestant things. I don't even know what Protestants believe,
and I'm so sorry, and he just refused. So the
(04:28):
Catholic League, which was a very powerful group of Catholic
people usually in the royalty or like government in France,
they decided to basically not recognize his the new king. Essentially,
they actually received money from Spain and support from the
Pope and they kind of started this war with the guy.
(04:51):
So the king and his new minions, who also received
money from Germany and from other Protestant interests including England
as well, was like, okay, we're going to go to war.
And so they went and to war together and they
waged a four year They just packed up their bag
headed out to war. For Jesus. My Jesus is different
(05:11):
than your Jesus. By yeah. And honestly, what I found
funny as I was reading about this is it felt
like a war reception. There was the War of Religion,
and then on top of that, there was this four
year war inside of the War of Religion, so war reception,
indeed war reception. Okay, listen, it was crazy. So the
(05:33):
war was going pretty well for Henri and he was
taking over France bit by bit. So the Protestants were winning. Okay.
Henry beat the Catholic League at the Battle of Ivory,
which was a very decisive victory. It was a big deal.
And this with the area where the battle happened was
about thirty miles west of Paris, so Prusians got a
bit freaked out and they decided to take a refuge
(05:54):
within the city. A lot of peasants who had land,
who had windmills, who had cattle, abandoned all of their
things because they thought that they'd be safer within the
walls of Paris. Yeah, Taylor horses were abandoned, abandoned them. Wow,
I love their cottage chorusesthetic though I know all of
(06:16):
this talking about bread made be hungry for some bread. Okay,
So they left all of their stuff, went into the
walls of Paris. This ended up being smart for safety,
but not smart for their tummies. I cannot believe I
actually wrote that Wow did take control of many towns
near Paris, so the peasants were smart to flee. However,
(06:38):
he also burned all of their windmills and cut off
all of their food supplies, so both peasants and city
dwellers were left without bread, without food, without resources inside
of Paris, locked in the city. I feel like I
see where this is going. Oh yeah you do. So
wait so was Henry So why was he destroying their stuff?
(07:01):
Because were they Catholic peasants or he just was like
I gotta burn taking over France basically, like because the
Catholic League still controlled France and Catholic interests control friends.
So okay, so he just had to burn it up.
So dumb, honestly, Yeah, so dumb. I mean I think
if your war ends up being a war reception, maybe
(07:24):
take some time think about it. Think about why this
is the regular war's farm. If he's trying to take
the land and like burn up the land, it's like, bro,
that's your land. Literally, this is actually if you end
up winning, what are you gonna do with all this
messed up land, all the messed up windmills? Yeah? How
are you gonna have your cottage core aesthetic immediately you're
(07:45):
gonna have to rebuild it might not even be fashionable anymore. Yeah,
and then like the next trend, how's he gonna like,
He's gonna be still so backed up on cottage core.
How is he gonna get to yo case style? You know,
it's like creating his own trends? When is he gonna
get his low rise jeans? If he's trying to rebuild
cottage windmills, it's not it's not right, Okay. Anyway, it
(08:06):
was just very unstrategic anyway. So they had cheese and windmills,
so this was a big deal. Obviously. The average Parisian
ate one point five to two point five pounds of
bread a day. They loved bread. Okay, I love bread.
I love bread too. Okay, I have a baguett in
my closet right now, close in your closet and just
(08:29):
my secret bagette. I meant to say cabinet. But do
you hide food from yourself as well? What? No hide
chocolate for myself here? Do you really? Yeah? Um found
it though the other day. It's a problem. Do you
just have like really bad short term memory? You're just
like I'm hiding this from myself. Yeah, that is so
(08:54):
I used to hide money from myself too. What Yeah,
can you imagine being so rich that you could do that?
I can't. No, Okay, Taylor's like a try, don't do
it now, I don't. I don't hide money for myself now.
Actually I actually do. I will put like money for
safekeeping um places. Sometimes the feeling of I will say
(09:17):
this has only happened to me like twice, The feeling
of going into like a jean pocket or whatever and
suddenly pulling out cash and being like, oh my gosh,
free money. But in reality it's like your money and
you just forgotten it's free money. Oh okay, Well, well
we'll listen to from the Horse Girl. Okay, okay, well okay,
well anyway back to the story. Okay, So, so they're there.
(09:38):
They they want their bread exactly, and Henry the new
King took it away from them. Again bad pr and
his end too. So the siege began in kind of
April ish and Parisians were starving by May. Um they
would graze on grass from nearby parks. Um. They ate
their pets and they ate their cattle. M I need
(10:00):
She also know, it was very very bad. One I
witness account Don't reported that the children of a woman
who they knew starved to death and the woman dismembered them,
cooked them and ate them. Hm. Yes, the situation for
children was dire, yes, m hmm, Like God, wouldn't you
(10:25):
like try and cook yourself for your kids first? In theory,
I don't know, have you ever met a French person,
I'm kidding, I'm anyway, Um so cannibalism, so they didn't
care about children as much. You know, they were all
gonna die anyway. You know. It's like most of them
died before age five, so I guess you might as
well eat them. Yeah, Gobby, you're gonna get so much
(10:49):
hate for that just because literally children would die, because
that's no I'm aware. But the eating part, it's like, okay,
don't eat your children. Okay. Well, it's like the when
we did a little bit of the history of birth
control that episode, and we basically said that many times
the best birth control was having the baby and then
(11:09):
abandoning it, which is literally what so many people did
back then. Oh yeah, that was dark anyway. So as
as we can see and hear cannibalism was not something
insane to consider. So finally, an assembly got together in
June to figure out what to do about the food shortage. Okay,
(11:30):
they were like, we need to figure this out, and
they came up with an interesting innovative solution. They decided
to make bread out of bones. Oh oh yeah, how yeah,
I will tell you so. If y'all remember Gabby's fascinating
story about corpses going wild in Paris, the city has
(11:50):
always had a constant influx of bodies. Cemeteries are constantly
overflowing or used to constantly overflow too many corpses, an
understandable problem. That is why the catacombs exist, right, So
the assembly marched on over to the whole the Innocence Cemetery,
which is the same one that overflowed and was one
of the reasons that the catacombs became the thing that
(12:11):
they are today. And they disinterred corpses, taking and cleaning
their bones, then grinding them into a fine powder so
that they could be used to make bread. And they
called the bread Madame de Montpenzier's bread. It was named
after one important member of the Catholic League who staunchly
supported the nutritious idea. Mind you, she never tasted it, Okay,
(12:35):
she just she just said that it was a good idea.
Did they use it as like the flower like exactly? Yes,
they would use the bones the bone dust as flower
is actually what it's called. I believe there is, because
like they actually use bone meal for stuff like in
(12:55):
animal husbandry. Okay, Tyler, are bones nutrecious so calcium? Well yes,
but interesting so the bone bread Sadly, it didn't work
because disinterred bones are not very nutritious and they let
(13:17):
gluten so the bread would fall apart very easily, and
it wasn't tasty. And it seems like the people who
ate the bone bread actually died when they would eat it. Oh,
oh that's too that's too bad. It was such a
good idea and it just didn't work out, quite the
opposite of I mean, they were trying to be innovative.
(13:39):
I understand that, you know they were. Yeah. Times. It
was actually interesting though, because I did look up whether
that would be nutritious, and it wouldn't be nutritious in
the sense of like what we need for food, Like
it wouldn't really give us anything, but it does have
calcium and did you guys know that that is rich
in minerals obviously, And in the nineteenth century, after the
(14:02):
Battle of Waterloo, where many people died in the Napoleonic Wars,
the bones of the dead soldiers and their horses were
actually shipped off to be ground and made into fertilizer
and that actually worked very well. Hmm. Okay, well, I'm
glad to know what to do with my bones now exactly,
so did it work? Lots of people were dying. M
(14:24):
bone bread was a failure. So yeah, after around forty
to fifty thousand Parisians died, Henry was like, I guess
I'll convert to Catholicism and wow, yeah, he saying Paris
is worth a mass so wow, Okay, that's annoying, because
(14:47):
then it was like for nothing, that's so annoying. Exactly
all right, Naked, thank you so much for telling us
about the bone bread. Um, I know what I'll be
doing this afternoon is making me some bone bread. No cottage,
court of you, okay, brb, Okay, welcome back. It's Cadavergalza.
(15:10):
Nika just told us a wonderful tale about making bone
bread and then also a mama eating her babies. Um,
and here's here's here's something about cannibalism survive. There's multiple
different types of it, you know, there's like the types
like there's like some cultures that you know have ritual
uh cannibalism, like if your loved one dies, sometimes people
(15:31):
will be like, okay, as the sister as yeah, as
the sister, I'm gonna eat my brother's brain or whatever,
you know, you know, their ship like that. There's also
cannibalism via like insanity, which we also we we've talked
about that before, like with the guy and was it
in Florida, Yes, in Florida, Yeah, with the guy who
(15:52):
had killed the two people and nate them. Um, most
likely due to mental illness. But then there is also
survival cannibalism, which is kind of what Nika was describing,
which was, you know, when you're real hungry and you
ain't got nothing else to eat, And this has happened
a lot. There's been a lot of survival cannibalism throughout history,
and there was even some people who are like it
(16:12):
might like just be like an innate human trait of
just like when you're hungry, there's nothing else to eat,
you're like I'll eat another person. So don't don't feel
bad if you eat somebody. That's all I'm saying. It's
an innate thing. Okay, that's not what I'm saying. I'm
making a joke. Guys, don't freak out. Okay, don't eat
(16:33):
somebody unless you have to. Like whatever I think I'm
Cannibalism is like yea um okay, because Okay, so like
there's you know, famously, there was like the Donner Party,
who was like, you know, a bunch of pioneers who
also are just trying to get out to California, but
(16:53):
then they got lost and so then they were eating
each other. And then there's just been other times in
like with Jamestown, which was like the first Virginia colony,
there's cannibalism there because they weren't doing so hot. I mean,
they also didn't treat the Native Americans too. No one
was doing hot and there was no hotness was happening.
But then the colonizers they they didn't have a lot
(17:14):
of resources and they didn't know how to like work
the land, so they were starving and they there's like
one account where they ate this fourteen year old maid
and they think they think she wasn't they didn't kill her.
They just like she might have died and then they
ate her. But they couldn't be too sure that story.
Maybe maybe it happened. Also, this has happened multiple times
(17:38):
on like on boats, so when neither boats get lost
or they get shipped wrecked, that it is a not
you know, maritime law, but it is what they call
a custom of the sea, where like people will eat
other people when they're shipwrecked and shit. It's just like
it has happened so much, so many times that that's
(18:00):
a custom of the sea. But I think the one
of the most horrific cases of cannibalism was during World
War two. It was a siege on len Andrad, which
is now Saint Petersburg. So this was in World War
two in nineteen forty one, Nazi Germany and the Fins
and I think Italy two. They were trying to take
the cities in Russia. And instead of like you know,
(18:24):
attacking the cities and like taking control of the city
because then they would be like responsible for taking care
of the citizens, Hitler decided on more of agent assidal
plan that would just basically lead to mass starvation of
a large quantity of the population. So basically he was
trying to starve out everybody and kill all the Russians.
When the Germans attacked nineteen forty one, the city of
(18:46):
Leningrad only had supplies like food supplies for about a month,
and the only access point to the city once it
was surrounded by enemy forces was this one lake called
Lake Ladoga, and the people started calling it the road
of life because it was the only way that they
could get food into the city. Basically, this isn't they
had cards, but then it ended up being like they
(19:08):
would only get a third of the amount of food
that they were promised. Some people would just get three
thin slices of bread, and the bread was often made
out of like sawdust, So yeah, and then people were
so hungry that they were eating like petroleum jelly and glue.
And then they started eating rats and pigeons and their pets,
(19:30):
and thousands of people started dying of starvation. And in
the peak of the winter from ninety one to ninety two,
every month one hundred thousand people were dying of Oh my,
that was a long siege. Yeah, it was for almost
The siege was for almost nine hundred days. So what
(19:52):
ended up happening the Allies one World War two spoiler,
but within like that first winter of the siege. The
first reported case of cannibalism was in nineteen forty one
in December, and there basically they also had accounts of
like mothers smothering their babies and eating them. There's also
the story of a man who killed his wife to
(20:12):
then feed her to their children and their nieces and nephews.
And then there's like one person said that a child
died there. He was just three years old. His mother
laid the body inside the double glazed window and sliced
off a piece of him every day to feed or
other child a daughter. And based on how many people
were starving, cannibalism was actually like pretty rare by comparison.
(20:34):
What was more common is that people were like killing
other people to get their ration cards. But cannibalism did
become such a problem that they had like a special
like police force basically to like catch cannibals. And there's
two different types. There was the corpse eating cannibals who
would just like eat dead people, and then there's the
ones who would actually murder people and eat them, and
I think they arrest They ended up arresting like two
(20:55):
thousand people cannibalism. That's a lot. Gosh. Can you imagine
living in a city where there are two thousand active
cannibals out just like hungry and everyone's hungry and you
can't leave. Wow? That And like if you're there, you're
probably like, that's not a bad idea. Let's you know,
we got to eat something. No judgment. No judgment on
(21:18):
them either, because they were starving. That's not Yeah. So
the Russians were able to kind of like take back
Leningrad in like nineteen forty three, but then they weren't
fully able to take it back until nineteen forty four.
And at that point they said that there had originally
been like two point five million people in and around
(21:39):
the area of Leningrad, and in the population was reduced
to eight hundred thousand people. Wow. So anyway, sad cannibal
is uh? Sad? Is there such thing as happy cannibalism?
Probably not. I don't know if you're a cannibal, because
then I think you would probably get happy. They'd give cannibalism.
(22:00):
I feel like the ritual cannibalism is pretty happy because
like there's you know, you're on ring, you're dead by
eating their brain, right, obviously, obviously we love it all right, Taylor,
Now that I've brought us down into a deep dark pit, well,
I'm going to talk about Russia. Oh good, we're still there.
(22:21):
We're still stay in Russia please, but we're gonna move
forward a little bit to September eleventh, twenty seventeen. Oh
so this well was not that long ago, which is scary.
Oh no, oh no, I forget we're talking about canibalism. Yeah.
I was like, reset, Oh, what's it going to via that? Okay,
(22:42):
so picture this. We're in Russia September eleven, twenty seventeen. Right,
we already said that. I'm there there. I assume it's
early morning. There's these roadworkers and they see something in
the distance and they're like, what's that? So they go
check it out. It's a cell phone, because it's twenty
seventeen cell phones. Wow, a cell phone, so the cell
(23:04):
phone is not dead. They are able to get into
the cell phone and they're like, hey, let's snoop, let's
check it out. Let's see what's in there, Let's see
whose it is. See if we can figure it out.
So whoever lost it, it was not that long ago,
because it's not dead yet. So they go into the
photos to see if they know the person or something.
They're like flipping through the photos. They see like a
(23:25):
couple like hanging out with some friends. They're all smiling, happy.
They keep flipping and then they find images of a
dismembered body and a man are you ready for this
with body parts hanging out of his mouth? Oh? These
are what a shocker. These are like selfies too. He's like, oh,
(23:45):
gott out like you know, okay, wait, let me I
need I need some more clarity. So it is a
selfie of a man and there are body parts hanging
out of his mouth. He is alive. The men who's
eating the body parts? Yes, okay, he's like he's taking
a selfie and has like a hand hanging out of
his mouth, a human hand that's been dismembered. Okay, like
(24:08):
probably P signing like oh I don't know that's dark. Wow.
So obviously they're like, oh this is scary. They freak out.
They call the cops. They're like, yo, you need to
look at this phone. So that's where the investigation begins.
So the cops are like, let's take out the simcard
a bing bought a boom. The phone belongs to a
(24:30):
fella named Dmitri. Okay, so they're like, Dmitri, WTF, what's
happening bro? So he So Dmitri and his wife Natalia
they live in this like military base. It's like a
hostile accommodation type thing. I don't really understand, but it's
in southwest southwest Russia. So investigators go and they're like, hey, Dmitri,
(24:56):
well the heck this is very weird. And at first
Dmitri and Hay and his wife Natalia are just like,
oh yeah, like we found this bo like this dismembered body,
and we were like oh yeah, we thought we would
just like take pics with it. And then it's just
like take the body parts home, which like m yeah,
you find a dismembered body and you're just like, oh yeah,
(25:19):
this looks like a fun furnishing for my house. I'm
pretty sure that's already a crime. We've done an episode
on what to do if you come across the body,
and I'll tell you guys, right now, it's not that
it's not what you don't do that yeah. But then
they were like, okay, but there's like body parts hanging
out of your mouth and he's like, oh yeah that.
So they're like, we're gonna need to come and check
(25:40):
out your apartment, see, like you know, this is a
crime scene. So they walk in the apartment and it's
like these guys are like straight up hoarders. There's like
clothes everywhere, papers, like like it's just super not clean,
straight up like off of that show like Buried Alive
or whatever. There's pictures of it and videos of it
(26:02):
if you want to check it out done and I do. So.
They also noted like they were like all these wigs
hanging off of lamps and like draped all over the
places like Silence of the Lambs. It was just like
really weird. So so then as they continue to search,
they find this like stash of photos. They open this doorer.
(26:23):
There's like photos and all this stuff. There's pictures of
them with you know, with people friends, just like the
cell phone, and then pictures of dismembered bodies. One of
the photos this is okay, this is really this is bad.
They found a photo and there's this like silver platter
with fruits and vegetables, specifically oranges and a head. And
(26:48):
when you look a little harder at this strange photo,
there are olives placed in the eyes and a lemon
slice for the nose, and it's just like, whoa, what
is this? This is like a human head? A human head?
Did you see it? Or yeah? Described there there are
(27:08):
photos online, but like they've blurred out the head because
that's disturbing. But they were just like oranges, like whole
oranges placed around it. Also oranges and olives. Weird combo. Yeah,
that's the weird party. Yeah. So anyway, they keep they
keep looking like they're like this is this is not cool?
(27:31):
And then they find a video that is like a
how to video to be a cannibal. And so I'm
not sure like who made the video, like if it
was the couple or it was just like somebody else.
There's just like teaching others how to be a cannibal.
But that was there, so we're we're really picking up,
(27:56):
like what's what's going on here there? These people are
eating people a whole mode. Yeah. Then they find a
cookbook in Natalia's handwer she's creating, and you guessed it.
They are recipes to cook victims of this situation. So
at this point they are arrested, right, okay, yeah, yeah,
(28:17):
So well we're not done looking around at their partment yet. Well,
so they're like so they're like, okay, this is all
very sketchy. So like, let's look in the refrigerator, which
in a cannibal's house, as you can imagine, they were
like all these glass jars with legit body parts chilling
(28:37):
and sailing like hands, ears, whatever. There were also lots
of frozen chunks of meat and the freezer. They're like
not exactly sure like where the meat originated from. And
they're like, okay, we're just gonna take this whole refrigerator
that's going into evidence. Remember those wigs, m yes, they
(29:00):
were not wigs, as I'm sure you have probably figured out.
They were people. They would scalp their victims and then
just like literally like cut the hair off and like
scalp it. And they just like had these chilling around
the apartment. So the initial investigation they determined there at
(29:21):
least seven different bodies in there. So when they came in,
so they're like, y'all are arrested, this is nope, So
they come in for questioning, and Natalia actually identified and
they like confess that, like, you know, they've been been
cannibals for a while, and they actually identified thirty people
who are actually on the missing person's list, Like she
(29:42):
was able to say like, oh it was this person,
like knew the names and like the dates and everything.
Is there is there info on how they chose their victims?
Like what? Yeah, so so I found this actually this
like YouTube video with this girl's talking about it, and
she said, which I didn't read this anywhere, so this
is this is just like a he said, she said thing.
(30:02):
But she said that like they would get on these
dating apps or dating sites. But here's the kicker is
they've been practicing cannibalism since nineteen ninety nine, so they've
been doing this for that's a long time to not
get caught. At least that's almost my entire lifetime. Yeah,
this just feels fake because it's like, how did they
(30:24):
not get caught. That's so many people in a long
period of time. No, exactly there were and there were
thirty people at least, and I feel like dismembering people
it's probably loud, you know, like you can't just casually
have an apartment dismembering people exactly. So okay, but the
evidence is they're a gabby. They have the people in
(30:44):
the apartment well, but it's it's it's mind boggling that
they weren't caught. So they had Okay. So, like I said,
they were like living in this like hostile type situation,
and so people when they would come back, like people
that also lived in the area, were like, oh, it
kind of like smelled a little funky, to look a
little bit weird. And if they were like you know,
tried to come and they would apparently like Natalia and
(31:07):
Dmitri would like freak out and be like no, no, no,
don't come in here, don't come in here. Which I'm like,
how did nobody think like, hey, you might want to
just do like a weird walls check. They just seem sketchy,
you know, I don't know, I've lived in a lot
of apartments, and the I mean, I think you guys
know that, like the way you live in apartments is
like you mind your business. Yeah, but this was like
a military base, you know. So anyway, they also had
(31:31):
like a seller where they would also keep a lot
of this stuff that they found. You gotta have a seller. Yeah.
So Natalia is like, hey, guys, I'm mentally ill, and
which I would be like, yeah, I would say so,
but Taylor's like, you don't say you don't say what
what are you? What are your symptoms? Murdering and eating people? Yeah? Right?
(31:55):
Well she was like yeah, I like, um, a few
years back, if you like look at my history, like
she had like substance abuse or something like that, and
she's like, yeah, so I'm like mentally ill. But the
psychiatrist was like, no, you're just like crazy eating people,
like that's just whatever. She was trying to get out
of it, yeah, because she was like I don't want
to go to prison, right, Yeah. So where they sent
(32:18):
Natalia because like she was just as if not more,
involved in Dmitri. She was sent to like an isolated
island prison situation like Shutter Island or something. You know. Um,
she's supposed to be there for ten years, ten or
twelve years, I forget which it was, and then after
that a year and a half in a regular prison,
(32:38):
which I'm like, you need to be there like for
like ever, right, they're gonna let what Yeah, I mean
I don't know about that. But um, I did. However,
I have seen a documentary about like Russian Russian prison
prisons and they're like no joke, but like still and
then her husband, Dmitri, he just went to like regular prison,
(33:01):
so like she was a little bit battier I guess
than he was. I don't know. So so here's what
they would do do. It's pretty graphic, but are you ready?
I'm ready? So what they would do so they would
inject their victims with a substance containing phenobarbital, which would
just like make them go to sleep, and then they
(33:22):
would skin them and then they would dismember them, and
they would like save some parts of souvenirs. They would
save the meat and some cans. And this is the
worst part. It is rumored that they may have or
it is suggested that they may have slipped some of
the meat into some of there's this other soldier's food
(33:44):
that were at the academy. So yeah, so super sketchy
that they were able to get away with us for
like twenty years and like only two people. Um yeah,
it makes me think there might have been more cannibals,
That's what That's what a lot of people were saying.
But I mean, there's no actual evidence of that, and
(34:07):
like honestly, like both Dmitri and Natalia were very I
mean they confessed, they opened up and they were like yeah,
so like the I don't know if it was the
first one or the most recent one, but they were
like yeah, so they would go on like dating sites
or whatever, and then they don't know if it was
for I mean, I guess they were trying to bring
them in as like a third person or something, because
(34:28):
they would like all three beyond the date. But then
at like one point, like Natalia got really jealous and
so Dmitri was like, oh and he got like all
he like stabbed it said that he stabbed this person
because he had always had a knife, and then Natalia
just like went ham and like took it even further
or something. So like I don't know, I don't it
(34:51):
seems like there should be more people, but they haven't
found evidence of that, and like the biggest thing that
they have they're trying to figure out the police is
like how to avoid this in the future, right, you know,
and like trying to figure out if there are more people,
And they were trying to really keep this on the
DL because that's like, this is terrifying, but it's it
(35:14):
all got leaked and so now people are freaked out
that like they're a lot, like had been eating people
for the last twenty years, thirty victims at least that
they could remember. And yeah, so there you go. I
think this story, this story also shows that if you're
trying to open up your relationship, you know, maybe have
(35:35):
some good communication so it doesn't spiral into a cannibalism
jealousy situation. That's the lesson I'm getting. Yeah, Yeah, that's
a great lesson. Kevin's a great lesson. Communicate with your
partner when you open up your relationship. Well, we love
to see it, We love to hear about it. We
are ready for our nightmares tonight. We'll be right back. Wow,
(36:03):
we're back with Cadavergas with a little bit more info.
And Taylor just told us a story that will live
with us in our hearts. I forgot to tell you
they were so good. I forgot I forgot one thing.
Um they This couple is now lovingly referred to as
the Cannibal couple Cuties alliteration. Yeah, the cannibal couple. Love
(36:28):
love makes he do crazy things. You know anyway, Um, well,
when you're talking about the uh, the fact that they
might have been slipping the human remains into other people's food,
that made me start thinking about Sweeney Todd obviously, So
I had to watch Sweeney Todd and he, you know,
(36:48):
kills he's the the demonic Barbara fleet Street and he
you know, kills his he kills his clients, which I
feel like that doesn't It's the whole thing, Taylor, It's
a whole thing. It came out and the first story
came out in like eighteen forty six. So if you
haven't caught up, get with it, get with it. But
(37:10):
I just feel like that's a really bad way to
like have clients. You know, like if you kill all
of them, how are you going to have a return customer?
Are you right? Have? Like word of mouth? That's what
I was going to Marketing is original, you know, marketing. Yeah,
So a Sweeney Tod is really unrealistic because then he
would send his victims down a little tunnel down to
(37:32):
missus love it, and then she would turn those people
and to meet pies very spicy. So I actually have
never seen it. So I'm actually kind of mad that
you just gave literally the entire plot away. Yeah, but
that's like the first like ten minutes or something, ten
twenty minutes. Well, it takes them a long time in
the musical to get there, yeah, because they got a
lot of singing to do. They have a lot of
(37:53):
sing because like musicals, they really love exposition. That's like
they're like me, it's my favorite part of anything. But
I was thinking, I was like, Okay, Sweeney Tod, it's
been around, like it's been a story that's been around
for a while, and I was like, was it like
based on somebody real? And the answer is no anyway,
d no, oh no. But the first Sweeney Todd was
(38:14):
in this Penny Dreadful, which was kind of like in
Victorian England they would write these really like spooky, like
gothic stories that were just like slasher fiction basically that
was just like really like not very well written and
often like plagiarized stories, but people really enjoyed reading them.
So he was the first. One was called like a
String of Pearls and it's just like these dudes are
(38:35):
like where did our friend go? He was like getting
like gonna go get a haircut, and then he neighbor
came back, you know, so then it's Sweeney Todd. Ah,
he did it, love it. But I was trying to
figure out, like they were saying at this point that
there might have been there was like a barber in
Paris who was killing people, but there's no like real
evidence of that, but there are people were like gossiping
(38:55):
about that. But then the cool thing about Sweeney Todd
is that it all goes back to maybe a little
bit of racism against Irish people. So this is like
I was like, what is the origin of Sweeney top
part of it was during this time too. There's a
lot of like adulteration of food, Like like a lot
of the food was contaminated, you know, like how you
(39:16):
get your cocaine now it's got ventanel, and it's same
thing back then. Like your meat pies would have gross
shit in them sometimes, and so it's like really at
the time, it's like it wouldn't be too crazy to
think that you just have like some human remains in
your pie. You're like that was a thing that was
happening meat pies for me, Oh, we're destroying them. I
kind of feel like all meat is ruined now. I mean,
(39:39):
I feel like it's all meat. I don't I'm vegetarian now,
are you actually? No? I grew up vegetarian, though, and
I was vegetarian in college. I'm not so much now,
but I do prefer melas. Wait when did you get changed?
Did you get changed and then you realize that you
had an actually a taste for meat, specifically human meat
like that one movie? Oh god? No, I just was like, well,
(40:02):
you wanted that movie. I think you would really relate
with the make character. It's kind of It can be
expensive to be a vegetarian sometimes. I don't like touching
raw meat. I don't know, I don't like making it,
so I prefer not to make it. I made chicken
for my partner yesterday because it was their birthday or
also would have never touched that disgusting chicken. Yeah, it's gross.
(40:25):
I like a turkey sandwich, you know, I could. I
could live without it, though. Okay, anyway, can we get
back to the story, yes, okay, well every Sweeney Todd Okay.
So yeah, at the time they were saying that sometimes
even here sawdust was in the flower, just people be
eating sawdust, I guess. But they were also like a
lot of milk was like diluted, and they would also
(40:45):
like in butter and milk, they would put copper in
it to give it a brighter color. You know, I don't,
oh my gosh, do we really care that much about
the color? Not a good time for eating in Victorian England.
So there's like, it's not crazy that you would have
human remains in your meat pie, you know, just there's
all sorts of crazy things in there. But okay, so
(41:07):
the racist origin of Sweeney Todd, this is what they're
thinking is because Sweeney it is a Scottish name, but
it was that mostly affiliated with Irish people and at
the time, they fucking hated Irish people and they was
just like a lab porterials of Irish people as like animals.
And you know, that's a great question. Haters be hate
and that's that's okay. I was gonna say xenophobia, but
(41:30):
that's basically haters be hating was just like a better term. Yeah.
But also again why that is a larger question, but
there's no it's complicated, okayis complicated. Yeah. Watch Peaky Blinders. Okay,
watch Dairy Girls. Watch Dairy Girls. Yeah, so they're thinking
(41:51):
that because they made Sweeney Todd. He was just like,
like this crazy person. They're like they think that's probably
where the character came from, was like the fact that
the food was gross and that they hated Irish people,
and that's kind of how he came around. And but
the thing is, you know, haters hate and right, but
people were actually, we're also in England, some people were
actually not xenophobic. They were actually being like, hey, guys,
(42:14):
you're hating on their Irish people and like poor people,
especially like poor Irish people all the time. Maybe you
should shut the fuck up and stop doing that sort
of shit. Okay, And specifically, basically there's this guy Jonathan
Swift in like seventeen thirty or seventeen twenty nine, and
he was a satirist and he I didn't know they
made jokes back then, they used to make jokes too,
(42:35):
But he wrote this whole thing, it's called a Modest Proposal,
basically trying to like make fun of like rich, xenophobic
English people, being like, hey, you know there's all these
like poor Irish people. Here's what I suggest. Why don't
you guys just eat their babies? You know? That was
his whole God essay that he wrote. It was satire, obviously,
(42:56):
but it was and he was like a modest proposal
for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from
being a burden on their parents or country and for
making them ben aficial to the public. And so he
just says this whole diet dribe about like, yeah, just
eat children, you just eat them, just eat them. I
think I read this in high school and I remember
(43:17):
it actually being very well written and funny, and like,
if you understand the context of the times, it's like
very enjoyable to read. Yeah. He was like, I have
been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London that a young, healthy child well nursed is
at a year old a most delicious and nourishing and
wholesome food. Which is funny whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled,
(43:41):
because here he's making fun of rich, but he's also
making fun of people in America, which I also appreciate,
my knowing American friend. We deserve it. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Also he was saying he was making fun of Catholics too.
He was like, infants flesh will be in season throughout
the year, but most plentiful in March and a little
before and after because all the babies were being born then,
(44:05):
because he was saying that was nine months after Lent.
He's like, all these people after Lent or horny and
they had kids, and now we got all of them
for Lent. Yeah, so that's a great time to like
eat children. Anyway. So when I was joking earlier about
eating your kids, you know, I'm just like this man.
You know, I'm making the same joke like three hundred
(44:26):
years later, So eat your children. The end. Well, this
has been an episode about cannibalism, and what a fun
time we had. Yeah, what did I ever do with
that lady's cookbook? That's a quick question. I'm gonna um
(44:50):
into evidence and probably not to see the light of
day because I mean, like here's the thing, and like, okay,
so back to Sweetie Todd, like even like you know,
the more more recent iteration, like people are watching this
and like some people are probably like, hum, that's not
about you. You know, look these people. That movie was
(45:14):
out when these people were around. Tim Burton did this.
So Tim Burton, it's Helena Bottom Carter dead. This Johnny
Depp did it. It's their fault that these people were
eating people feeding them to other people. Perhaps after this, Okay,
Johnny depp is canceled he encouraged cannibalism. No, Also, you know,
(45:36):
people have to take personal responsibility too. Just because you
have information doesn't mean you should do it. Like, don't
let yourself become a cannibal, y'all. That's all I'm saying.
Got it anyway? Yeah, even though it might be our
innate survived like none of us, none of us are surviving, Like,
we're fine right now. You don't need it, You don't
(45:56):
need to eat somebody. Okay, thanks for listening and we'll
talk about you next week. Bye bye, kid Gal. Cadaver
(46:17):
Gals is a production of School of Humans in iHeartRadio
and is hosted and All That Jazz by Nika Duarte Me,
Gabby Wats and Taylor Church. Wow what And you can
follow us on the internet at Cadaver Gals on Instagram
and Twitter. So thanks so much, x XO gossip Girl
School of Humans. Oh, it's another episode of cadaver Gals,
and this is the show where we talk about all
the ways people have died throughout history to cope with
our own mortality, and we don't cope well and we're broken.
I'm Gabby along with Nika. I couldn't sleep last night
because of the research that I was doing for this project. Hi,
(00:28):
I'm Nika, and time you know I already said who
I am? And your Taylor? Hi. Yeah, I slept well
last night thinking about it. No, I'm just kidding. I
did not sleep thinking about I just remember when we
did flush eating bacteria one time, So I think I
have a fungus on my nail and I think bacteria.
Oh No, that stresses me out. Today is a special
(00:52):
episode because we're just going to be talking about cannibalism
the whole time, because it was just you know, it's fall,
and you know what fall makes me think about pumpkin
spice and what does pumpkin spices made me think about
people ingesting pumping spice? And then I don't eat pumpkin spice,
so then I have to eat people because they're filled
with it. It's like a preseasoning. The only way you'll
(01:15):
have pumpkin spice. Cannibalism is my second favorite sword after couter. No,
I hate that word. Oh Catholic, no cat, Get your
mind out of the gutter, Gabby. Do you know that
I'm working on a short film called Night of the Couters?
(01:39):
I vaguely remember that, but that is very Night of
the Couter. That's every night for me. I don't know, well,
I as a bisexual, it's only half of my nights maybe, okay,
maybe only thirty three percent of okay, okay. Anyway, we
have a bunch of fun trigger warnings for today. Cannibalism
(02:00):
obviously also wore starvation, murder, prejudice against Irish people, just
membering corpses, scalping um. And I think that's that's it.
What Mark did you ask for? Honestly, it's gonna be
so fun to hear. And yeah, also, if you're eating
during this, I would suggest I did throughout all of
(02:20):
my presciuto yesterday because I was like, I can't eat this.
I think you think it looks like muscles. It looks
like the muscles that people have. Anyway, cue the music,
(02:44):
So Nika is gonna start off our fun episode about cannibalism,
and you know, she's taken us back back in time.
We're always going back in time, right, We're not talking
about future things. Hey, when we did cryotherapy or cryogenics, Sorry,
when we did cryogenics, we were talking about the futures.
(03:05):
Why don't you shut your mouth? Taylor? Taylor, whoa shut
your mouth? Except if you have a good comment and
Riff is talking, that will be compelling for the episode. Okay,
So we are in fact going back in time this time.
I was high on drugs when I wrote this outline,
(03:25):
so we will see how it goes. So we are
going to the fifteen nineties in France, a super fun
time for humanity in general, unless, um, you were in France.
That's a terrible opening, are you okay? Yeah? Fine? And fighting.
I mean it was probably terrible in other places. Or
(03:47):
maybe they had a better perspective, you know, yeah, maybe
people's attitudes were more positive back in good Okay. So
basically what was happening over there in the French towns
is their king had recently died and the heir of
the throne was a Protestant. That was bad. Yes, So
his name was Henry, the third of Navare. And this
(04:07):
sucked because France was in the middle of the Wars
of Religion, which was a long term conflict between Protestants
and Catholics. So here we are, the heir is Protestant
and he won't convert. He's like, no, I believe in
my Protestant things. I don't even know what Protestants believe,
and I'm so sorry, and he just refused. So the
(04:28):
Catholic League, which was a very powerful group of Catholic
people usually in the royalty or like government in France,
they decided to basically not recognize his the new king. Essentially,
they actually received money from Spain and support from the
Pope and they kind of started this war with the guy.
(04:51):
So the king and his new minions, who also received
money from Germany and from other Protestant interests including England
as well, was like, okay, we're going to go to war.
And so they went and to war together and they
waged a four year They just packed up their bag
headed out to war. For Jesus. My Jesus is different
(05:11):
than your Jesus. By yeah. And honestly, what I found
funny as I was reading about this is it felt
like a war reception. There was the War of Religion,
and then on top of that, there was this four
year war inside of the War of Religion, so war reception,
indeed war reception. Okay, listen, it was crazy. So the
(05:33):
war was going pretty well for Henri and he was
taking over France bit by bit. So the Protestants were winning. Okay.
Henry beat the Catholic League at the Battle of Ivory,
which was a very decisive victory. It was a big deal.
And this with the area where the battle happened was
about thirty miles west of Paris, so Prusians got a
bit freaked out and they decided to take a refuge
(05:54):
within the city. A lot of peasants who had land,
who had windmills, who had cattle, abandoned all of their
things because they thought that they'd be safer within the
walls of Paris. Yeah, Taylor horses were abandoned, abandoned them. Wow,
I love their cottage chorusesthetic though I know all of
(06:16):
this talking about bread made be hungry for some bread. Okay,
So they left all of their stuff, went into the
walls of Paris. This ended up being smart for safety,
but not smart for their tummies. I cannot believe I
actually wrote that Wow did take control of many towns
near Paris, so the peasants were smart to flee. However,
(06:38):
he also burned all of their windmills and cut off
all of their food supplies, so both peasants and city
dwellers were left without bread, without food, without resources inside
of Paris, locked in the city. I feel like I
see where this is going. Oh yeah you do. So
wait so was Henry So why was he destroying their stuff?
(07:01):
Because were they Catholic peasants or he just was like
I gotta burn taking over France basically, like because the
Catholic League still controlled France and Catholic interests control friends.
So okay, so he just had to burn it up.
So dumb, honestly, Yeah, so dumb. I mean I think
if your war ends up being a war reception, maybe
(07:24):
take some time think about it. Think about why this
is the regular war's farm. If he's trying to take
the land and like burn up the land, it's like, bro,
that's your land. Literally, this is actually if you end
up winning, what are you gonna do with all this
messed up land, all the messed up windmills? Yeah? How
are you gonna have your cottage core aesthetic immediately you're
(07:45):
gonna have to rebuild it might not even be fashionable anymore. Yeah,
and then like the next trend, how's he gonna like,
He's gonna be still so backed up on cottage core.
How is he gonna get to yo case style? You know,
it's like creating his own trends? When is he gonna
get his low rise jeans? If he's trying to rebuild
cottage windmills, it's not it's not right, Okay. Anyway, it
(08:06):
was just very unstrategic anyway. So they had cheese and windmills,
so this was a big deal. Obviously. The average Parisian
ate one point five to two point five pounds of
bread a day. They loved bread. Okay, I love bread.
I love bread too. Okay, I have a baguett in
my closet right now, close in your closet and just
(08:29):
my secret bagette. I meant to say cabinet. But do
you hide food from yourself as well? What? No hide
chocolate for myself here? Do you really? Yeah? Um found
it though the other day. It's a problem. Do you
just have like really bad short term memory? You're just
like I'm hiding this from myself. Yeah, that is so
(08:54):
I used to hide money from myself too. What Yeah,
can you imagine being so rich that you could do that?
I can't. No, Okay, Taylor's like a try, don't do
it now, I don't. I don't hide money for myself now.
Actually I actually do. I will put like money for
safekeeping um places. Sometimes the feeling of I will say
(09:17):
this has only happened to me like twice, The feeling
of going into like a jean pocket or whatever and
suddenly pulling out cash and being like, oh my gosh,
free money. But in reality it's like your money and
you just forgotten it's free money. Oh okay, Well, well
we'll listen to from the Horse Girl. Okay, okay, well okay,
well anyway back to the story. Okay, So, so they're there.
(09:38):
They they want their bread exactly, and Henry the new
King took it away from them. Again bad pr and
his end too. So the siege began in kind of
April ish and Parisians were starving by May. Um they
would graze on grass from nearby parks. Um. They ate
their pets and they ate their cattle. M I need
(10:00):
She also know, it was very very bad. One I
witness account Don't reported that the children of a woman
who they knew starved to death and the woman dismembered them,
cooked them and ate them. Hm. Yes, the situation for
children was dire, yes, m hmm, Like God, wouldn't you
(10:25):
like try and cook yourself for your kids first? In theory,
I don't know, have you ever met a French person,
I'm kidding, I'm anyway, Um so cannibalism, so they didn't
care about children as much. You know, they were all
gonna die anyway. You know. It's like most of them
died before age five, so I guess you might as
well eat them. Yeah, Gobby, you're gonna get so much
(10:49):
hate for that just because literally children would die, because
that's no I'm aware. But the eating part, it's like, okay,
don't eat your children. Okay. Well, it's like the when
we did a little bit of the history of birth
control that episode, and we basically said that many times
the best birth control was having the baby and then
(11:09):
abandoning it, which is literally what so many people did
back then. Oh yeah, that was dark anyway. So as
as we can see and hear cannibalism was not something
insane to consider. So finally, an assembly got together in
June to figure out what to do about the food shortage. Okay,
(11:30):
they were like, we need to figure this out, and
they came up with an interesting innovative solution. They decided
to make bread out of bones. Oh oh yeah, how yeah,
I will tell you so. If y'all remember Gabby's fascinating
story about corpses going wild in Paris, the city has
(11:50):
always had a constant influx of bodies. Cemeteries are constantly
overflowing or used to constantly overflow too many corpses, an
understandable problem. That is why the catacombs exist, right, So
the assembly marched on over to the whole the Innocence Cemetery,
which is the same one that overflowed and was one
of the reasons that the catacombs became the thing that
(12:11):
they are today. And they disinterred corpses, taking and cleaning
their bones, then grinding them into a fine powder so
that they could be used to make bread. And they
called the bread Madame de Montpenzier's bread. It was named
after one important member of the Catholic League who staunchly
supported the nutritious idea. Mind you, she never tasted it, Okay,
(12:35):
she just she just said that it was a good idea.
Did they use it as like the flower like exactly? Yes,
they would use the bones the bone dust as flower
is actually what it's called. I believe there is, because
like they actually use bone meal for stuff like in
(12:55):
animal husbandry. Okay, Tyler, are bones nutrecious so calcium? Well yes,
but interesting so the bone bread Sadly, it didn't work
because disinterred bones are not very nutritious and they let
(13:17):
gluten so the bread would fall apart very easily, and
it wasn't tasty. And it seems like the people who
ate the bone bread actually died when they would eat it. Oh,
oh that's too that's too bad. It was such a
good idea and it just didn't work out, quite the
opposite of I mean, they were trying to be innovative.
(13:39):
I understand that, you know they were. Yeah. Times. It
was actually interesting though, because I did look up whether
that would be nutritious, and it wouldn't be nutritious in
the sense of like what we need for food, Like
it wouldn't really give us anything, but it does have
calcium and did you guys know that that is rich
in minerals obviously, And in the nineteenth century, after the
(14:02):
Battle of Waterloo, where many people died in the Napoleonic Wars,
the bones of the dead soldiers and their horses were
actually shipped off to be ground and made into fertilizer
and that actually worked very well. Hmm. Okay, well, I'm
glad to know what to do with my bones now exactly,
so did it work? Lots of people were dying. M
(14:24):
bone bread was a failure. So yeah, after around forty
to fifty thousand Parisians died, Henry was like, I guess
I'll convert to Catholicism and wow, yeah, he saying Paris
is worth a mass so wow, Okay, that's annoying, because
(14:47):
then it was like for nothing, that's so annoying. Exactly
all right, Naked, thank you so much for telling us
about the bone bread. Um, I know what I'll be
doing this afternoon is making me some bone bread. No cottage,
court of you, okay, brb, Okay, welcome back. It's Cadavergalza.
(15:10):
Nika just told us a wonderful tale about making bone
bread and then also a mama eating her babies. Um,
and here's here's here's something about cannibalism survive. There's multiple
different types of it, you know, there's like the types
like there's like some cultures that you know have ritual
uh cannibalism, like if your loved one dies, sometimes people
(15:31):
will be like, okay, as the sister as yeah, as
the sister, I'm gonna eat my brother's brain or whatever,
you know, you know, their ship like that. There's also
cannibalism via like insanity, which we also we we've talked
about that before, like with the guy and was it
in Florida, Yes, in Florida, Yeah, with the guy who
(15:52):
had killed the two people and nate them. Um, most
likely due to mental illness. But then there is also
survival cannibalism, which is kind of what Nika was describing,
which was, you know, when you're real hungry and you
ain't got nothing else to eat, And this has happened
a lot. There's been a lot of survival cannibalism throughout history,
and there was even some people who are like it
(16:12):
might like just be like an innate human trait of
just like when you're hungry, there's nothing else to eat,
you're like I'll eat another person. So don't don't feel
bad if you eat somebody. That's all I'm saying. It's
an innate thing. Okay, that's not what I'm saying. I'm
making a joke. Guys, don't freak out. Okay, don't eat
(16:33):
somebody unless you have to. Like whatever I think I'm
Cannibalism is like yea um okay, because Okay, so like
there's you know, famously, there was like the Donner Party,
who was like, you know, a bunch of pioneers who
also are just trying to get out to California, but
(16:53):
then they got lost and so then they were eating
each other. And then there's just been other times in
like with Jamestown, which was like the first Virginia colony,
there's cannibalism there because they weren't doing so hot. I mean,
they also didn't treat the Native Americans too. No one
was doing hot and there was no hotness was happening.
But then the colonizers they they didn't have a lot
(17:14):
of resources and they didn't know how to like work
the land, so they were starving and they there's like
one account where they ate this fourteen year old maid
and they think they think she wasn't they didn't kill her.
They just like she might have died and then they
ate her. But they couldn't be too sure that story.
Maybe maybe it happened. Also, this has happened multiple times
(17:38):
on like on boats, so when neither boats get lost
or they get shipped wrecked, that it is a not
you know, maritime law, but it is what they call
a custom of the sea, where like people will eat
other people when they're shipwrecked and shit. It's just like
it has happened so much, so many times that that's
(18:00):
a custom of the sea. But I think the one
of the most horrific cases of cannibalism was during World
War two. It was a siege on len Andrad, which
is now Saint Petersburg. So this was in World War
two in nineteen forty one, Nazi Germany and the Fins
and I think Italy two. They were trying to take
the cities in Russia. And instead of like you know,
(18:24):
attacking the cities and like taking control of the city
because then they would be like responsible for taking care
of the citizens, Hitler decided on more of agent assidal
plan that would just basically lead to mass starvation of
a large quantity of the population. So basically he was
trying to starve out everybody and kill all the Russians.
When the Germans attacked nineteen forty one, the city of
(18:46):
Leningrad only had supplies like food supplies for about a month,
and the only access point to the city once it
was surrounded by enemy forces was this one lake called
Lake Ladoga, and the people started calling it the road
of life because it was the only way that they
could get food into the city. Basically, this isn't they
had cards, but then it ended up being like they
(19:08):
would only get a third of the amount of food
that they were promised. Some people would just get three
thin slices of bread, and the bread was often made
out of like sawdust, So yeah, and then people were
so hungry that they were eating like petroleum jelly and glue.
And then they started eating rats and pigeons and their pets,
(19:30):
and thousands of people started dying of starvation. And in
the peak of the winter from ninety one to ninety two,
every month one hundred thousand people were dying of Oh my,
that was a long siege. Yeah, it was for almost
The siege was for almost nine hundred days. So what
(19:52):
ended up happening the Allies one World War two spoiler,
but within like that first winter of the siege. The
first reported case of cannibalism was in nineteen forty one
in December, and there basically they also had accounts of
like mothers smothering their babies and eating them. There's also
the story of a man who killed his wife to
(20:12):
then feed her to their children and their nieces and nephews.
And then there's like one person said that a child
died there. He was just three years old. His mother
laid the body inside the double glazed window and sliced
off a piece of him every day to feed or
other child a daughter. And based on how many people
were starving, cannibalism was actually like pretty rare by comparison.
(20:34):
What was more common is that people were like killing
other people to get their ration cards. But cannibalism did
become such a problem that they had like a special
like police force basically to like catch cannibals. And there's
two different types. There was the corpse eating cannibals who
would just like eat dead people, and then there's the
ones who would actually murder people and eat them, and
I think they arrest They ended up arresting like two
(20:55):
thousand people cannibalism. That's a lot. Gosh. Can you imagine
living in a city where there are two thousand active
cannibals out just like hungry and everyone's hungry and you
can't leave. Wow? That And like if you're there, you're
probably like, that's not a bad idea. Let's you know,
we got to eat something. No judgment. No judgment on
(21:18):
them either, because they were starving. That's not Yeah. So
the Russians were able to kind of like take back
Leningrad in like nineteen forty three, but then they weren't
fully able to take it back until nineteen forty four.
And at that point they said that there had originally
been like two point five million people in and around
(21:39):
the area of Leningrad, and in the population was reduced
to eight hundred thousand people. Wow. So anyway, sad cannibal
is uh? Sad? Is there such thing as happy cannibalism?
Probably not. I don't know if you're a cannibal, because
then I think you would probably get happy. They'd give cannibalism.
(22:00):
I feel like the ritual cannibalism is pretty happy because
like there's you know, you're on ring, you're dead by
eating their brain, right, obviously, obviously we love it all right, Taylor,
Now that I've brought us down into a deep dark pit, well,
I'm going to talk about Russia. Oh good, we're still there.
(22:21):
We're still stay in Russia please, but we're gonna move
forward a little bit to September eleventh, twenty seventeen. Oh
so this well was not that long ago, which is scary.
Oh no, oh no, I forget we're talking about canibalism. Yeah.
I was like, reset, Oh, what's it going to via that? Okay,
(22:42):
so picture this. We're in Russia September eleven, twenty seventeen. Right,
we already said that. I'm there there. I assume it's
early morning. There's these roadworkers and they see something in
the distance and they're like, what's that? So they go
check it out. It's a cell phone, because it's twenty
seventeen cell phones. Wow, a cell phone, so the cell
(23:04):
phone is not dead. They are able to get into
the cell phone and they're like, hey, let's snoop, let's
check it out. Let's see what's in there, Let's see
whose it is. See if we can figure it out.
So whoever lost it, it was not that long ago,
because it's not dead yet. So they go into the
photos to see if they know the person or something.
They're like flipping through the photos. They see like a
(23:25):
couple like hanging out with some friends. They're all smiling, happy.
They keep flipping and then they find images of a
dismembered body and a man are you ready for this
with body parts hanging out of his mouth? Oh? These
are what a shocker. These are like selfies too. He's like, oh,
(23:45):
gott out like you know, okay, wait, let me I
need I need some more clarity. So it is a
selfie of a man and there are body parts hanging
out of his mouth. He is alive. The men who's
eating the body parts? Yes, okay, he's like he's taking
a selfie and has like a hand hanging out of
his mouth, a human hand that's been dismembered. Okay, like
(24:08):
probably P signing like oh I don't know that's dark. Wow.
So obviously they're like, oh this is scary. They freak out.
They call the cops. They're like, yo, you need to
look at this phone. So that's where the investigation begins.
So the cops are like, let's take out the simcard
a bing bought a boom. The phone belongs to a
(24:30):
fella named Dmitri. Okay, so they're like, Dmitri, WTF, what's
happening bro? So he So Dmitri and his wife Natalia
they live in this like military base. It's like a
hostile accommodation type thing. I don't really understand, but it's
in southwest southwest Russia. So investigators go and they're like, hey, Dmitri,
(24:56):
well the heck this is very weird. And at first
Dmitri and Hay and his wife Natalia are just like,
oh yeah, like we found this bo like this dismembered body,
and we were like oh yeah, we thought we would
just like take pics with it. And then it's just
like take the body parts home, which like m yeah,
you find a dismembered body and you're just like, oh yeah,
(25:19):
this looks like a fun furnishing for my house. I'm
pretty sure that's already a crime. We've done an episode
on what to do if you come across the body,
and I'll tell you guys, right now, it's not that
it's not what you don't do that yeah. But then
they were like, okay, but there's like body parts hanging
out of your mouth and he's like, oh yeah that.
So they're like, we're gonna need to come and check
(25:40):
out your apartment, see, like you know, this is a
crime scene. So they walk in the apartment and it's
like these guys are like straight up hoarders. There's like
clothes everywhere, papers, like like it's just super not clean,
straight up like off of that show like Buried Alive
or whatever. There's pictures of it and videos of it
(26:02):
if you want to check it out done and I do. So.
They also noted like they were like all these wigs
hanging off of lamps and like draped all over the
places like Silence of the Lambs. It was just like
really weird. So so then as they continue to search,
they find this like stash of photos. They open this doorer.
(26:23):
There's like photos and all this stuff. There's pictures of
them with you know, with people friends, just like the
cell phone, and then pictures of dismembered bodies. One of
the photos this is okay, this is really this is bad.
They found a photo and there's this like silver platter
with fruits and vegetables, specifically oranges and a head. And
(26:48):
when you look a little harder at this strange photo,
there are olives placed in the eyes and a lemon
slice for the nose, and it's just like, whoa, what
is this? This is like a human head? A human head?
Did you see it? Or yeah? Described there there are
(27:08):
photos online, but like they've blurred out the head because
that's disturbing. But they were just like oranges, like whole
oranges placed around it. Also oranges and olives. Weird combo. Yeah,
that's the weird party. Yeah. So anyway, they keep they
keep looking like they're like this is this is not cool?
(27:31):
And then they find a video that is like a
how to video to be a cannibal. And so I'm
not sure like who made the video, like if it
was the couple or it was just like somebody else.
There's just like teaching others how to be a cannibal.
But that was there, so we're we're really picking up,
(27:56):
like what's what's going on here there? These people are
eating people a whole mode. Yeah. Then they find a
cookbook in Natalia's handwer she's creating, and you guessed it.
They are recipes to cook victims of this situation. So
at this point they are arrested, right, okay, yeah, yeah,
(28:17):
So well we're not done looking around at their partment yet. Well,
so they're like so they're like, okay, this is all
very sketchy. So like, let's look in the refrigerator, which
in a cannibal's house, as you can imagine, they were
like all these glass jars with legit body parts chilling
(28:37):
and sailing like hands, ears, whatever. There were also lots
of frozen chunks of meat and the freezer. They're like
not exactly sure like where the meat originated from. And
they're like, okay, we're just gonna take this whole refrigerator
that's going into evidence. Remember those wigs, m yes, they
(29:00):
were not wigs, as I'm sure you have probably figured out.
They were people. They would scalp their victims and then
just like literally like cut the hair off and like
scalp it. And they just like had these chilling around
the apartment. So the initial investigation they determined there at
(29:21):
least seven different bodies in there. So when they came in,
so they're like, y'all are arrested, this is nope, So
they come in for questioning, and Natalia actually identified and
they like confess that, like, you know, they've been been
cannibals for a while, and they actually identified thirty people
who are actually on the missing person's list, Like she
(29:42):
was able to say like, oh it was this person,
like knew the names and like the dates and everything.
Is there is there info on how they chose their victims?
Like what? Yeah, so so I found this actually this
like YouTube video with this girl's talking about it, and
she said, which I didn't read this anywhere, so this
is this is just like a he said, she said thing.
(30:02):
But she said that like they would get on these
dating apps or dating sites. But here's the kicker is
they've been practicing cannibalism since nineteen ninety nine, so they've
been doing this for that's a long time to not
get caught. At least that's almost my entire lifetime. Yeah,
this just feels fake because it's like, how did they
(30:24):
not get caught. That's so many people in a long
period of time. No, exactly there were and there were
thirty people at least, and I feel like dismembering people
it's probably loud, you know, like you can't just casually
have an apartment dismembering people exactly. So okay, but the
evidence is they're a gabby. They have the people in
(30:44):
the apartment well, but it's it's it's mind boggling that
they weren't caught. So they had Okay. So, like I said,
they were like living in this like hostile type situation,
and so people when they would come back, like people
that also lived in the area, were like, oh, it
kind of like smelled a little funky, to look a
little bit weird. And if they were like you know,
tried to come and they would apparently like Natalia and
(31:07):
Dmitri would like freak out and be like no, no, no,
don't come in here, don't come in here. Which I'm like,
how did nobody think like, hey, you might want to
just do like a weird walls check. They just seem sketchy,
you know, I don't know, I've lived in a lot
of apartments, and the I mean, I think you guys
know that, like the way you live in apartments is
like you mind your business. Yeah, but this was like
a military base, you know. So anyway, they also had
(31:31):
like a seller where they would also keep a lot
of this stuff that they found. You gotta have a seller. Yeah.
So Natalia is like, hey, guys, I'm mentally ill, and
which I would be like, yeah, I would say so,
but Taylor's like, you don't say you don't say what
what are you? What are your symptoms? Murdering and eating people? Yeah? Right?
(31:55):
Well she was like yeah, I like, um, a few
years back, if you like look at my history, like
she had like substance abuse or something like that, and
she's like, yeah, so I'm like mentally ill. But the
psychiatrist was like, no, you're just like crazy eating people,
like that's just whatever. She was trying to get out
of it, yeah, because she was like I don't want
to go to prison, right, Yeah. So where they sent
(32:18):
Natalia because like she was just as if not more,
involved in Dmitri. She was sent to like an isolated
island prison situation like Shutter Island or something. You know. Um,
she's supposed to be there for ten years, ten or
twelve years, I forget which it was, and then after
that a year and a half in a regular prison,
(32:38):
which I'm like, you need to be there like for
like ever, right, they're gonna let what Yeah, I mean
I don't know about that. But um, I did. However,
I have seen a documentary about like Russian Russian prison
prisons and they're like no joke, but like still and
then her husband, Dmitri, he just went to like regular prison,
(33:01):
so like she was a little bit battier I guess
than he was. I don't know. So so here's what
they would do do. It's pretty graphic, but are you ready?
I'm ready? So what they would do so they would
inject their victims with a substance containing phenobarbital, which would
just like make them go to sleep, and then they
(33:22):
would skin them and then they would dismember them, and
they would like save some parts of souvenirs. They would
save the meat and some cans. And this is the
worst part. It is rumored that they may have or
it is suggested that they may have slipped some of
the meat into some of there's this other soldier's food
(33:44):
that were at the academy. So yeah, so super sketchy
that they were able to get away with us for
like twenty years and like only two people. Um yeah,
it makes me think there might have been more cannibals,
That's what That's what a lot of people were saying.
But I mean, there's no actual evidence of that, and
(34:07):
like honestly, like both Dmitri and Natalia were very I
mean they confessed, they opened up and they were like yeah,
so like the I don't know if it was the
first one or the most recent one, but they were
like yeah, so they would go on like dating sites
or whatever, and then they don't know if it was
for I mean, I guess they were trying to bring
them in as like a third person or something, because
(34:28):
they would like all three beyond the date. But then
at like one point, like Natalia got really jealous and
so Dmitri was like, oh and he got like all
he like stabbed it said that he stabbed this person
because he had always had a knife, and then Natalia
just like went ham and like took it even further
or something. So like I don't know, I don't it
(34:51):
seems like there should be more people, but they haven't
found evidence of that, and like the biggest thing that
they have they're trying to figure out the police is
like how to avoid this in the future, right, you know,
and like trying to figure out if there are more people,
And they were trying to really keep this on the
DL because that's like, this is terrifying, but it's it
(35:14):
all got leaked and so now people are freaked out
that like they're a lot, like had been eating people
for the last twenty years, thirty victims at least that
they could remember. And yeah, so there you go. I
think this story, this story also shows that if you're
trying to open up your relationship, you know, maybe have
(35:35):
some good communication so it doesn't spiral into a cannibalism
jealousy situation. That's the lesson I'm getting. Yeah, Yeah, that's
a great lesson. Kevin's a great lesson. Communicate with your
partner when you open up your relationship. Well, we love
to see it, We love to hear about it. We
are ready for our nightmares tonight. We'll be right back. Wow,
(36:03):
we're back with Cadavergas with a little bit more info.
And Taylor just told us a story that will live
with us in our hearts. I forgot to tell you
they were so good. I forgot I forgot one thing.
Um they This couple is now lovingly referred to as
the Cannibal couple Cuties alliteration. Yeah, the cannibal couple. Love
(36:28):
love makes he do crazy things. You know anyway, Um, well,
when you're talking about the uh, the fact that they
might have been slipping the human remains into other people's food,
that made me start thinking about Sweeney Todd obviously, So
I had to watch Sweeney Todd and he, you know,
(36:48):
kills he's the the demonic Barbara fleet Street and he
you know, kills his he kills his clients, which I
feel like that doesn't It's the whole thing, Taylor, It's
a whole thing. It came out and the first story
came out in like eighteen forty six. So if you
haven't caught up, get with it, get with it. But
(37:10):
I just feel like that's a really bad way to
like have clients. You know, like if you kill all
of them, how are you going to have a return customer?
Are you right? Have? Like word of mouth? That's what
I was going to Marketing is original, you know, marketing. Yeah,
So a Sweeney Tod is really unrealistic because then he
would send his victims down a little tunnel down to
(37:32):
missus love it, and then she would turn those people
and to meet pies very spicy. So I actually have
never seen it. So I'm actually kind of mad that
you just gave literally the entire plot away. Yeah, but
that's like the first like ten minutes or something, ten
twenty minutes. Well, it takes them a long time in
the musical to get there, yeah, because they got a
lot of singing to do. They have a lot of
(37:53):
sing because like musicals, they really love exposition. That's like
they're like me, it's my favorite part of anything. But
I was thinking, I was like, Okay, Sweeney Tod, it's
been around, like it's been a story that's been around
for a while, and I was like, was it like
based on somebody real? And the answer is no anyway,
d no, oh no. But the first Sweeney Todd was
(38:14):
in this Penny Dreadful, which was kind of like in
Victorian England they would write these really like spooky, like
gothic stories that were just like slasher fiction basically that
was just like really like not very well written and
often like plagiarized stories, but people really enjoyed reading them.
So he was the first. One was called like a
String of Pearls and it's just like these dudes are
(38:35):
like where did our friend go? He was like getting
like gonna go get a haircut, and then he neighbor
came back, you know, so then it's Sweeney Todd. Ah,
he did it, love it. But I was trying to
figure out, like they were saying at this point that
there might have been there was like a barber in
Paris who was killing people, but there's no like real
evidence of that, but there are people were like gossiping
(38:55):
about that. But then the cool thing about Sweeney Todd
is that it all goes back to maybe a little
bit of racism against Irish people. So this is like
I was like, what is the origin of Sweeney top
part of it was during this time too. There's a
lot of like adulteration of food, Like like a lot
of the food was contaminated, you know, like how you
(39:16):
get your cocaine now it's got ventanel, and it's same
thing back then. Like your meat pies would have gross
shit in them sometimes, and so it's like really at
the time, it's like it wouldn't be too crazy to
think that you just have like some human remains in
your pie. You're like that was a thing that was
happening meat pies for me, Oh, we're destroying them. I
kind of feel like all meat is ruined now. I mean,
(39:39):
I feel like it's all meat. I don't I'm vegetarian now,
are you actually? No? I grew up vegetarian, though, and
I was vegetarian in college. I'm not so much now,
but I do prefer melas. Wait when did you get changed?
Did you get changed and then you realize that you
had an actually a taste for meat, specifically human meat
like that one movie? Oh god? No, I just was like, well,
(40:02):
you wanted that movie. I think you would really relate
with the make character. It's kind of It can be
expensive to be a vegetarian sometimes. I don't like touching
raw meat. I don't know, I don't like making it,
so I prefer not to make it. I made chicken
for my partner yesterday because it was their birthday or
also would have never touched that disgusting chicken. Yeah, it's gross.
(40:25):
I like a turkey sandwich, you know, I could. I
could live without it, though. Okay, anyway, can we get
back to the story, yes, okay, well every Sweeney Todd Okay.
So yeah, at the time they were saying that sometimes
even here sawdust was in the flower, just people be
eating sawdust, I guess. But they were also like a
lot of milk was like diluted, and they would also
(40:45):
like in butter and milk, they would put copper in
it to give it a brighter color. You know, I don't,
oh my gosh, do we really care that much about
the color? Not a good time for eating in Victorian England.
So there's like, it's not crazy that you would have
human remains in your meat pie, you know, just there's
all sorts of crazy things in there. But okay, so
(41:07):
the racist origin of Sweeney Todd, this is what they're
thinking is because Sweeney it is a Scottish name, but
it was that mostly affiliated with Irish people and at
the time, they fucking hated Irish people and they was
just like a lab porterials of Irish people as like animals.
And you know, that's a great question. Haters be hate
and that's that's okay. I was gonna say xenophobia, but
(41:30):
that's basically haters be hating was just like a better term. Yeah.
But also again why that is a larger question, but
there's no it's complicated, okayis complicated. Yeah. Watch Peaky Blinders. Okay,
watch Dairy Girls. Watch Dairy Girls. Yeah, so they're thinking
(41:51):
that because they made Sweeney Todd. He was just like,
like this crazy person. They're like they think that's probably
where the character came from, was like the fact that
the food was gross and that they hated Irish people,
and that's kind of how he came around. And but
the thing is, you know, haters hate and right, but
people were actually, we're also in England, some people were
actually not xenophobic. They were actually being like, hey, guys,
(42:14):
you're hating on their Irish people and like poor people,
especially like poor Irish people all the time. Maybe you
should shut the fuck up and stop doing that sort
of shit. Okay, And specifically, basically there's this guy Jonathan
Swift in like seventeen thirty or seventeen twenty nine, and
he was a satirist and he I didn't know they
made jokes back then, they used to make jokes too,
(42:35):
But he wrote this whole thing, it's called a Modest Proposal,
basically trying to like make fun of like rich, xenophobic
English people, being like, hey, you know there's all these
like poor Irish people. Here's what I suggest. Why don't
you guys just eat their babies? You know? That was
his whole God essay that he wrote. It was satire, obviously,
(42:56):
but it was and he was like a modest proposal
for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from
being a burden on their parents or country and for
making them ben aficial to the public. And so he
just says this whole diet dribe about like, yeah, just
eat children, you just eat them, just eat them. I
think I read this in high school and I remember
(43:17):
it actually being very well written and funny, and like,
if you understand the context of the times, it's like
very enjoyable to read. Yeah. He was like, I have
been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London that a young, healthy child well nursed is
at a year old a most delicious and nourishing and
wholesome food. Which is funny whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled,
(43:41):
because here he's making fun of rich, but he's also
making fun of people in America, which I also appreciate,
my knowing American friend. We deserve it. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Also he was saying he was making fun of Catholics too.
He was like, infants flesh will be in season throughout
the year, but most plentiful in March and a little
before and after because all the babies were being born then,
(44:05):
because he was saying that was nine months after Lent.
He's like, all these people after Lent or horny and
they had kids, and now we got all of them
for Lent. Yeah, so that's a great time to like
eat children. Anyway. So when I was joking earlier about
eating your kids, you know, I'm just like this man.
You know, I'm making the same joke like three hundred
(44:26):
years later, So eat your children. The end. Well, this
has been an episode about cannibalism, and what a fun
time we had. Yeah, what did I ever do with
that lady's cookbook? That's a quick question. I'm gonna um
(44:50):
into evidence and probably not to see the light of
day because I mean, like here's the thing, and like, okay,
so back to Sweetie Todd, like even like you know,
the more more recent iteration, like people are watching this
and like some people are probably like, hum, that's not
about you. You know, look these people. That movie was
(45:14):
out when these people were around. Tim Burton did this.
So Tim Burton, it's Helena Bottom Carter dead. This Johnny
Depp did it. It's their fault that these people were
eating people feeding them to other people. Perhaps after this, Okay,
Johnny depp is canceled he encouraged cannibalism. No, Also, you know,
(45:36):
people have to take personal responsibility too. Just because you
have information doesn't mean you should do it. Like, don't
let yourself become a cannibal, y'all. That's all I'm saying.
Got it anyway? Yeah, even though it might be our
innate survived like none of us, none of us are surviving, Like,
we're fine right now. You don't need it, You don't
(45:56):
need to eat somebody. Okay, thanks for listening and we'll
talk about you next week. Bye bye, kid Gal. Cadaver
(46:17):
Gals is a production of School of Humans in iHeartRadio
and is hosted and All That Jazz by Nika Duarte Me,
Gabby Wats and Taylor Church. Wow what And you can
follow us on the internet at Cadaver Gals on Instagram
and Twitter. So thanks so much, x XO gossip Girl
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.