* Top investigator put on leave for misleading public 
 
 
 
 * He said up to 60 people murdered and their fat extracted 
 
 
 
 By Terry Wade 
 
 
 
 LIMA, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Peru suspended its top organized crime investigator on Tuesday after he misled the country by saying he had caught a gang of serial killers who acted out an ancient Andean legend and sold their victims’ fat. 
 
 
 
 Eusebio Felix was put on leave from his job for telling Peruvians last month that four suspected murderers apprehended by police were "Pishtacos" — the legendary killers who roam the Andes mountains extracting fat from travelers. 
 
 
 
 In the legend, the Pishtacos strung-up the torsos of their victims above candles and heated them to collect fat. 
 
 
 
 Police initially said the gang murdered up to 60 victims and exported their fat for thousands of dollars a liter to Italian cosmetics makers. In the end, there may have been only one victim. 
 
 
 
 When they announced their big find, police held a news conference and displayed what they said was human fat stored in an empty bottle of Inca Kola, the electric-yellow soft drink popular in the Andes. 
 
 
 
 They also showed a video of police pulling body parts from a shallow grave at a house in the mountainous region of Huanuco. 
 
 
 
 But on Tuesday, after weeks of doubts about the case, police in Lima, the capital, said the investigation had been botched. 
 
 
 
 General Miguel Hidalgo, the head of Peru’s police, said he was embarrassed. 
 
 
 
 "This affects the image and respectability of the police," he said. 
 
 
 
 Police in Huanuco, who complain they were excluded from the inquiry, said there was only one murder victim and that he was linked to the cocaine trade. 
 
 
 
 They believe the four alleged killers, who are still in custody, may have bottled his fat to intimidate their rivals in an area rife with drug trafficking and violence. 
 
 
 
 Police have been harshly criticized. 
 
 
 
 Anthropologists said investigators foolishly believed the Pishtacos legend when searching for a motive for the murder, and then played on people’s fears by turning the legend into reality. 
 
 
 
 "It seems a myth that has been in Peruvian culture for a long time was used to explain a very strange crime," said Juan Rivera of the Catholic University in Lima. 
 
 
 
 Politicians blamed the police for scaring away tourists. 
 
 
 
 "This has been a ruse of bad taste," said Jorge Espinoza, president of the region of Huanuco. 
 
 
 
 Doctors said it would be pointless to kill people to harvest their fat when it could be easily collected from plastic surgery clinics that perform tummy tucks. 
 
 
 
 "We wouldn’t throw out hundreds of liters of human fat if it were worth $15,000 a liter," said Julio Castro of Peru’s board of medicine. Others said fat spoils too quickly to be useful. (Additional reporting by Carlos Valdez and Enrique Mandujano; Editing by Eric Beech) ((terry.wade@reuters.com; +51 1 221 2130; Reuters Messaging: terry.wade.reuters.com@reuters.net)) ||||| By Dan Collyns 
 
 BBC News, Lima 
 
 Police had displayed what they said were bottles of human fat to reporters Peru's police chief has suspended a top investigator for saying he had caught a gang who were murdering people to sell their fat. Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people. He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre. But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie. 'Sold-on' In an extraordinary press conference, police showed two bottles of what they said was human fat and a photo of a decapitated head. Mr Murga told journalists how four suspects had confessed to gruesome murders reviving an Andean legend about the Pishtacos - mythical killers who murdered people on lonely roads to collect their fat. But two weeks later a complete lack of evidence showed the police account to be more fiction that fact. As a result Peru's chief of police, Miguel Hidalgo, announced Mr Murga would be put on indefinite leave from his job for sullying the reputation of his unit. Initial doubts were compounded when police from the region where the crimes were alleged to have taken place said they knew nothing about a gang of murderers killing people for their fat. They were only able to corroborate one of the dozens of alleged disappearances in a region where drug-trafficking and violence is rife. Mr Murga and the head of the anti-kidnapping unit had also claimed the fat was sold for thousands of dollars in the European black market supplying the cosmetics industry, but could not confirm any sales. Medical experts dismissed this theory, saying human fat had no monetary value and injecting it from one person to another would be potentially life-threatening. Some anthropologists say the police's story deliberately played on an old Peruvian myth to explain crimes which the police had failed to investigate fully. Other observers say this story was just one of many embellished or invented news stories used as a smokescreen which are intended to distract the general public from the real issues facing Peru. 
 
 
 
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– The Peruvian cop who claimed to have busted a crime ring that killed dozens of people to harvest their fat has been suspended for lying. Felix Murga, the country's top organized crime investigator, said that a gang had killed 60 people to sell their fat at $15,000 a liter. Investigators now believe there was just one victim and his murder was linked to drug trafficking, the BBC reports. Murga appears to have revived an ancient Andean legend of killers who roam the mountains extracting fat from travelers, say authorities, who blame him for damaging the police force's reputation and scaring tourists away. "This has been a ruse of bad taste," a local politician tells Reuters.