* 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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 StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version ||||| Police in Acapulco patrol outside a beach home where masked armed men broke in and raped six Spanish women. (Bernandino Hernandez/Associated Press) 
 
 Six Spanish tourists were raped by a gang of armed, masked men in the Mexican resort of Acapulco, the latest chapter of violence that has tarnished the once-glamorous Pacific coast resort. 
 
 The vicious, hours-long attack occurred before dawn Monday at a house that six Spanish men, six Spanish women and a Mexican woman had rented on a quiet, idyllic stretch of beach on the outskirts of Acapulco. 
 
 The attackers gained access to the house because two of the Spaniards were in the yard and apparently were forced to open the door, said Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton at a news conference late Monday. 
 
 The five attackers burst into the house and held the group at gunpoint, he said. They tied up the six men with phone cords and bathing suit straps and then raped the six Spanish women. The Mexican woman was not raped. 
 
 The attack began about two hours after midnight Monday and the victims were only able to report the crime five hours later, at nearly seven in the morning. 
 
 "This is a regrettable situation, and of course it is going to damage Acapulco," Walton said. 
 
 Attackers wore masks 
 
 The once-glittering resort that attracted movie stars and celebrities in the 1950s and 60s has already been battered by years of drug gang killings and extortions, but except for very few incidents, the violence has not touched tourists. 
 
 Walton said he believed, but wasn't sure, that the assailants in Monday's attack didn't belong to a drug gang. Guerrero state Attorney General Martha Garzon Guzman said witness descriptions of the attackers were more difficult to obtain because they wore masks. 
 
 "From what the attorney general has told me, I don't think this was organized crime," Walton said. "But that will have to be investigated, we don't know." 
 
 Mexico's Foreign Relations Department issued a statement saying it regretted the attack, and suggesting it was not drug-cartel related. 
 
 "Up to now, the investigations are being carried out by local authorities and they will be the ones to provide information," the statement said. 
 
 In Mexico, federal authorities investigate drug-related crimes. 
 
 Security and drug analyst Jorge Chabat said that, after years of drug gang activity in Acapulco, the distinction may be merely semantic. 
 
 "At this point, the line between common and organized crime is very tenuous, there are a lot of these gangs that take advantage of the unsafe situation that currently exists, they know the government can't keep up," Chabat said. "Everything points to this being organized crime, because several gangs have operated there for years ... it's probably not the big cartels, but there are smaller groups that carry out crimes on a permanent basis." 
 
 The Spanish Embassy in Mexico City said the victims were receiving consular assistance. 
 
 The victims were "psychologically affected" by the attack and received treatment, the mayor said. 
 
 Travellers advisory 
 
 Spain's Foreign Ministry had already issued a travellers advisory on its website for Acapulco before the Monday attack, listing the resort as one of Mexico's "risk zone," though not the worst. 
 
 "In Acapulco, organized crime gangs have carried out violence, though up to now that has not affected tourists or the areas they visit," the advisory states. "At any rate, heightened caution is advised." 
 
 A travel advisory from Canada's Foreign Affairs department tells Canadians to "exercise extreme caution" in the state of Guerrero, including Acapulco, "due to high levels of organized crime and urban violence." 
 
 The attack came just three days after a pair of Mexican tourists returning from a beach east of Acapulco were shot at and slightly wounded by members of a masked rural self-defence squad that has set up roadblocks in areas north of Acapulco, to defend their communities against drug gang violence. 
 
 The vigilantes say the Mexican tourists failed to stop at their improvised roadblock. 
 
 Walton said the city was already contemplating ways to revive the city's image. 
 
 "We have to look at an advertising campaign to say that not everything in Acapulco is like that," Walton said. "This happens everywhere in the world, not just in Acapulco or in Mexico." 
 
 The attack was particularly embarrassing for Mexico, because it came just four days after Tourism Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu visited the International Tourism Fair held in Madrid to launch a "promotional offensive" depicting Mexico as a safe and attractive destination. 
 
 "This is Mexico's moment," Massieu said, describing it as "a safe country."
– 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.