The Creepy Truth Behind 10 Urban Myths
2. The Cannibal Cook
The Legend
A long-suffering spouse grows tired of their other half's behaviour - perhaps they're abusive, neglectful or have had a string of affairs. They murder them, either in a fit of passion or as a cold, calculated hit, and need to figure out what to do with the body.
They decide that the best way to get rid of the evidence is to cook their soulmate into a lovely stew. For bonus points, they might even serve it to a police officer that happens to call round to investigate reports of a disturbance.
The Truth
Although this sounds like a story straight out of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected, there have actually been real instances of cannibalistic cookery after a domestic that has gone too far.
There was the case of David Viens, who told investigators that the reason they couldn't find his wife's body, was because he had slowly broken it down over four days in a 55-gallon slow cooker after he murdered her. He said he had then chucked it out with the waste that came from his restaurant.
In another similar case, Katherine Knight became the first woman in Australia to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole after she killed and cooked her husband in 2001. In a truly sick twist, however, Knight did not just dispose of the body. Instead, she hung it, cooked it and even served it to her children.
Truly the stuff of nightmares.