Cannibal beheads woman, eats head

By EDWIN IYO and JIGGER JERUSALEM
with NITZ ARANCON, Correspondents

TALISAYAN, Misamis Oriental — He took her head because there was no food at home.

Lloyd Bagtong, a real-life “Hannibal Lecter” from Talisayan, Misamis Oriental, said this casually behind bars, hours after he beheaded a woman the police are still trying to identify.

The 21-year-old cannibal told the Gold Star Daily: “Akong gidala ang ulo kay walay sud-an sa balay.”

What Bagtong did was like a scene straight from the stomach-churning Hannibal Lecter series but this one is true to life — he beheaded his victim and then ate her brains, face, eyes, nose, and ears. Some parts, he ate raw; others, he cooked.

Police said Bagtong confessed to killing the woman at a cemetery approximately 100 meters from the highway in Purok 1, Barangay Punta Santiago in Talisayan town.

Bagtong, a resident of Sitio Cabulogan, Barangay Casiboli in Talisayan, said he clobbered the woman to death with a steel bar. Seeing she was already dead, Bagtong then beheaded her with a scythe and brought her head home, some three to four kilometers away.

Investigators, however, said the victim was stabbed in the back, and her left breast was slashed off and believed eaten, too.

Capt. Maribeth Ramoga, Talisayan police chief, said officers arrested Bagtong at his home at around 7 am, about an hour after the victim’s headless body was found sprawling on the ground by villagers.

The victim was half-naked, wearing denim pants. Her hands were tied up.

During the investigation, Bagtong told the police where he threw the remains of the victim’s head — in a hole near his home. Police found what was left of it — a bloodied skull covered with some flesh and hair wrapped in a black and red garment. It was skinned with the brain, eyes, nose, and ears missing.

Ramoga said Bagtong told investigators that he first ate the woman’s brain.

“Tab-ang (bland),” Ramoga quoted Bagtong as saying after he was asked by an investigator about how it tasted.

Ramoga said Bagtong used the victim’s brain to make himself some rice toppings.

At the police station, Bagtong spoke like a normal person but Ramoga said the young man is mentally ill.

Ramoga said Bagtong was identified by the police after a concerned citizen informed them that he saw the young man running with a scythe tucked in his waist when people started talking about the discovery of the grisly murder at the cemetery.

“The suspect said he killed the victim because she was speaking in English. This probably got the suspect irritated,” Ramoga said.

Bagtong and the victim, also believed mentally ill, were seen walking together along the village road in Punta hours before the murder.

Talisayan Mayor Rommel Maslog said he asked the police to exert more effort to identify the victim so that her family could be informed.

Meanwhile, police are preparing to press murder charges against Bagtong.