A famous former castaway, accused of eating his fellow fisherman to survive being lost at sea for a record-setting 14+ months, is being sued for cannibalism by his dead shipmate’s family.
In November 2012, 36-year-old Jose Salvador Alvarenga and his 22-year-old employee, Ezequiel Cordoba, had set sail from Mexico on a fishing trip that was to last only two days.
A sudden and violent storm drastically changed the men’s plans, damaging their vessel and communications system and casting them adrift in the Pacific Ocean without ample provisions.
According to Alvarenga’s memoir of the unprecedented 438-day life and death ordeal, his younger companion eventually died after refusing to eat the raw fish, birds and turtles they sometimes managed to catch.
Alvarenga further claimed he sentimentally kept Cordoba’s emaciated corpse aboard his craft for about a week, before reluctantly burying it at sea.
The deceased crewman’s family members, however, fear their hapless relative didn’t really starve to death during the ill-fated fishing expedition, but was more than likely slain by his starving captain.
They think there’s just no way Jose Salvador Alvarengo could have been rescued alive many months later if, in fact, he hadn’t nibbled from time to time on their loved one’s remains.
Based on that grisly but virtually un-provable presumption, the Cordobas are demanding a million dollars compensation from the suspected cannibal castaway; either in cash or in the form of royalties from his published story.
Eponymous Rox
Weird Crimes, Murder, Mutilation
