Three people arrested for killing two women and eating parts of their bodies

SAO PAULO - Police in Brazil have arrested three people for allegedly killing at least two women, eating parts of their bodies and using their flesh to make stuffed pastries known as empanadas that they sold to neighbors in their northeastern Brazil city.

The three suspects - a man, his wife and his mistress - belonged to a sect that preached "the purification of the world and the reduction of its population," police inspector Wesley Fernandes in the city of Garanhuns told the Globo TV network Friday.

The newspaper Estado de S.Paulo said the man, Jorge Beltrao Negromonte, wrote a 50-page book titled "Revelations of a Schizophrenic" in which he says he hears voices and is obsessed with the killing of women.

Fernandes said the three were arrested Wednesday and had confessed to the crimes.

The three allegedly lured women to their house by promising them a job as a nanny. They were tracked down after one of the arrested women used a credit card belonging to a victim who disappeared last month.

Police found the remains of the two women in the backyard of the suspects' house, which enraged neighbors burned to the ground Thursday.

Fernandes identified the three as Negromonte; his wife, Isabel Cristina Pires; and his mistress, Bruna Oliveira da Silva.

The three allegedly had plans for killing another woman living in the nearby city of Lagoa do Ouro, Fernandes said.