 | Alexander "Sawney" Bean: Encyclopedia II - Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Family life and cannibalism
Alexander "Sawney" Bean - Family life and cannibalism
At first, Beane and his wife supported themselves as brigands by waylaying and murdering travellers, stealing their money and hoarding their valuables. They used only the money they took from their victims because valuables could be more easily recognised.
Alexander Bean and his wife soon produced a large family of children, and later grandchildren who were all the product of incest. Before they met their grisly end, the family consisted of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. There were 46 children in all.
Needing food, and without any skills or a desire to perform honest labour, Bean and his family quickly took up the only option available to them, crime. Their methods were very simple and consistent: they would lay a careful ambush to surprise and kill single people or small groups at night. They were able to cut off all possible escape routes with the members of their massive family.
But the meager proceeds from highway robbery were not enough to sustain the growing clan. Rather than waste the bodies of his victims, Beane fed himself and his family on them. Their victims were robbed of all of their possessions, murdered, and brought back to their cave where they were dismembered and cannibalised. The Beans would pickle any leftovers.
Eventually their methods grew to be so successful that they were discarding unnecessary body parts into the ocean, where they would wash up on nearby beaches.
The missing people and body parts did not go unnoticed by the local villagers, but none of them knew who were committing these crimes. The Bean family lived in the caves during the day, and killed anyone they saw during the night to prevent any witnesses to their existence. They were so secretive that the local residents simply never knew that they had a family of 48 murderers living nearby.
In the towns' quest for justice, they reputedly lynched various innocent strangers, but the disappearances continued. Suspicion especially fell on local innkeepers, since they were often the last to see many of the missing men and women alive.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Family life and cannibalism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
