Yes, we hacked off his frozen flesh with an axe and ate it - but we DIDN'T kill our friend: Horrific tale of cannibalism after four men disappeared on trip to Siberian wilderness

• Mystery  after only two come back alive and third is found dead in strange circumstances after trip into Russian hinterland
• Alexander Abdullayev says they ate friend after he perished in cold
• Police  suspicious and open murder inquiry

  By Will Stewart

PUBLISHED:22:41 GMT, 22  December 2012| UPDATED:04:15 GMT, 23 December 2012

Waving their families goodbye, the four men  were in high spirits as they loaded their jeep and set off on a much-anticipated  adventure holiday.

Their destination was a land from another  time, a largely unpenetrated corner of eastern Siberia roamed by bears and  wolves, where sightings of yeti-like beasts are not uncommon and only the  hardiest of explorers dare to tread.

What happened next to the four Russian  travellers is a mystery only just beginning to yield its secrets. And the story  of their four-month ordeal has gripped and appalled their country in equal  measure.

Baldly, the facts are these: Two of the men  returned alive, one is still missing, while the fourth man – 44-year-old Andrei  Kurochina – was found dead in strange circumstances.

At first it was assumed he had simply  perished in the extreme cold. But then the shocking truth began to emerge.  Police discovered he had been cannibalised and that his flesh quite possibly was  eaten by his best friend, Alexei Gorulenko, and fellow adventurer Alexander  Abdullayev, to keep themselves alive.

Abdullayev, 37, insists they ate Kurochina  only after he died from natural causes. But the police suspect otherwise and  have launched a murder investigation.

At her home in Volsk, southern Russia,  Kurochina’s widow Olga is struggling to make sense of it all, while across town  her husband’s friend Gorulenko is back with his family, recovering from his  ordeal, and saying nothing.

‘I am in contact with his wife but not him,’ said Olga. ‘Her Alexei is alive – but, believe me, she is suffering no less than  me.

‘I can’t bring myself to speak to Alexei yet.  I’m not ready to hear what he can tell me and he can’t open up to me. I find it  too painful to even think what I feel about him now.

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