Bulletproof killer croc who’s eaten a whole lot of individuals might nonetheless be at massive

Locals living on the banks of Lake Tanganikya, Burundi, have lived in fear for decades.

When disembowelled corpses and severed feet began washing up on the shores of the lake in the 70s, villagers whispered of a serial killer who had begun to roam the region.

As the bodies piled up, however, people began to realise that it was no mere man carrying out the slaughter. No, the bloodthirsty killer was in fact a colossal Nile crocodile.

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Some terrified locals say the beast is 30ft long, others say 40ft. Eyewitnesses have described it as sometimes glowing red, at other times it’s said to have been a sickly yellow, with grass growing out of its enormous head.

A local shaman once warned a visiting documentary crew that the bloodthirsty reptile is controlled by ‘an evil person’ who uses the croc to carry out assassinations.

While the creature has an almost mythical status in Burundi, as well as in neighbouring Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the monster is absolutely real.

The killer croc would later become known by one name, a name that sparks dread up and down the Nile and across East Africa.

That name is Gustave.

Mysterious origins

Gustave is believed to have been born in the 1950s or 60s, somewhere along the Nile River. When he was young, experts believe he would have followed the feeding patterns of most other crocodiles, hunting fish and smaller mammals.

However, as the beast began to grow to its remarkable size, catching smaller nimble prey would have become impossible.

Experts who have seen the creature first-hand estimate he could be as large as 21ft, or around 6.5 metres, and weigh as much as a car (around a tonne). For context, the longest-ever crocodile to be officially measured was 20ft in length, meaning Gustave could hold the record.

Gustave was forced to turn his attention to larger, slower prey. At first, he snacked on buffalo and hippo, before developing a taste for human flesh.

People would have been easy targets for the monster, as the lakes and rivers he lived in were, and are, popular fishing destinations. Locals would have lined the banks with their rods in the water, allowing an intelligent hunter to know exactly where they were.

Gustave is believed to have possibly killed hundreds during the 80s, although locals did fight back against the maneater.

The croc’s tough skin shows scarring from a spear wound on his shoulder, as well as a number of bullet holes from coming under machine gun fire. Despite the battle scars, none of the attacks made any impact on the beast’s ability to snack on the locals, and if anything probably riled up the reptile.

Some reports claim that Gustave started venturing as far as towns and even cities in search of human prey, while others suggest the crocodile’s taste for human flesh was even encouraged by the bodies of victims of the brutal Burundian (1972/1993) and Rwandan (1994) genocides being thrown into the lake.

Catching the killer

Unsurprisingly, efforts have been made to put an end to Gustave’s reign of terror.

In 2004, a documentary called Catching the Killer Croc aired on the American network PBS, following a French reptile expert called Patrice Faye’s life-long efforts to capture the creature.

Patrice, along with a team of scientists and local trackers, hunted Gustave for years, hoping to catch him alive.

The Frenchman personally verified dozens of Gustave’s brutal killings during the 90s and noted that many of the croc’s victims weren’t eaten after they died, suggesting the animal was killing for sport.

Some poor souls Gustave pulled into the depths and drowned, others he disembowelled and left to die on the shore.

In order to put an end to his reign of terror, and to study the creature, Patrice constructed a 30ft cage-style trap to capture the crocodile, placing meat and even live animals in order to bait Gustave into being caught.

Gustave could not be fooled, however, and the crew never came close to catching the beast. In an interview with the BBC in 2002, Patrice described his efforts.

He said: “We placed a trap into the Ruzizi (the local river), put bait inside and spent the whole night in the river with cameras, but it was a total failure. The crocodile was parading outside the cage, teasing us, and we were unable to catch it.”

The week before the mission ended, Patrice’s crew left a live goat tied inside the cage. When they returned, the cage remained closed, and the goat was gone.

Still alive today?

It seems likely that Gustave could be alive and well today.

The last official sighting of the croc was in 2009, although a group of fishermen claim to have seen the 20ft beast in 2015.

According to experts, crocodiles like Gustave, who would be around 70 years old, can live well past 120 and can go several months in between eating as long as the prey is big enough.

Given the huge area he likes to hunt in, its very possible the maneater could go years without being seen, particularly if he is feeding on non-human prey.

Either way, Gustave has achieved such a mythical status in Burundi and beyond that people will surely fear the creature long after he’s gone.