SAO PAULO -- Police 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.