Gustave the Killer Crocodile: Burundi's 2,000-Pound Man-Eater

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Gustave is a Nile crocodile estimated at more than 20 feet long and 2,000 pounds, blamed in local legend for the deaths of up to 300 people along the Ruzizi River and the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika in Burundi. Thought to have hatched around 1955, he is the product of indeterminate growth, the reptilian trait of never fully stopping, compounded over five decades of successful hunting. Observers counted at least three bullet scars on his body and a deep gash on his right shoulder blade, evidence that his bony, plate-like scutes had already turned away more than one attempt on his life.

This episode explains how sheer size forced Gustave to give up fast prey for hippos, buffalo, and the people who fish and wash at the water's edge, and why so many of his victims were found uneaten, a detail that points to territorial defense instead of hunger. It also follows herpetologist Patrice Faye, who named the crocodile and spent two years trying to trap him alive during the Burundian Civil War, an effort recorded in the 2004 PBS film Capturing the Killer Croc. Conservative scientific estimates put the real death toll at 60 or fewer, yet the myth kept growing.

• Faye's team built a drop-door cage nearly 30 feet long and weighing 2,000 pounds, fitted with an infrared camera. Gustave ignored the bait entirely.
• Three giant snares hidden on the riverbanks caught only smaller, ordinary crocodiles.
• On the final night before a forced evacuation, a thunderstorm knocked out the camera. By morning the cage had been partly dragged underwater and the live goat inside was gone.
• Gustave was reportedly photographed again in the Ruzizi River in 2009. A 2019 piece in Travel Africa magazine relayed rumors of his death, but no body, photograph, or account of the kill ever surfaced.
• Nile crocodiles can live 70 to 100 years, and Lake Tanganyika plunges more than 4,700 feet, which leaves open the possibility that he is still alive.