Crocodile Sisters Back in Jail

Two sisters who claimed a flesh-eating Russian heroin substitute ravaged their bodies are back in jail.

Amber Neitzel, 28, and her sister Angela Neitzel, 31, missed court for a theft case. The Lockport women allegedly stole clothes from a Kohl’s in Romeoville.

In October 2013, Amber Neitzel created a media frenzy when she revealed she caused grievous wounds to her body by unwittingly shooting crocodile, a heroin substitute concocted by combining codeine tablets and gasoline, paint thinner, lighter fluid or other substances. She and her sister were both treated for their ghastly injuries at Presence St. Joseph Medical Center, and the hospital put out a press release about the drug and its effects.

Crocodile consumes and rots away the skin of users, the press release said, and “destroys a user’s flesh and leaves gangrene and large abscesses all over a user’s body,” the release stated.

Despite the press release and the claims of a doctor from Presence St. Joseph Medical Center, an undercover drug agent questioned whether crocodile was actually ever present in the Chicago area, and the director of a local undercover narcotics unit suggested the Neitzels may have just gotten a hold of a “bad batch of heroin.”