Interesting observation - do you often see body tags enclosed in comments? You are assuming the poster doesn't want body tags enclosed in comments. ;) In any case, I think this pattern is better (added ^):
my $body = $the_html_string;
$body =~ s/^.*?(<body.*?>)/$1/sgi;

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In reply to Re^3: Regular Expression by kwaping
in thread Regular Expression by Anonymous Monk

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