Looks as if they found another foot
CNN is reporting that another foot has been found in British Columbia, bringing the total to six over the past 15 months. This one is in a New Balance running shoe, just like a foot found on May 22. Do they match?
The mystery of where these feet are coming from remains unsolved. Some speculate that they come from people who died in an ocean plane crash; the feet are gradually breaking free from the bodies as they decompose, and the shoes are buoyant enough to carry them to the surface. So far, forensic examiners have not found any signs that the feet were cut or pried loose, leaving decomposition as the most likely explanation.
No plane has been reported missing in the area, however.
Earlier this year, a bogus foot was discovered. Someone had shoved a rotting animal paw into a shoe and left it to be found.
To learn more, check out the CNN story at www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/12/canada.feet.mystery/index.html.
A break in the foot case?
CNN posted this story on Friday, but I’ve been out of town at a writers conference and just found it today.
One of the feet that has washed up on Canadian shores has been linked by DNA to a missing man. The man, who is described only as depressed, went missing a while back. Now authorities finally know who one of the feet belongs to.
Check it out: www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/19/canada.feet.ap/index.html
Latest foot find a hoax!
The sixth foot found in British Columbia does not belong to a human, a Canadian newspaper is reporting.
Instead, someone stuffed an animal’s skeletonized foot into a sock, slipped it into a black shoe and apparently planted it near the shore.
It’s a sick practical joke that’s light years away from funny.
Officials still don’t know where the five real feet came from, although at least four of them seem show no signs of tool marks. That suggests the feet may have detached from bodies during decomposition and drifted to land, floating in buoyant shoes.
For more information, go to:
http://tinyurl.com/3e7dzl
I’m not obsessed with this. Really.
But ANOTHER foot has been found in British Columbia.
This is the second one this week and the sixth foot overall. The story below is a good one with more description of the foot than other stories. It suggests the foot was severed, rather than simply coming loose due to decomposition.
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=597081
Another foot?
Someone out there has a foot fetish … of the worst kind.
A fifth foot has washed up on Canadian shores, this time in Metro Vancouver. The previous four were all right feet; this one’s a left foot. No word on if it matches any of the others.
Are all of these feet linked somehow? Or is it simply an astonishing coincidence? What do you think?
Check out this story from the Calgary Herald: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=326fc9ee-60c3-4fe8-b5e4-4d2975910dd7
Canadian newspaper story on the missing feet
More complete story here, along with some irreverent (but occasionally funny) comments from readers:
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=38699382-8aaa-42e4-9ef7-707ea45230be
Still another mystery foot!
Reuters posted this story on Friday. What a bizarre series of events!
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VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada’s Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery.
The foot, still wearing a shoe, was discovered on Thursday on a small uninhabited island south of Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia, and is the fourth discovered in the region in the past 10 months.
The previous cases all involved right feet still in sneakers, and each was found on a different island.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not said if the latest discovery was a right or left foot.
DNA testing has failed to link the earlier discoveries to any missing person cases.
(Reporting Allan Dowd, editing by Rob Wilson)
More on mystery feet
The Associated Press offers some more information on those mystery feet washing up in Canada. See below:
By DAN BURRITT, Associated Press Writer
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) – Three times in less than a year, three right feet inside running shoes have been found near separate islands in the Strait of Georgia.Police don’t know if there are any links between them. Speculation in the region is rife, including that the feet were from slaying victims or they were the remains from drownings. Police haven’t reached any conclusions.
“It is very unusual,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Annie Linteau said Tuesday.
Linteau said two of the feet were size 12, but the size of the third was not released.
The first right foot was found by beachcombers on Jedidiah Island in August.
A few days later, a foot was found inside a man’s Reebok sneaker on Gabriola Island. The third was found on the east side of Valdez Island on Feb 8. Only the shoe type for the second foot was announced.
“We’re looking into all our missing person files,” Linteau said. “We’re certainly inviting anyone who may have information about these right feet to give us a call.”
She said the coroner’s office was doing DNA testing. British Columbia’s corner’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a former professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who studies floating objects, said the feet could have drifted as far as 1,000 miles.
He speculated the feet floated away in the buoyant shoes after breaking from decomposing bodies, possibly of people who drowned in boating accidents. Other said they could be from four men whose bodies weren’t recovered after their small plane crashed in the area about a year ago.
Ebbesmeyer said it might not be a coincidence the feet were found in the same general area.
“Left foot wear and right foot wear often tend to wash up at different times at different places because they float differently,” he said. “There are beaches that collect mostly rights and other beaches that collect mostly lefts. The winds of the currents sort out left and right foot wear.”
Sheila Malcolmson, a Gabriola Island government official, said the feet are the talk of the islands.
“We are all getting e-mails and messages from friends far away, saying, ‘What’s going on up there?”‘ Malcolmson said. “We’re all walking around carefully.”
Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
Mystery of the missing feet
Reuters news service posted this story recently. Quite a bizarre case.
Severed human feet a mystery for Canadian police
Police have found themselves with the gruesome mystery of why three human feet have washed ashore on islands in the Strait of Georgia on Canada’s Pacific coast over the past six months.
Investigators do not know who the victims were, when they died, or if foul play or an accident was involved.
The cases all involved right feet, and the decomposing remains were still wearing sneakers.
“It is not known at this time what relationship, if any, this (third) foot has with the two feet recovered last year in the same area,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
The first two were discovered in August and the third was found on February 8. Each was found on a different island in the Strait of Georgia, which separates the mainland and the city of Vancouver from Vancouver Island.
DNA testing on the feet found in August failed link them to any missing person cases. The third foot is awaiting testing.
(Reporting Allan Dowd, Editing by Rob Wilson)
