6th severed foot found in B.C.?
Karen says: "I work for a newspaper in Campbell River, B.C. on Vancouver Island. Another foot was found here this morning at Tyee Spit (the second this week!). I don't know if it's hit the web yet. I just wanted to give you a heads up, since you've been reporting them on the website."
UPDATE: National Post is running a story about the sixth foot. It's a right foot in a black Adidas shoe. The woman who found it, while picking rocks along the water, said two bones were sticking out of the shoe, and they looked like they'd been cut.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• 5th foot found washed up in B.C.
the latest
latest episodes
From Fortean Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008001287_webfoot16.html
Man, this is a weird province!
Truly, the BoingBoing Mafia has operatives in every nook and cranny of the globe....
But is it a right foot, or a left foot?
Somewhere out there is a European slasher who wants to be known as the Ten Foot Pole...
I hear these stories and I'm still creeped out by it.
I don't know if this has been posted in comments of past foot stories but there is a perfectly logical (although tragic) explanation.
There is a guy here in Vancouver who has been on the radio and who lost his brother in a plane crash along with several passengers. The plane went down somewhere off the coast of Vancouver and is, obviously, underwater. This was some months ago. He has been dragging the ocean trying to recover the plane and his brother's body and he thinks he has dislodged the bodies and the feet have detached due to decomposition. The feet have come to the surface because shoes float.
No gangsters involved. I don't know why the police and the media aren't paying much attention to this guy. The investigation has been soooo slow that if fuels speculation. It has taken months to get a DNA match on this guy's brother.
Let this be a lesson to the Raytown Middle School 7th grade class of '90 third-period gym class: You may not remember who was picked last for kickball, but I do.
GAH
I'm glad they finally found a left foot. The story was getting very one-sided.
Just saw the report on the news. A Witness says it was a right foot in a man's running shoe and unlike the previous finds, this foot was cut clean across. The others apparently dettached due to decay in water.
5 rights, one left so far and compared to the global numbers of such finds, 8, finding 6 in the Georgia Strait is highly suspicious.
@6 Would you be talking about this story?
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=0c065f06-8b88-4d7a-830b-05ab2e817895.
I also have a rough .kmz of where the feet have washed up for the morbid, and/or amateur oceanographers.
The floatplane crash was close to where the 6th foot was found, so that might be related, but the feet further up the fraser river where the 4th and 5th were found is unlikely as the fraser flows OUT to sea not into the lowermainland. Reports from the witness say it appeared to be a right foot, in a black sneaker or running shoe. But this has yet to be actually confirmed from the police who are investigating.
Pugwash, I saw that about the plane crash theory and it's a pretty rational explanation but there were only four people in that plane. The discover of this foot puts it at five at least.
Mounties don't believe the owner of the feet is dead but believe he may be heavily armed. *rimshot*
The Fraser River is a tidal river up to the Pitt river. It is no problem for debris to flow upstream as far as Coquitlam.
Sounds like those damn illegal aliens have figured out a new way to get into North America!
Just send one part at a time.
Remain Vigilant...It might be a trick.
Now that they have their foot in the door, what next!!
###
CBC confirms, sort of: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/06/18/bc-sixth-foot-found.html?ref=rss
4 right feet, 1 left foot, and 1 rumored additional right foot.
Add that to the global total of 8 since 2004, and that brings the total to 14. So it's certainly an unusual cluster. That CBC story has a woman saying that the foot looked "cut", but she's probably just guessing. If that's true, it might not be related to the other feet, since they were not cut.
"...a story about the sixth foot. It's a right foot in a black Adidas shoe."
Guerrilla Marketing gone too far?
I am really hoping that this is some sort of medical school prank. Maybe the left foot was from a one-legged victim and the prankster/serial killer had no other choice.
I just want to point out how creepy the article ends:
The author knows more victims!
#18: Silly, gorillas don't wear shoes.
It's probably for Dexter Season 3, starting in September on Showtime.
I bet someone will make a movie about it soon. This is so Hollywood material!
The cops must be hopping mad.
@Lobster #14 - Very silly, and certainly worthy of a rimshot. Waka-waka.
But it's exactly that type of silliness that makes me laugh, and lightens my day a bit. My kind of joke for sure.
Thanks!
@14: oh, GROAN. Cue the cheesy music and get the hook ready!
talk about a foot fetish...
Left foot found. Daniel Day-Louis ecstatic.
I love The National Post. What other paper would quote the forensic opinion of a women who spends her days picking rocks. Awesome. That totally qualifies you to make proclamations regarding the separation technique of the foot from the leg.
Wasn't this a Dexter storyline?
My friend Adam pointed out this video, which may help to explain the preponderance of left feet. Due to surface currents, differently shaped objects get steered into slightly different paths. If a cargo ship full of Nikes goes into the drink, the left and right shoes will end up on different beaches. As to those shoes being full of, well, feet, I guess that's a bit more sinister. I wonder how many feet are lost when they get caught in the bite of a line. That's the kind of thinking that comes from too many episodes of "Deadliest Catch."
I also work for a newspaper in Campbell River. I am a reporter here and am covering this story (which, after posted on our website, mysteriously appeared almost verbatim in the Vancouver Sun and National Post.)
Visit http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/20448124.html for the latest news on this story.
On the pun front, you all might enjoy one that Canada's Globe and Mail (accidentally?) made.
My wife is from BC and she suggested witchcraft.
In case that sounds far-fetched, there was a case a few years ago of an African childs torso washed up in the Thames: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_(unsolved_Thames_murder_case)
Hmm, with a count of 5 right and 1 left, the siding issue does not seem overly peculiar. Conditioned on the unlikely event of finding 6 unpaired feet, with random siding, the probability of getting 5 right and 1 left is 0.09375; the probability of getting five of one side and one of the other is, by my calculations, double that or 0.1875. This is within the realm of what might occur by chance.
My conclusion is that the oddity is that feet keep washing ashore; not that they are predominantly one side. The siding is reasonably attributed to randomness.
What is odd is that nothing ELSE is washing up in numbers. No hands, no heads, no other bones. It's really a bizarre story.
Someone commenting at CBC brought up a disturbing question: given the length of the BC coastline, and the relatively sparse population, and 6 have been stumbled upon, how many feet are washing up unnoticed? Yikes.
@KEITH TALENT #28
I'm not sure how the NPs quoting of the witness is any different than any other news outlet's quoting of the witness. Even the CBC quoted her. I'm no fan of the post but they didn't do anything out of the ordinary here.
Canadians are so polite. They don't have serial killers, just serial maimers.
that is very bad taste, Pharmakos, and quite funny
It's just Dr. Ebbesmeyer's new project.
I'd thought the plane crash theory had to do with a plane that crashed in 2004... at least I read that somewhere (that link doesn't work for me as I don't pay the newspaper.
the feet would have decomposed in that amount of time.
On the other hand there's been a number of young men disappearing in the Vancouver area lately as well... three of them near lakes.
I think the investigators deserve a hand.
It started with a sock going missing now and then in the wash. But did anyone heed those warnings?
This latest foot was a hoax:
"Remains found in a shoe near Campbell River, B.C., Wednesday are not human, the B.C. Coroners Service said Thursday.
"The BCCS, along with a forensic pathologist and an anthropologist, examined the remains and determined that an animal-paw skeleton had been inserted into the shoe with a sock and packed with dried seaweed, according to a press release."
http://tinyurl.com/6bc2mn
Should the boing boing post be updated?
you just did, thanks
oh, if it's useful to know: a bear paw is almost indistinguishable from a human foot if the fur and claws are gone.
That would account for half the articles at Cryptomundo.
The foot is a lie!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/19/canada.feet/index.html
The 6th foot is a lie!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/19/canada.feet/index.html
It doesn't make the story of the previous five any less disturbing or mysterious, but there may be a plausible explanation - there was a crash of a float plane in 2005:
Five people dead and no bodies recovered.
It's common for feet to be severed in a plane crash and all the feet so-far recovered were wearing sneakers - with buoyant soles so they float.
That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.
And now the linkie - must have been parsed at BB HQ:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071221/wfive_kevinsquest_071221/20071229
That's the crash of a float plane in 2005 that others have referred to here.
somewhere in canada an eight-legged man is limping around on crutches.