Sixth severed foot a hoax - Latest discovery appears to be animal bones stuffed in sneaker
Sandra McCulloch, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, June 19, 2008
VICTORIA -- A foot found Wednesday on a beach in Campbell River was not human and appears to be a hoax, said the chief coroner's office today.
A forensic pathologist and an anthropologist have examined the shoe and the remains inside it, and identified it as the bones of an animal's foot inserted into a shoe, along with a sock and packed with dried seaweed.
The coroner's office chastised whoever is responsible for the hoax, calling it "reprehensible and very disrespectful for the families of missing persons."
The foot was found Wednesday on a Campbell River beach on Tyee Spit, adjacent to the Thunderbird RV Park and Campground. It was the sixth such discovery on the southern B.C. coast since August 2007. So far, the five previous finds were human. The first four were right feet, while the fifth, which was found on Monday, was a left. All have been inside running shoes. Only the fourth appears to be female; the rest were likely male.
According to Sandra Malone, Thunderbird campground manager, a woman found the latest foot at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Malone saw the black running shoe, "it looked like a size 10 or 11. You could see two leg bones sticking up from the foot about three or four inches. There was no tissue or muscle or anything."
The bones seemed to be cut clean across, said Malone, suggesting an instrument had been used to cut the bone. "You could see it was a cut," Malone said.
Investigations into the other five missing feet are continuing. While police are giving few clues as to where their case is going, a retired coroner and military diver believes there's no foul play involved in the five severed human feet.
"I just think the more people you have missing the more chances you have of finding naturally occurring denegration of the body," said Ian Buckingham of Victoria, a retired physician and coroner. He has also served as military diver with the Canadian, U.S. and British navies.
While more people are missing, there are also more people walking beaches than before, said Buckingham.
"Some [feet] have been discovered by pets who have good noses," said Buckingham. "I just think there are lots more people out there than there used to be."
The ankle joint can "easily" come apart from the leg during a body's disintegration at sea, said Buckingham.
A left male foot in a sneaker was discovered Monday floating in the water off Westham Island, at the mouth of the Fraser River. A woman's foot was found in May on Kirkland Island, also in the Fraser and a kilometre from Westham.
In February, a severed foot was found on Valdes Island east of Yellow Point and last August, two feet washed up on Gabriola and Jedediah Islands in the Strait of Georgia.
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