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Update:

GULF ISLANDS/CKNW(AM980) - RCMP in the Gulf Islands are investigating after a severed foot was found on the east side of Valdez Island.

Constable Annie Linteau says this is the third severed right foot to show up on the Islands in the last year, "They are being investigated independently of each other and we are asking anyone who may have information to please call police or Crimestoppers."
Last summer, a Washington State family came across a severed foot on Jedidiah Island. And six days later, a Vancouver couple found another severed foot on Gabriola Island.

So thats 3 right feet. Obviously demand for those is low right now.

Since fetishism knows no bounds, this really isn't all that strange.

Or maybe I'm hanging out with a different crowd than the rest of you?

I'm starting to lose track, I missed #4.

edit here is #4

Fourth right foot washes up near Vancouver, RCMP confirm

Another right foot wearing a sock and sneaker was discovered washed ashore near Vancouver, the RCMP confirmed Friday.

The foot is the fourth right foot wearing a sock and a running shoe to wash up in the area in less than a year.

The latest foot was discovered on uninhabited Kirkland Island in the Fraser River on Thursday.

The previous three washed up in the Gulf Islands between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. In August, two size 12 right feet were discovered on Gabriola and Jedediah islands, and a third foot was found in February on Valdez Island.

DNA tests were underway and experts in forensics, major crime and missing persons were all involved in the investigation, the RCMP said on Friday.

RCMP Cpl. Nycki Basra of Richmond said on Thursday that the case is one of the strangest she has heard of.

"Well, for us, it's our first time. In my 12 years of service, this is the first time I've seen it," she said about the most recently found foot.

Police are working to trace where the foot came from, Basra said. It could be the result of a suicide, an accident, or foul play.

Meanwhile, one man believes the feet may be remains of his two brothers and two other passengers who were in a plane that crashed in the waters off Quadra Island three years ago.

The bodies of the four men were never recovered, and Kevin Decock has been looking for the remains of his brothers since the crash in 2005.

Decock said he may have stirred up the ocean floor during a search last summer.

"I was out on the water conducting some surveys trying to bring up the engine from the plane crash, and I was dragging a hook. And two weeks after that the first foot showed up," Decock said.

His father provided authorities with a DNA sample two months ago, but Terry Smith, B.C.'s chief coroner, would only say that a full DNA profile exists for the first three of the four feet found, and officials have been unable to match the feet to any missing persons.

Smith cautioned against jumping to any conclusions, including that there might be foul play involved.

"This may very well be nothing more than the results of natural process of decomposition in water and the combined affects of predation by aquatic scavengers," Smith said.

It appears the first three feet were not severed, Smith said, but separated from the body through decomposition.

source:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columb … hmond.html

So onto #5. This time a lefty.

By The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER - A fifth human foot has washed ashore in southwestern B.C., and this time it's a left one.

Police say two people out for a walk spotted a left foot floating in water off Westham Island on Monday morning. Four other feet have washed up on shorelines along islands in B.C. in the last year; all have been right feet wearing socks and shoes.

Const. Sharlene Brooks of the Delta Police said officials are working with the BC Coroner's office to see if this foot is linked to any other partial remains recovered in the province.

Westham Island is at the mouth of the Fraser River, about 25 kilometres south of Vancouver.

While the similarities to the other found feet is strong, she said there's no indication this foot is related to the other cases.

"We're certainly not discounting the possibility that this may be linked to the other recovered feet, but it's just too premature and very speculative for us to even entertain that right now."

The last foot was found May 22 on Kirkland Island in the Fraser River, just one kilometre away from Monday's discovery.

The first in the series was found nearly a year ago on Jedidiah Island in the Strait of Georgia. Within days, another right foot was found inside a man's Reebok sneaker on nearby Gabriola Island. The third was found in the same area, on the east side of Valdez Island in early February.

The origin on any of the remains is still unknown.

The RCMP has said there's no evidence the feet were severed or removed from the victims' legs by force.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer based in Seattle, Wash., said when a human body is submerged in the ocean, the main parts like arms, legs, hands, feet and the head are usually what come off the body.

He said his theory is that the feet came along as a result of an accident that might have happened up along the Fraser River, that washed down and spread out along the Straight of Georgia.

Last edited by VWVan (06-17-2008 07:33 PM)

When 3 more left feet wash up this story won't seem nearly as interesting.

I find this story fascinating but the reporting is almost as painful to read as losing a foot.

Malone said it was a man's foot. "You could see the two bones were sticking out above the ankle part, probably three to four inches."

That's how Malone could tell it was a man's foot?

And this:

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a U.S. authority on ocean currents and drifting objects, said a disarticulated foot could float for up to 1,600 kilometres in a buoyant sneaker.

Not a bad sentence but still funny that there is an expert on floating feet that determined at 1,601km a severed foot in a sneaker will sink.

Chinese military intelligence = prime suspect #2

Ok, now were up to 6 again.

VANCOUVER -- Authorities in Washington State and British Columbia are investigating another disembodied foot - the sixth to wash up on the shores of the West Coast in the past year.

The foot was found on a beach about 64 kilometres west of Port Angeles, Wash., 1.6 kilometres east of Pillar Point on the shores of the Juan de Fuca Strait. The woman who passed by it on her way to her campsite Friday thought nothing, at first, of what she thought was simply a lost shoe, said Clallam County Undersheriff Ronald Peregrin. But camping out that night, he said, she couldn't stop thinking about the news reports of a spate of washed-up feet in B.C.

The woman returned the next day, and with the help of a man who owns a campsite nearby, poured sand out of the shoe to find a sock containing bones and decomposing flesh. Undersheriff Peregrin said authorities did a search of the area but found nothing in connection with the foot, which is now under forensic examination in Seattle.

"The foot was fairly well decomposed. ... The shoe, at outward appearance, didn't appear to have been there, like, months and months and months," he said, adding that authorities didn't look closely at the sand-covered shoe because they didn't want to disturb it before a forensic investigation.

The right foot was encased in a black, low-top running shoe, which Undersheriff Peregrin estimated was a man's size 11. He said the brand has not been determined. A cursory examination revealed no signs of tool marks that would indicate the foot was forcibly severed, he said.

Four of the five shoes that have washed up off the B.C. coast since August, 2007, have been right feet. Only one was a woman's. B.C. RCMP announced last month that two of the feet - both in size 11 Nikes - belong to the same person, and they matched one of the shoes to a man from the Lower Mainland whose identity they haven't released.

The series of feet found in the West Coast waters created heated speculation as to their origins, and at least one hoax earlier this year, when what was thought to be a sixth foot turned out to be an animal paw wrapped in seaweed. Both Canadian and U.S. authorities noted it's possible this latest could be a hoax, and coroners must confirm that the remains are, indeed, human.

B.C. RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields said authorities in Canada are sharing information with Washington State authorities to determine whether the investigations are connected.

"Any evidence they find will be compared with the list of missing people in British Columbia to see if we can obtain a match," he said.