Brew: It’s a calm summer day.
The sun lists between the clouds above, casting long
shadows across the sandy shoals and shallows of the Salish
Sea— peaceful until BC resident Sandra Malone saw a woman
running frantically for help, she knew that someone had
been hurt, but when she arrived on the scene to find only
a human foot, she knew that she had to tread lightly.
Grill: What’s this?
The puzzling plot of a podiatric serial killer?
They’ll take your life, and your feet too.
Quiz: Her name is Penelope Le Pied!
She’s a Montreal born Podiatrist turned serial killer!
Brew: Ahem.
Quiz: Sorry, Brew, continue.
Brew: The foot was found at a beach near Campbell
River on Vancouver island, wrapped in the
soaking remains of a size 10 Adidas running shoe.
When Malone saw the foot, she “got the chills right away”,
and quickly got her husband to come out to investigate.
“It's definitely a foot in a shoe, you could
see the bone sticking out”, she said, but how it
got there, and who it belonged to was a mystery.
Malone immediately called the police, and
soon they arrived to collect the remains.
Investigators took the foot back to the
station to be examined by a coroner, a forensic
pathologist, and a forensic anthropologist.
Theories quickly began emerging to
explain these mysterious circumstances.
One posited that this foot was connected to the remains of a
group of 5 who vanished after a plane crash three years prior.
The 5 men had taken off from Campbell river, crashing
near Quadra island off the coast of Vancouver island.
Only one of the men’s bodies was ever recovered.
Sally Feast, the sister of one of the missing men, said that
it was “beginning to be a little bit unbearable” thinking
that a foot could be all that was left of her brother.
In an effort to connect the foot to one of the men, forensic
examiners asked their family members to donate DNA samples.
Unfortunately, none of the DNA samples
were a match to the missing men.
For their families, it meant another wild goose chase.
Kirsten Stevens, whose husband died in the crash, said
that the missing remains were “a constant reminder
of the lack of closure in regards to this accident”.
Grill: Wait, then who the hell did it belong to?
Brew: Well, Dr. Gail Anderson of the Simon Fraser University Center
for Forensic Research noted that “It could be one of
those massive international boats that goes through
this area” and that “We could be looking at an incident
that didn't even officially happen in our waters.”
But a day later, when forensic experts took a closer
look at the remains, they discovered a terrible secret.
But before we get into that—I’m embarrassed
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When forensic experts took a closer look at
the remains, they discovered a terrible secret.
The “human” foot that they found was,
in fact, just a bundle of animal bones.
Grill: What!? How did a bunch of animal bones get in a shoe?
Brew: According to the forensics team that examined the
foot, “a skeletonized animal paw was inserted into
the shoe with a sock and packed with dried seaweed”.
It was intentionally left there.
Quiz: Ugh, who would do something like that?
Brew: Beats me.
Chief Coroner Terry Smith said that it was “a
very, very senseless and thoughtless act”, and
that "Clearly it wasn't done with any thought or
feelings of the families of these missing people."
Grill: They sound like a loser
with too much time on their hands.
Quiz: And not enough brains.
Grill: Exactly.
Brew: Whatever prankster behind this cruel
joke seemed to know their local history.
Quiz: Local history?
Brew: The area near Campbell River, BC, specifically the
body of water between the British Columbia mainland and
Vancouver Island, has been known for a strange phenomenon.
Since 2007, a grand total of 15 severed real,
bonafide human feet have shown up at various
locales along the Salish Sea coastline.
Grill: What the f***!?
Brew: At the time of the hoax, investigators had been
searching for the origin of another 5 severed feet.
Quiz: So wait, they had an extra 5 feet?
Brew: There have been far more than just five!
Over the course of 11 years, BC coroners service
identified 4 pairs of feet and 7 additional
individual feet to a total of 15 on Canadian shores.
The British Columbia Coroners Service has even
thrown together a simple map highlighting each place
a foot was found from August 2007 to October 2019.
3 of the 4 pairs were matched using DNA
evidence, but the last were matched using
circumstantial and anthropological evidence.
Quiz: What does that mean?
Brew: They were found very close to one another,
and were inside the same style of running shoe.
A forensic anthropologist also examined the
bones of each foot and found a connection.
The aforementioned map labels feet found on Canadian coasts.
Including American finds, the total rises to 21.
Since no more pairs were identified,
there are probably at least 11 more feet
floating around in the Salish sea somewhere.
Quiz: After a decade, there
probably isn’t much floating, Brew.
Brew: Certainly not, but it’s very possible
that there are even more feet floating around.
Cause, y’know, I just needed another reason to fear the ocean.
It’s most of our planet, and I hate it.
Grill: Okay this is getting a little weird.
I was just joking about the whole
podiatrist serial killer thing...
Brew: It’s unsettling at best, and terrifying at worst.
There have been many theories to explain it
over the years, ranging from serial killers,
drug deals gone wrong, plane crashes, human
traffickers, even the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004.
The man who found one of the feet suspected something
ominous was going on— “There’s someone doing this all right.
Think about it, if they tied a chain around
someone’s ankle and threw them overboard, the foot
would just pop off… Maybe they got a lot of bodies
stored up in a container and they got washed out.”
But the reality is much simpler, yet
no less upsetting than speculation.
In truth, the authorities have become pretty
nonchalant about the whole thing in recent years.
They still follow the proper forensic procedure, but
the “mystery” of the feet unraveled fairly quickly.
The BC Coroner Service stated “in none
of the cases was any foul play involved”.
The Salish Sea, which is bordered by Vancouver
and Seattle, is very densely populated.
In short, there’s bodies in the water because
there’s just a lot of people who live nearby.
Unfortunately, accidents, and self-inflicted deaths are
fairly common around any body of water, but bodies seem
to wash up on the shores of the Salish Sea more frequently
than in other coastal regions, like San Francisco or Miami.
According to Oceanographer Parker MacCready of the
University of Washington, “Things that float at the ocean
surface move with the currents, but also are pushed a
bit by the wind, and this can be significant in getting
them to shore”, and “The prevailing winds here, around
the Salish Sea, are west to east, and so floating stuff
in this part of the Pacific gets blown to the coast”.
Quiz: Oh it’s the Jet Stream!
Brew: Exactly!
The Jet Stream is a flow of super fast
moving winds that always travel west to east
in a large ring across the entire globe.
Since ocean currents are, in part, controlled
by wind, you get something of an ocean garbage
highway that takes any floating debris from the
Pacific Ocean, and deposits it in the Salish Sea.
Grill: But why feet, Brew?
Quiz: Yeah, Brew, why feet?
WHY FEET?
Feeeeeeeeet.
Brew: There are a few pieces of evidence that
can give us a step in the right direction.
Grill: C’mon, please.
Brew: Kathy Taylor, a forensic anthropologist at the
King County Medical Examiner’s Office, has said “The
ones I have seen are not fresh feet, they’ve been in the
water for a long time, with significant decomposition.”
Grill: So they’re grody.
Brew: But that’s not all!
Constable Annie Linteau of the RCMP made a statement
to the public, “We want to make it clear: there
is no evidence that these feet had been severed.
There were no tool markings and no visible sign of trauma”
Quiz: So the feet weren’t sawn off?
Brew: You’re watching too much of Twist’s videos.
All the evidence points toward
natural aquatic disarticulation.
Grill: Dis-articu-what now?
Brew: It’s a fancy word that means
the separation of bones at the joint.
In this case, how bodies separate at
the joints when they’re left in water.
Taphonomist, or decomposition expert, William D.
Haglund wrote in a paper on aquatic decomposition that the
“Disappearance of body parts followed the general sequence:
bones of the hands and wrists, bones of the feet and ankles,
and the mandible and cranium.” and, “As parts drop away from
a floating carcasses in large or current-driven bodies of
water, they are often separated from the major body unit.”
What’s more is that the cushioning in modern sneakers
act as makeshift flotation devices for separated feet.
Your new pair of Reebok Club C 85s are really
just lifejackets for your disarticulated footsies.
Dr Anderson notes that if you double check,
you’ll see that “there are no feet washing
ashore in stiletto heels or flip-flops.”
Not only does the buoyancy of today’s running shoes
expedite the separating of the feet by forcing the
feet upwards as the body decomposes, they can also
protect the feet against the nibbles of sea dwelling
scavengers, and the process of decomposition itself!
Your socks and shoes are like a
mummy’s wrapping and sarcophagus.
The humble running shoe protects our feet to the
bitter end, or rather, beyond the bitter end.
I want to be very clear.
If you find a human foot with no human attached to it, or
any human part for that matter, please call the police.
Just because it’s normal to find human feet lying
around, doesn’t mean we don’t need to report it.
We can find the absurdity in it, but we
should never forget the human element.
We should remember that at one point, all
of these feet were attached to people.
Real people, with likes and
dislikes, with families and dreams.
This weird phenomenon, after all is
said and done, is a story of loss.