Sixth severed foot found in British Columbia

Yet another severed foot in a shoe has been found in British Columbia. For BB readers who may have lost count, this is the sixth foot that has turned up in the region in 14 months. As my brother Mark says, it may be evidence of "the ultimate foot fetish." Not sure about that, but something is definitely afoot. From CNN:

The shoe -- a left New Balance running shoe -- was found about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday on the south arm of the Fraser River by a Richmond, British Columbia, couple, police said...

Four of the five feet discovered between August 2007 and June 2008 were in running shoes made between 2003 and 2004, and the other was made in 1999, according to police. Royal Canadian Mounted Police have released photos of the shoes, hoping someone can help identify the remains.

Apparent 6th severed foot found in British Columbia

Previously on BB:
• Posts about the saga of the severed feet

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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mcn

@redshirt77 – I’m with you – surely, BC would have noticed a bunch of folks limping in to urgent care going, excuse me, I’ve lost a foot. . .
empirechick

I get the buoyancy of the shoes and the decomposition process, but doesn’t that make the real question:

Where are 7 dead BODIES coming from???
Takuan

drug trade
Rashkae

5 dead bodies… 6 feet, with 1 matched pair.
Takuan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Gang
celia

So far as where the feet are coming from, there’s this:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/06/19/bc-foot-no-human.html

Ignoring the discussion of the hoax, farther down it discusses a plane crash in the approximate area:

“The small float plane took off from Tyee Spit and crashed near Quadra Island, which is about 10 kilometres away from where the remains were found Wednesday. Five people were on the plane and only one body was ever found.”
jazzbo

anon at #34 and I have the same thought.
Recall the oceanographic mapping done by lost rubber ducks off the shore of China.

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/shoes.htm
Takuan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Angels
Takuan

http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/04/GunningSmugglers/
Takuan

http://www.canada.com/national/features/crime_report/story.html?id=e89305a5-5ad9-44b3-ac77-f92e53a8a259

etc etc etc
dbarak

Oh, stop complaining! You’re just getting feet up there in Canada. Here in San Diego, we’re getting the assholes.
Ryan Waddell

An article I read this morning said that the feet didn’t appear to look like they had been chopped off (ie somebody killed and chopped into little pieces), but rather more like they had rotted off. So it seems that somebody has a collection of bodies somewhere, and the feet are the only body parts that are escaping intact as the bodies rot (perhaps due to being encased in the shoe? whereas the rest of the clothes is rotting off?). It’s so bizarre.
Anonymous

the leg-end continues…..
Takuan

or it’s becoming an inside joke.
jphilby

Mexico and Argentina have both been accused of throwing bodies out of planes into the ocean in the 1960s and 1970s. Maybe these feet didn’t originate in North America.
Takuan

nah, they’re being offed in the Vancouver area and tossed out of boats in the Strait of Georgia and up the Fraser River.
Brainspore

Apparently this isn’t really a rare phenomenon- when a corpse decomposes under water it eventually goes to pieces and the buoyant soles naturally carry the feet to the surface after they separate.

I suspect that this just seems like an epidemic right now because the media has picked up a few of the finds and now people are on the lookout for these things. Under other circumstances most people wouldn’t think twice about walking past a rotten old shoe sitting on a riverbank- but now they might look more closely to see if it contains a severed foot.
mdh

Are we being given the run around?
Anonymous

@#1: it’s actually a cross-promotional viral campaign for New Balance and NBC’s LOST show. Y’know, Flight 815?
Anonymous

JEL56: After hearing about severed feet I remembered a book I read some 25 years ago, “Jogger’s Moon” by Jon Messmann (1980). In this thrilling story an aging long distance runner directs his anger for not beeing recognized as the prime athlete he thinks he is towards innocent jogger’s by … severing their feet. The story has some striking similarities with the Canadian discoveries, running shoes and all. I remembered the story because at the time I also was a jogger (and not an athlete). Sounds like a copycat with a large freezer to me. As far as the natural character of these discoveries is concerned, which appears to be the police official point of view. It must be a unique environment up there that favours decomposing bodies to produce floating feet while the rest of the world appears to remain untouched by this “natural” phenomenon.
Glossolalia Black

I bet you anything it’s a person who works with cadavers, possibly in a crematorium somewhere in the Vancouver, BC area. They have the job of torching bodies for a living, so nobody’s going to notice the missing foot in the pile of ashes, and whoever it is gets to have his or her lulz.

It’s a theory, anyway.
arkady

How about fishing accidents and small boat accidents people get washed off of jetties the sea is dangerous. I would think that more then seven people die fishing a season in the Pacific northwest around British Columbia.
mujadaddy

It’s got to be a New Balance marketing campaign, surely, no?
Takuan

nah, they float.
Anonymous

Wouldn’t this be the 7th foot in the past 15 months?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/11/12/bc-seventh-foot-washes-up.html

These are detached feet, not severed feet. The shoes protect the feet from decomp. Crazed human eating serial sea monster with an aversion to feet? I think not.
Ugly Canuck

These feet are really steppin’ out.
Anonymous

Actually, there is a 7th one now. Really freaky.
The Unusual Suspect

If I haven’t lost count myself, this is actually the seventh incident, counting the animal foot stuffed into a running shoe as an apparent prank.
mdh

nah, they float.

It’s the ones wrapped in chains that don’t float so well.
RedShirt77

So this is a Serial killer then right? Hospital waste doesn’t have shoes and accidents don’t produce in this quantity.
romulusnr

@5: Sure it could. Bus accidentally drives off cliff, etc.

You’d wonder though how it would go unnoticed.

Maybe they’re mob hits. Vancouver Mafia, eh?
Anonymous

Even without the hoaxy one, this is the 7th foot.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/11/12/bc-seventh-foot-washes-up.html

Here’s a possible theory:

Marine life has trouble eating the foot inside the shoe, so the shoe is abandoned after the rest of the body is eaten…?
OM

…Has anyone done a breakdown on the shoes themselves? To see if there’s any links between data such as:

* Foot size
* Style of lacing
* Brand and model of shoe
* Amount of tread ware
* What kind of sock the victim was wearing
* Color of shoe
* Left vs. Right
Raines Cohen

[...] foot in a shoe [...] found on the arm [...]

You’re doing it wrong.
Anonymous

These are the remains of the 2004 tsunami victims that have worked their way across the Pacific Ocean. Expect more.

–bad dad