Kevin P. Casey
Ebbesmeyer at Golden
Gardens, with beach detritus:
“It’s not something you can
bring up at dinner.”
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In the past 15 months, police in British Columbia and Washington have been counting potential crimes by the foot. The total so far is seven, all apparently washing up in sneakers on remote beaches. The first human extremity was discovered by a shocked 12-year-old Washington girl who came upon it on a cool, clear Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, along Jedediah Island, a rocky isle in the Strait of Georgia's Gulf Islands. Curious, the girl picked up the man's size-12 Campus brand sneaker off the beach, and out tumbled a wet sock. Inside was a decomposing right foot.
The find rated an intriguing news story in the Alberni Valley Times on Vancouver Island. Authorities were mystified. "There's all kinds of scenarios and possibilities," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Garry Cox, noting he was unsure whether the foot had floated in or was the product of some kind of beach mayhem. "It was a regular foot with the skin intact," he said. "It didn't appear to be there too long because it wasn't that decomposed."
Mounties bagged the foot and sent it to the British Columbia Coroners Service in Vancouver, where DNA testing commenced. That seemed that, and the story faded. Somewhere there was, presumably, a cadaver minus one foot. Officials could wait to see if the other shoe literally dropped.
It took only six days. The second foot was found on Aug. 26, a calm, sunny Sunday. It too was inside a sock, and in a man's sneaker, and was a size 12.
And one more similarity: The second foot was also a righty. A case that had gone two feet forward suddenly took a step backward. "I've heard of dancers with two left feet, but come on," the RCMP's Cox told reporters, making it clear he had two separate floating-feet cases to investigate. And bizarre cases they were. "Finding one foot is like a million-to-one odds," he said, "but to find two is crazy."
And 40 miles apart at that. The second foot, encased in a Reebok, was discovered by a Vancouver couple strolling along a beach trail on Gabriola Island, known for its shellfish and limestone formations, located down the strait from Jedediah.
Another Mountie, Cpl. Brad Szewczok, seemed to be urging the media and public to stay calm. "My best guess," he said, "is that they are from missing-persons cases. There have been people that fall off ferries, missing boaters, and a tugboat that went down within the last year. And people fall off fishing vessels all the time."
B.C. law enforcement has about 2,400 missing-persons cases on the books, and Washington 2,000. Many in both jurisdictions are cold cases dating back years, even decades. They include abducted children, the homeless, runaways, and those designated presumed dead/body not recovered.
B.C.'s missing-person count is the highest of any Canadian province, according to a 2005 Simon Fraser University study, and many are thought to have drowned from accidents or suicides in B.C.'s vast waters. Some also might be victims of B.C. serial killer and pig farmer Robert Picton from 1997 to 2001. He was convicted last December, and is doing life for the murders of six women, parts of which he fed to his pigs. Officials say he once confessed to killing 49 women, the majority of them prostitutes and drug users from the mean streets of downtown Vancouver's Eastside.
The second foot joined the first at the Coroners Service in Vancouver for DNA tests. But for a test to succeed, a matching sample is needed, and that's not often available in missing-persons cases. Medical examiners did confirm the disarticulated extremities were from males, but where the flesh and bone came from and who the owners had been, authorities couldn't yet say.
Within six months, that story also faded. Then came the third foot.
It was another male righty size 11, inside a Nike sneaker, found Feb. 2 this year on Valdes Island, a short drift south of Gabriola. That sparked new interest by the public, some of whom began combing beaches for sneakers bearing feet—and finding them.
The fourth foot, a female righty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found May 22 on Kirkland Island, across the strait from Valdes off the B.C. mainland, which catches the current coming out of the Fraser River.
The fifth, a male lefty size 11, inside a Nike, was found June 16 on Westham Island, near Kirkland Island; DNA tests later confirmed it was the mate to foot #3.
The sixth, a male righty size 11, inside an Everest sneaker, was found Aug. 1 mired in seaweed along the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Pysht, west of Port Angeles. That is more than 150 miles from foot #1, although Canadian currents flow that direction into the Pacific.
And the seventh, a female lefty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found last month, Nov. 11, near Richmond on the B.C. mainland south of Vancouver. Last week it was confirmed as a mate to foot #4.
By installments, newspapers tracked the carnage, which appears to total four male and one female footless victims, most discovered in the past 10 months along adjoining Canadian and U.S. waters. Forget Mountie Szewczok and his words of caution! It had become the Seven-Foot Mystery, a suspected epidemic of foul play.
