Sunday June 22, 2008
Mystery beats misery every time
The whole world seems fascinated by the severed feet washed up on British Columbia beaches. As of Thursday night, Google News showed over 1500 stories, from Australia to India to Scotland. The severed feet outranked Barack Obama\’s political manoeuvring; they were topped only by Mississippi floodwaters.
There\’s little to tell about the feet themselves. In August last year, a single right foot, still wearing a running shoe, drifted ashore on Jedidiah Island in the Gulf of Georgia, off Vancouver.
Since then, two more feet appeared on Gulf Island beaches, another two on islands in the Fraser River.
A sixth foot, found last Wednesday near Campbell River, proved a cruel hoax – animal bones laced into a running shoe.
The first four were all male, all right feet. The fifth, a left foot, may have been female. All wore running shoes; all had separated from the leg at the ankle.
Forensic analysis has so far failed to connect their DNA to any of the 2,400 or so missing persons in British Columbia.
And no hospitals or medical clinics reported injured patients hobbling around on one foot.
Conspiracy theories
I can\’t shed any light on the origin of those feet. But I\’m more interested in our reaction to them, anyway.
The universal first reaction seems to be a conviction that all the feet must share a common cause. What chance is there, amateur statisticians argue, that the first four discoveries would all be right feet?
In fact, when there are only two options – head or tails, left or right – each alternative has an equal chance, each time. The laws of probability do not take history into account.
Imaginations ran wild. So did conspiracy theories.
There must be another serial killer on the loose, some said, another Clifford Olson or Willie Pickton, who trademarks his killings by severing the victim\’s foot. To the objection that no bodies have shown up minus one foot, these people suggest the killer chooses his victims from homeless transients, whose absence would not be noted anyway.
Others postulate gang violence. Presumably the offenders had just one leg encased in a concrete gumboot before being dumped into the ocean.
There have even been suggestions of religious cults that torture and dismember their subjects.
Rational explanations
Some individuals reject the single-killer theory. Dr. Joseph Finney, a retired FBI agent, speculated that the B.C. feet may have belonged to stowaways headed for Alaska.
In their desire to evade discovery, Finney suggested, stowaways “secrete themselves in areas that are in proximity to the ships\’ running gear.” Mangled by machinery, alive or dead, the stowaways were pitched overboard to avoid awkward investigations.
Other experts offer natural explanations.
Feet get washed ashore, they say, because the running shoe provides flotation – especially the kind of shoe that includes an airbag for cushioning.
Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer told reporters that a buoyant athletic shoe could float as far as 1,600 km, or more.
The shoe also provides some protection against marine predators. Lacking the shoe\’s buoyancy and barrier, the rest of the body will sink, or be eaten, or both.
There\’s even a rational explanation for a foot naturally severing itself from its leg.
Dr. Gail Anderson, a criminologist at B.C.\’s Simon Fraser University, has studied how bodies decompose in water. “Feet do detach,” she noted. “There\’s not much holding a foot onto the rest of the body.”
Lust for mystery
But rational explanations fail to satisfy us. Many citizens of Campbell River cling to the belief that severed feet must belong to four men who perished when a light plane crashed, three years ago — even though more feet have washed up than occupants who died.
We may not even want rational explanations. We are fascinated by – indeed, we demand – mystery. We expect an Agatha Christie, a Ngaio Marsh, a Robert Ludlum, to unravel the mystery for us.
It\’s often said that small boys have an obsession with bodily functions. The mere mention of words like poo or piss will produce paroxysms of sniggers. (Bigger boys obsess about different body parts.)
Perhaps we never outgrow those childish obsessions. After all, people drown in fishing accidents, in diving mishaps, in tsunamis, in storms… There\’s no mystery in finding a whole body. Its identity, and its cause of death, can be determined fairly readily.
But body parts – that\’s different.
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Indeed, we\’d rather speculate wildly than deal with the real issue this story uncovers — the fact that B.C. currently has 2,400 missing persons.
Granted, a few of those may have intentionally gone missing. They\’ve walked out on a toxic marriage. They\’re young people, rebelling against their parents. They\’re transients, convinced that no one cares whether they live or die. None of them want to be traced.
Even so, the statistic says that over two thousand families live in daily agony, not knowing what\’s happened to a sister or brother, a son or daughter.
Death, we can cope with. Not easily, and perhaps not well, but we can.
But not knowing – that\’s devastating.
I have friends whose son disappeared for about two months. For that period, they were mentally, physically, and emotionally incapacitated. They couldn\’t do productive work, couldn\’t concentrate, couldn\’t relax, laugh, enjoy normal life…
And B.C. has more than two thousand families going through that experience. Every day.
We may never know where those severed feet came from. Even the wonders of modern forensic labs may never manage to identify the original owners.
Similarly, we may never learn who planted the hoax on a Campbell River beach – an act the RCMP called "reprehensible and very disrespectful for the families of missing persons."
But if our macabre fascination with the gruesome makes us more sympathetic to the anguish endured daily by the families of missing persons, perhaps the feet will have served a purpose. Whoever they once belonged to.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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