August 20, 2007. A young girl visiting is hiking along the rugged shore of Jedediah Island. The sweeping ocean views and old growth forests are only part of what make this isolated British Columbia island a popular tourist destination.
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Jedediah Island is a classic Pacific Northwest paradise. It’s only a few hours from Nanaimo, but because It’s only accessible by boat, it feels remote. Truly, the perfect place to truly unplug. There’s old growth forests for hiking and exploring, native birds who use the island for nesting, beaches for swimming and sunbathing and beachcombing. Which I imagine is what this young girl was doing when she suddenly noticed something odd.
She had found a shoe. A right shoe. Blue and white, Adidas, size 12 men’s shoe. This usually wouldn’t be super out of place. Beachcombing is a common hobby in the PNW. People find all kinds of odd thingamabobs, including clothes and shoes. But this was different. Morbidly different. This shoe contained the remains of a decaying foot.
This alone would have been a morbid mystery worthy of deep diving. But… it didn’t stop there. Just a week later, Canadian police discovered a second shoe with a severed foot washed up on the beaches of Gabriola Island.
If you’re wondering… was this the matching foot?
Unfortunately no. This second foot was a completely different foot. A second right foot, in a black and white Reebok.
“Finding one foot is like a million to one odds, but to find two is crazy,” said RCMP spokesman Garry Cox.
If finding one foot is a million in one, and two is astronomical, then the odds that 5 more severed feet would be discovered in the next year?
Not surprisingly this case goes viral. People all over the world are going nuts trying to figure out where these feet are coming from, there’s talk of serial killers and paranormal activity, crime writers in Norway are using this case as inspiration for their true crime books.
And the total foot count right now? 21 severed feet that have washed up in British Columbia and further south, including near Seattle. And some are not just the feet. Some include parts of the leg bones.
So what is going on? Is there a serial killer? Has the Ghoul of Grey harbor returned to haunt the PNW taking more victims?
Just like the true story of the Ghoul of Grey Harbor, the truth of the Salish Sea Severed feet is far less sensational and more sad and scientific.
Let’s break it down. Why did 21 severed feet wash ashore? Where did they come from, how did this happen, and will it keep happening?
First off let’s debunk all the conspiracy theories.
Some of my favorites from reddit include the feet belonging to victims of boat crashes, plane crashes, or even the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Some think the feet are the work of some sicko prankster with access to cadavers and a pile of running shoes. Others think it’s paranormal, maybe sasquatch, hunting random hikers deep in the woods. More still think it’s a serial killer with a foot fetish, following in the footsteps of other famous PNW serial killers like Bundy, the Green River Killer… and Jerry Brudos. If you’re wondering, Jerry is also known, infamously, as “The Shoe Fetish Killer”.
How do we know this wasn’t a serial killer? Because if the feet had been cut off or removed mechanically, it would show. There would be clean cuts or other marks. But there were none. According to the BC Coroners Service Barb McLintock , “We found there is nothing suspicious in any of them. It appears that the feet become disarticulated from the body naturally with time, as the bodies decompose and are eaten by sea life or other marine organisms.”
Let’s flesh this out. Body enters the water, and sinks to the seafloor. All the little crustaceans and fish gather to feed. Sea critters can eat a body to bones in only a few days apparently. And what areas do they tend to prefer? softer areas first. Areas like the ankle. That plus natural decomposition means the feet will naturally detach from the rest of the body. Also since these bodies were wearing shoes, obviously, the feet were protected from getting eaten.
Then there’s the DNA testing. Most of the missing feet have been identified. The people whose feet these are? They went missing, and were presumed to have committed suicide or die by accident. The first foot found by that young girl in Jedediah Island? It belonged to a missing man who was known to suffer from depression. A pair of New balance sneakers was determined to belong to a woman who committed suicide in 2004. Another foot was matched to a fisherman who went missing in 1987. Another pair of feet were found over a year apart before they were identified belonging to a man who went missing the years before. It’s incredibly tragic, and way less sensational.
But if you’re asking… 1987? How could a foot have survived that long? Why was it only discovered now?
The feet were all found in varying levels of decomposition, and many were skeletonized. Even though critters will nibble away at all the fleshy bits, harder material like bone will still remain. In a previous podcast we spoke with two local divers who helped recover the skeletal remains of a man who went missing 10 years ago. And again, because these feet are in shoes, it offers a layer of protection as well as buoyancy.
And yes, there have been a few discoveries of leg bones still attached to feet. One belonged to the body of a man who had gone missing in September of 2017. His body was found two months after his disappearance, in roughly the same area he disappeared from, without his legs attached. His leg and foot bones were later found washed up near Victoria BC.
And the other leg bone example? The one found under the Ship Canal Bridge in Lake Union, Seattle in 2011?
No clue. But apparently it was found in a plastic garbage bag and.. That’s it. That’s literally all the information out there.
There are also questions about why all these feet have been found in running shoes and the occasional hiking boot. Running shoes are naturally buoyant, like a foot sized life jacket. Once the foot detaches, again, naturally, the buoyant shoe shoots to the surface where it bobs in the currents.
This is why there haven’t been feet found in high heels, or sandals. Those just sink. There was even one article that suggested around the time many of the feet were found, runner shoe manufacturing changed so that shoes became even more buoyant. But I couldn’t really verify this.
But why did these severed feet start showing up recently?
Well… they didn’t. One famous example occurred Island in 1887, when BC police discovered a severed leg in a boot. It belonged to a man who was reported missing days before, and it’s thought he died after a cougar attack. There’s even a square named after this incident called… Leg In Boot Square.
Even before this case went viral, shoes have been washing up on beaches for years. After the discovery, people started checking more than usual. More checking means more discoveries.
And what about the fact these severed feet washing up on the beaches of the PNW?
Severed feet can be found anywhere, not just the PNW. Severed feet (and other body parts) were found on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro before the 2016 Olympics. But that is an interesting point, why is the Salish Sea such a hotspot?
First off, victims are from large, densely populated areas. More people, meaning more bodies, means increased chance of parts being found.
To quote Kathy Taylor, a former forensic anthropologist at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office “this is a consequence of having a densely populated area on the coast”.
We also have to consider the winds, tides, and currents of the Salish Sea.
According to oceanography professor Parker MacCready of the University of Washington, the Salish Sea has the ideal conditions to bring dismembered feet to shore.
“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,” MacCready explained to Vox. “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 effectively.”
So what have we learned?
The mystery of the Salish Sea Severed Feet is more tragic and mundane than the surrounding circumstances would lead you to believe. At the end of the day, these feet belong to people, people who were dealing with depression and mental health issues, who had loving families who reported them missing and were able to get closure after these feet were found. Many of the feet have been linked to the people they belonged to. And it’s pretty likely more shoes will wash ashore in the future.
To help with the identification, the BC Coroners Service launched an interactive portal where people can see where unidentified human remains have been reported along with relevant information. The goal is that more families can get closure, so that their loved ones aren’t remembered as “size 12, left side, black and white Adidas”. If you have any information, please head to their website If you know of anyone missing who could use this information, please pass it along. Because serial killer or not, supernatural or not, these feet belonged to people, who have families and loved ones that deserve peace and closure.
