By Tim Binnall
The macabre mystery surrounding severed feet that keep washing ashore in the Pacific Northwest was renewed this week when yet another of the bizarre body parts was found along a beach in Washington state. The grim discovery was reportedly made by beachgoers visiting a site known as Jetty Island on Tuesday afternoon. No doubt aghast by what they had stumbled upon, they promptly called police, who arrived on the scene to collect a work boot which still contained the foot of its owner.
Although authorities are still waiting for official confirmation from a medical examiner as to whether or not it is a genuine human foot, it's probably a safe bet that it is, since it wouldn't be the first time that such a strange discovery had been made in the region. The odd phenomenon began back in 2007 when two right feet were found over the course of a week on a beach in British Columbia and, since that time, there has been a steady and somewhat unsettling wave of severed body parts turning up on beaches in the area with seemingly one new entry being added to the creepy collection every year.
In fact, what may be most surprising about this latest discovery is that the foot was found in Washington state as its neighbor to the north is the locale where most of the body parts have been discovered. To date, a jaw-dropping 14 severed feet have been recovered on beaches in British Columbia with the most recent headline-making discovery being made last May. This week's foot found in Washington is the sixth one found in America and brings the total number of such body parts discovered over the last decade in the region to an astounding 20.
The source of all these feet remains the subject of considerable speculation with a number of different theories being offered by law enforcement agencies and armchair detectives. The most sensational possibility, that they are the handiwork of a serial killer, has largely been dismissed by experts. This is informed, in part, by the fact that DNA testing managed to connect some of the feet to people believed to have committed suicide. Nonetheless, a number of the feet remain unaccounted for and, perhaps most perplexing, no one seems to know why, exactly, they only started washing ashore over the last few years.