By Chris Bartholomew
British Columbia coast: the foot remains of five different people have washed ashore on the same stretch of waterway in the Pacific Northwest wearing running shoes. The first four feet were all from right legs, while one was from a left leg. All five of the feet were found inside running shoes.
A right foot in a size 12 Adidas running shoe was found on Jedediah Island. A right foot in a size 12 Reebok was found on Gabriola Island. A right foot in a size 10 1/2 running shoe was found on Valdes Island. A right foot in a sneaker was found on Westham Island. A left foot in a shoe was found on Kirkland Island.
Not boots, sneakers or street shoes but each was found in running shoes. They were detached at the ankle. There is no flesh but just bone in the sock in shoe and in the past 11 months they have washed ashore in different scattered locations where the same current would have deposited them. The feet belong to four men and one woman and it's a real mystery. There was a sixth foot, but that one was a hoax. It was the paw of an animal placed on the shore.
None of the feet appeared to have been forcibly removed from a body, but that has not stopped some lurid reports suggesting that a serial-killer with a foot fetish is on the loose. Canadian officials, who are treating the investigation as a criminal inquiry, have so far discounted one potential explanation: a 2005 plane crash in the Georgia Strait, from which four men are still missing. The families of the victims were told that DNA samples from their loved ones did not match any of the genuine human remains.
There is no shortage of speculation on why the remains of human feet are washing up on British Columbia's shores, with theories ranging from a serial killer to a morgue worker with a morbid sense of humor. Why are only feet being found? Why are they all clad in runners? Why are they being found in the same area? Why have none been found in the U.S.? This could be a serial killer.
Families of some missing 20+ men want the DNA tested to see if they could possibly be the remains of a family member. The coroner's office plans to examine DNA from the last foot found to try to identify the person to whom it belonged. The authorities also are combing through missing person's reports and trying to determine when and where the shoe was manufactured and sold.
Since the media has gotten much attention now for the 'Highway of Tears' missing women, there is a group of family members that want their missing sons to get some attention.
One paper in Canada did a study on missing men. They took a list of sixty and weeded out the ones who might have had a reason to disappear such as health problems, seniors in frail health, probable suicides and those known to police for links to gangs or drug use, and that left forty to find. Taking the 40 names, they followed up by looking to see if any of the names were of people who had been found, dead or alive. They located about a dozen, but unfortunately less than a handful of these men are alive. The remaining 22 healthy, apparently happy, men from southwestern B.C. have simply vanished.
Rumors of a possible serial killer at work are growing, but police departments discount any connections in the cases. So, here we go again. Despite obvious similarities in the disappearances, the police don't think a serial killer is involved. No connection? The similarities might lie in their appearances. John Kahler, Derek Kelly, Michael Scullion and Kellen McElwee are white, young, clean-shaven muscular men with short hair who have tattoos. Bryan Braumberger has a similar look, but no tattoos.
Each of the men was last seen eating or drinking with friends. The vehicles of Kahler, Braumberger and McElwee were found abandoned with no sign of foul play. A lot of the men are from the same locations: Langley. Burnaby. Chilliwack. All of these locations are familiar because they are where a lot of the missing women were from along the 'Highway of Tears'. Families of the missing men are putting up posters, familiar. Families of the missing women do the same thing along the highway.
Some of their cars were found with the engine running, the radio playing, as if they meant to come back to the car right away. There are similarities. They were all in great shape. And they're all gone.
Editor's note: this was written in 2008, eleven months into the discoveries, when five feet had come ashore and the investigation was open. It is reproduced as written, and the answer is now known. More than twenty detached feet have been recovered along the Salish Sea since the first on Jedediah Island in August 2007, on both the Canadian and the American side, and in December 2017 the British Columbia Coroners Service said foul play had been ruled out in every case. There is no killer. Feet come away at the ankle on their own after long immersion, the joint being a weak one and marine scavengers taking the soft tissue first; no cut marks or trauma have been found on any of them. The reason it is feet and not hands or heads is the shoe. The foam sole of a modern running shoe floats, which carries the foot to a beach instead of leaving it on the sea floor, and shelters it well enough to arrive intact. That is also why the article's own observation, that they were all running shoes and never boots or street shoes, is the answer rather than the mystery. DNA has since matched most of them to missing people, the majority missing over a year and one a fisherman missing since 1987, and the deaths behind them are drownings, accidents and suicides. The hoax foot the author mentions was real, a June 2008 animal paw staged in a sock and a shoe. The missing men in the second half of the article are a separate matter and remain unresolved; nothing in the record connects them to the feet or to each other.