Posted on 02/12/2007 2:16:55 AM PST by leadpenny
Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office searches Livingston Landfill for body, clues, after workers discover a severed foot there
By MICHAEL ZITZ
Authorities painstakingly picked through 127 tons of garbage at a Spotsylvania County landfill yesterday, searching for a body in the area where a severed human foot had been found Saturday.
Using heavy machinery, rakes, cadaver dogs--and even sifting by hand--35 county deputies and fire-and-rescue volunteers went about a gruesome task that Sheriff Howard Smith said might go on for several days at the Livingston Landfill near Brokenburg.
Workers found the foot at about 3 p.m. Saturday as they were cleaning the treads of a bulldozer used to spread and cover garbage that had been brought in by huge county trucks that day.
Smith said it was a left foot, and that "we know it was sawed off, just at the ankle." He said it was a clean cut.
He said the foot was covered with "sludge," making it difficult to say what race, gender or age the person might have been. Perhaps because of the cold weather, the foot hadn't undergone extensive decomposition, he said. It was sent to the state forensics lab in Richmond yesterday morning, Smith said.
The sheriff said workers initially thought the foot was part of a mannequin, then called 911 when they realized it was real.
"We've found two mannequins since we started the search," he added.
Smith said garbage is brought to the Livingston Landfill from "convenience sites" all around the county. And he said a recent decision to do away with county stickers on vehicles makes it difficult to tell if people from outside the county are dropping off their refuse.
Asked where the foot might have been disposed of before coming to the landfill, George Seals, a gate attendant who monitors the scales, said: "Who knows? It's definitely a mystery. An eagle could have even dropped it here. A dog could've carried it in."
Seals said he has a personal theory, though: "If you're in New Jersey and you want to get rid of a body, you could drop part of it off in D.C., part of it in Quantico, part of it here."
Smith said he didn't know of any cases in which body parts had been spread around the country to conceal the identity of a victim, "but anything's possible."
The sheriff said he had sent word to other police agencies around the country in case they, too, were trying to piece together a body and identity.
Even though it was a clean cut, Smith said he doubts the foot was the result of a medical amputation. "I've been told that amputated body parts are supposed to be cremated," he said.
Residents can drop off trash at the landfill, and a number of companies have accounts with the county and pay a fee to dispose of refuse there, Smith said. But he said no trash is supposed to come in from outside the county.
George Kartoudi, who owns the 208 Variety Store and Shell station about a mile from the landfill on State Route 208, said a landfill worker told him those who found the foot believed it belonged to a man in his late teens or 20s.
"It's scary," Kartoudi said. "I hope they find out what happened, and who it is."
Beverly Burcham, who works for Kartoudi, said that when she heard the news from a landfill worker, "I almost threw up.
"I don't want to to take my trash there anymore and I certainly don't want my children going there to drop off our trash," she said.
At Pizarro's Store in Snell, Joanne Pizarro said the discovery is one more sign of negative changes growth has brought to the area.
"It's horrific," she said. "You hate to hear something like that. It's just a changing environment. It never was like that before."
Michael Zitz: 540/374-5408 Email: mikez@freelancestar.com
ONEFOOTNOTINTHEGRAVE
To who ever, :)
Maybe they didn't need it any more...
Unless they don't want to burn the gas that creates global warming. Or, the incinerator is broken and they are too cheap to fix it.
I once worked for a company that made incinerators. We had two of them at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga.
One day we fired up the second one and it drew so much gas that it snuffed out the pathological incinerator next to it.
All of a sudden the building filled with the smell of burning human body parts. There is nothing like that smell on earth. We ran around gagging getting that path. incinerator started again.
my neighbor is a Spotsy Sheriff and has 2 cadaver dogs. Guess I know where he was all day yesterday.
yuk.
What a way to spend the weekend.
I wonder how he protects the dog's feet while they are searching?
There are booties the dogs can wear, but they aren't always used.
Good to know. Gotta be a dangerous place.
This statement about why he doesn't think the foot was medically amputated makes no sense at all. What is supposed to be done with amputated parts and what really happens to them can be two entirely different things. Maybe somebody wanted it for a Halloween house of horrors or something like that. There are people in a position to make off with body parts, or entire body parts, all over the country.
Seems to me like the nearest orthopedic surgeon could tell them very quickly if the foot had been surgically removed. There should be no lack of clues as to why the foot would have been amputated, not to mention the quality of the method used to to remove it.
Well, if the shoe fits????
which reminds me, couldn't somebody inquire as to the shoe size? Was it wearing a high heel? pumps? flat? sans spats?
A few years ago, we had a couple of pickup loads of "enriched" topsoil brought in by our gardener to fill in a 3 foot planter area; a few weeks later I was planting some veggies and my gloved hand brushed what turned out to be a complete syringe.
I always used a spade after that.
One man's trash, is another man's........foot?
From Fargo to Fredericksburg. Makes sense.
That one really is a cadaver dog now....
foot was probably severed by one of the garbage machines...I think there was a CSI to that effect.
I watched that show once or twice and had to stop it was so ridiculous. From lab results in an hour to walking around an indoor crime scene in the dark with a flashlight, I didn't know what nonsense would come up next.
If you want to see interesting and real crime stuff, watch shows like Forensic Files or Body of Evidence.
It's simple. Someone's foot just decided to go on walkabout.
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