Mysterious Human Feet Baffle Police

From murder mysteries to murky maladies

(NEWSER) - A lot of big news happened in 2011 ... and some of it only half-happened. The Atlantic Wire took a look at the most frustrating unanswered questions of the year, and keeps its fingers crossed that 2012 will bring new details. Highlights from its list of the year's 10 most nagging mysteries:

• What's the deal with the Long Island serial killer/killers? In the course of searching for Shannan Gilbert, police ultimately found 10 bodies. Gilbert's body, recently found, was No. 11—except she died accidentally . And authorities can't even agree whether one or two killers are responsible for the deaths. Are police anywhere near catching this guy(s)?

Police mystified by cleanly cut limb

(NEWSER) - A family visiting St. Petersburg, Florida, got a nasty surprise yesterday, when they stumbled upon a severed human leg that had washed ashore on a small beach tucked behind a waterfront neighborhood. The leg was pale, white, and shaven, bent at the knee and cut with eerie cleanness at the thigh and foot. “We don’t know the cause and manner of death,” the city’s top detective tells the Tampa Bay Times . “But obviously someone went to great lengths to dismember the body.” More»

Elderly woman died on trip from Oregon to British Columbia

(NEWSER) - In a sad story from Oregon, a 71-year-old man had his wife die in the car beside him as they were driving home to Canada. Unsure what to do, he drove for 225 miles until he was close to the Canadian border, then got out and made a phone call for help. “I think it was just not registering that he needed to stop," said the police chief in Tonasket, Oregon, where the unidentified husband made the call. More»

Buoyant footwear behind grisly finds, coroner says

(NEWSER) - Another foot missing its owner has washed ashore in southwestern British Columbia—the ninth such grim discovery in the last four years. Unlike the others, this one, found by a group of teens, was in freshwater and was in a hiking boot, not a running shoe, CBC reports. Investigators believe the foot separated naturally from the rest of the body and had probably been submerged for at least a decade. Six of the feet found previously have been identified. More»

No damage has been reported

(AP) - A magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck today off the coast of British Colombia, the US Geological Survey said. The quake struck at 12:41pm PDT about 173 miles west of Vancouver. No immediate reports have damage have surfaced. "It's been felt pretty widely—we have reports of it being felt in Vancouver, Victoria, and even in Seattle," a USGS geophysicist tells the Vancouver Sun . The quake shook buildings on Vancouver Island. More»