Tourist Finds Human Leg on Florida Beach

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.”

The first step for police will be identifying the victim—“You can't even surmise what happened to them until we identify the victim and look into their life,” the police major said. Police believe the leg belonged to a heavyset woman, but even the gender hasn’t been officially determined. For now, they’re checking neighboring areas for missing persons reports, and scanning the shore for more body parts. (More St. Petersburg stories.)