Human Hand, Foot Found in Canadian Mail

Canadian police are looking for a connection between two Ottawa packages containing a human foot and hand and a torso found in Montreal garbage.

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In a bizarre series of events, Canadian police are looking for a link between a bloody package containing a human foot in Ottawa and the grisly discovery of a severed torso in Montreal.

A receptionist at Canada’s Conservative Party Headquarters alerted authorities Tuesday after partially opening a blood-soaked package just before noon. Police enlisted members of the hazardous-material unit, who opened the package at 130 Albert St. and found the human appendage, the AP reports. Police said the package was addressed to the Conservative Party of Canada, which is Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s party. (Harper’s office is not located at the political headquarters.) “I don’t think any of us are thinking this necessarily has anything to do with politics,” Conservative MP Brad Trost said.

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 Hours later, authorities discovered a second suspicious package containing a human hand at the Ottawa Postal Terminal Tuesday night, according to the Ottawa Citizen. Police confirmed the second body part was sent from the same origin as the foot, but would not say where it was being shipped. The second package was not destined for the Tory headquarters.

About 120 miles away in Montreal, meanwhile, a hotel employee unearthed a suitcase containing a severed torso from a pile of trash, the Ottawa Citizen reports. Mike Nadeau, 49, said he noticed a foul odor emanating from the suitcase over the past few days. The janitor said he and a friend used cutters to break the locked suitcase. “What I saw when we opened it is hard to describe. There was no head and [the torso] was all grey.”

Authorities said it is too early to determine whether the puzzling, gruesome cases are related, but continue to comb through garbage where the torso was found.

MORE: Canada: Severed Foot Sent to Party Office