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.
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.