FL FL - Hollywood, WhtMale UP1269, 21-35, Legs Found Inside Shark, Sep'82

[Migmuu]

UP#1269

DEMOGRAPHICS
Age: 21 0 35 years old
Sex: Male
Race: Caucasian
Height: 5'6 (NamUs), 6'0 (contemporary articles)
Weight: ~190 pounds
Postmortem Interval: 1 - 4 days

CIRCUMSTANCES
Date: September 4, 1982
Location: 1 1/2 miles off coast of Hollywood, Broward County, FL.
A sports fisherman and his friend caught a 9 1/2-foot-long tiger shark in the Atlantic. When they cut open the shark, they discovered a full right leg and an upper left leg in its stomach. Postmortem interval is 1 - 4 days based on normal digestive patterns of tiger sharks. It is believed that he was already deceased when the shark began feeding, but the cause of death is unknown.

PHYSICAL/MEDICAL
Full right leg and upper left leg only. Remains mostly skeletal with some soft tissue.

CLOTHING/ACCESSORIES
A sock and size 10 1/2 Adidas high-top sneaker on right foot.

IDENTIFIERS
N/A

 

[Migmuu]

Four news articles about the discovery

 

[anonymess]

Super unusual case!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[azure]

This is probably the most bizarre circumstance for a UID case I've ever come across.

 

[Rayemonde]

Good grief.

 

[bflocket]

Wouldn't it be possible for this to be a Cuban trying to make it to the USA?

There was a huge exodus in 1980. But I know that Cubans have tried to float their way to Florida pretty frequently since then. Fleeing Cuba has been going on for a long time (i.e. the huge Elián González brouhaha around 2000). I don't know if people are still trying to leave now that Castro's dead.

But they definitely were trying to get to Florida at the time this person's pieces were found. Here's a map showing the route Elian floated to Florida. It would go right through/past the area where the shark was caught.

 

[apearn]

Here are a couple people to get the ball rolling on this one.

Gerald has a crippled left leg. It doesn't go into specifics on that. It made me wonder if that is why we don't have a full left leg in the shark. He was supposed to be going to Texas though.

I doubt it's Donnel. That is a long way to go (and a large timeframe) in a syrofoam sailboat.

Terrance is probably a good possibility eventhough he is a bit taller than what NAMUS has.

Gerald Bradshaw
Virginia Beach City County, Virginia
Victim last heard from on 03/17/82. Victim moved out of a motel he was staying at and did not return to his mother's residence in Florida. Mother sent money via Western Union to victim so that he could travel to Texas to retrieve his stolen van that had been located. Victim has not been heard from since.
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/show/7624

Donnel Sears
Pinellas County, Florida
Date of last Seen : 1/28/1982
Location of Last Seen : GULF OF MEXICO, WEST OF MADEIRA BEACH, FL
Synopsis - Donnel Sears left Madeira Beach with a friend named Michael Franzese (SPPD case #: 82-10262) on a 10' Styrofoam sailboat on 01/28/1982. Neither subject nor the sailboat has been recovered. Sears was reported missing on 01/30/1982.
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/27798/909

Terrance Schram
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
Terrance Lee Schram was in the U.S. Navy in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Terrance had phone communications with his father is early 1982. He has not been seen or heard from since. The Schram family believes Terrance may have been in Florida when he called his father in early 1982.
https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/1750/0/

 

[apearn]

Height and age is on target.

Ricky Eugene Osborn
Missing since about 1982 or 1983 from Apopka, Orange County, Florida

Circumstances of Disappearance
Osborn was last seen by a family member who dropped him at the bus terminal in Apopka, Florida about 1982 or 1983. Ricky had a bus ticket to Santa Cruz, California.
Since that time two calls were received by family members. The first call came from an unknown law enforcement agency on an unknown date to his mom to confirm Ricky's identity. The second call was from Ricky to his Aunt claiming he feared for his life when the phone went dead on his end. The date and location of that call is also unknown.
The family has been trying to get a missing person report filed for Ricky, but because of the circumstances of his disappearance, have so far, been unable to.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/3264dmfl.html

 

[rats]

Legs found inside shark? That's ridiculous! I find that so interesting!

 

[Hap]

Crazy!!! Sounds like some sort of Jaws follow up movie...

 

[bflocket]

I wonder how they're coming up with their stats. They are truly "unknowable" from a single leg. People are shaped all kinds of ways in their upper body and their lower bodies. The height range seems OK to me because it is so broad, but I wonder about the weight being worked out to be "190-lbs" rather than a range of weights.

I also thought about the flow of the ocean currents, but I don't know how that would affect a living shark. A dead shark (or person) would float with the currents, but I don't know how the sharks behave, as in whether they would travel with the current, go against it or stay in one general spot.

Here's a map of how the currents go. It's from The Daily Mail's website and I know that every other story is about the Kardashians or, well that's basically it. But I checked with a better map covering the whole world and this one looks to be OK. I just used it because it is focused on the area involved with this.


The warm/red current seems to whip around the bottom of Florida and head north, right past Miami/Hollywood.

 

[STANDREID]

In a 1935 Australian murder case, a shark that had been captured and put in an aquarium vomitted up a human arm and the victim was actually identified due to a tatoo on the arm. A man was put on trial for the murder but he was found not guilty and the case is still officially in the unsolved column.

 

[bflocket]

...victim was actually identified due to a tatoo on the arm.

Too bad that this one doesn't have some kind of identifier like that.

 

[Migmuu]

I keep coming back to this case because of the incredible circumstances. This Miami Herald article dated 09/05/82 can’t be found online without a local library card (or by paying money), so I’m posting it here in its entirety. It gives a little more information:

Al Laurino and Bobby Colville went on an all-night shark- fishing expedition Friday night 1 1/2 miles off Hollywood Beach.

What they caught Saturday at 5:30 a.m. surpassed even their wildest imaginings: A 364-pound, nine-foot, five-inch tiger shark with a pair of human legs inside it.

The right leg had on a sock and an Adidas tennis shoe. There was also a thigh portion of the left leg.

"I suppose you could say I was shocked," said Laurino, a charter boat owner from Davie. "But I guess I always had it in my mind that I could come up with something like that."

The fishermen reeled in the man-eating shark after a tiring two-hour struggle. The fight over, they returned to shore and proceeded to slice open the shark's belly.

The baffled fishermen immediately called Hollywood police, who then notified the Broward Medical Examiner's Office.

The tiger shark was transported to the medical examiner's office. Chief medical examiner Dr. Ronald Wright performed an autopsy on the body parts, seaching for clues about the victim's identity.

The limbs are believed to be those of a white male in his early 20s, weighing about 190 pounds, and between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet tall, according to Wright.

The cause and time of death are unknown.

Investigators were unable to determine if the man was dead or alive when the shark swallowed part of him anytime between a day ago and four days ago.

"We can't classify the death as accidental, or homicide or suicide or due to natural causes," said Steve Cory, an investigator for the medical examiner's office.

"We don't have enough to go on. We've had no missing persons reports and we've had no reported shark attacks."

If the man's identity remains a mystery, so do the tiger shark's recent whereabouts.

"A shark of that size can travel 100 miles in a circle so it could have been anywere from Palm Beach to the Keys to the Bahamas," Cory said.

The tiger shark is famous for its voracity. It's a scavenger and a maneater that lives in warm waters. They grow to 18 feet in length.

The last time the Broward Medical Examiner's Office had a case even similar was about a year ago when a chewed torso was found floating in the ocean near Fort Lauderdale.

And the last shark scare occurred in February of this year when about 50 schooling blacktip sharks were spotted near Deerfield Beach.

Dade County also experienced shark incidents in February. Large schools of blacktips offshore at Crandon Park caused the beach to be closed to swimmers for several days.

Also in February, a skin diver, Kim Seibel of Homestead, disappeared off Elliott Key. His swimsuit and some of his diving gear were found, bearing numerous marks from shark's teeth. It was unclear if Seibel was attacked while alive.

On Saturday, questions about the tiger shark's travels and the mystery man also were left unanswered.

But fisherman Laurino ventured a guess:

"I don't think he attacked anybody. I would say the person was dead already when the shark ate him," Laurino said.

"And the sneaker tells me it wasn't a diver."

 

[Migmuu]

In 1986, while giving a presentation to an 8th grade civics class explaining the duties of the Medical Examiner’s office, Steve Cory stated his belief that this victim fell off a boat and was already deceased when the shark encountered him. Clipping the relevant portion of the article:

Steve Cory, an investigator for the Broward Medical Examiner`s Office, pulled out a slide picturing a tiger shark and an Adidas sneaker. Groans and gasps came from the Pines Middle School students watching.

Students in Kathleen Manning`s class shuddered even more when he explained: A man who caught the shark ripped it open only to find the legs and feet, still in Adidas sneakers, inside.

"Either (the victim) fell off a boat or he was pushed," Cory said, pointing out people don`t swim in sneakers. "He was probably dead before he was eaten by the shark, since tiger sharks are scavengers."

Cory was only one of several speakers to visit Manning`s civics classes over the last several weeks.

 

[Migmuu]

I was doing research on shark attacks in Miami and came across another case of UID partial human remains found inside a shark near Soldier Key in 1915, about 30 miles south of where this man’s legs were found. It appeared as if the remains were eaten several months (or years) before the shark was caught. They were tentatively identified as a man named John Mooney, who disappeared (presumably drowned) while rescuing his nephew in the ocean in St. Augustine in 1912, but they could never confirm it because the remains were missing a mandible and several upper teeth. Unsurprisingly, he’s not in NamUs, probably because that case is ~104 years old.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with this case; this is the time of year where I get obsessed with shark attacks and I just thought of this John Doe when I read that story.

 

[MadMcGoo]

This is a good point (from a couple of posts up):

"Either (the victim) fell off a boat or he was pushed," Cory said, pointing out people don`t swim in sneakers. "He was probably dead before he was eaten by the shark, since tiger sharks are scavengers."

This is such an unusual case. Not even sure where to start.

 

[PatLaurel]

Bumping with the Doe Network link: 3542UMFL

Date of Discovery: September 4, 1982
Location of Discovery: Hollywood, Broward County, Florida
Estimated Date of Death: Unknown
State of Remains: Not recognizable - Partial remains with soft tissues
Cause of Death: Unknown

Physical Description​

Estimated Age: 21-35 years old
Race: White
Sex: Male
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 190 lbs.
Hair Color: Unknown
Eye Color: Unknown
Distinguishing Marks/Features: Unknown

Identifiers​

Dentals: Unknown
Fingerprints: Unknown
DNA: Unknown

Clothing & Personal Items​

Clothing: A size 10 1/2, black-and-white, high-top, ''Adidas'' sneaker.
Jewelry: Unknown
Additional Personal Items: Unknown

Circumstances of Discovery​

The remains of human legs were found inside a shark in the Atlantic Ocean about 1.5-2 miles east of Hollywood Boulevard, in Broward County, Florida on September 2nd or 4th, 1982.

Two fishermen caught a 9'5", 370 lbs. tiger shark in the ocean near Hollywood. The entire shark was taken to the medical examiner's office for investigation.

Investigating Agency(s)​

Agency Name: District 17 Medical Examiner's Office - Broward County
Agency Contact Person: Wendy Crane
Agency Phone Number: 954-357-5200
Agency E-Mail: Med_Exam_Trauma(at)Broward.org
Agency Case Number: 1982-01255

Agency Name: Hollywood Police Department
Agency Contact Person: Unknown
Agency Phone Number: 954-967-4357
Agency E-Mail: hollywoodpdtips(at)hollywoodfl.org
Agency Case Number: 82-75948

NCIC Case Number: U-140017988
NamUs Case Number: 1269
Former Hot Case Number: 607

 

[PatLaurel]

3542UMFL - Newspapers.com