Story Archive

A Mystery with Leg

When a human leg was discovered in the garbage, homicide detectives began investigating. The tag on the leg identified it as John Timiriasieff’s, so, thinking he might have been the victim of very serious misconduct, the detectives went to his Key Largo, Fla., home. Timiriasieff, who had not in fact been murdered, contacted Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, where he’d had his right leg amputated — and now he agrees he was the victim of very serious misconduct. The hospital, he says in his lawsuit, did something “outrageous and beyond all bounds of human decency”: it threw out the useless limb instead of burning it, and that mistake caused Timiriasieff to suffer hurt feelings. A hospital spokeswoman said that “Proper procedures have been reinforced at the hospital to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.” (AC/Miami Herald, WPLG Miami) ...From now on, nametags will only be attached to parts that people are keeping.