Investigators in Washington State are preparing a DNA sample to send to Canada for a footless body that might be connected to the mystery of the severed feet.
Days after CTV News first called San Juan Island Coroner Randall Gaylord in an investigation into the mystery of why five severed feet have washed ashore, B.C. investigators are actively working on the file, Gaylord said.
"They've been exchanging phone calls and e-mails and e-mailing our medical examiner," said Gaylord.
The remains were discovered by a hiker on the eastern tip of Orcas Island, near Point Lawrence, in March 2007.
It was badly decomposed, with its left arm missing, its lower jaw missing, and both feet were gone. The body was unidentifiable.
But that was five months before the first of five feet were to wash ashore in B.C., and officials filed the body as a 'partial skeleton.'
That's where it lay, until a CTV News investigation prompted Gaylord to make a link between the mystery north of the border and his own unsolved cold case.
"I hadn't turned it until you called," Gaylord told CTV News' Jon Woodward. "You're the one who really put it all together."
The Mounties said they knew about the body all along.
"Our office was aware of this at the time," said RCMP spokesperson Annie Linteau.
But documents obtained from the San Juan Coroners office show that B.C. officials only acted on the file on Thursday -- one day after the phone conversation with CTV News.
The coroner says it could be weeks before DNA results from the San Juans are known -- meaning it could be a while before we'll know if this mystery is any closer to being solved.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward
