A Vancouver author, who is watching British Columbia's missing feet mystery unfold, isn't ruling out the possibility that a serial killer may be at work in the area where the human remains have washed ashore.

It's an opinion put forward by Michael Slade, a criminal lawyer, who has worked on hundreds of trials and been involved in almost as many murder cases.

He is also the author of psycho thrillers, including "Deaths Door," the story of a serial killer who put body parts on the shores of British Columbia to taunt police.

He spoke to CTV on a day when police and forensic experts were trying to explain why it is that the remains of five human feet have washed up on the shores of British Columbia since August 2007.

On Wednesday, police thought they had found the remains of a sixth foot on a beach near the Vancouver Island community of Campbell River. But it turned out to be a hoax.

Slade says there are too many theories, in this real-life story, that can't be ignored.

If the discoveries are the result of a natural occurrence, he wonders, for example:

  • Why are only feet being found?
  • Why are they all clad in runners?
  • Why are they being found in the same area?
  • And why have none been discovered just kilometres away, in the United States.

"Now you also have to consider whether or not, this could be a serial killer, someone who is right now underneath the radar,'' he said.

"That has to be on the table,'' he said.

In the past few years, more than 20 reportedly happy and healthy young men have vanished from various parts of southern B.C., Slade said.

Slade was careful to point out that there is no evidence that they've been killed.

But it's another theory

"If those men are all athletically healthy, well you've got a tie-in to running shoes right there,'' he said.

So far police and B.C.'s Coroners Service say they don't suspect foul play.

But Slade says authorities were slow to connect the dots in some high profile cases like Clifford Olson and Robert William Pickton.

"There was this no, no, no, it can't be foul play until the evidence was overwhelming that is was foul play, that we ended-up looking very foolish,'' he said.

On Thursday, people who called into speak to Mr. Slade on broadcaster Bill Good's CKNW morning talk show, had theories of their own.

"It's maybe just a sick person working in a morgue,'' one said.

"I often throw my runners into the washing machine with the laundry and they float on top,'' added another.

Some people even speculate that the missing feet are the remains of people swept away in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

And since all the feet have all been randomly found near populated areas, their discovery has even lead some to wonder, are there more out there?

With a report by CTV British Columbia's St. John Alexander