A Corpse Called Sneaker Man

Another bit from the ANDERSON VALLEY ADVERTISER, edited by Bruce Anderson, Boonville, Mendocino County, "American's Last Newspaper."

You should keep in mind that Mindo Co. is hilly, forested and mostly unpopulated. Along the delightful Pacific Coast you'll find retired city people from Berkeley etc. Inland you will find ancient families of rednecks, fond of beer and whiskey. Think of the TV series "Justified" or the series set in New Zealand called "Top Of The Lake."  Looking much like the rednecks are a third group, the hippie dope growers. Both sides are heavily armed and hate one another. You do not want to stroll far from the road, unless you are accompanied by children and a picnic basket, which might give you non-combatant status.  Mendo is the county where the sheriff used to issue legal pot farm permits, which were lost in a fire just before the Feds came with arrest warrants.  Anyway:

What follows is an update on a corpse they call Sneaker Man, a corpse that had been buried upside down, head first. "The human remains are believed to be that of a white male adult, approximately 25-45 years of age with a height between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet 5 inches. The gravesite and the body was discovered last October by a family near Piercy. For years they had seen the toe of a single sneaker protruding from the ground. They dismissed it as river trash. This last year a second sneaker toe was uncovered side by side with the first, which led to the man of the family poking around more deeply. On the day before Halloween, the man pulled one of the shoes out. It was difficult. The man thought that maybe roots had grown into it but instead discovered that the shoe contained bones and a sock. 'Once he found the bones they were put in an empty bag he had with him,' his wife said. 'When I went back with him to confirm (around disk), we brought a little shovel and dug out a little more until we could see the leg bone. It was only a little round end, but it was obviously a bone leading up to a leg . . . and we could see there was leg bone going up inside what looked like denim pants. That is what confirmed to us we really were seeing a human body, and it was time to call the police about it.'"

The investigation continues, and hats off to this woodsy family that had the good sense not to ignore two sneaker toes protruding from the dirt side by side.