These little piggies almost went to market. (Jmarchn/Creative Commons)
Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
You’ve gotta hand it to Joanna Kinman. Or maybe foot it to her. The Australian woman narrowly avoided jail time after being caught with, well, quite a lot, actually. We’ll get into that shortly, but the offending act that got her on the authority’s radar was trying to sell a pair of human toes on the black market. You’re probably wondering a lot of things, but first and foremost, how she came into sole possession of part of a foot.
Last year, Kinman worked at an animal shelter where two dogs were dropped off after their owner died of natural causes. The dogs may have been man’s best friend at one time, but they got hungry after he passed, and decided they liked their owner both as master and dinner. After being dropped off at the shelter, they may have decided that Alpo was better than human flesh, and they regurgitated some of the remains. Kidman found the toes in the trash, took them home, and put them in formaldehyde… as one does.
If you’re wondering why someone would snag a body part or two out of the trash, it’s not because she had a foot fetish. See, Kinman is (or at least was) part of an internet group called “Bone Buddies Australia.” Sadly, that’s not a dating app, but a Facebook group where users buy and sell specimens, NBC News reports. The two digits were the latest in her collection, and she posted them on the group, believing she could get the Australian equivalent of $253 by hocking the toes that a pair of dogs had hocked up.
She could have at least put them in one of these. (Fu00e6/Wikimedia Commons)
Turns out selling human remains is frowned upon down under as well, and acting on an anonymous tip (if were to to harbor a guess, probably someone in the “bone buddies” group), police showed up at her house, where she showed them the rest of her collection, which included an alligator claw, a bird skull, a guinea pig foot and her children’s teeth. The most surprising thing was that all of those were also regurgitated by the dogs. Okay, that last sentence wasn’t true, but she did boast to one of her five children about having the toes and told detectives she thought that the toes were “cool” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Kinman was hauled into court and faced as much as two years in jail, which would’ve worked out to one year for each toe. However, she was able to skirt prison by pleading guilty to offensive conduct involving human remains at the Ringwood Magistrate’s Court in Melbourne. Magistrate Andrew Sim told her that she was avoiding jail “by the barest of possible margins,” sentencing her to an 18 month non-custodial sentence that includes 150 hours of community service. Kinman’s lawyer said when pleading her case, she’d lost her job (obviously) and been subject to public shame online. While she didn’t publicly comment, we’re sure she’s happy to just be on toebation for a year and a half.
This article is based on fully factual news, so if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
