Wendy's chili 'Finger Lady' back in San Jose, but banned from restaurant

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 3/11/10 | Bruce Newman

[SmithL]

She cooked it.

Say what you will about the half-baked scam perpetrated by Anna Ayala at a San Jose Wendy's five years ago, the finger she supposedly discovered in her chili was medium well-done. And no one would know that better than Ayala: She was the finger-food chef that day.

"I cooked it," Ayala said, making a clean breast of her crime for the first time in a televised interview with Joe Vazquez of CBS-5.

Ayala's attempt to shake down the fast-food chain attracted worldwide attention, forcing the San Jose Police Department to assign six investigators to the case and cost Wendy's an estimated $21 million in lost business. Ayala drove the wandering ring finger — severed weeks earlier in a workplace accident — to San Jose, then pretended she had just chomped down on it, warning other patrons to avoid the chili. A representative of the chain did not return a call seeking comment about the news that Ayala was at large again.

After serving a prison term of four years — one year for every remaining finger and opposable thumb on the harvested hand of Brian Rossiter, who was paid $100 for the severed digit that ended up in a Wendy's chili container — Ayala, 44, has been living in San Jose since last April. But as a condition of her parole, she has not returned to the scene of the crime.

"I'm banned from Wendy's," she said. "For life."

[martin_fierro]

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[null and void]

True, you can’t get blood from a turnip, but if you squeeze it hard enough, you can get turnip juice.

[Xenalyte]

Her last name is Ayala. Why would you think that she and Sonia Sotomayor are at all related?

[a fool in paradise]