There was an extra leg? You mean, when they put all the pieces back together, they had one leg left over?
Not only that, but the left leg was dark in skin complexion. There were also reports that the leg was recently shaven. That's apparently why they thought it belonged to a woman -- a black woman named Lakesha Levy. They put the stray leg in her casket and buried her, apparently hoping the issue would go away. A funny thing happened, though. Lakesha Levy's real left leg was later found in the rubble and definitively identified by footprint. So they dug her up and exchanged the legs.
The sticky little problem still remained, though; they still had an extra leg of unknown origin. They didn't know whose dark-skinned, newly shaven leg that was that had originally been buried with Lakesha Levy.
More here:
Families to Select Leg's Burial Spot
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b2a9e006886.htm
One of these days when I have more time, I'll follow this up to see where the leg was buried and what kind of burial it was given. The maddening irony of the entire thing is this: If that leg did belong to a Middle Eastern male who had recently shaved his body in preparation to meet his 72 virgins, then we ended up giving him (or what was left of him) a nice, humane, dignified (and probably Christian) burial.
The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK)
April 24, 2004 Saturday
Nichols' jurors learn about mystery leg; Severed limb was never matched to any known bombing victim.
Nolan Clay, Staff Writer
McALESTER — Jurors at Terry Nichols' state murder trial learned Friday that a severed left leg never was matched to anyone after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Jurors also learned the gruesome details of how more than 70 of the victims died in the April 19, 1995, attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
"This is not easy," said Dr. Fred Jordan, the state's chief medical examiner, as he described one by one the causes of death.
Jordan conceded under defense questioning that someone else may have been killed because one left leg could not be matched with any of the 168 known bombing fatalities.
"That's possible," Jordan testified. "This is a mystery to which I don't have the answer."
Nichols, 49, contends executed bomber Timothy McVeigh had help from others — not him. His attorneys may suggest during closing arguments the unmatched leg is all that is left of McVeigh's true accomplice.
Jordan testified his "gut feeling" was that medical examiners made a mistake and the leg belonged to a known victim. He told jurors, though, he and other experts studied X-rays and other evidence and couldn't figure out any mistake.
He said anthropologists concluded the shaven left leg likely belonged to a woman of mixed race who was 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6 inches tall. Prosecutors suggested Friday the leg could have belonged to a homeless person.
Outside the courthouse, Jordan told reporters: "I've always thought this had to be a mistake on our part. ... There were a lot of missing parts. ... But we have looked and looked and looked. Other pathologists have looked. Other anthropologists have looked. And we can't find it. ... Could it be another individual? I have to say, 'Could be. I don't know.' ... I do not know whose leg it is. That's the bottom line."
Leg had been placed in coffin
The mystery leg had been mistakenly placed in the coffin of Tinker Airman 1st Class Lakesha Levy, who was killed while visiting the Social Security office.
Officials discovered the mistake when they identified a left leg found in the rubble on May 30, 1995, as Levy's leg. Officials made that identification from a footprint on Levy's birth records.
The mystery leg was studied after Levy's casket was removed in 1996 from an above-ground crypt in New Orleans.
(snip)
FOX -- THE EDGE WITH PAULA ZAHN
June 11, 2001 Monday
Leading THE EDGE
Inside Timothy McVeigh's Execution
GUESTS: Stephen Jones, Beth Wilkinson
BYLINE: Paula Zahn, Shepard Smith
ZAHN: And joining us now with more on the McVeigh execution is Stephen Jones, who led McVeigh's defense team when he was convicted and sentenced to death on federal bombing charges.
Welcome back to THE EDGE, sir.
STEPHEN JONES, FORMER MCVEIGH ATTORNEY: Thank you, Paula.
(snip)
ZAHN: And do you still to this day believe the conspiracy went beyond Lori, Michael Fortier and James Nichols?
JONES: I think in all likelihood it did, yes.
ZAHN: And is there any evidence you can point to of who those other people would have been?
JONES: Well, you know, there's still the question and the government acknowledges that they have an unidentified leg. They have nine left legs and they have eight victims with traumatically amputated left legs. They cannot match the ninth leg to any victim or to any person that's known to be missing or unaccounted for. So who does it belong to? Well, it is consistent with eyewitness testimony that it belongs to one of the bombers. There are still people who saw someone with Terry Nichols that looked like Tim McVeigh but wasn't Tim McVeigh. And we know that it couldn't have been Tim McVeigh because he was somewhere else. And that person hasn't been identified.
And somewhere along the line, Paula, there has to be someone who designed and assisted in the construction and transportation of this terrible, destructive device. And that, I think, is still an open question.
Okay. I'm done. :-)