Body found in barrel floating in river

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Phone interview with George Knight; the man who first saw the body.
*Please be advised that this podcast is unedited and includes some profanity.

(July 24) While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police already have quite a mystery concerning the human feet that have emerged along the shores of British Columbia, another Canadian waterway has just served-up another grisly find:  The body of a man found stuffed inside a barrel that had been floating down the Lee River northeast of Winnipeg.

According to a breaking news story in this afternoon’s Winnipeg Free Press, two neighbors noticed the barrel bobbing in the river Wednesday:

Two cottagers were horrified when they discovered the decomposing body of a man stuffed face-first inside a barrel floating in the Lee River on Wednesday morning.

George Knight, 69, was repairing his dock in Fisher’s Grove along the Lee River, about 90 kilometres northeast from Winnipeg, when he and neighbour Richard Marcotte noticed a barrel bobbing in the water between their two properties.

Knight said he and Marcotte rolled the barrel near the river’s edge and pried the lid off only to discover a man’s “rear-end” wrapped in a thick plastic sheet.

“I’m pulling this plastic out and I sort or lift it up and I see this guy’s rear-end,” Knight said, noting he also saw jeans and a brown belt inside the barrel. “I just said to Richard, ‘get out of the water!’ He jumped out of the water, and I ran up to his place and called 911.” 

Mr. Knight told the newspaper that the stench from the body was “terrible” and could be smelled 50-feet away.

The RCMP says it will not confirm the story, telling the Winnipeg Free Press that authorities are waiting for the result of an autopsy.

Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Body of man in barrel identified (audio interview with RCMP)