A human foot found inside a shoe that washed ashore near the mouth of a river in northern Washington in 2021 belonged to a 68-year-old woman who vanished three years earlier, authorities said Tuesday.
Jerilyn L. Smith was identified through DNA from the human foot that a passerby had spotted near the mouth of the Elwha River in Port Angeles, the Clallam County Sheriff's Office said.
The human foot was found in a woman’s size 8 New Balance brand shoe. Since the foot was the only part of the remains discovered, authorities were not able to immediately determine multiple factors about the woman, including age, ethnicity, height and weight, the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators pursued various leads, but the woman’s identity remained a mystery until the sheriff’s office partnered with Othram Labs in Woodlands, Texas, in 2022.
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After analyzing the human foot, the lab gave detectives a list of potential family members to confirm the woman’s identity through DNA. The surviving family members sent samples to the lab, which confirmed the remains belonged to Smith.
Smith was reported missing on Jan. 7, 2018. Her cause of death and the circumstances of her disappearance were not immediately clear.
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More than a dozen other severed feet have been discovered in the waters of northern Washington and southern British Columbia since 2008, KOMO News reported in 2019 when authorities identified another human foot that had been found inside a boot that washed up on an island off the coast.
That human foot was linked to a 22-year-old man who had gone missing in 2016.
