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."
Knight said the barrel has been floating in the water for at least a week, and that the stench from the decomposing body was terrible.
"The stench you wouldn't believe -- 50 feet away you were still smelling it," he said.
RCMP refused Thursday to confirm the story, saying they need to confirm results of an autopsy before releasing any information.
"Unfortunately, I can't confirm any of that at this point," said RCMP Sgt. Brian Edmonds of the major crimes unit. "I don't know how much more, if anything, will be coming today. I'd like to think that maybe once the autopsy's done there might be more that's able to be released.
"The issue right now is the identity," he added. "We need to establish identity as best we can or work on that aspect of it. I haven't been told anything about the gender or the condition of the body, anything like that. A lot of it's pending on the autopsy results."
Knight said RCMP told him and Marcotte "to say nothing" and didn't give them any further details of the investigation. Knight said RCMP were still on scene Thursday afternoon, and that his dock was taped off for the investigation.
"We want nothing to do with it," he said, admitting he was still shaken up from the ordeal. Residents of Lac du Bonnet said RCMP were called out to the site last night after an RCMP Musical Ride that attracted a huge crowd.
Several businesspeople in the town about an hour's drive northeast of Winnipeg said they had heard the story, but knew little more.
"That's all I heard," said Lynn Adrian of Adrian Tire and Auto Service. "It was right after the RCMP musical ride. There were thousands of people there and right after that, the RCMP had to go. But apparently it happened (Wednesday) morning.
"It was after the musical ride that they all had to go and look after everything," she reiterated. "They said they're real busy this morning because apparently they've got the investigators and stuff in from the city and all that."
Talk about maggoty! Floating a week? Somethin' smells fis... Dead. Another pointless autopsy. Guy's dead. Leave 'im be. Just bury the barrel! With him in it. He's stinkin' up the joint!
-- Edited by Uke at 13:50, 2008-07-26
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Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
From Luc Sante's book "Evidence" The body of Gaspare Candella, found stuffed in a barrel in a vacant lot on 45th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. 1914-1918 credit: Municipal Archives, Department of Records and Information Services, City of New York.
