The Agony of de Feet

 

by Pa Rock

Rural Resident

(Note:  The following story was told to me by my old college friend, Mike Box, over breakfast this past  weekend in Mission, Kansas.  It had occurred last fall in Howell County, Missouri, the rural southern Missouri county where I reside, and Mike's retelling of the news account was the first that I had heard of the gruesome tale which follows.  My friend has since forwarded a copy of the newspaper article where he got his information.  It was in the February 15, 2024, edition of the "Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader,"  The article, written by Ryan Collingwood, was entitled "Willow Springs man staged farm accident, paid someone to cut off his feet, authorities say."  The title for today's blog posting was provided by my old friend.  Thanks, Mike.)

This story begins in November of last year when the Howell County Sheriff's Office was notified of a farm "accident" near the town of Willow Springs where an elderly person, a man in his sixties, had lost his feet in a brush-hogging accident.  (A brush-hog is a mower deck that attaches to the back of a tractor and is used to clear large acerages of sprouts and brush.)  

The sheriff's office responded by sending out an experienced investigator to see exactly what was going on, and the investigator quickly developed concerns about the truthfulness of the report.  For one thing, the man's feet appeared to be truly lost - they could not be located by the medics or deputies who responded to the call.    The investigator also noted that the wounds where the feet had been removed were too clean to have been the work of a brush-hog, which would have left them more mangled.  Another curiosity was the fact that the man's legs had tourniquets applied before the responders arrived, and it was unclear who had provided that first-aid treatment.

The man's feet were eventually discovered by a relative.  They were hidden in a bucket and obscured by some tires.

There were too many questions and too few answers for the tale the tale that law enforcement and medics were being given.

The sheriff's investigator determined that it had been a "staged accident" and a news release was put out to that effect not long after the incident occurred.  The "victim," who was known to be a paraplegic in his lower extremities, hired a man from Florida to come to Missouri and chop off his feet with a hatchet, with the ultimate objective being insurance fraud.

(He put out a "hit" on his own feet!)

The "victim" was not arrested because he ultimately did not follow through with the insurance claim and had therefore not committed fraud, and he was not charged with wasting law enforcement time and resources because the sheriff's office did not want to go through the expense and bother of incarcerating what would have been an expensive and problematic patient/prisoner.  He also was not mentioned by name in the article in the Springfield newspaper because the Howell County prosecutor never charged the man with a crime.  He did, however, have a prolonged stay in the hospital.

The case was recently closed, but it remains one of the more interesting tales to emerge from the Ozarks in recent years.  If there is ever a sequel to "Winter's Bone," perhaps this bloody incident will merit a cameo!