The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Animals
 shark vomits arm




From: pdt@mundil.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Peter David THOMPSON)
Subject: Shark bites man
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 11:18:20 GMT

From the Australian edition of The Reader's Digest, November 1977, "My Brother: Surgeon and Shark Man" by Sir Lionel Coppelson as told to Leonard Bickle:

In April 1935 a four-metre tiger shark was captured and put into a pool in the aquarium at Coogee, a suburb of Sydney [1]. On Anzac Day [2], visitors to the aquarium were astonished to see the shark disgorge a human arm - with a length of rope still tied around the wrist. Had the shark, captive for eight days, torn the arm earlier from a swimmer or a drowned body? The police consulted Victor. To his practised eye, it was clear the shark teeth had seized the arm at the albow; but human hands had severed the limb at the shoulder - crudely, hacking with a blunt knife. From fingerprints and a tattoo, police established the arm as that of James Smith, employed as caretaker of a luxury yacht alleged to have been engaged in drug-running. Possibly he had learnt too much; police deduced that he had been murdered and his dismembered body dumped at sea [3]. There was a series of three murder trials, but no convictions, and the case was never officially solved. The night before the inquest, a key witness was found dead in a car near the Harbour Bridge.

[1] Famous chiefly for having an opera house, a bridge, and the Olympic Games in 2040 or thereabouts.
[2] April 25th.
[3] They're quite sharp really, you know.

Peter "Wbry Shee" Thompson


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