Lab finds clue to mystery leg

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Nearly two weeks of examining the disembodied left leg found at Hanauma Bay and interviewing the families of the missing has yielded only one clear marker to help identify the person: He or she had once broken that leg.

If this clue clicks with any missing person's friends or relatives, the city medical examiners hope they'll call.

Aided by the police and the Army Central Identification Lab-Hawai'i, they have checked with families of those reported missing most recently. None so far appear to have this characteristic: an old, healed fracture halfway down the fibula, the outer bone of the lower leg.

Medical examiner Dr. Kanthi von Guenthner also said there may have been another injury in the lower thigh bone, just above the knee, and that the leg socket showed signs that the person may have walked with a limp or other characteristic gait. He or she stood somewhere between 5 feet 6 inches and 6 feet tall.

Beyond that, von Guenthner said, the forensic anthropologists of the Army's lab were unable to conclude much about the mystery leg, found by a diver in about 30 feet of water near the area known as Toilet Bowl.

Bone features that frequently tip off scientists to a person's gender are not so clear in this case, so they can't even say if they're looking for a man or woman.

And without narrowing the field at all, she said, checking the bone DNA against samples taken from missing persons is a practical impossibility.

Von Guenthner is hoping that someone somewhere in the state or even on the Mainland knows someone who's been missing in Hawai'i and who fits even this thin description. It may be someone that was never reported as missing to police, she said; or it may be someone in the files who, for example, sustained leg injuries without the family's knowledge.

"There was one female tourist," she said. "However, after talking to the mother, the mother knew she didn't have a leg injury."

Officer Joe Self of the police missing persons detail said his office still is going through files dating back "several years."

He's said he's looked first at cases where the persons were last seen somewhere near Hanauma but is considering those whose remains may have been submerged elsewhere on the island and drifted around to the East O'ahu shore.

Von Guenthner said she's been asked why her office is so bent on identifying the person. They don't understand the anguish of families whose loved one is missing.

"They said, 'Who cares?'" she said. "But we do care. What if one family really wants closure?"

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Office of the Medical Examiner at 527-6777.