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Cynthetiq

03-25-2005 08:30 AM

Finger Food *UPDATED*

Quote:

link

Authorities seek hand with a missing finger
- Maria Alicia Gaura, Alan Gathright, Dave Murphy, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, March 25, 2005

http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/200...od_caps104.jpg
The mystery of how a human finger found its way into a bowl of fast- food chili has sparked a series of investigations that hope to trace the finger back from a San Jose restaurant to the hand it was detached from.

Santa Clara County sheriff's officials said Thursday that they planned to lift a fingerprint from the mystery digit, in the hope that the owner's prints might be listed on a database.

The far-flung probes began after a diner at a Wendy's restaurant on Monterey Road bit into the 1 3/8-inch piece of a finger Tuesday evening while eating chili.

Investigators from Santa Clara County's Department of Environmental Health are tracing the meat, sauce, beans, spices and frozen vegetables used in the tainted chili back to their producers in hopes of linking the finger to an industrial accident.

"We probably are going to go back as far as the grower of the beans," said Ben Gale, the environmental health director, even as a restaurant spokesman expressed confidence that the digit had not originated in the food supply process.

County health officials have said that, although repulsive, the finger fragment was well-cooked and unlikely to cause health problems more serious than emotional trauma.

One fingerprint expert said it will take only seconds for investigators to identify the owner of the lost finger if the individual is among the millions of criminals, immigrants, school and bank employees, and other licensed professionals whose prints are on file in searchable federal, state and local databases.

"If you have an unknown print, you can search the database and boom! Out it pops,'' said Kenneth Moses, a former San Francisco police crime scene investigations supervisor who does forensic identification consulting.

Failing that, investigators will probably face weeks of tracing delivery invoices and lot numbers on all the ingredients that Wendy's puts in its chili.

The chili served at Wendy's includes canned chili base sauce, chili seasoning mix, cans of pre-cooked beans, chopped frozen celery, onions and green peppers, and ground hamburger meat. The chili is assembled and cooked on site for four to six hours before being served, Gale said.

"The finger had the potential of coming in on a number of those products, " Gale said.

Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch said the company checked out all the employees who worked at the San Jose restaurant two days ago. He would not name the company's suppliers of such products as tomatoes, beans and meat, but said Wendy's has checked with all that could have provided food to the restaurant.

"None of them had any hand or finger injuries," Lynch said. "We are confident that the supply chain did not produce the source."

Companies are required to immediately report industrial accidents involving a fatality or more than two injuries to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But although businesses are supposed to keep on- site records of all other industrial injuries or illnesses for OSHA to review, firms do flout the regulation.

"Record-keeping violations are common,'' said an OSHA spokesman, adding that firms can be fined from $100 for each "serious" health and safety violation up to $70,000 for each "willful" violation.

Employee dismemberment isn't rare, either.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 1,702 food industry workers lost limbs or other body parts in 2002, according to the most recent annual business survey.

Some 13 California food service firms have had at least three incidents where workers lost fingers between 1987 and early 2004, according to OSHA records. One Los Angeles meat processor, Clougherty Packing Co., had 15 cases of lost digits during that time.

Given gaps in the reporting system and the lack of a central database for all industrial accidents, experts say even serious injuries can fall through the cracks.

"It would not be shocking to me that at the end, after all this effort, we end up with our pockets turned inside out," Gale said. "We could end up with nothing."

Lynch said that all the information Wendy's has gathered is being turned over to the investigating agencies and that he is waiting for a more in-depth medical examination of the finger.

"They'll be able to tell if it was a cadaver, for example," Lynch said.

Moses, the former police crime scene supervisor, said that the mysterious chili finger could have been planted by a disgruntled employee or prankster who obtained the digit from a medical school cadaver or mortuary employee.

"It's not that hard to get anatomical parts,'' Moses said.

Lynch said that all the foods involved, with the possible exception of a few spices, were manufactured in the United States.

A spokeswoman with the state Department of Health Services said her agency's food and drug branch will be tracking where the ingredients came from, working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because some of the food came from other states.

The answers more than likely will not come quickly, Gale said. "It's probably going to be measured in weeks. It's a grunt work kind of process."

Not too long ago someone at the other building bit into their muffin and found a used condom. No word on that resolution, but this one is by far the strangest thing I've ever heard.

Someone's missing a bit of finger... it couldn't have gone completely unnoticed.

Glory's Sun

03-25-2005 08:35 AM

you're right cyn, it couldn't have gone unnoticed. How the finger still ended up in someone's chili is just disgusting.

I'm not sure which I think is worse though, the condom muffin or the extra meaty chili

maleficent

03-25-2005 08:37 AM

I checked, it's not my finger.. anyone from TFP missing a finger lately? :D Maybe we should help them out and say it's not us...

Smartassery aside... If it happened at the level of the bean growers, it might be possible that the missing finger belongs to that of an illegal laborer. Maybe it wasn't reported because this person wouldn't want to be discovered.

I would surely hope the processors of the canned beans would have things in place to get rid of large chunks of anything (including rodents or insects) from the end product.

ratbastid

03-25-2005 09:26 AM

Quote:

County health officials have said that, although repulsive, the finger fragment was well-cooked and unlikely to cause health problems more serious than emotional trauma.

I know that was intended to make it less disgusting, but... it had the opposite effect on me. I only hope that the phrase "the finger fragment was well-cooked" will some day no longer be burned on my brain...

Zephyr66

03-25-2005 09:48 AM

Oh my god!
So thats where it went...
looks like I'm off to Santa Clara to retreive a lost digit. Now this is what I call a quest

liquidlight

03-25-2005 09:53 AM

*stomach lurching* Having worked at a Wendy's as my first "job" and actually helping prepare this chili, at least I can say that you can't really blame the cook, ready for some trade secrets? :)

The hamburger comes from the grills, it's meat that was "staged" but didn't get into a burger because it had been on the grill for too long, so they throw it in a pan of water on the back of the grill, several times throughout the day that "chili-meat" is weighed, bagged, and frozen for use in the chill mix later. The frozen vegetables are cut to about 1/8 inch square and are in clear plastic bags that are only about 8 inches on a side, so a foreign object in there would be pretty easy to spot as well.

This leaves you with the chili base and the beans, both of which come in industrial sized tins cans, a little larger than your big coffee can, both are sealed at the factories where they are packaged, but that still leaves the picking for the beans and the processing for the chili base where someone could have very likely ended up short a finger and like Mal said, if they're an illegal they're not going to want to get deported. Also if it was a 3rd world factory they may have chosen not to report for fear of losing their job, or they did report it but the foreman chose to ignore it rather than destroy the amount of product necessary to ensure that the finger had been filtered out. Last option, the DID destroy what they though to be the tainted product but missed a bit! :)

All that aside, all I would really comment on is DAMN I'M GLAD IT WASN'T ME THAT FOUND IT!!!!!

Coppertop

03-25-2005 11:03 AM

This Wendy's is right by my home. I drive by it every week to play hockey. Ugh.

Manuel Hong

03-25-2005 07:50 PM

That is horrible. Yeah, that might give me emotional trauma...nightmares anyway. I'm so glad I don't eat fast food.

FlunkedFlank

03-25-2005 09:48 PM

best comment about it that I've seen so far (paraphrased): "so if they never find the person with the missing finger ... I guess that means we'll be seeing the rest of them soon in more fast food."

Supple Cow

03-25-2005 10:12 PM

...uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

This will either lighten the mood or send folks back to the drawing board as far as terrible mental images go, but the chili-finger reminds me of the time I used a lighter for too long and lightly cooked a few layers of skin on my thumb. I didn't even notice it was happening, but when I finished with the lighter, my thumb was dark orange on one side and smelled like a cocktail weenie. :|

MH73	03-25-2005 11:01 PM

Beans give gas...
Pulling fingers relieves gas...
Beans are in chili...
Maybe someone thought of this as an alternative to Gas-X...

nah....

Tarl Cabot

03-25-2005 11:46 PM

The illegal laborer is one idea.

It also occurred to me that a disgruntled worker (are there any gruntled ones?) might have slipped a cadaver finger into the mix.

FngKestrel

03-26-2005 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coppertop

This Wendy's is right by my home. I drive by it every week to play hockey. Ugh.

Does this mean you'll never eat Wendy's chili again? Because that would be a great service to me. :D

kid astronaut

03-26-2005 06:14 PM

i KNEW there was a reason i never eat the chili there

i would say that i'll never eat at wendy's again, but... come on, a double-stack hamburger for 99 cents? that's WAY worth the risk of biting into a finger!

slant eyes

03-29-2005 08:58 PM

i hate to sound like a skeptic, but i found the wendy's story kinda disturbing. not in the sense that there was a finger in the chili, but how the hell did it get there.

first of all, looking at the picture, it's hard for me to tell it was a finger. maybe i have a poor imagination, but i would never bite something with a bit of toughness, spit it out, and say, 'oh my god, i just bit someone's finger'. and wait for the medical examiner to confirm it was an actual finger. just seemed too much of a coincidence that they knew it was a finger. i guess like when someone farts and tries to cover it up by being the first to yell, 'who farted', chances are, the person yelling it was the person who felt it.

second, i'm not much of a culinary person, but i've noticed that everything in chil starts to take on the color of each. i mean everything starts to turn dark orange from all the ingredients. you'd never find a piece of potato that stayed its original color if you tossed it into the chili, let alone boil that pale looking finger in it. just seems that the finger was boiled in water

third. for those of you who have ever eaten at wendy's and have been given a spoon to use there. the spoons are really small and shallow. i would say 1-2 inches long at most. when i say 1-2 inches, i don't mean the whole spoon including the handle cuz that would be rediculous, i am talkin about the part that does the scooping. the picture of the finger is about 1 inch long with some thickness to it. now try to imagine 1 inch of your finger in a spoon. my fingers aren't the thickest things, but i would see it in a 1-2 inch spoon. how the hell did you not notice that? especially seeing how pale the finger is, sitting in some chili. unless the patron was so god damn hungry, she double fisted it so fast that she couldn't see the finger, but then, if that happened, she would have just swallowed it.

it just doesn't add up to me.

anyone else see it this way? or am i the only skeptic standing here with all my clothes off?

FlunkedFlank

03-29-2005 09:26 PM

I'm pretty sure there have been cases of people who have falsified health violations with restaurants and fast-food chain for the purpose of extracting a payoff.

that said, I can't imagine that's the case here. people will put roaches or rodent remains or whatever in their food, but where is a person going to get a finger tip to do this with?

Apparently she actually put it into her mouth and started to bite when she noticed that. I dunno about you, but I have a pretty quick response when something nasty makes its way into my mouth via food ... I'll spit it out right away.

I think it's legit. Stranger things have happened. :)

Coppertop

03-30-2005 11:57 AM

WALTER
That wasn't her toe.

DUDE
Whose toe was it, Walter?

WALTER
How the fuck should I know? I do
know that nothing about it indicates--

DUDE
The nail polish, Walter.

WALTER
Fine, Dude. As if it's impossible
to get some nail polish, apply it to
someone else's toe--

DUDE
Someone else's--where the fuck are
they gonna--

WALTER
You want a toe? I can get you a
toe, believe me. There are ways,
Dude. You don't wanna know about
it, believe me.

Coppertop

03-30-2005 12:34 PM

A video of local newscast regarding the finger.

liquidlight

03-30-2005 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slant eyes

anyone else see it this way? or am i the only skeptic standing here with all my clothes off?

You make some excellent points here, especially when I start thinking about the fact that in normal Wendy's chili the largest object is one of the beans. . . maybe 3/8 of an inch long and 1/4 around.

I don't know about the color change because we don't know how much the finger would have been cleaned before being cataloged, but you really got to me in asking about the spoons, not so much their length but they are quite shallow.

Who knows, maybe it's all a giant scam to sue the company, and the finger came from some crematorium or cadaver lab. I'm sure there's an ongoing investigation and I'd be interested to see what they come up with.

Also the finger was in two seperate chunks that somehow both ended up in her chili? This stuff is cooked in 2.5 gallon vats, stirred almost constantly and ladled into the relatively small cups, that's an awful lot of coincidence. Granted it could just be that they're not reporting that they found the nail later on in the remaining chili.

One last thing that I'm wondering. . . where are the bite marks?

Cynthetiq

03-30-2005 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liquidlight

sometimes the burger meat is bigger than a bean.

Cynthetiq

04-08-2005 08:28 AM

updated news:

Quote:

Police search home of woman who found finger
- Alan Gathright, Dave Murphy, Maria Alicia Gaura, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, April 8, 2005

The mystery of the finger found in a bowl of chili at a San Jose Wendy's last month deepened Thursday with revelations that police have searched the Las Vegas home of the woman who made the revolting find.

A tearful Anna Ayala, 39, angrily denied planting the finger in a telephone interview with The Chronicle. She accused San Jose and Las Vegas officers of bursting into her home with guns drawn on her and her family Wednesday afternoon.

"They put guns to us and handcuffed us and threw us to the ground in front of all my neighbors,'' Ayala said Thursday. She accused police of terrorizing her family, ransacking her home and injuring the arm of her 13- year-old daughter.

"They treated us like trash, like terrorists. It's the worst nightmare,'' she said.

San Jose police said they and local officers executed a search warrant regarding the wayward finger in Las Vegas, but refused to say whose property had been searched and whether anything was found.

Police would not respond to Ayala's claims of rough treatment or even acknowledge searching her home.

"We're not going to release any information that is going to jeopardize our investigation,'' said San Jose police spokeswoman Officer Gina Tepoorten.

She dismissed press rumors that authorities are investigating whether the finger belonged to Ayala's dead aunt.

"It's just rumor -- we have no information that it belongs to an aunt, '' Tepoorten said.

She added that investigators are interviewing anyone who might explain Ayala's grisly discovery March 22, when she reportedly bit into the finger while eating chili with relatives she was visiting in San Jose. Police are questioning Wendy's employees, its food suppliers, diners present that day and "anyone who knows the finder of the finger," Tepoorten said.

"We want to find out who the finger belongs to, from a criminal aspect. We don't know if this was an industrial accident or something more serious like an unreported homicide,'' she added.

The search was just the latest twist in the tale that has caused Wendy's San Jose sales to plummet and turned the chain's name into a punch line for late-night TV comedians. Ayala even recounted her disgust on "Good Morning America."

Santa Clara County investigators lifted a print from the 1 1/2-inch fingertip, but database searches have not revealed a match. DNA testing is under way, as well as chemical analysis to determine if the finger was preserved or cooked.

Meanwhile, Ayala denies even having a dead aunt. She said her family has become the subject of a bizarre witch hunt.

"Right here, I just heard on the TV news that my son cut off my daughter's finger and I put it in the (chili),'' the woman fumed. "It's just ridiculous.

"They're lying, and they're very, very wrong. They're doing all this damage to me, and they're going to pay for it," said Ayala, who has hired a civil attorney to investigate a possible lawsuit against Wendy's.

Ayala refused to say what police questioned her about and what they were searching for. "They went through everything, my clothes, my drawers. My garage looks like a tornado hit it," she said.

Ayala's attorney, Jeffrey Janoff, did not want to discuss the specifics of the case late Thursday. "It's apparently under police investigation, and we await the results of that investigation."

In what a Wendy's official insisted is a coincidence, the restaurant chain announced Thursday that it is offering a $50,000 reward to the first person who provides "verifiable information" that reveals how the finger got in the chili.

"We believe someone knows exactly what happened," Tom Mueller, Wendy's president and chief operating officer, said in a written statement, "and hopefully the reward will encourage this person to come forward."

But Ayala said a San Jose officer told a 23-year-old man who lives in her home "the Wendy's corporation will pay him so much money'' if he provides information about the finger case.

In a telephone interview Thursday night, Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini said he was unaware that Ayala's home had been searched. "We've had no information on that so far," he said.

Bertini acknowledged that the chain's business had suffered since the finger was found, with sales being "significantly impacted" in the Bay Area.

He said it is premature to discuss what action, if any, Wendy's will take if it turns out that the finger was a hoax.

Wendy's officials have said in earlier statements that they have checked with employees and suppliers and are convinced that the supply chain is clean. Wendy's asks anyone with information to call (800) 821-3348.

Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGLFC57TC1.DTL

the_marq

04-08-2005 08:41 AM

well i wold guess tat if I lost a fger my tpig wold be alt worse.

So its ot my fng.... o fck!

Redlemon

04-08-2005 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supple Cow

...reminds me of the time I used a lighter for too long and lightly cooked a few layers of skin on my thumb. I didn't even notice it was happening, but when I finished with the lighter, my thumb was dark orange on one side and smelled like a cocktail weenie. :|

I've often wondered if human would taste good or not. If the answer is "tastes like boiled mini hot dog", well, that's not very promising. ;)

Coppertop

04-08-2005 10:18 AM

Ah yes, good ol' SJPD. They're a mixed bunch. Part of me wants to believe this, but my experiences tell me otherwise. Why did she refuse to state what the police where searching specifically for? Something here doesn't quite add up...

Charlatan

04-08-2005 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maleficent

Smartassery aside... If it happened at the level of the bean growers, it might be possible that the missing finger belongs to that of an illegal laborer. Maybe it wasn't reported because this person wouldn't want to be discovered.

I was thinking the same thing but an illegal in the slaughterhouse or meat packing part of the chili prep. From what I've read people are getting cut all the time at the slaughterhouse...

d3cemberist

04-08-2005 05:54 PM

Dear god.. That's pretty nasty!!

Cynthetiq

04-13-2005 07:53 AM

Quote:

Woman Won't Sue Wendy's for Alleged Finger
-
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

(04-13) 08:23 PDT San Jose, Calif. (AP) --

A woman who claimed she scooped up a human finger in her chili at a Wendy's restaurant has decided not to sue the fast-food chain.

Anna Ayala dropped her claim because it "has caused her great emotional distress and continues to be difficult emotionally," said her attorney, Jeffrey Janoff.

Ayala, 39, claimed she found the 1 1/2-inch long fingertip on March 22 while dining at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose. She later filed a claim with the franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management Corp., which her attorney had said was the first step before filing a lawsuit.

Court records show Ayala has filed at least six lawsuits in the San Francisco Bay area, and she acknowledged receiving a settlement for medical costs a year ago after claiming that her daughter was sickened after eating at a Las Vegas restaurant.

Phone calls to Ayala's house in Las Vegas went unanswered Tuesday. Investigators searched her home last week as part of their investigation into how a finger ended up in the chili.

Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch declined to comment on Ayala's decision to drop the lawsuit but said a reward hot line to receive tips will remain open. Wendy's has offered $50,000 to the first person who can provide verifiable information that identifies the origin of the finger.

"It's very important to us to find out what really happened at the restaurant," Lynch said. "We will continue to fully cooperate with the police investigation."

Wendy's maintains the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. None of the employees at the San Jose store had lost any fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.

The Santa Clara County coroner's office used a partial fingerprint to search for a match in an electronic database but came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...a031328D95.DTL

follow up story: something doesn't smell right in Denmark.

kutulu

04-13-2005 09:49 AM

lol, I saw the story on fark earlier. I think that makes it pretty obvious that she was full of shit.

Coppertop

04-13-2005 10:04 AM

50 Gs to anyone who can identify the finger? Someone has got to know something.

Elphaba

04-13-2005 03:36 PM

Six lawsuits to her name in San Francisco alone. That is one unfortunate gal. :rolleyes:

rat	04-13-2005 06:02 PM

on a more upbeat note, i guarantee you that for the forseeable future, that particular Wendy's will be immaculate. They've had enough government and corporate inspectors crawling around their establishment that they'll be dreaming of it (or having nightmares about it if they're management) for some time to come.

slant eyes

04-13-2005 09:06 PM

wow cynthetiq, keep up the updates. i would really like to know what happens. thanks for the info

Coppertop

04-14-2005 10:42 AM

Quote:

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The Las Vegas woman who claimed she bit into a human finger along with her Wendy's chili has decided not to sue, her lawyer confirmed Wednesday.

Attorney Jeffrey Janoff said Anna Ayala was dropping her claim because after police investigations, DNA tests, a search of her home and intense publicity, "it's been very difficult for her emotionally."

He wouldn't say whether the decision had anything to do with a report that a woman in Nevada had lost her finger a month earlier in a leopard attack.

San Jose police investigating Ayala's claim said they were looking into a possible connection with Sandy Allman, a woman who lost part of a digit in a Feb. 23 leopard attack at an exotic animal compound at her home in Pahrump, a rural Nevada town about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.

A lawyer for Allman, 59, said Allman believes the fingertip was hers, but that Allman had "absolutely no connection with Ms. Ayala."

"She thinks it's her finger," lawyer Philip Sheldon, said from his office in Encino, Calif. "She wants to participate in any DNA testing and any final resolution of that matter."

Sheldon said Allman last saw the 3/4 of an inch tip of her middle finger packed with ice in a plastic bag on an emergency room table at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas early Feb. 24 where he said she sought treatment after the leopard attack.

Allman left it after doctors told her it could not be reattached, Sheldon said.

"She has no idea what happened to the finger after she left the hospital," Sheldon said.

Sunrise Hospital spokeswoman Glenda McCartney said she had no public record of Allman being treated at the hospital. She also said there was no record of Ayala working at the hospital.

Sheldon said Allman realized the piece of finger that San Jose police said Ayala found in her chili was twice as long as the one Allman lost. Allman would welcome a reward if the finger is hers, the lawyer said.

San Jose police spokeswoman Gina Tepoorten said police were in contact with Allman, and added that authorities were receiving many tips from around the country about lost digits, spurred by a $50,000 reward offered by Wendy's.

Tepoorten said one woman reported she lost a finger while breaking up a dog fight, "and apparently the hospital lost her finger."

Ayala was visiting relatives in San Jose on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. Her son, Guadalupe Reyes, 18, told The Associated Press that Ayala doesn't know Allman.

"Mom doesn't even know how to get to Pahrump," Reyes said.

He said his mother was distressed by all the attention.

"The way I see it, it's like a big show," Reyes said. "Everyone's saying this and that. It's ridiculous. People are just trying to get the $50,000."

Tepoorten said Ayala was not considered "a suspect."

"She's not our main focus in the investigation," Tepoorten said, without elaborating.

Ayala, 39, was at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose on March 22 when she claimed she scooped up the 11/2-inch-long fingertip. She later filed a claim with the franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management, Corp., which her attorney had said was the first step before filing a lawsuit.

Court records show Ayala has a history of making claims against corporations, including a former employer, General Motors and a fast-food restaurant.

She said Friday in an interview with The AP that she filed a claim against an El Pollo Loco restaurant in Las Vegas after her daughter became ill after eating there, but called it "something very different" from the Wendy's case.

El Pollo Loco spokeswoman Julie Weeks said Wednesday from Irvine, Calif., that the company made no payment to Ayala after her February 2004 claim on behalf of her daughter, Genesis.

"We reviewed the claim and made the decision not to make payment on that claim," Weeks said.

Ayala said last week after police searched her home and seized items that she was being victimized.

"Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," Ayala said. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding?"

Clark County District Attorney David Roger said documents relating to the search warrant were sealed.

Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch declined to comment on Ayala's decision to drop the lawsuit but said a reward hotline to receive tips will remain open. Wendy's has offered $50,000 to the first person providing verifiable information leading to the positive identification of the origin of the finger.

"It's very important to us to find out what really happened at the restaurant," Lynch said. "We are manning the hotlines, and we are more anxious than you are to find out what really happened.

"We're not going to engage in any speculation as to where it came from," Lynch added.

The director of an exotic animal sanctuary in Texas called the Wendy's hotline Tuesday to suggest that the finger might have come from Allman.

"What are the odds?" asked Carol Asvestas, who runs the Wild Animal Orphanage in San Antonio and had gone to Pahrump to rescue several exotic animals at Allman's request.

San Jose police said it would take DNA tests to determine whether the fingers are one and the same.

Wendy's maintains the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. All the employees at the San Jose store were found to have all their fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients have reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said. Officials also still had not confirmed whether the finger was cooked, as initial news reports indicated.

The Santa Clara County Coroner's Office was using a partial fingerprint to attempt to find a match in an electronic database but came up empty. DNA testing is being conducted.

http://kron.com/Global/story.asp?s=3205872

I added the bold for emphasis.

Heh heh, Pahrump. :D

cellophanedeity

04-15-2005 06:17 PM

This is so creepy.

Even if it's a hoax, the fact that she has some sort of finger just hanging around is gross.

Cynthetiq

04-22-2005 07:17 AM

more followup

Quote:

Police give woman in Wendy's finger case the finger
LINK

By CHRISTINA ALMEIDA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

LAS VEGAS - The woman who claimed she found a finger in her bowl of Wendy's chili last month has been arrested, the latest twist in a bizarre case about how the 1-1/2-inch finger tip ended up in a bowl of fast food.
Anna Ayala was taken into custody late Thursday at her Las Vegas home, police said.

Authorities would not provide details until a news conference Friday in San Jose, Calif. - the city where Ayala claimed she bit down on the finger in a mouthful of her steamy stew.

Ayala's 18-year-old son, Guadalupe Reyes, said he had gone to the store around 9 p.m. when he got a phone call from a friend who was back at the Las Vegas home.

"We rushed back and she was already gone," Reyes said.

Reyes said he had no other details and was waiting to hear from his mother.

Ohio-based Wendy's International Inc. did not immediately return a call Friday.

Ayala's claim that she found the finger tip, complete with a well-manicured nail, on March 22 initially drew sympathy. But when police and health officials failed to find any missing digits among the workers involved in the restaurant's supply chain, suspicion fell on Ayala, and her story has become a late-night punch line.

Ayala hired a lawyer and filed a claim against the Wendy's franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management. But after police searched her home in Las Vegas and continued to question her family, she dropped the lawsuit threat, saying the whole situation was just too stressful.

"Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," Ayala said after police started questioning her. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?"

As it turns out, Ayala has a litigious history. She has filed claims against several corporations, including a former employer and General Motors, though it is unclear from court records whether she received any money. She said she got $30,000 from El Pollo Loco after her 13-year-old daughter got sick at one of the chain's Las Vegas-area restaurants. But El Pollo Loco spokeswoman Julie Weeks said last week that the company reviewed Ayala's February 2004 claim and paid her nothing.

Earlier Thursday, Wendy's International Inc. announced it had ended its internal investigation, saying it could find no credible link between the finger and the restaurant chain.

Sales have dropped at franchises in Northern California, forcing layoffs and reduced hours, the company said. Wendy's also has hired private investigators, set up a hot line for tips and offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who provides information leading to the finger's original owner.

Associated Press writers Josh Dubow in San Francisco and Joe Cavaretta in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Demeter

04-22-2005 07:58 AM

Everytime I see any bits about this drama, it makes me wanna cringe & vomit. What some people will do for a buck. I hope Wendy's sues her pants off for all the lost sales. I had crossed Wendy's off my lunch list when the story initially appeared. I still will never look a a pic of Wendy's chili the same again.
However, I still wonder, where did she get the finger to plant in the food? :hmm:

slant eyes

04-23-2005 03:21 PM

well...i am a big skeptic of this, but the story does merely state that someone heard her say she planted the finger. benefit of the doubt given. we'll hope to hear some more substantial evidence before we accuse her of anything, i hope.

Cynthetiq

05-18-2005 01:22 PM

more updates on this....

Quote:

Worker gave his finger to settle $50 debt
Mother says laborer who provided digit unaware of alleged plot against Wendy's
LINK
Las Vegas -- The Las Vegas man whose severed fingertip ended up in a cup of Wendy's chili gave his mangled digit to a co-worker to settle a $50 debt -- but had no idea it would be used in an alleged scheme to swindle the fast-food chain, the man's mother said Tuesday.

San Jose police have refused to name the man whose finger they believe ended up in the chili. But the man's mother, reached by The Chronicle on Tuesday, said the finger belonged to her 36-year-old son, Brian Paul Rossiter of Las Vegas.

"My son is the victim in this,'' Rossiter's mother, Brenda Shouey, said in a telephone interview from her Pennsylvania home. "I believe he got caught in something, and he didn't understand what was going on.''

Rossiter lost part of his finger when his gloved hand was caught in a mechanical truck lift in December at a Las Vegas paving firm where he worked with James Plascencia, the husband of Anna Ayala, the woman accused of planting the fingertip in her cup of Wendy's chili.

Ayala claims she bit into a 1 1/2-inch human fingertip on March 22 while eating chili at the fast-food restaurant in San Jose. She was arrested a month later on felony charges of attempted grand theft for allegedly trying to shake down Wendy's International Inc. for a financial settlement in a scheme police say caused the fast-food chain to lose more than $2.5 million in sales. Her husband was arrested this month on unrelated charges of failing to pay child support in a previous relationship.

San Jose police announced last week that they had scientifically confirmed that the finger Ayala claimed to have chomped into was obtained from an associate of Plascencia, but they have refused to identify him because he is cooperating in the investigation.

Shouey said her son was desperate for cash when he gave his finger away.

"He had a money problem. He owed $50 to this character, James," Shouey said.

The mother accused Plascencia of preying upon her injured son, who she said was strapped for money because he was unable to work after the accident and his disability checks were lost in the mail when he moved. She said Rossiter was laid up for weeks after reconstructive surgery on his mangled hand.

While the finger-chili caper has made headlines even in her rural West Pennsylvania town, Shouey said she learned of her son's involvement only Monday night when he alarmed her by calling to say: "Mom, do you know what's happened?"

"The last time he said something like that to me was 9/11,'' Shouey said.

Rossiter hadn't even told his father, James Rossiter, who lives in Florida and is divorced.

"Oh, my God!" the father said when contacted by The Chronicle, saying he never imagined that his son's severed digit was the Wendy's finger.

He said he knew his son had suffered a finger injury but had not been in touch with him in the months after the accident.

"That is pretty wild,'' he added.

The man's mother declined to give details of how the finger was preserved, the nature of her son's debt, or whether Rossiter was told why Plascencia allegedly wanted the finger. She said her son is keeping a low profile after undergoing intense police questioning in the case.

"My son is a happy-go-lucky guy. He thought it was cute to show" the severed finger, Shouey said. "It's like a man thing. If a woman had her finger severed, she would never show it to anyone. But he would show it to the girls in the office if they asked."

While Ayala and Plascencia have been arrested, Shouey said her son appears to have convinced police that he had nothing to do with the alleged finger hoax.

"He originally thought that he was going to be in big trouble,'' Shouey said. But after taking lie-detector tests and being quizzed by investigators for four hours at a stretch, "it appears from what he's interpreted that the police believe him," the mother added.

Ayala, 39, was arrested April 21 at her Las Vegas home on suspicion of attempted grand theft for allegedly costing Wendy's millions of dollars in a plot to shake down the company with a tainted-food claim. She remains in jail in Santa Clara County and has a court hearing today at which her attorney is expected to seek reduction of her $500,000 bail.

Wendy officials have said bad publicity over her claim cost the chain millions in lost sales.

Plascencia, 43, was arrested May 4 at his Lamb Asphalt Maintenance job site, the same day investigators got a tip about a man who might have lost a finger in an industrial accident. The tip was received on a hot line run by Wendy's, which had offered a $100,000 reward for information on how the finger got in its chili.

Lamb's president, Mike Casey, has said he called the tip in that day after he put together the arrest of Ayala's husband at the firm and the fellow employee who lost his finger there three months earlier.

Office supervisors at the Lamb paving firm chuckled at the media attention on Tuesday, each raising both hands to show all 10 digits to reporters.

Plascencia is awaiting extradition to California from Las Vegas, where he is jailed on felony charges of failing to pay child support and of committing identity theft by assuming the name and Social Security number of his young son, allegedly to avoid having his wages garnisheed for child support in a previous relationship.

Police have said Plascencia is likely to face charges in the Wendy's case and will not rule out further arrests.

Without identifying Rossiter, San Jose police spokesman Enrique Garcia reaffirmed Tuesday that the man who lost the finger "is being cooperative with us and assisting us in the investigation.''

However, Garcia said, once police turn in their reports to the Santa Clara County district attorney, it will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to charge anyone else.

At the Las Vegas trailer park where Rossiter lived until February, residents who knew he'd lost the finger were surprised to learn it had wound up in the bizarre chili saga.

"I know he smashed his hand in one of the construction vehicles,'' Dan Gelzaines said. "He showed it to me. It looked like this," Gelzaines said, lifting his hand to show an index finger missing its tip from his own carpentry accident.

While at first saying it was really strange to learn his old neighbor's lost finger is that finger, Gelzaines added: "But nothing really surprises me anymore."

Gelzaines said he thinks Ayala's husband should be held accountable if he did indeed use Rossiter's finger in an attempted scam.

Rossiter left the Kensington Community trailer park, which is across the street from Nellis Air Force Base, after the friend he was living with was evicted for having vicious dogs that mauled a neighbor's pooch.

"I've been listening to this story on the news. I'm surprised someone would go to that extreme to get money,'' said trailer park manager Terri Richey, who also hadn't heard of Rossiter's link to the Wendy's tale. "But people are funny. They'll do anything. This is Vegas, after all.''

Coppertop

05-18-2005 02:49 PM

And so we finally have closure. This past weekend the Wendy's in question was packed with people craving some free frosty action.

slant eyes

05-18-2005 09:38 PM

wow...what people will do. thanks cyn. and is it me or did rossiter's mom seem like she was near some type of wanting compensation. claiming her son was the victim and how her son has been out of work. when i read it, it just seemed to sound as if she was readying to sue someone. anyone else get this?

oh, and wasn't it a manicured finger? how is it that it belonged to this man, unless he manicures his finger nails

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