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No evidence backs up claim of finger found in food, Tampa police say

By Kim Wilmath and Saundra Amrhein, Times Staff Writers
In print: Saturday, August 30, 2008

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TAMPA — A Tampa couple says an oxtail dinner turned out to have one not-so-appetizing ingredient: a human finger, nail and all.

Connie Edwards, 48, told Tampa police she discovered the finger after nearly finishing her meal, agency spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.

Edwards reported that she had shopped at the House of Meats at 502 E Sligh Ave.

One of the store owners, Josh Eubank, called the report a hoax.

"It's impossible they got it here," he said. "Everybody here has got all their fingers."

Edwards told police she bought the meat in mid June. When no one at the store said they had lost a finger, Edwards and her boyfriend, Tommy Lee Smith, 43, brought the finger to the Police Department — on a fork.

"It was the middle finger, a tip of the finger from that first knuckle up," McElroy said. "It pretty much grossed out everybody there."

The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed on Aug. 22 that the finger was human. McElroy said no fingerprints or DNA evidence survived the cooking process.

Smith, the boyfriend, has a criminal record, including a one-year prison sentence in 2006 on charges of defrauding a financial business and grand theft, according to state records. He served prison time in the 1990s on drug and aggravated battery charges.

Reached at home, Smith referred calls to his lawyer but said he was not a liar and that his past has nothing to do with this.

"I'm unemployed. I'm a hard-working man. I don't have to lie about anything," he said.

The family's lawyer, Thomas Parnell, said the oxtail meat had been cooked at home in a big pot. When the finger was retrieved, it was hollow, with just a bit of bone fragment left inside, according to medical examiner documents.

Parnell said that tissue from the finger probably had dissolved into the stew and that family members would get blood tests and then he would he would determine what damages they should seek.

Edwards is a certified nursing assistant, according to state records. She told Tampa police that she is a "support coach" at Merrill Gardens retirement community in Lutz. A manager there refused to comment.

Police said the case is closed on their end. They investigated all the meatpacking companies that supply the House of Meats but found that no employees had reported any fingers missing.

"It was a bit of a wild goose chase," McElroy said. "Our first step was to see where it came from forensically, and that was a dead end. Then we tried to do the legwork on where that oxtail came from, and that was a dead end as well."

Police found no evidence that the finger came from House of Meats.

"It's just their word," she said of the couple. The case will remain closed unless police are provided more information about the finger's origin.