Amputated leg turns up in smoker

Original owner plans to get it back

John Wood is trying to get from South Carolina to Catawba County today to retrieve his leg.

On Tuesday, a man from Maiden, N.C., found the lost appendage in a barbecue smoker he had bought from a storage facility.

The man took the smoker home, looked inside, and saw something wrapped in paper. Inside, Maiden Police Chief Troy Church said, was Wood's leg -- the foot and most of the calf. Police are keeping it for Wood.

Doctors amputated Wood's leg after a 2004 plane crash in Wilkes County that killed Wood's father and injured two other family members, Wood said.

"When it was amputated, he told [the hospital] that he wanted that leg saved," said his sister, Marin Wood-Lytle. "He wanted to keep the bone because he wanted to be buried as a full man." But instead of a bone, a funeral home delivered the whole leg.

Wood put it in his freezer, his sister said. It became something of a joke when she came over. "I wouldn't even get a Pepsi out of his refrigerator."

But it stopped being funny when Wood got behind on his power bill and his electricity was shut off, the sister said.

Despite his family's protests, Wood-Lytle said, her brother took the screen off his front porch, wrapped the leg inside and "tied it to two posts to let it dry. He was going to mummify it."

Wood-Lytle said her brother was homeless for a while, living in his van, which he eventually lost.

Their mother put his belongings in a storage facility in Maiden, about 45 miles northwest of Charlotte, and she paid for the first few months, Wood-Lytle said.

On Tuesday, Wood declined to answer most questions. He did say he put the leg in the smoker because "I didn't have anything else to secure it in. There were no macabre intentions."

Maiden police officers talked with the storage facility's owner, who was auctioning off items in the units of people who were behind on their payments. Wood said he asked the owner of the storage facility not to open his belongings and is trying to get from Greenville County, S.C., to get his things.

On Tuesday, his sister was watching TV and saw the man who found her brother's leg and thought, "It just seems to never go away."

She said an officer came by Tuesday and said they had her brother's leg.

"John had told them 'how about just dropping it off at my sister's and she'll just hold it until I get there,' " she said. "I told them 'don't bring that thing in my house.' "

(Staff researcher Maria Wygand contributed to this story.)