Toronto-area police are searching for body parts as well as answers after finding a severed female head in a local river, near where hikers found a severed human foot the previous day.
Police recovered the head in the park near the Credit River in Mississauga, Ontario, a city of 700,000 located just west of Toronto. The authorities could not confirm the body parts were from the same person, but were working on that assumption.
"Obviously, we consider it as foul play, and we are treating it as such," Peel Police Spokesman Randy Cowan told reporters.
"We'll be looking for the entire victim," he added.
It was the second gruesome set of discoveries in Canada in less than three months. In June, body parts were mailed to schools and political parties, prompting an international manhunt for the suspect.
Luka Magnotta, a smalltime porn actor now accused of killing, dismembering and cannibalizing a Chinese student in Montreal, was arrested in Berlin and deported to Canada.
Cowan said the toes of the foot found on Wednesday were painted with bright yellow nail polish, suggesting that it also came from a woman. The body parts, found about 1km apart, had likely been there for weeks, he said.
