Actually, it might be more accurate to say the finger is found… it’s the rest of the person that is missing.
Somewhere out there is a woman, dead or alive, who is missing a well-manicured finger about 1 1/2 inches long.
Authorities know where the finger ended up — in a bowl of Wendy’s chili — but just who it belongs to is a mystery.
Anna Ayala’s claim that she bit down on the finger in a mouthful of her steamy stew 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.
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DNA tests are being done on the finger. A partial fingerprint failed to turn up a match in a national database.
Tips are coming in from across the country, from “folks who either have lost a finger, or know somebody who lost a finger,” said San Jose police Sgt. Nick Muyo.
“Our goal is to find where that finger came from and who it came from. Is this an industrial accident, is this a homicide? Once you determine that, then we can start working backward.”
Health officials said it is apparently a woman’s finger, because of the long, manicured nail. But investigators will not say which finger on the hand it was
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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. El Pollo Loco officials say she did not get a dime.
The San Jose Police fraud unit joined Las Vegas police in the search of her home there, and officers have questioned her relatives. A family friend, Ken Bono, 24, said the warrant indicated police were looking for a cooler, a blue bag and “any family documents about anybody dead.”
Ayala’s sister Mary, who lives in San Jose but missed the fateful meal at Wendy’s, has been outspoken in defense of her sister.
The police “wanted to know if I ever asked her, even jokingly, `Hey, did you do it?’” Mary Ayala said. “I said, `No, my sister wouldn’t do that.’” She added: “It’s just a mess right now. Things are out of hand.”
If police do obtain evidence that Ayala planted the finger, she could face charges of fraud, extortion or making false statements, legal experts said.
The story gets stranger by the day…
