Word of the plane theft spread at small-island gossip speed—a startling velocity equaled only by the rate at which facts twist. Orcas has just five thousand full-time residents, and each exists within one degree of separation from everyone else on the fifty-seven-square-mile island. Like in any small community, but especially a small-island community, anybody’s business is everybody’s.

No one had ever heard of a plane theft before, certainly not one in a place where a puppy caught chasing chickens makes the newspaper’s police report. This was the kind of crime, though, that locals could relish. It was extremely rare, which appealed to our sense of exceptionalism. It was bizarre, which fit the eccentric nature of the island. And hardly anyone felt threatened because it wasn’t random and it was hard to identify with. Very few people are lucky enough to even have an airplane to steal, so it was like hearing that someone’s pet koala had run away. “Gee, that’s a shame… I wish I had a koala.”

No one had gotten hurt during the crime, but that wasn’t necessarily a factor for a juicy San Juans–style sin story. The county’s most famous misdeed to date had occurred in 1980, when a “kindly” old woman popped two .38 caps in her husband’s head, then had her simpleminded brother chop him up in a bathtub using a decorative battle ax before burning all the bits in a barrel.

In the spring of 2007, a body washed ashore on Orcas with its hands and feet missing. Since then, nine feet—all sans bodies—have shown up in the area’s waters from British Columbia down to Island County, making national headlines and prompting speculation of foot-fetish serial killers.