Fingering a Suspect

Sorry...I couldn't help it...

You've probably heard about the case of the Las Vegas woman who claimed she found a severed human finger in her Wendy's 99 cent cup of chili.

My first response is...they're charging 99 cents for a cup of chili. What did you think you'd fine in there? Beef?

Well, police remain baffled as to the identity of the finger's owner. All the employees of Wendy's have all their fingers, and none of Wendy's suppliers have reported an accident wherein someone lost a digit. There's even talk that the police may suspect the victim, Anna Ayala, of putting the finger in the chili in the first place.

"We are looking into every aspect in this case," San Jose police spokeswoman Gina Tepoorten said. "We are talking to people she knows as well as the finder of the finger. … We want to determine who this finger belongs to how and how it ended up in a bowl of chili."

I'm genuinely intrigued by this one. We know it wasn't a Wendy's employee who lost a finger, and we know it couldn't be the woman who found the finger. So who's left?

To my mind, there's only two reasonable explanations.

(1) Someone at a Wendy's ingredient warehouse lost a finger, and it's being covered up for fear of reprisals or a loss of business. Maybe the company cut a check to some wage slave in exchange for their silence, although once the police are involved, you'd think the victim would speak up anyway.

(2) Ayala convinced someone she knew to cut off their finger for a chance at a share of the winnings in a future lawsuit.

The cops have executed a search warrant for Ayala's home, so they're clearly keeping #2 in mind as a possibility. If this is true, Ayala might be the best saleswoman of her generation.

Think about that...You have to convince someone to actually cut off their finger at the knuckle, so you can plop it into your Wendy's chili and then collect the pay-off. How do you start that conversation?

"Okay, I have this idea. We'll be totally rich. I'm going to find someone's finger in my Wendy's chili!...Are you kidding? They'll pay through the nose! It'll be a national embarassment...No, I can't cut off my own finger. The cops will figure it out!...Well, I'm the only one who knows how to handle the media. Plus, it is my idea...Well, I was thinking maybe you could cut off your finger...I mean, it'll hurt a little...No, you can't reattach it. It will be entered into evidence...We're talking thousands of dollars here. Stop being such a baby...Yeah, you've got 9 more...So, you're in? Great! I'll bring the pruning shears, you get some green nail polish..."