Australian Mom Of 5 Plotted To Sell Human Toes Chewed By Dogs

An Australian woman pleaded guilty on Monday to a plot in which she attempted to sell two human toes from a deceased man.

Joanna Kathlyn Kinman, 48, of Melbourne, was charged with offensive conduct involving human remains, but will avoid jail time despite a magistrate calling the crime “astounding” and “distressing.”

Instead, she was given a community corrections order that will allow her to serve her sentence in the community, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Kinman was employed at a Melbourne animal shelter in February 2024 when two dogs whose owner had died of natural causes arrived.

Apparently, the dogs had eaten parts of the man’s body before he was discovered and then vomited up some of his remains, including two toes, at the shelter.

Kinman did not witness this, but she later found the toes in a wheeled bin at the shelter, took them home and placed them in a jar with formaldehyde, prosecutors told the court, according to 9News.com.

Authorities say she then called her daughter and said she planned to sell the toes online and believed she could get the equivalent of $250 for them.

Police later showed up at Kinman’s home after getting a tip from an unknown source. Authorities say she admitted to possessing the toes and intending to sell them online.

“I thought, cool, it’s a toe,” she reportedly told detectives.

Officers said that Kinman showed them the toes, which were in a jar. She also had an alligator claw, a bird skull, a guinea pig trotter and her children’s teeth.

Further investigation showed that Kinman was a member of a Facebook group called “Bone Buddies Australia,” where she previously sold “wet specimens” of a stillborn kitten and puppy.

Kinman’s attorney, Rainer Martini, told the court that he understood why the community might be “repulsed” by his client’s actions. He noted that she is no longer employed at the animal shelter.

“Well, that’s hardly a surprise,” Magistrate Andrew Sim responded, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Still, Martini said his client’s actions were “a purely spur-of-the-moment decision” and that the consequences have been “significantly negative to her.”

Detective Andrew Austin told the court that the dead man’s son was aware that Kinman had taken the toes, but said he had not informed other family members to avoid causing them additional suffering.

The judge called Kinman’s actions “entirely odd,” but sentenced her to an 18-month community corrections order rather than time behind bars, the Australian Broadcasting Company reported.

“By the barest of possible margins you will not be going to jail today,” Sim told Kinman. “You were dealing with body parts of a deceased person. That person would have expected they would have been treated with dignity and respect by any person who came into contact with their remains. You failed to do that.”