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A woman who planned to sell human toes on an online black market after dogs regurgitated them has pleaded guilty in a Melbourne court.
Joanna Kathlyn Kinman was employed at a Victorian animal shelter as a ranger when two dogs vomited up the toes and other remains in February 2024.
The dogs had been surrendered to the shelter after the death of their owner, whose name was suppressed. The man died of natural causes before his pets had eaten parts of his body.
Kinman faced Ringwood magistrates court on Monday, where she pleaded guilty to offensive conduct involving human remains.
The 48-year-old was not required to speak during her appearance and was supported by her 17-year-old son.
The police prosecutor Sen Const Melissa Sambrooks said Kinman was not present when the dogs regurgitated the remains, but searched a wheelie bin looking for the toes.
“She located two human toes and took them home and placed them in a jar containing formaldehyde,” Sambrooks said.
Later, during a phone call with her daughter, Kinman discussed how she planned to sell the toes online and said research suggested she could get as much as $400.
Police subsequently arrived at her Lilydale home after a tipoff from an unknown source. Kinman made full admissions to possessing the remains and intending to sell them online.
She showed police where the jar with the toes was located, beside other oddities including an alligator claw, a bird skull, a guinea pig trotter and her children’s teeth.
Police found Kinman was a member of the “Bone Buddies Australia” Facebook group, commonly used to buy, swap and sell specimens online.
Sambrooks said Kinman was an avid contributor to the site and had previously sold “wet specimens” of a stillborn kitten and puppy. It was not revealed where those remains were sourced.
During her police interview, Kinman told officers she was curious about the toes and took them because “I know someone who collects weird things ... I thought, ‘cool it’s a toe’.”
Many of the dead man’s relatives were unaware of the crime, with his son choosing to shield them from the investigation, saying his family had already suffered enough, the court heard.
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Kinman’s lawyer Rainer Martini told magistrate Andrew Sim his client had also been affected by her “spontaneous” crime.
He said Kinman lost her job and had her name spread online by a community that was “unsurprisingly repulsed by her behaviour”.
“She has regretted fulsomely ... not just for herself but for the impact on the family of the deceased,” Martini said on Monday.
The magistrate said it was “hardly surprising” Kinman – who had studied psychology as well as animal science – lost her job over the “entirely odd behaviour”.
“I find it remarkable that someone of the accused’s experience and education would not know it was an offence,” Sim said.
“It’s astounding that she didn’t understand [that] taking two toes that had been vomited up by one or two dogs from a deceased person and sell[ing] them on the internet was the wrong thing to do. I’m still struggling to understand – it’s astonishing, her behaviour.”
Sim adjourned the hearing until Kinman could be assessed for a community corrections order.
The maximum penalty for the charge was two years in prison, but both the prosecutor and Kinman’s lawyer agreed she should be assessed for a corrections order.
She was expected to be sentenced later on Monday. Kinman declined to comment to reporters outside court.
