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Leg up on 'Urban Legends'

Catawba County case back on TV

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By the Record staff

Published: October 21, 2008

HICKORY - Spoiler alert. If you play along with the Biography Channel's series "Urban Legends," we're about to ruin the surprise.

The human-leg-found-in-smoker saga that started in Maiden and got national and international attention last year is back on TV. It will be one of the scenarios on "Urban Legends" tonight at 11 p.m., according to the network's online listings.

The show presents three different stories. Viewers guess which are real or which are urban myths. In tonight's episode, "3 Degrees of Separation," all three scenarios feature a tale of dismemberment.

Producers interviewed John Wood, who left the preserved, amputated portion of his leg inside a meat smoker in a Maiden storage building, and Shannon Whisnant, who bought the contents of the storage building in an auction after Wood failed to pay his storage bill. Whisnant subsequently sold peeks into the smoker to adults for $3 and children for $1, though it didn't actually hold the leg anymore.

He turned the leg over to Maiden police after he found it Sept. 25, 2007. When investigators learned the limb was not involved in any foul play, it was sent to a funeral home and then returned it to Wood, who then lived in South Carolina. Whisnant, who said he had discussed movie and book deals, wanted the leg returned.

He and Wood let TV's Judge Mathis settle their dispute. The episode aired Nov. 1, 2007. Mathis ordered Wood to pay Whisnant $5,000, the amount for which Whisnant sued, but let Wood keep his amputated leg. He said previously he wanted to have the leg, which was taken off just below the knee, so he could be buried as a whole man.

Wood, whose MySpace page says he lives in Atlanta, said in recent interviews that a producer is making a documentary about his life and the 14 accidents he survived. It was after one of those, a plane crash in 2004 that killed Wood's father, that Wood lost his leg.